Whoa, bath

My mother used to tell this story about me. When I was about two years old, my family went to the ocean. It was the first time I had seen the sea, having spent the previous months of my life in Colorado. Apparently, when I was shown the great Pacific, my eyes widened and I said, "Big bath." My comment when the waves rolled into shore? "Whoa, bath!"

That's my plea to the Tricky Parts of Life right now, too. Hang on a minute, here. Where's the pause button? Let me catch my breath. I need time to think, to take it all in.

As Eliot says, "April is the cruellest month." No kidding. And a component of its cruelty lies in the vibrant but mortal beauty of the natural world this time of year. The irises and roses are blooming in the backyard. We have our annual nest of house finches just outside our front door, in the box D. custom made to fit in the eaves last year. The rain has stopped (for now, anyway), and green things are screaming "Spring" all over the place. There's this abundance of life and beauty, and then there's this whirlwind of other stuff going on. Iraq. Virginia. Melted Freeways. And all the personal ups and downs.

Two weeks ago Friday, one of my half-sisters and her husband came into town, which was wonderful. But they were only able to stay overnight and until the morning, which was a shame (but understandable, since the drive back to Moab isn't too quick from our neck of the woods, and Monday mornings, and work, come whether we want them to or not.)

That same night, we had a call with the news that D's mother had had emergency surgery. They'd removed her appendix, but the real reason for the sudden pain that sent her to the hospital was a tumor in her colon.

Saturday, we took turns visiting her. She was an ideal patient - great attitude, careful with herself and good at following the care giver's instructions, but also obviously determined to heal quickly and be discharged quickly. (By Sunday morning, she was not only taking walks around the halls but also made her own bed.) The tumor was sent to the lab for tests, but I've never seen anyone look so healthy less than 24 hours after surgery.

Saturday night, we went to an 80th birthday party for friends of the family. This, too, was an emotional event - there were dozens of close friends of the hosts, some of whom we hadn't seen for about twenty years. I tell you what, when I reach 80, I'd consider myself abundantly blessed to have half as many friends as Mr. L. has. It seems key, in the way that love and crossword puzzles and a glass of red wine a day for some are apparently all key to a long and happy life. (I know all these things intellectually, it's actually *feeling* them and living them that I have trouble with.)

Sunday, after visiting my mother-in-law in the hospital again, the girls and I came home to find our next door neighbors having a huge birthday party for a 3-year old in the family. There were about 30 people in their Sunday best, and a Jumpy ("El Chapulin" or grasshopper) full of kids. We waived hello & went into the house, but within minutes, the mother of the birthday girl had come over to invite us to the party. And so the girls wrapped up a "new" stuffed horse of R's with a chocolate bunny in a box as a present, and we stepped into the Great Unknown Mexican Village next-door. It was such a fantastic experience, too. We were welcomed like we were royalty. We practiced our Spanish (the English speakers among the group humored us), and much authentic food was brought to us at the table they'd cleared in our honor. When I explained that I didn't eat red meat, one of the hosts dashed off and came back bearing a big bowl of fruit for me instead. People who have been living next to me for a year and who have said no more than two words to me were suddenly opening up like they'd just been waiting for the right moment to become friendly. As maybe they had. We heard I don't know how many repetitions of the traditional Mexican piñata song "Dale, dale dale" before we finally took our leave, carrying plates of home-made tomales for D. and confetti-covered candy in wrappers covered with alien logos and mysterious Spanish names for refined sugar. And even after we'd retreated to our comparatively stilted, silent and under-populated anglo-saxon home, the neighbors came to the door one more time to give us party favors - hand-made basket (the medium was pastel pipe-cleaners) filled with more Mexican sweets and even a dollar bill for each girl.

Do you know what it felt like? It felt like the whole weekend was about opening myself up to feeling Love for other people and then getting it back ten-fold. That's what it felt like.

The following Tuesday, we learned that the tumor they'd removed from D's mom was malignant. I got the news 10 minutes before rushing off to a meeting at the girls' school where the Administration showed up to tell the 6th grade parents (surprise!) that they (the Administration) had serious concerns about the "viability" of the class for 7th grade. There were, they suggested, too few students for a healthy Junior High group. They wanted to get feedback from the parents about this. About 2/3rds of the class parents, myself included, voiced strong support for continuing in spite of the smaller size. A few other parents talked about the value of moving to a larger school. We were to meet again in a week for the decision from the Administration.

Within a week, the news was official. And so we've been looking into Plans B, C and D for the next two years of R's education.

And did I mention that D's current remodel ran into a complication? This particular wrinkle required that he dig through the foundation in the garage - and no, it is not a good sign when there are salamanders living between your slab and the ground - and make a 6' pit in the adobe under a corner of the room, weld a rebar spiral (actually a very cool-looking sculpture) and put it in the pit, and then fill the pit with about 20 bags of concrete. I don't know what the neighbors (who, as of the party, had been our new-found friends) thought about us hauling wheelbarrows of dirt out of our garage. They might have suspected that there was a body being hidden, but the truth is, D and I were kind of hoping we'd find a body so that the authorities would come and do the digging for us.

