Let's see if I remember how this works...

So, I think the idea is that I get over the "it has to be perfect" or "it will take too long" whine and dawdle shuffle, and move straight to the "put your fingers to the keyboard and post a blog entry" sashay.

Like, before yet another month makes an appearance, already.

It's been hard to blog. It's been hard to do a lot of things, although I manage them well enough that I'm not sure I need to officially complain.

Except that I feel like I'm off my game, frankly. As though I just can't think straight.

I wonder if it's possible that I'm in some sort of perpetual fog because the death of a close family member does that to you. I'm hoping that's the case. I've certainly heard now from a number of people that the inability to concentrate, and general confusion, are very common symptoms of grief. And it's not like I'm talking about London pea-soup fog, or tule fog, exactly. Sometimes it's only a wispy haze. But I definitely feel impaired. More than usual, that is.

I think.

In fact, what's tricky about this fogginess is that I'm not at all sure that it isn't the way I've always been. Maybe I've been cloudy-brained for a long, long time, and I'm actually only clear enough now to recognize it. Maybe this is me better than I've been because I actually now recognize how bad off I am. Sound confusing? It is to me, too.

So I'm giving myself whatever time it takes, hoping (because I am by nature an optimist, in spite of being paranoid at the same time) that I will pull out of this into the clear sunlight and be able to count to ten again without stopping at six to wonder what I came into the kitchen to get.

And speaking of paranoid - thanks to Julia for the compliment. Tonight after our writers group meeting, when we couldn't set the alarm at first because of a fault with an unknown area in the building, I'd offered to scout out the dark, secluded warehouse section of the place in case someone had propped open a door or something - since we had, after all, seen cars drive through the otherwise empty parking lot earlier, and people could have been casing the joint. I had even suggested I could take of my boots so I would be in my socks, and better able to run if necessary. And Julia, bless her, said to me, "I like the way you think of everything."

That's just about the nicest way to call someone paranoid that I can imagine.

The rough outline of the last month (or at least the highlights):

S. turned 7 on Friday. The same day, my oldest brother turned 47, and D's father turned 76. And that's only 3/5ths of the Leos in our immediate family. Much royalty.

S. had a roller skating party. I never knew I had it in me to disco dance to The YMCA while skating.

I was in Las Vegas last week. My first real non-slots gambling experience. Perhaps worth a blog entry, but perhaps not as worthy to write about as my Road Warrior post-apocalyptic fantasies about what would happen to Vegas if the power failed.

I wrote a new poem. Or at least the first few drafts. (Not related to Vegas. Or the YMCA.)

D and I are remodeling our bedroom to look like a traditional Japanese room - complete with a new closet with custom shelves behind hand-made (D-made) shoji screens, a platform bed, tatami mats, and lots of space and light, sans clutter. It's full of clutter mid-process, of course, which is hard to live with, but it'll be a slice of Japan in Northern California when we're done.

Sound true?

So Josh tagged me to write 8 THINGS about myself, but it's easier to paste this little quiz engine response than to actually put thought and energy into prose. So the 8 THINGS will have to wait, and here's this for now. It might be a *little* tiny bit true, I suppose. Maybe.

Your Birthdate: August 28

You have a Type A personality so big it makes other Type A's shrink away in shame. You never shy away from adversity - and you love to tackle impossible problems. Failure is not an option for you, and more than a few people are put off by your ego. You tend to be controlling, and you hate leaving anything up to chance. Your strength: Your bold approach to life Your weakness: You don't accept help Your power color: Bronze Your power symbol: Pyramid Your power month: October

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

The only thing is, it appears that this quiz spits out the same blurb for whatever DAY of the month you enter, regardless of the month. A little disappointing. It's not the all-seeing Oracle I thought it was. (But it does confirm the fact that I don't really like leaving things up to chance...)

The Quick Recap

Consider this a post card scribbled on a bus between stops in a journey.

