The Growing Blog

For those of you who haven't already seen it, this article about the growth of blogs in 2004 is interesting. In particular, I hope to learn more about RSS or XLM aggregators, which is something Julia tried to explain to me even though I couldn't, at the time, wrap my head around it.

The Challenge

I have been issued a challenge to blog daily. Well, you're on, Clare! This being day two of the new I-will-write-daily year, I'm feeling up to the task.

The BIC (butt-in-chair) writing time at the Applebox today with Julia helped me feel more writerly, as did the blogging I started up again last week. It also helps that I got my running in today. There's a real connection between me exercising and feeling good about myself and being creative.

After the run and writing session, I took the girls to Borders where they blew only some of the gift card money they got from "grandpere" on lots of books and a couple of CDs. I was pleased that we got out of there with no DVDs, since they're not currently watching any movies at all. One of the things I could (in theory) blog about is this no-media for the kids lifestyle we've adopted: why we're doing it, what it means, how it works on a daily basis.

Tonight we played The Simpson's Clue, which my brother and his family had brought over on Monday. (It was conveniently on sale at Borders, so we got our own copy). Fun, and it'll be even more fun when S. can read. I'm hoping we can do more goofy family things like that in the months to come - even when it's not raining!

All for now. Feeling the energy being drained right out of me, which must mean bed time. Work will be challenging tomorrow, anyway - the first day back after a vacation is the day when everyone realizes the servers have crashed, which keeps us very busy.

New Year's Day

It's New Year's Day. And although I am trying to learn to live in the moment and not the past or future, it's very hard today not to reflect on what I did and did not accomplish or experience last year, and what I hope to do and be in the 12 months ahead.

Here is where I am, now: in a somewhat cluttered "office" at home, writing. The girls are in the kitchen making up stories about giants and sculpting villages for dragons out of clay, and D. is building the kind of aesthetically pleasing million-degree scorching hot fire in our wood-burning stove that only an Eagle Scout can build.

My feet are cold, because I like the lovely idea we've adopted of not wearing shoes in the house, but as much as I exercise regularly, my feet represent a large surface area to warm and my circulation sometimes doesn't manage. But other than that, I'm fine.

How could I not be? I've had 12 hours of sleep and there's nothing pressing that I have to do today. And most importantly, I'm surrounded by a healthy, happy family in a dry home with food in the pantry and all those other countless blessings that are forgotten - until we see so many people in the world suddenly left with nothing. I can't help but remember that this is not a happy new year for millions of the people on this planet. It sobers me, and just like a death in the family can do, it strengthens my resolve to live a meaningful life and not take for granted the many kinds of wealth I've been given, but instead share them, spread them out, connect, and make a difference.

Three Names MEME

You can thank Julia for this "meme."

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
Rebecca
Becky
Mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
RowanEmrys
rpatrascu
RoTN

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
quick wit
comedic timing
ability to learn languages

THREE THINGS YOU HATE ABOUT YOURSELF:
As Julia suggested, "hate" is pretty harsh, but here goes:
My tendency to talk instead of listening
My tendency to speak before thinking
Horrible time management

THREE THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD RIGHT NOW:
enough money to make a real difference with tsunami relief
more time
a slender figure

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
what I get from my adopted family
what I get from my biological family
what I get from my historical, cultural inheritance

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
the thought that I've so little to show for my life
the idea of my daughters being hurt or scared
that George Bush is our President

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
coffee
food
connecting with my immediate family

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
my wedding ring
the clothes I put on at 5am
contact lenses

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS/ARTISTS AT PRESENT:
Dar Williams
Counting Crows
Dave Matthews

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
another half marathon
sleeping more than 6 hours a night during the workweek
writing DAILY

THREE THINGS YOU NEED IN A RELATIONSHIP:
honesty
respect
love

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE:
I believe in God
It's pouring down rain here as I write this
One of the above statements is a lie

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX (or same) THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
intelligent eyes
a warm smile
posture that shows a guy is comfortable with who he is

