Fourth

I posted an old 4th of July poem on The Practical Poet page to celebrate the day, but we mostly spent the day at home, puttering and doing chores, and (in my case) just being lazy in a post-stressful-times way. We'd had invitation to 4 great parties, and originally had planned to visit all of them if possible, but in the end we only went to the traditional gathering for fireworks at our friend's place on the other side of town.

The girls and I did run the Kenwood 3K at 7:30am - which meant waking up before 6am to get there on time. We took a friend with us - the ex-next door neighbor's girl, who is only 3 weeks younger than S. She and S. and I jogged, then walked, then jogged, then walked most of the route, until I finally got S. to agree to let me run ahead. She'd been anxious at the start of the race because we'd been briefly separated, and it made her clingy for the first mile plus of the 1.8 mile race. In the end, I passed R. (who had run ahead of all of us from the beginning), and got to the finish in time to snap shots of all of the girls as they came in. We also waited for our neighbor's mom to cross the finish line - she'd run the 10k, which I normally do, except she'd really been training for it and posted a respectable time for such an unkind, hilly course.

The fireworks were fun - the kids and adults all got along swimmingly, and we made it home at a decent hour. As always, I was relieved to find our house not on fire upon our return. I tell you. I can be so paranoid sometimes.

It's Official

The announcement went out at work today that I'm moving from the Inbound Sales group to the Customer Service department. This means my focus will be on giving customers news about their recoveries (including billing and invoicing for the work), as well as making sure that the customers are happy (or, hopefully, thrilled) and that the engineers and shipping folks all have what they need to perform the recoveries and get the jobs out the door. It's a problem-solving, colleague and customer supporting kind of role, and I'm super excited about the move. I think it suits my disposition and utilizes my strengths better than does a position in sales, with its related competitiveness.

And I'll still be able to provide whatever support I can (based on experience and knowledge that I've gathered over the last 10 years) to my colleagues in sales.
I'll also be able to use my foreign language and writing skills more. ¡Necesito aprender cómo hablar más español!

I probably won't start my new duties until late this month, as they have to find and hire a replacement in my current department. And apparently, no one is super eager about taking the 5am-1pm shift. But by the end of August, anyway, I should expect the transition will be complete. Also by then, the Customer Service department itself will have moved to a remodeled area on the first floor of the building, and I won't be sitting among the buzz of dozens of computers and servers or the cacophony of ringing phones and quoting salespeople.

D. insisted on going out for a sushi dinner to celebrate. Yeah. Twist my arm.

Sustenance

I've joined a discussion group where we're looking at Sustainable Living,
and judging by the first meeting tonight, it's exactly what I need when I need it in my path to living more responsibly and intentionally on this piece of rock.

Since probably a third of the readership of this blog is also in the group, you already know what I mean.

For the rest of you, I'll try to expand.

But not now.

I've been told that my 4 hours a night of sleep are worrying my spouse.

New Years in July

It's a time of change.

We recently got a new dishwasher (the previous one being 30+ years old), and a new front-loading stackable washer and dryer. These have already lowered our utility bill.

D's work on the remodel is moving along steadily, and what's emerging is gorgeous. Of course.

We've also got new toilets, which may not sound so glamorous but believe me when I tell you that one's quality of life is directly related to the minutes spent plunging vs not plunging.


We're just back from a trip to Seattle, Vancouver Island and Crater Lake, and it was the BEST family vacation I could have imagined, and we've got a new outlook and broadened horizons as a result.


It looks like there will be changes in my role at work in the not-so-distant future, and I'm very excited about that too.

And I'm shifting my focus in general - away from half-marathons and toward 20 minute workouts and more time to write. Sent out a poem for a local contest last night. Am glad I pushed myself to write it and get it out there.


And about that Writing thing.

Let's see if posting daily in July (starting yesterday, today) helps me keep it at the front of my mind. One can hope.

Greetings from Klamath Falls, OR

It's day 2 of our family vacation. Yesterday, we beat our own usual 2-hours behind schedule record by adding another 2 hours to it! After many hours of folding clean laundry and cleaning out pet cages (a standard courtesy for the pet-sitters), R. said, "For once, couldn't we just go on a trip without cleaning the whole house first?"