I've had a lot of proud-mama time lately. The girls have between them performed a gymnastics show, a school play, a ballet recital, and a horse show - and they did beautifully in all of them.

They're out of school for the summer, and are wrapping up their first two weeks of swim lessons.

I'm training a bit for another half marathon, which means I spend more of the week jogging & sweating.

I still write when I'm able (or am compelled by Writer's Group deadlines) to do so, and have a poem coming out in the next issue of The American Poetry Journal.

Tomorrow, my husband's sister is getting married. The girls are flower girls in the wedding. Tonight is the rehearsal dinner followed by a luau, complete with Polynesian dancers. The girls haven't even tried on the dresses that someone my sister-in-law knows has made for them, so if the fitting doesn't go well, there will be some night-before-the-wedding sewing, I'm afraid.

The day after the wedding, family from out of state (and out of country - an aunt and cousin from Montreal) will come to the house for a party. Is the house ready? No. Is the yard weeded? No. Has the menu been drawn up? Not really. Do I care? Well, I'm trying not to.

Also on my mind is that the party is on Sunday, and Monday I'm to be in Hemet to meet my oldest brother and sister to sort through Mom's things. I'm taking D's big truck down so I can bring back some furniture and boxes. My other brother, in Colorado, has a container that will be delivered to Mom's house for the few things he wants of what she'd left to him. The distribution of belongings has been very kind & gentle & civil. I just wish my siblings' schedules had enabled us to time it better, considering the frenzy of the next 3 days!

Yes, I'm Still Here

For what it's worth, I've thought about blogging.

That's all for now.

More later today.

Honest.

Mom

This is the post I didn't want to write, as though putting it off kept at bay the reality that has, in spite of it all, been sinking in.

I offer sincere apologies to anyone who is only now learning this news. My mom, Allison Fadeley Blauer, passed away April 23rd. An online obit can be found through Legacy.com's service for either the Denver Post or the Post Enterprise. (Search for last name Blauer.)

This is the first of what will be a forever of Mother's Days without Mom. A white carnation Mother's Day. And it's not just Mother's Day that will remind me of the loss of my mother and friend. It's those other days, those other moments, that I expect will sideswipe me with grief. I have tons of great memories of my mom to call up, but the tricky part, the part that will pang, will be all the future memories that I won't share with her.



There is plenty of writing that has already come out of this death. It's personal, it's my way of working through these early stages of mourning. It's not fit for public consumption.

But I couldn't put off updating my blog any longer. This is the first step of me moving away from the point of demarcation her death brings and into this next phase of my life.


So here's to the woman who raised me and my three siblings with a love that we're only now starting to fathom. To someone who was able to laugh even when times were extraordinarily hard. Mom was quiet and humble to a fault, and the one characteristic that those who knew her unanimously recall is that she was a "nice person" (which is, as my brother pointed out, a terribly undervalued virtue these days). She showed me what loving unconditionally means. She showed me the strength of finding humor in adversity. She spoiled my kids rotten. And I will miss her, every day, for a long, long time.


















Nothing was more important to Mom than her children.






She held each of us when we were small, and her death has brought us together as adults and held us again, in the space left by her leaving. We spent last weekend celebrating her life at her home with family, friends and neighbors. On Sunday, we gave her ashes to the Pacific Ocean according to her will. Her handwriting in the will shows that her first thought was to have her remains scattered "in the Colorado Mts" but she had scratched this out and modified it to read a Southern California beach. We dropped daises and roses in the waves. We saw sea lions sunning themselves on a buoy. A single dolphin splashed like a messenger in and out of the water as the boat returned to the harbor.







It was the first time the four of us children have been together for more than a day in nearly thirty years. Whatever differences we might have, we're united in this love, this loss.

Easter Eve

The single parent Easter bunny is hitting the hay.

After 4 hours in the car, and several more hours at the nursing home interrupted only by a very long walk in the neighborhood & dinner out (where they had to continue to behave), then grocery shopping and dying eggs after 9:30 pm, I think the girls were asleep ten seconds after their heads hit their pillows.