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
bat my eyelashes
chin ups
waltz (but I can polka in a hoop skirt!)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
jogging
reading
writing

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
take a hot bath
sleep about 15 hours
watch the new Jean Reno movies I just got from amazon.fr

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
poet
data recovery advisor (current occupation)
childbirth educator

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
Wales (as usual)
Antarctica
British Columbia

THREE KIDS NAMES
Myfanwy
Telemachus
Francis

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
see my great-grandchildren
publish an acclaimed (or at least respected) book of poetry
organize my papers

THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO TAKE THIS QUIZ (and post the results)... NOW!
Suzanne
Clare
Kate

Extended Stay

Due to the bad weather (flooding, roads being closed, people trying to dodge raindrops while they drive their SUVs), Mom is staying with us another couple of days. I’m glad, too. We’ve had a very pleasant visit. Yesterday while R. did a class project at a classmate’s house, Mom & S & I went out to brunch at a great little place downtown. Then I took her to the Toyota dealership to check out the Prius, since I’m hoping to get one in the next couple of months. They had a model available, but the wrong color & with leather seats, so I didn’t bite.

Then it was a quick trip to the Dr. for mom to get a few more antibiotics for a sinus infection that she’s fighting off. We followed that with a trip to rent a car for her for a couple of days, and finally dinner out at steakhouse (I had chicken) where we filled up on appetizers and hardly had room for any dinner!

Back home only long enough to work on my annual jigsaw puzzle a bit more, then off to the gym to run. Thus ends my week off work. And thus begins my back-to-work, back-to-posting routines.

The Long Christmas

I've had an extended Christmas this year. Mom got into town Thursday, we shopped on the way home from the airport, and then Friday I was out with the rest of the town's procrastinators getting the last few things, as well as groceries. Friday night we went way up north to a wine country town to be treated to a very fancy restaurant dinner by D's mom and stepdad, and then we went back to their place to open presents and have some Buche de Noel. D. and my mom won the bet that it would be a late night.

I stayed up until 2am Christmas eve wrapping & cleaning & prepping a little for the next day's cooking, and then was up at around 7am Christmas morning reminding the girls to be excited about Christmas quietly so that Grandma could sleep in a little.

My sister and her new boyfriend got here not long after 8am. They'd been staying in the city at the home of one of my sister's many friends. We had brunch: popovers, bacon, turkey sausage, fruit, coffee, scrambled eggs (with or without feta), and champagne. D's dad came and then his sister arrived not long after that. D's mom played a common card and called and kept him on the phone for about an hour just as his dad and sister were arriving - and yes, it was because she knew that they would be there. That's just how it is.

Everyone got along famously here, however, and spent the morning catching up or getting to know one another and opening presents and exclaiming over them. I stayed in the kitchen - first making brunch, then cleaning up after it, then making dinner. So I'm a little fuzzy on who gave my kids which fantastic presents. I've already started the motherly interrogation process with them. "And what did Aunt T. give you, honey? Sweetie, who gave you the a-bomb kit? And where did this shark egg come from?" That kind of thing. But fortunately, they're very clear on what's what on this score.

Although we didn't have our Writer's meeting Thursday due to S's cold and my over-committed, non-writing self bowing out, I've felt a growing desire to get back to blogging and finishing stories and doing writerly things. The New Year helps. It may be an artificial starting point - just a date, after all - but it's a convenient time to re-commit to being more who I am , really, and less who I think other people think I should probably be.

It helped to have Suzanne asking where my blogs had gone, and Julia doing the same & also encouraging me to WRITE. And then last night, when we were at Clare's house, having her say that she looks at my blog when she first gets online was also a great motivator. I so appreciate the support.

Today, my brother and his family may again stop by. But I'll have to write about that later, because I've already stolen as much time from the girls and mom as I can get away with. I hear the natives getting very restless in the other room....

Returning from beyond

....climbing...back...up...from the edge of the world. You thought I'd slipped off for good, didn't you?