I really do appreciate my family's patience with my get-it-all-in-order now compulsive issues. And for the record, I held myself back a lot (otherwise we'd still be at home, I suspect.) I didn't have the girls clean their rooms, and I didn't wash the kitchen and bathroom floors like I wanted to so desperately. So we all make sacrifices.

I'll write more as I can on the road. We're about to leave for the train station, now!

A Quarter of A Century

That's how long it's been since D asked me to be his girlfriend. Standing under the stars in the driveway of my friend's house, after D had snuck out (I think he'd been grounded) to bike the few necessary blocks and crash a girl-only party to talk to me, I distinctly remember thinking, "Ah! This must be what Juliette felt about Romeo."

And I remember that even in that head-spinning, heart-thudding moment, part of me was observing, analyzing, and assessing how cliche it all was. But that doesn't mean I could stop myself from being swept of my feet. Detachment only goes so far in the face of wild first love.

I was 16. He was 18. (It tells you something about his home life that he'd been grounded at 18.) He was my first and only boyfriend, and to this day is my best friend, confidant, lover, the father of my children, and the smartest, funniest, most creative and most complex person I know.

We officially became a couple June 11, 1983. We broke up around September 1986 and got back together again somewhere around February 1988, and we've had our rough patches here and there since then - but we proudly count that time apart when calculating the longevity of our relationship, because without that dramatic breakup and the subsequent maturation, we wouldn't be where we are today.

So here's to you, D. Thanks for everything.

And in the interest of embarrassing us both, a couple of shots from Marin Sierra, July 1983:





















(We've come a long way, baby!)

Such is the age

...and such is the insular geeky nature of my family.

S. said Saturday night, "I know what a clone is. But what's a cyclone?"

It wasn't because of Myanmar that she was asking - we don't have TV, don't take a paper, and D hadn't yet read about Nargis in the Japan Times online, nor had I yet heard about it on NPR.

We'd been watching an episode of "Jeeves and Wooster" and the word came up.

And of course, R. speculated that a "cyclone" might be a cyber-clone.

World events? Meteorological phenomena? not a clue
BBC comedies? Replicants? oh yeah, we got that covered

Something new

The new site, one that I'll use as a "professional" web page, at least for now, is called The Practical Poet, and can be found here.

I actually have two reasons to break out the bubbly - the new site, and the amazing news I received yesterday that one of my poems I'd sent out into the wide world of competitions in March has won first place. I'll share the details once the journal has announced the results officially. I'm still reeling a bit - wondering if there's been some mistake, but enjoying the whirly ride.

Ping post

Still here, alive and kicking, and working on a new (!), more professional-use blog site to be "launched" this month, as part of my celebration of National ("forced recognition") Poetry Month.

Doesn't "launched" sound like there should be a bottle of champagne involved?

Back in the game

I've mailed off poems to five separate competitions this month - all reputable and fairly judged, from what I can tell - with the added benefit in almost all cases of a subscription in exchange for the reading fee, and significant prizes for first and other places.

We shall see!

It feels so good, at any rate, to put those SASE's in the envelope and send them off. As Suzanne and I discussed recently, the anticipation of responses is like the hope one might feel in the time between the buying of the lottery ticket and the revelation of the winning numbers.

And even though I know my chances for winning the contests are not fantastic - yet! wait until next year, when I'm that much improved! - they probably are better than those of winning the lottery.

Mis Mawrth Happus Iawn i Chi! And about the ficus...

Or "Happy March to You!" for my non-Welsh speaking readers.

I missed officially celebrating Saint David's Day this year because I wasn't at work to bring in scones & show off my Red Dragon flag, and I didn't post a blog entry Saturday either. But Mother Nature in our corner of the world celebrated for me, with good weather and daffodils trumpeting the advent of spring everywhere.

A year ago, I see, I had just sent off poems for inclusion in an anthology. Saturday, I mailed poems to be considered for a contest - the first of many such mailings. (Really, Julia.)