I'm going to follow suit.

Haven't worked on novel in days, owe emails to everyone & haven't even gone to look at my email account since yesterday mid-day. But I'm going to Scarlett O'Hara it, and leave it for tomorrow. Until then....

South for the holiday

The girls and I will leave shortly for Southern California, and as I don't expect to have internet access between now and tomorrow, I am posting something now.

SOMETHING.

There's been DRAMA! at work and DRAMA! at the girls' school. It will be nice to get away and spend time with family, and with the familial drama to which I have become accustomed.

In case you were wondering

"ACHTUNG!

Setdownthis may actually be a spider-human hybrid

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com


Thanks to Kate for the link to the above fun. I know a few Spidy fans who might appreciate the random results. And please note that the link on the sidebar to Kate's blog has been updated, and that I've added a link to Chris, Deneene & Wilder's blog. I am fortunate enough to know some truly amazing people who are living truly authentic lives. And although I am just not someone who has the habit (yet?) of spending much time in the blogosphere, let alone much time online (or even on the computer) once I'm home, I've got links to blogs that are great reads.

Enjoy!

And L, you're right. The importance of sushi for last year's work outweighs future sushi anyday.

Happy soggy April

April is National Poetry Month.

I'm thinking I should find a few words to rhyme with "deluge."
There's no end of the rain in sight.

National Poetry Month. Hmm. We mark days so that everyone will recognize them. But I think it's a little ironic that we should take something we honor, or something that looms large in our minds, and go to great lengths to have it officially recognized. I mean, If you have to remind people to remember it, how great can it be? I understand that we don't want future generations to forget what we know. I understand this personally, even. For example, we have daguerreotypes of relatives on my mother's father's side of the family whom I may never identify. They were surely important to someone while they lived, and probably for a generation or more after they lived. And they each have a story to tell. But it's lost because we did not honor or commemorate it. But I'm not suggesting we should have a National Day or Month to recognize my great-great-grand relatives.

Actually, this late at night, I'm not sure *what* I'm suggesting.

But a truly EVIL coworker double-dog dared me to blog daily for a year for another sushi dinner. This is not the same coworker who dared me into doing the same in 2005.

Will I give in to the pressure....?

It may be like child birth. Nature allows you to forget the agony so that you'll be SUCKERED into pushing another incongruously large, screaming animal out of your pain-wracked body. The hurt fades (for some mothers, anyway) and you find yourself ordering another round of the hair of the dog that bit you.

So I'm not exactly picking up the gauntlet (see, Julie, you're not the only person to mix metaphors with wild abandon) - but I am looking at it.

See the gauntlet.
"Pick me up!" say the gauntlet.
"I dare you!" says the gauntlet.
"I double dog dare you!" says the gauntlet.

I nudge the gauntlet with my toe.



Did I mention that my coworker was EVIL?

More progress

I returned yesterday morning from spending three full days with Mom. I got her moved from the hospital to a rehab center, aka a "skilled nursing facility" or "SNiF," a name which I personally think should be abandoned, as it's only one letter away from Snuf.

The nursing home is good, though, and the staff for the most part very good. In particular, the physical therapists are excellent. Within two days, mom went from being completely unable to assist us in transferring her from a wheelchair to the passenger seat of my rental car, to being able to walk about twenty feet with a walker - from her room to the dining room where I'd been waiting while she had her PT. After two weeks of inactivity, and weeks before that of declining health and lousy nutrition (she says only jello and orange slices tasted good), she is getting her strength back. The staff seems to know just how to encourage her to work, and just when to back off, when to allow for her weakness or the wound pain.

Much more significantly, she says she actually can imagine getting well now. To me, this is the most optimistic sign. She admitted that even when we'd visited her in February, she hadn't cared about anything. And while in the hospital, she'd felt so bad (and foggy from the drugs), that she had no real will to pull through.