Well, ha! Fooled you! I'm here. Just after 3 weeks of not blogging - does that mean I've developed the habit of not blogging? I'd rather call it a serious lapse than a change of lifestyle. Sound okay? Okay.

So what have I been doing with myself? What do I have to show for this incommunicado-ness?

Work has been especially demanding, meaning no time for any kind of break or lull to toss off a blog post. So good, but damn busy, on the work front.

The kids had lots of December school and after school stuff. 2 days a week, we take one of R's classmates for the afternoon. Another classmate comes every other Wednesday. Tuesday, R has had "acting camp," a project completely started and managed by another classmate of hers. He'd written a script for a play production of A Series of Unfortunate Events (and this is before the film was released, mind you), and R and other classmates were practicing for 2 hrs every Tuesday. It's that kind of class, I tell you. Thursdays, R. has gymnastics now. S. has gymnastics Fridays, then R. has riding lessons Saturdays which take up from 10:30am to 1pm. (Have I mentioned this before. Sorry if I'm repeating myself, but this is the sort of babbling journaling that I do for my own later reference. Here is where my life is at right now, e.g.)

I have written little. I have jogged about 4 times a week, and when each run takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes, I think this has wiped out what little free time I'd had. I feel like I've been too busy making sure the dishes get washed and the kids' lunches get made and my half-marathon training happens to just sit my butt down and write. Another argument for the writer's group BIC (butt-in-chair) meetings.

Another thing that I think has somehow wiped me out and kept me from writing, ironically, is a new insight that came last week when I went to visit the counselor whom R. had seen 3 times for ADD issues.

This was the first time I'd seen a therapist since I was a post-breakup suicidal twenty year old. And even then, I think I only saw someone three times. I'm just too stingy to spend money talking to someone about myself when I already have the bad habit of doing it far too much for free. If that makes sense. Anyway, that last therapist's last comment to me 18 years ago had been, "You know, someday, you're going to want to talk to someone about your father." I remember at the time, I'd thought something like, "That's weird! I wonder why she thought that? All I ever talked about was me and my ex boyfriend and stuff. I didn't even talk about my dad!"

Uh. Hem. You can see what an insightful twenty year old I was.

Anyway, darned if after my dad's call the other night and his "Actually, I was dead," letter, I didn't find myself thinking, "I want to talk to someone about my father."

Those of you who don't care about digging this deep into my brain and emotions, feel free to stop reading this blog and enjoy something else instead. Like How to Build an Igloo or Hello Kitty Horoscopes or something. And because I know my birth mom and birth dad read this blog (hi guys!), this is the part of the entry where I tell you that I still think you did the RIGHT thing by putting me up for adoption and that I do not want you to feel ANY remorse or concern or whatever. IT'S OH-KAY. Okay? Got it? Really got it? Good. Thanks. No, really.

Anyway, after a chat with this very nice, very competent therapist (let's call her Dr. X), I've learned the following things:

**Warning. Angst-ridden self-absorption follows. Warning.**

1) My father (and by this, I mean my adoptive father, of course) falls neatly into the DSM-IV definition for Antisocial Personality Disorder. As Dr. X gently pointed out, "Your father is a sociopath." I demurred a little, until she read to me from the DSM-IV and I said, "Oh, yeah. That's him."

2) I've survived this remarkably well. She said she was fascinated by how it was that I got out of my childhood so healthy. I told her I suspected genetics had a lot to do with it. The birth relatives I've met are all strong, strong people. Phew. Thank God for that! And I also give God credit for helping me. I may have mixed feelings about who Jesus was right now, but I'm very clear on God.

3) My very handy ability to be detached when it comes to my dad's illness is no reason for me to think that it's not really affecting me at some level. Case in point: I cried in the office. When Dr. X said, "Maybe you've never let yourself cry about this," and I said, "Cry about what? I'm fine. I don't think I really need to cry about it. Much. And besides, even if I did, I wouldn't know how to cry about it. I wouldn't know how to make a catharsis happen." (Besides, I thought, I'm kinda busy...)