D and I did a ton of work around the house over the weekend. His big project was getting rid of the now-defunct 50 gallon saltwater tank that had been "temporarily" moved to the livingroom when we started the garage remodel. Inspired by his hard work, I was up until 12:30am this morning trying to find a new configuration for couches, chairs & the 26-year old ficus in the room - something that was feng-shui and would keep us from feeling like the place is just a jungle with a TV in the corner. But the tree is more bush than tree, and until we do some kind of topiary chiropractics with it, it insists on dominating the room.

In looking for a nice generic image of a ficus to add to the post, I found this quirky link www.theficus.com.


That link in turn lead me (2 links later) to this article & quote by Donald Trump:

There's no plant as beautiful as the ficus, and no plant that does the trick like the ficus.

(Hmmm. Maybe Mr. Trump would like to provide us with a small stipend as a reward for having lovingly coexisted with our plant for so long? A girl can only hope...)

How many times

...will I re-affirm my desire to write or my intention to be a better-published, better poet?

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

Thanks to Suzanne for the re-inspiration yesterday,and for this great poetry resource link.

The work progresses. I was re-inspired by hearing Rebecca Foust speak at a panel last Thursday sponsored by Marin Poetry Center. The discussion was on "The Professionalization of Poetry," and she was by far the most articulate, informed and relevant speaker for me. She's a woman who had a career as a lawyer, raised three children, and is now getting her MFA at a low residency program. She has gained a great deal of recognition and won several awards in a short period of time. How? By writing well and sending those well-written poems out there. Sounds like a plan to me.


The rain is still relentless. And this little snippet of a blog entry skirts around the thing that really must be recorded: the fact that our dog died a week ago today. I want to gather pictures, though, and perhaps also the little video clip that R. has of him nosing the camera and wagging his tail, and make a proper tribute post. But for now, Quiescat in Pace.

Oh. My.

**warning. mush follows. not for the cynical of heart.**


The first love note I found this morning was attached to my car keys when I went to start my daily half-pot of decaf.

(Um. Not that I need my keys to start the coffee maker. They were just near it on the counter.)

That one post-it note would have been enough to have me secretly smiling to myself all day.

But then I found another note on the bathroom mirror.

And another on the dashboard of my car.

It seemed like a note had been placed in every spot I might run into one at oh-dark-thirty when I prepare for work in the morning.

Short and simple.
(The notes, not their author.)

I came to work feeling like I was the best-loved woman on the planet.

And to make it even better, I'm loved by the coolest, smartest, funniest, dearest man I could ever hope to meet.


***


I divide my workdays between two desks in two departments in the office, so I wouldn't have found the last note until after 9am if my coworker hadn't emailed me to come to my other department early to see what had been left there.

I can't believe the lush beauty of the bouquet of red roses D. had delivered.

The note attached to the blooms is the same short message that I'd seen on the post-its.

There's hardly room on my desk (either desk) for the arrangement.

There's hardly room in my heart for how grateful I am to have such a sweetheart as a best friend and husband.

undulation

i.
the first grief is a white water slam
dashing into itself, erupting again
a tattoo beat in spikes and dips
like green blips on a screen.
between breakers this abrupt there is no
almost forgetting you are gone.

ii.
later, waves swell and fall like hills
spills of starlings twist and spin
in the blushing dusk. without counting
days or distance, here is the farthest away
you’ve been, now the longest
we’ve spent without your kiss.
orgasm, seasickness, the heat of
fire, the wind, and this. what else
comes in waves and goes in waves?

iii.
even now when we think ourselves
becalmed, sneaker waves capsize us.
we look for the horizon, everything
moves. terra infirma, the world reincarnates daily.
what of you? you in the flocks of fish wheeling
up and down in deep water. you in the modulation of bees
in the breeze-stricken apple boughs.

Slightly modified version

I like this better. Am wiping out the last version.