We had some really good talks and lots of laughs while I was there, and Mom emphatically labeled it "such a nice visit."

There's still no saying how well things will continue to go, and I think everyone is "guardedly optimistic." She will always have congestive heart failure (35% functionality, the chart said), and fairly advanced kidney disease (IV), and right now, her wound is deep enough that it's like an anatomy lesson in itself (a whole chunk of muscle is just plain gone, and let me tell you, tendons are really white). But her spirits are so improved, and the time we've spent together was so good (for her, too - not just for me), that I feel like every day she's still around is a bright gift, instead of a roller coaster ride in the dark.

An update on Mom

Thanks to all of you who have offered support and get well wishes for my mother. She was in ICU for a few days last week because of an "incident" with her heart, then she was moved to a telemetry room where they could monitor her to see if she needed to have a defibrillator installed. In the meantime, though, she is not a candidate for surgery of any kind. Her blood pressure has occasionally been very low (80/33, for example), they've given her another 2 pints of blood, and her leg wound is no better (although it's also no worse, thank goodness). They're running more tests (biopsy on the leg, just in case, and the dreaded colonoscopy), and are trying to get her healthier in order to transfer her to a rehab center nursing home, and then later, to do a skin graft. I'm sure she's sick of being in the hospital, but her spirits are better, and her sense of humor is as healthy as ever. I fly down to see her early Thursday morning.

In the last week or so, I've had the great good fortune of a few heart-to-hearts with other women who are going through, or have just gone through, similar health crises with parents. We've talked about the importance of spending time with mom, of communicating with her as often as I can when I can't actually be there in person. We've discussed me talking to the kids about grandma's illness - and about mortality in general. These are obvious things, but I need to hear them. This is a moment in my life when I most need to be *present* but instead find myself using my standard defense mechanism against stress - distraction, distance, and denial. I'm detached, but not in any spiritually healthy way. This self-analysis is a prime example of my MO. Don't be fooled by it. I'm less a writer turning to the craft for comfort than I am a bundle of unfelt, unprocessed emotions. Hiding fluently behind prose.

I mean, I'm nearly 3 years divested from any spiritual system, feeling the need to talk to mom about the possibility of her death, but not knowing what I believe anymore. I wish she were willing to talk about it - about either death or faith. I don't know her current thoughts on either. I plan on broaching the subject when I see her, but for now, we're not missing an opportunity to tell each other how much we love each other. I know that she thinks I'm a wonderful daughter. She knows that I think she's the best mom and grandmother in the world, and the kindest person I have ever met, and that all sorts of people in my life are sharing their love and concern for her. For now, that will have to do, and for now, that's enough.

Unexpected travels

I spent last weekend in southern California, visiting my mother in the hospital. She's still there, and will probably be there for a few more days, but I am back home and going through the usual routines, while I wait to hear how she's doing. It's the waiting, 500 miles away, that is most difficult.

Mom has so many things going on with her, there's no short or simple way to explain why she's in the hospital. Her heart works at about 33%, but that's been the case for 7 years since her bypass surgery. Her kidney function is around 26%, but that's been true for about 2 years. As long as she stayed active - which she did, walking and swimming daily - and as long as she watched her diet, she was fine. A little slow-moving, but trim and happy and for the most part, really fine. What has brought her low is very minor surgery she had at the end of December for a squamous cell on her lower leg which has become a horrible, enormous wound that is excruciatingly painful. I'm told it looks and acts just like a diabetic ulcer (which may well never heal), with the exception that she can feel it, while a diabetic person might not. So she stopped being able to get around, and she was on pain meds that didn't exactly work, and she was too intimated by the pain to care for the wound correctly to begin with, and she had no appetite and didn't eat, and lost 10 pounds that she could ill afford to lose. Then she had another infection they had to locate, and blood loss they had to figure out, and the morphine they put her on for the pain and the 2 pints of blood they gave her helped, but not enough, etc. etc.