4) Saying to Dr. X, "I guess I'll stop in the restroom to blow my nose," doesn't mean that I won't find myself in said restroom choking down sobs and feeling suddenly like I could cry for two hours straight and not be done.

So there you have it.

Plus I've been making Christmas cookies. And, you know, mailing out cards and dragging the kids around shopping. That kind of thing.

(Dr. X suggested I might want to see her one more time. I guess I will.)

Thanksgiving report

Yeah, so I haven't posted in ages. Which is not to say that I haven't been writing, at least.
Much has happened, most significantly the birth of Lillian Monroe!
Congratulations to the family!

Thanksgiving was the tradition two-meal affair for us. Thursday we went to D's dad's new place, about an hour away. D's sister joined us. I brought homemade popovers, broccoli casserole and stuffing, and a store-bought pie. It was a nice afternoon & evening. Before I collapsed into bed that night, I double-checked my ambitious recipes to see what needed to be prepared in advance for the next day's feast. As a result, I was up until about 1:40am making herb maple butter and the beginning of pumpkin soup.

The next day, I got up early and started the cooking/cleaning thing. By 11, the turkey had been in the oven for 2 hours, and I had made half of the dishes for the day. My oldest brother and his wife and two boys (14 & 11 yrs old) came over for the first time in many years. They'd been staying at her brother's place in the Wine Country with his family. Around 1, D's mother and her husband arrived. Around that same time, I was called by my work to give a quote to someone at at a big production studio who had lost about 100GB of data.

Here's what I made for Friday: popovers, broccoli casserole, pumpkin soup, turkey with maple herb butter, stuffing, mashed potatoes with buttermilk, bacon bits & chives, sweet potatoes with brown sugar, almonds and marshmallows, green beans with walnuts and walnut oil, and pecan pie. I did not make the pie crust. If you've ever seen a pie crust made by me, you'd understand why.

Here's what happened with the work quote: we could save their data, but to do it as quickly as they needed would run tens of thousands of dollars, and was outside the budget for this particular project.

It's quite an interesting experience going straight from navigating the four cousins who are wrestling in the hallway, to explaining to an update So. Cal. producer why our service will cost 40K to do ASAP, to chopping yams and offering drinks to the adult guests. If I'd gotten mixed up with what I was doing, it could have been really ugly.

A letter from Dad

I got a letter on Sunday from my father. You don’t normally receive mail on Sundays, unless it’s been mis-addressed and a neighbor has had to bring it to you, as was the case here. Dad says his call to me two weeks ago had been from the ER. He says (and this is where I remind readers that unfortunately you cannot believe anything he says) that he’d had a stroke and his doctor told him he’d flat-lined for four minutes and was dead. Before the call, that is.

Dad’s an atheist, and he made a point to say there were no bright lights, no relatives waiting for him. “Dead is dead,” he writes. Then he says he checked himself out of the hospital and went home. Okay. Right.

When I relayed this story to my mother, she said – uncharacteristically for her - that it was no surprise that no one was waiting to meet him on the other side.

So I’m writing a new short story about my father. I started it before I got the letter. The letter just gives me that much more incentive. I’m inspired by a combination of subject matter I know and find interesting, and the thought that maybe this will be therapeutic for me.

On a different front, a couple of days ago, I had an interesting conversation with my five year old after I picked her up from daycare. It went something like this (with an acknowledgement to Kate, whose dialogs with her son are so nicely recorded in her blog).

“Mom, who did you vote for?”

“For President?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, hon, I voted for Kerry this time.”

“Oh. Well. I just want President Bush to make some castles. Because there are ZERO castles in the world.”

“In America, or in the world?”

“In the world.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I wonder why he hasn’t made any castles.”

“I don’t know, but I need a castle for when I grow up because I’m going to live in a castle, and only poor people can come visit me there. And I’ll give them some of my gold.”

“How much gold will you give them?”