Rain on Fresh Concrete



The sound of the downpour draws us
to the window like the circus come to town.
All that we had left outside is now initiated by rain.
True, much had been well on the road to rust and mold
anyhow. But the concrete, newly poured, was not yet set in its ways.
We rush the storm: wheel in the mixer, toss empty bags,
fling tarps over the new path. The rain never pauses for breath.
We are alone in our remorse. We, who celebrated
every square inch of adobe we buried with bricks and cement:
that much less mud the next time it pours.
Cover it up in lining, rebar, gravel, concrete.
Planter boxes on top filled with dirt.
Dirt in boxes over concrete over dirt.
The strata we make of our lives.

An old one, in honor of recent rains

Rain on Fresh Concrete

Darkroom in Samoa

(an old one, posted for Kate. And written for her, and Joe, to begin with)

Darkroom in Samoa

We swim through green abundance,
one last breath before the glade. Before the
schoolroom mausoleum, chalk dust and damp
cement. One last breath before the closet
where we inter ourselves.
There are chemicals used for this in the dark or
near dark; developer, stop bath, fixing bath, wash.
Acrid attacks on the senses, vinegar alchemies,
each in turn.
Faces surface from oddly bent buildings;
lovers; horizons. Not always what was meant,
yet each one making its own sense.
We inhale the fumes and the faces together,
exhale a sigh of the same.
Our nostrils still burn when we step out of the room
and raise ourselves from the dead.
We make hardcopies of a wasteland,
here where the breezes are lush,
where the air is ginger and palm.

First published in Disquieting Muses, February 2000
Quoted in full again in pifmagazine, May 2000, in their review of DM.

New Years Eve, Post the First

Like so many people, on December 31st I am prone to rank, rate and ruminate. I don't like to look back and analyze much in detail, but I do take stock. I look at where the accumulated year has brought me. I look at myself in this moment, now, and ponder where I'll be in the Nows to come.

I've just spent the last half hour or so chopping wood. We've been going through the knotty, hard, stubborn stumps that are all that are left of the free cord plus that we were lucky enough to get a couple of years ago. And so my lower back is itself knotted and I have a stinging callus starting on my left palm. But the blood blister from when I chopped with my wedding ring on a couple of weeks ago has finally healed, and the wheels in my head are spinning with the same inspiration that a brisk walk in the hills normally brings. It's one of those times when if I could forsake my family, the dinner the girls are so excitedly preparing, the groceries I need to buy and money I need to deposit at the bank, I would sit and write. And write. Poems, prose, emails, blog entries. I always get the desire to write on New Year's Eve.

But even as I type these very words, R comes in asking me to open a new jar of tomato sauce.

[Here the blogger weighs out whether to insert long suffering sigh or philosophical observation...]

More later.

Is there something my husband isn't telling me?

Yesterday, we received a Christmas box from my mother-in-law. It was addressed:

Mr. and Mrs. P*******
and Becky


Here are my questions:

Where has he been keeping this other wife?

Does the box contain fruitcake? (I've been afraid to look)
If it does, how long will fruitcake keep?

I guess this sort of thing is to be expected from my mother-in-law, the woman who once installed hospital wall colored pastel floral vertical blinds in our bedroom while we were away from our house one day. The woman who gave us a BRASS SADDLE BAG mailbox with "The Patrascu" engraved in it. In black. Come to think of it, maybe she's just confused about who lives at our house. Sometimes it's just one Patrascu. Sometimes it's D., the Mrs., and me. Apparently.


I may have told this story before, but for years we talked about "losing" the mailbox and then reporting to D's mom that it had been taken. I practiced saying incredulously, "Somebody stole our mailbox!" but I just knew I couldn't pull it off. It was only after a remodel when D. built a mail slot into our garage that we were able to justify taking down the saddlebag. I know she meant well. I'm sorry if I sound like an ingrate. But here's my point: there are some items that one should allow a person to pick out for his or herself. You know, items that display prominently by default at one's home.

Pics from the Company Party

You can tell from his hunched shoulders that D is not 100% happy. But for someone in tremendous back pain and medicated, I think he looks pretty good! I hadn't posted a pic of us here in forever, and thought I might as well take advantage of us being dressed up...








...and this is after I let my hair down,
although I didn't even get near the dance floor all night,
and in fact didn't even have a drop of alcohol either.
How tame is that?