Her nurses have been excellent, as have most of the team of doctors (cardiology, nephrologist, wound care specialist, hospital drs). Yesterday, she was transferred to ICU for the first time because she had a cardiac "incident" - either a heart attack, or a response to all the meds she's been on, but she seems better in ICU than she did before. (She has been allowed to eat again, and snuck an "illegal" cell phone call to me from her bed.)

I'm glad I went to visit her, and I hope to go again soon, possibly with R., who really wants to see her. But it's a day-by-day, hour-by-hour wait, now, to see what happens next. This is hard for me, and harder for my sister, who, as primary care giver living near my mom has had to put her life, and the new career she's trying to start, on the back burner while she spends as much of her day as she can with Mom or making arrangements for what happens once she's out of the hospital.

As always, there is so much more to say here, so much more to write (which has always been my best tool for "processing" things), but limited time in which to compose.

So that's all the news, for now.

Dydd Dewi Sant

It is St. David's Day. St. David, the patron saint of Wales. I don't care much one way or another about saints (apart from the fact that we are all saints), but I do care about Wales.

The novel progresses slowly, all too often shoved aside while life gets big and hairy.

I've had about 50 minutes of sleep in the last 41 hours - a 10 minute nap at work this morning, a 40 minute nap this afternoon. I feel like I'm in an altered state, but one not entirely unwelcome. This is what drama queens and crisis junkies crave - the tilting priorities, the teeter-tottering significances, and emotional kaleidoscope. In a sense, you are left with nothing mattering because you really might actually already be dead. Everything is surreal in this way. In another sense, things have never mattered so much, or been so clear. And you want to remember this.
It's probably the exhaustion that makes you drop the baggage and just BE. It would be a great trick to master after a full night's sleep. Come to think of it.

The catalog for the girls' school auction is finished and was printed this afternoon. In case you were wondering why I pulled an all-nighter.

For the first time in seven years, I did not celebrate St. David's day by bringing pastries to work and forcing Welsh words on my colleagues.

My mother's surgery wound is now an ulcer that may take 2 years to heal.
My sister is fried from taking care of her.
My oldest brother is worried that this could turn into hospital bills that he can't afford to help pay for.

I think I will make a business card that states that I am a writer.
I think it will be square.

Vacation approacheth

The girls and I will head out of town in just over a week, with D. to follow later. Off to see family in Southern California and then go to the Magic Kingdom. (Really, what's the most magic about it is that I won't have to plan and cook a meal or answer a phone for 3 days.)

I did survive the half marathon Sunday, and in fact trimmed more minutes off my time. I can now officially run 13.1 miles in under 11 minutes per mile. A personal accomplishment, and best not compared with the runners who do the same distance at twice the speed. However, on the bright side, if I take 5 minutes off my time each of these runs, I figure, by the time I'm 80 or so, I'll be crossing the finish line before I cross the start line.

I have decided that I most likely will NOT try to run a marathon before I'm 40. Or ever. I think the half marathon distance is just about right for me.

What does that mean? That means time spent not training but hanging out with family and friends. Time spent in the garden. Time spent writing. Right? Write.

Culture

You know, it has taken me 5 days to write this tiny post, primarily because I want to give it a longer stretch of time and more depth, more detail. This is something I've seen other bloggers struggle with - one's desire to do something justice coming up hard against one's time constraints - resulting in no post at all rather than a partial or sketchy post.

But since web log silence is not something I want any longer, I'll just give you what I've got.





Last Sunday we had a spontaneous adventure - a trip to the deYoung Museum to see the Hatshepsut Exhibition. We brought one of R's riding buddies to make it more fun for all of us.

After having run 10 miles in the morning (my last long run before Sunday's Half), the walking from parking to the museum, and then all over the museum, and then back to the car, I felt like I'd had my exercise for the week. But the girls were real troopers, and I was gratified to see that S (who just officially turned six-and-a-half) really wanted to know all about all of the Egyptian artifacts.