“Well, for one person, I’ll give six gold pieces. And then for another person, I’ll give six gold pieces, and for another person, I’ll give him six gold pieces.”

“So you’ll give everyone six gold pieces?”

“Yeah. Unless if they already have some money, then I’ll only give them one.”

“How many gold pieces will you have?”

“Oh, about five thousand.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“Yeah.”


I think about how we all just want someone to build us a castle to live in. I think about how my dad has been telling me his whole life all about the castle that is being built for him.

A phone call from Dad

My father called me around 10:15 Saturday night. We spoke for about half an hour. It was the longest conversation we’ve had since two years ago, when I went out to visit relatives in Colorado and saw him for about 45 minutes. It was really good to talk to him.

He said he was calling to tell me that he loved me. I waited with some anxiety for the next sentence, but it wasn’t anything about suicide or my grandmother (his mother) dying – the only reasons I could think of for him to call with such a message.

He said that he’d sold the property where he’d had his pawnshop and they were going to tear it down and make a dialysis center there. He said he wanted to call all his kids just to let them know that he loved them and he wasn’t sure what had gone wrong with his life and everything but that he’d sold the property and were going to use it to make a dialysis center. And they’d sold the property. And they were going to tear down the building and make a dialysis center.

Did I mention that he was four sheets to the wind?

After we spoke, I typed furiously on a keyboard at great length about the conversation and about my feelings for my father. The next night, I wrote more about it. In fact, I’m thinking that this is as good a spark as any for me to work on that collection of stories (or even – dare I say it? – a novel) I’d been toying with doing about Dad.

It’s funny that I should get this call now, only a couple of weeks after my birth father had sent me an email checking in to see how I was doing. What a contrast between the two men. My birth father, whom I first met two years ago, is very humble and careful about his relationship with me. He’s never done anything to harm me, and yet he almost acts like he doesn’t deserve to get to close to me. (“Pshaw!” I say to that.)

My father, on the other hand, has done an amazing amount of damage to the health and well being of the people around him, and yet the closest he comes to remorse is a whiny self-pitying litany of drunken excuses.

Hmm. That sounded a little harsh, didn’t it? Yes, it did. And I’m probably the person in my family who was least hurt by him.

I know that alcoholism has a lot to do with Dad’s inability to face reality. In fact, one of the many interesting parts of our conversation Saturday night was when I suggested that he shouldn’t call my sister until he was actually sober, and he said, “You may be right. But I don’t have a problem with alcohol.”

And I said, “Dad, you are the epitome of an alcoholic. I can’t remember the last time I saw you when you hadn’t been drinking.”

Damn, that felt good. He’s been drinking my whole life and that was the first time I’d confronted him about it.

He denied that he drank I pointed out that denial was all part of the disease, too, but I don’t think he heard me.

He said, “I don’t drink. I’m on medication.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” I said.

He said, “Well, I just wanted to call and tell you that I love you."

"I love you too, Dad, " I said. Because of course, in spite of everything else, I do.

"Well, okay," he said. "And I just wanted to let you know that they sold the building you saw when you came out, and they’re going to tear it down and build a dialysis center there.”

“So I hear.” I told him.

It's November

Okay, so it's been November, but I have a time management / denial issue, which is another blog entry unto itself.

November means NaNoWriMo month, when tens of thousands of insane...uh, I mean motivated...people aspire to, and in many cases actually successfully write, a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

As they say on their web site, "It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down."

For the second year in a row, my neighbor will be participating and I will probablynot be participating.

That's to say that it's one of those things I'd like to do (sort of) and think I should do (sort of) but in all reality, I believe the world is better served by me concentrating on living in the moment and working on things like poetry, short stories, my grandmother's oral history and feeding my family.

Maybe next year.

Or maybe this year.

But probably not until next year. At the soonest.

Could you do this? Would you?

Tomorrow I'll figure out what psychic void I'm trying to fill with Halloween Candy. And I'll talk about the Candy Fairy.

But for now, I have this goal of > 6 hrs of sleep a night, and my pillow calls.

Voted

I voted. Did you?

My 10 year old asked me yesterday whom I was going to vote for. I was reminded of a satirical comment I heard on the radio last week. I think it's actually a bumper sticker, and that it goes something like: "John Kerry: He'll Do."

We talked about how it's important to respect the President, and that he'd been faced with some very difficult circumstances. I told her that I didn't agree with his choices, but that he'd done the best he could.

She said, "The best he could? Are you kidding me?"

As liberal as her school is, only one kid in her 4th grade class admitted that his parent were going to vote for President Bush. Everyone else has had nothing but severe criticism of him - criticism that I'm sure they'd overheard from their parents.

My first political memory was when Nixon resigned. I was a little younger than R. My father made sure I watched the broadcast. Otherwise, my first political memory would have been the Iran hostage crisis, many years later.

I'm amazed that my kids are aware of who the President is, and who's running against him today.

My five year old expresses her political awareness a little more subtly, though.

What exactly was she was trying to convey by making two yellow jelly beans stand up on the table (one in each hand), and saying, "This is Bush." (holding up the right one briefly) and "This is Mrs. Bush" (hold up the left one briefly), and then making them "walk" up to either side of an Applebee's plastic cup, followed by a sly giggle. Hmmmmm....very profound, I'm sure.

Where There's Smoke

One brief observation about Japan before bed:

* Many people smoke. I mean, sure, more people smoke there than smoke in my little cul-de-sac of the world, but even compared to the average amount of smokers in, say, Europe, these days (200 million plus), I'd say more people smoke per capita in Japan than outside of it. (And a quick Google search backed me up.)

Some restaurants have little "No Smoking" sections, but since they're not really divided in any way (except by a few feet of distance) from the rest of the nicotine-breathing diners, this really means, "Slightly Less Smoking." Did D. & I care? Not really. We were so happy to be there, on vacation, away from it all and (after the business part of the trip) alone together, I think we could have lost a finger and would have said, "Oh well, who cares?! We're in Japan!"

Except, on second thought, that's not entirely true - as a missing finger is a sign that you're with the Yukuza.

Although there's apparently a way to work around that, too.

What a world we live in.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Blade Runner fans, you know the rest.

We are here: well and safe and sound. The girls are also here, and well and safe and mostly sound. Yesterday, S. had to be taken to the Dr. because of a puffy red eye, which it turns out was slightly scratched somehow - possibly she scratched it in her sleep. We are grateful that eyes heal so quickly. She'll go back for a checkup tomorrow, but today she was the "Pirate Princess" with a patch over the eye.

She was so happy to see me when I picked her up from daycare that she was "almost going to POP!" Daughter number 1 was also thrilled to see me, and gave a running jump into a hug that nearly broke me, followed immediately by her running off to play with a friend. It's all right. I'll get over it.

There is SO MUCH to tell about the trip. I suppose it's best done in installments, and best done after more than the 3 or 4 hours of sleep I've had in the last 2 days. Let's see - it's now 2:30pm in Tokyo Thursday, and we got up to leave around 7:30am in Tokyo Wednesday. I slept about 30 minutes on the plane, about 20 minutes in the airporter, and about 3 hours since I got home. Time for a full night's sleep!

Great to be home. Wonderful to be away, mind you, but great to be home.

Oct. 20, 2004

Dateline Tokyo.
The 23rd typhoon of the season has pretty much passed through the city. The southern parts of Japan, where we will visit next, were hit fairly hard. Here in the city, it just rained on us the whooe time we were sight seeing yesterday, and then while we safely had dinner at the hotel restaurant, the worst of it passed through.

This morning it is raining but not socked in. We'll have a few hours of sight seeing and then I'll be off to another meeting followed by a trade show visit followed by dinner. Tuesday afternoon and evening and even part of the night was business meetings and dinner with the other company's CEO and Manager too. We're learning a lot about how they do business, and more importantly, they're learning a lot about how we run our company. The CEO and Director of Business Developement (our outside sales manager) are really showing me how it's done.