The older girls' experience with museums had been fairly limited to hands-on childrens' museums like the Exploratorium, so they were a little frustrated by the lack of touchable, experimental exhibits. After we'd been there about 90 minutes and had left the Hatshepsut rooms, R's friend said to me, "You know, I didn't know there's be so much art here."

I pointed out it was, after all, an art museum, which she agreed explained the emphasis.

It was an educational experience, anyway. The older girls, examining the museum's map, insisted that we go to the African rooms. When we got there, and they saw the scores of dark wood carvings with, in many cases, prominent or exaggerated anatomy, there were cries of, "Oh! Don't look at that, S!" and "Don't look at that either!" until they beat a hasty and disillusioned retreat out of the area with hands to the sides of their eyes to avoid any other surprises. I would have happily strolled through slowly with them, reading about the art and discussing it, but they wouldn't hear of it. I explained that people in different parts of the world express themselves artistically in ways that are new to us, and that some other cultures just feel differently about the human body than people in our culture do. I pointed out that different doesn't mean bad - just different. They said they understood all that, and I think they did. But they were still clearly embarrassed as only pre-teen girls can be. Since they had been so hot to see the African art to begin with, I asked them what they thought the rooms would be like, and they admitted they'd been hoping for something that looked like Africa. I think they were expecting to step into a stage setting. Or maybe they were hoping the second floor of the deYoung had a Savannah tucked away in it.

We also made the mistake of starting to enter the photography exhibits, which were even more explicit than the African rooms had been, and weren't going to fly with my underage companions.

The girls were happier to see the 18th and 19th century paintings and portraits - especially because the rooms were more brightly lit. And of course, they really liked the little original Remington bucking bronco statue, although they had comments on the lack of realism (!) in the horse's build and pose.

Jeez. Everyone's a critic.

Well, hello again

I've been told by more than one person (thanks, both of you), that I've thrown off their morning routine in some way because I haven't been blogging. Flattery will get you everywhere.

The latest news from my life is not that riveting, but here it is for what it's worth.

I'm training for the Kaiser Half marathon in San Francisco, which means 3-5 mile runs during the week with interval training when I can, and about 6 miles Saturday and 8-10 miles Sunday. Why? Why, you ask? Because, I tell you. Because I really like food.

The girls are doing their thing in school. Parent teacher conferences were last week, and it's astonishing to learn that both kids, as different as they are in many ways, are described almost identically in terms of behavior by their teachers. Bright, but too talkative. Engaged and focused, but ONLY in what interests them. Thank goodness they're so sweet and lovable in general - I think it offsets the time the teachers have to spend getting them to stay on task. Honestly, I don't know where they get their susceptibility for distractio

Anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes.

D. has been working long days and will probably do so for a while, as the new employee in their 3 man shop spent too many days sick (here, the word "sick" means skiing in Tahoe until you look like a raccoon).

My mom is very, very slowly recovering from having surgery on her leg for a spot of skin cancer. My sister has been taking her to doctor's appointments and buying her groceries and generally trying to help her take care of herself so she can heal. I'd love to be there to help, but it's 500 miles away. I said to J., "I wish I lived closer," and she said wryly, "So do I."

The rain stopped long enough for us to remember that there's a sun out there after all, but today it is back. What a tease.

The novel is still being written.

Ahem. Let me rephrase that.

I am still writing the novel.

Where it took me 1 month to write 8 chapters, it may take me 8 months to write the last 2 chapters. But I still enjoy spending time with my characters, which is a relief.

There's more to say, but perhaps it's just as well that I'm out of time to say it right now. It gives me something for the next blog entry for those of you who have apparently become addicted to my compelling prose and amazing insights.

And speaking of intention...

At the end of the year, a coworker (you know who you are) mentioned that he appreciated some of my thoughts on living intentionally. I appreciate the comment. More than once, I thought about what was driving me to post blog entries in 2005. It looks like my motivation neatly sprang from most of the seven deadly sins.