The hotel we are staying at is the one used for the film "Lost in Translations." If you've seen the movie, you know what this place is like. And it's not just a movie star that gets treated royally here. Everyone does.

I want to write more - there's a lot to write! But I have only a little time to see more sights before business, and I don't want to lose that chance. So this is all for now.

Pre-Trip Count Down: 36 hours

I'm 36 hours away from getting on the airporter and going to Japan.

My to-do list is long - but finite. My energy is low but steady - amazing, especially since I've had 5 hrs sleep per night for the last 4 or 5 nights, now. I've lost count. It's a little like having a baby in the house, but instead of losing shut eye for the sake of a crying newborn, I'm up at all hours to appease my own sense of needing to be prepared for a journey.

When we go on long car trips, my husband packs flares and spare gasoline and whatever manly tools he thinks one might need in the event of a problem. I don't think in those concrete terms, but really, I do same thing before a big trip in terms of mental preparation.

One of the symptoms of the difference between us, though, is that he seems unconcerned by what is being left behind. He doesn't worry about letters to teachers, permission slips and paperwork that needs to be put in order, while I can't be bothered to think about how much air is in the tires or what the turbulence might be like over the Pacific.

I've cleaned out most of the drawers and closets in the house. I still need to complete the list of contact names and numbers, the how-to-use the funky dishwasher instructions, to clean out the dog's pen, pay the bills, yadda yadda yadda. There are a few business details still to sort out too: a list the contacts we'll be meeting and their titles (I have their cards from previous trips), a map out their offices and facilities and the trade show we'll be visiting.

The young woman who is watching our kids (with help from her fiance) will have copious lists of instructions and directions. I warned her about this, and she was actually grateful. (Or at least, she said she was.) With her last gig like this, the parents went to Jamaica for a week, and she ended up having to rely on the 4 year old (the oldest of the 3 kids she was watching) to tell her where Mommy kept everything.

Anyway, I'll probably be up until midnight again, but maybe in some twisted way, that's good. I think I'm getting used to the change in the time zone. Right now it's noon in Tokyo.

I will do what I can to post to this blog while traveling. Maybe I'll even figure out a way to post pictures.

But I guess know about as much Japanese as I'm going to know by Sunday.

Some lessons are repeated

Here's what I'd like to do: sit in front of a movie and vegetate for about thirty minutes and then go to bed and get almost full night's sleep.

Here's what I'm going to do: put on a mud face mask, write something for tomorrow's workshop, make the girls' lunches, do the dishes, drink more water, check my Japan trip to-do list, and then maybe fold laundry while watching a few more minutes of Lost in Translation. I've seen it once, but watching it feels like more trip preparation, so I can be entertained and feel like I'm accomplishing something at the same time.

Sick, isn't it?

At least - as my mom pointed out tonight - at least I can laugh at myself about it. "When are you going to learn?" she asked. Apparently not yet.

But please note that I WILL relax on my trip.

Ships and the Sea

We spent the day on the S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien today. We left before sunrise to make it to Pier 45 on time. There was a horribly nerve-wracking hour or so, while I tried to figure out if I was supposed to bring tickets and/or whether they would let us onboard without them, and while D's sister broke the speed of sound getting from her home to the ship before it left.

But we made it, we were all onboard when the tugboats started doing their work, and it was a long but enjoyable day. They served good food, there was a big band playing all day, and we saw the Snowbirds do their stuff. I'm still rocking from being on sea from 8 to 4:30, but it could also be that I'm swaying with exhaustion.

We had dinner out (my request) and after the kids got to bed, I went through a drawer of my grandmother's papers to pull out letters from the kids. I've been doing that for hours now.