There was rising to the challenge of the dare. (Pride)
And the promise of sushi (Gluttony)
There were the several positive comments I got (Vanity)
And my keen awareness of fellow bloggers' witty posts and the tons of positive comments they received (Envy)
I wanted the same kind of praise at the end of the day (Greed)

The only two that I didn't really cover were:
Sloth - although a number of posts were late in being written and bare-bones, and Lust.

That last one is pretty clearly absent. Try as I might, I just can't factor Lust into my raisons de posting last year. I mean, no one promised me any kind of pleasures of the body--and no, sushi doesn't count in this case--in exchange for my quotidian musings. It wasn't a case of "share your 2 bits every day and I'll share mine." Er. So to speak.

But I think that's just as well. I think the internet in general and the Blogosphere in particular has that one covered more than sufficiently without help from me.

But what about the seven deadly virtues? you ask. Did they play into the work at all? Let's see:
Faith. Well, it did take faith to believe the year would pass & I'd survive.
Hope. And I did hope that the habit of blogging daily helped me as a writer.
Charity. Hmm. My daily posts were free. Does that count?
Fortitude Okay, yes. There was some of this stuff involved. A lot, actually.
Justice Don't think so.
Temperance With the exception of the Evil Twin / Goth episode, I think, yes.
Prudence Not much of this, I'd say. Not much thoughtful, careful wisdom and consideration. Maybe that's what this year can be about.

Yeah. I'd say It's quality, not quantity, this year. While I redirect energy into poetry and finishing the novel & working on another draft of it, I expect I'll be writing just as much or more than I did in 2005. It just won't all be here.

A soggy New Year

So the North Bay is much in the news the last couple of days because of flooding. We've been fine, although we've seen some street closures near us, and the waters came close to reaching the front door of D's work three miles away.

We spent the afternoon at the restored Victorian home of D's mother & her husband, and then tonight after tucking the children in bed, have been up late watching The Thin Man movies. D's Christmas gift to me was the whole boxed DVD set - so much fun! (And so much alcohol consumed on screen!)

Tomorrow the girls are back in school but I have the day off - a rare event, indeed. I hope to make good use of the time, which might mean just sleeping for four hours while they're in class. Hey, wouldn't you?

The End. Or is it the Beginning?

My humble thanks are extended to those of you who encouraged (or dared) me to blog daily in 2005.

I'd thought about writing a post that was the Year in Review, a sort of summary of the high points. And I even came up with a few, including a couple half marathons, the work D did on the front yard & the new fences he put in the back yard, watching R's skill as a horsewoman develop, seeing S on stage after the Nutcracker, traveling to New York and Orlando, writing 50,000 words of a novel in a month, and blogging daily.

But in listing some things, I exclude others. And my feeling right now is that the year is over & there is no point in dwelling in the past.

So I thought about recording my hopes for 2006: more poetry published, a better (closer to final) draft of the novel written, a couple more half-marathons run, more time spent in quiet solitude.

But what's more important is the here and now.

It's 7 minutes to midnight. Time to wake up the girls (as I promised I would) and celebrate, briefly, this transition from arbitrary end to arbitrary beginning - which is really, after all, a celebration of being here, now.

Penultimate Post of the Year

The rain is coming down, and has been off and on for days, and will continue to do so for the weekend. It's perfect for pulling out a jigsaw puzzle, and lounging around in front of the toasty fire with a cup of something hot to drink.

We had new friends over for dinner, and their girls and our girls had a grand old time running around and being silly and putting on a little dance show to princess music. It was all fun and games right up until their oldest and our youngest bonked heads. (R thinks this would be an appropriate place in my post to insert a sad face).

Insert sad face here.

They were fine after ice and sympathy was applied, although I think their daughter has the imprint of one of S's teeth on her forehead.


Tomorrow, as the last post of the year, I hope to writing something more than "had tea with the Jones'." Maybe I'll include a description of the crumpets.

For now, I just wish everyone a safe and relaxing New Year's weekend.