A funny thing happened, too. Before I got to the drawer of things, I was cleaning up one of the ubiquitous piles of paper on the office floor, and I found an offer to join or contribute to the Nature Conservancy. Well, I do sometimes send checks to various causes and non-profit organizations. But every once in a while, you just have to release yourself of the false sense of obligation brought on by unsolicited mailing. And I said to D., "I'm not going to give to these guys right now," and I threw away the paper. (Ah! Liberation!)

Forty-five minutes later, going through my grandmother's things, I found an envelope from the Nature Conservancy asking her to renew her membership. She'd hung on to the request (for who knows how long), and when she died, it went with all her other paperwork to me.

Yeah, okay. But she died over 8 years ago.

So I threw it out on her behalf.

I think we all feel better. Except maybe the Nature Conservancy. But they'll get over it. Heck, they not only have the domain www.nature.org, but they got a plug in my blog. Twice, if you think about it.

To bed. Tomorrow will be another big day, followed by only big days until we leave for Japan. It's the last big push to get myself and my family ready for our 10 day adventure apart, the last few days during which I can organize my things, clean the house, pack, and find a cure for cancer.

Makes me tired just thinking about it. I've done my duty for the day. I've written. To bed.

Choices

I have made an enlightened decision. I won't be able to complete my grandmother's transcription AND sleep between now and my trip (let alone before the 13th), so I'm going to set it aside and complete it for Christmas.

I'm on page 45, which represents about one and a half of five or six tapes. It takes me about an hour to transcribe about 5 minutes of speaking, because I'm doing it verbatim, and keep pausing and rewinding to get every "but...uh.." and cut off or mumbled sentence she said. So I think there are about 270 minutes more to go. That's nearly 24 hours, realistically. It can't happen as quickly as I'd like.

I can be proud of what I've done so far, and send out a note to my family in time for her birthday, maybe with a picture and excerpt and an announcement that more will come. I have a great shot of her and two friends in front of a little plane they flew in in the 1920's. That should do. I don't want to send just some of the transcript. I'll back up the tapes, back up the file, and put it all in our fire safe.

And then I can focus on other things.

The older I get, the better I can think through things and prioritize, but I'm still fighting this weird idea I have that I can and should do everything I think I can and should do.

Right now I can and should go to bed, but see, now, that's an example of a reasonable goal.

16 tons of concrete

Hello Gentle Readers. I am here, and all is well.

R's 10th birthday party was a quiet affair, with dinner out and a sleepover with two of her friends. She invited the sweetest, most polite girls in her class, which made my job easy. One of the girls is diabetic, and so we had to stay on top of checking her blood and dosing out the insulin after consulting with her mom every few hours. It was educational, because I now understand carbs and blood sugar in a whole new way, but also educational to see that a 9 year old girl can jab herself in the stomach with a needle and just say a quiet, "Ow" when she's done. It's all about attitude; how we handle hardships, how we get through this life.

We had about 16 tons of concrete poured in our front yard today. That's right: 33,000+ pounds have gone into the making of a courtyard just outside the front door. D. was very worried thinking about it last night, and I don't blame him. That's a lot of material to deal with if something goes wrong. Which it didn't. We'll have a walkway to the front door cured in another week or so instead of the rebar and dobie obstacle course we'd had. (I tried and tried to find a visual for a dobie but I couldn't!) It feels like things are getting done in a timely manner, but that's probably because I'm not the one doing all the hard work & I'm not as aware as D. is of what must still be done.

I'm working on poems to send to the contest, and I think I have 2 or 3 candidates so far, but they'll need more work. I love the process of working on poetry so much.

Tonight is D's night out. I got the girls to bed before 9pm and am still awake a half hour later - unheard of for a Monday night! I'm trying to talk myself into doing a few more things before bed so I can sleep well all night instead of my usual Monday night routine: collapse into bed, set the alarm for 10pm, hit the snooze button for two hours, get up and work for an hour or two, go back to bed. That's just so wrong in so many ways.

The pet rat is keeping me company. We named her Beatrice. I suppose if I'd had a male too I would have named him Dante, but it somehow seems appropriate that Beatrice is here and Dante is somewhere else, distant from her.