Then April 23rd came. The anniversary of Mom's death.
The girls and I drove out to the beach. We got there late in the day, thanks to my tendency to just hop in the car after a quick glance at a map and with a vague idea of where I'm going. At least it was scenic, being lost that half hour... At the beach, the girls ran through, and rolled and slid down, the soft sand dunes, giggling and yelling at each other to try this, try that. At the ocean, their wildest manic moods and loudest screams just dissipated in the salty air without bruising my psyche.

We walked along the shore, looking for treasures. I found a piece of shell with a snake-skin pattern to its white surface. I thought of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea. It's been so long since I read it, it would be like a new person reading the book for the first time. I thought about Mom. We wrote messages in the sand to her. I wrote her full name, the date she was born, the date she died. In memoriam. We faced West and sang "You Are My Sunshine" loudly and out of tune into the wind. The girls used rocks and shells to spell out greetings, X's and O's, we miss you, we love you. I think R wrote a private "please get in touch with me," request. Officially, I didn't see it. We had barely finished our scribbling when an incongruously huge wave rolled up out of nowhere. We raced for higher ground as it rolled over the words, smoothed the sand, and sucked our letters into the water.

Five days later, in a toy store in the country, I picked a "free fortune" out of a basket. At random. It read, "You are the beautiful Mother, washing waves of love across sand."

Exercising the Brain

For the last 4 days (including today, this is me on a lunch break), I've been in training classes about 2 hours from home, commuting each day. This means that I leave home nearly two hours later than usual and I get home nearly 4 hours later than usual. It's amazing how quickly I can form habits - arriving at the same time, parking in the same place in the same lot, going to the same extremely up-scale grocery store for a coffee and a few minutes before class, leaving at the same time. It is a creature that likes its routine, Precious.

(posting this now, 2 weeks later, for posterity, I suppose...)

David Bromige and other poetic stuff

I'm working on a poem but it needs more time to rise at room temperature, so I won't post it yet. And I didn't enlighten the world yesterday with my witty blog-banter either.

But tonight I am inspired, first because I went to see David Bromige read. The evening began with several of his greatest admirers and other fine poets read his work in homage to him. Bromige is a frighteningly brilliant man and at the same time so completely humble and accessible, he might as well be canonized now, for all he's apparently an atheist. I can't say I always follow all of his work, but he's the real deal.

The second source of my inspiration is the latest Richard Shindell CD I got. I'm trying to think of how to describe him - a John Denver with no sentimentality and ten times the talent? A modern-day Don McLean, maybe?

At any rate, the poetry & music had me all worked up, and driving home I felt pretty moved. Moved to get lost writing in particular. (What!? Is it really after 11pm? How did that happen!?)

It's bound to be an emotional time for me anyway. D. is tearing apart the garage - our pantry is now on sturdy (function, not form) shelves in the kitchen, my [adjectives deleted] mother-in-law and her husband are coming for lunch tomorrow, and Easter marks the one-year anniversary (the holiday, not the date) of the last time I saw my mother alive. Yeah, that last thing just might explain the vulnerability. Bear with me, folks.

Observation made at 1st grade pickup

A child was swinging in the playground behind the school building.
I couldn't see the swing, but I could hear its shrill creaking,
like a seagull rhythmically crying out again and again in a rusty voice,
screaming in defiance against the rule of the sea.

Moon poem #2 (informal)

Forget About the Moon

The moon is a slut. I mean,
everyone loves her at one time or another,
and she plays us all the same-
spares no one her studied wiles.
The tramp draws you in, full of smiles
and smooth magic, pulls rabbits from a hat.
She builds you a house. She promises greatness,
then behind your back, she turns
into nothing more than a thin fickle
scythe of a whore. She cuts you down.
She lays you low, then she goes
missing for a night or two, the bitch.
You start out with your heart
beating its moth wings lighter than air,
un-scorched to the shore of her light.
But in the end her kisses are glass-sharp dust,
her hands are the siren's rocks. She is
distant. She does not need
you. She is cold. In the end
she is oh so cold.


c. rbp 07

Moon poem #1 (formal)

I'm working my way through form poems by writing a poem in each form I can find. Because I feel I need to be familiar with them all, and this is the best way I can think of to do that. Besides, sometimes things come out of the structure and stricture that wouldn't emerge otherwise. Here's a moon poem that came out of that about a month ago (can you guess the form?). I'll post the less formal (and less polite) one tomorrow. Have to pace myself if I'm to last the month.


I Want to Forget The Moon Was My Lover

I want to forget the moon was my lover,
the grand chiaroscuro curves she'd wind
around me, and how her charms would over-
come me when her smile lit the faceted rind
of the sea. I want to forget the might
of us, or how, eclipsed, I felt completed.
I'm done with tilting my face up at night
or scanning afternoon skies, defeated
if I miss her changeable shape. Instead,
I'll let the force of fusion rub my feet,
I want an x-class flare to kiss my head
and burn my tidal trysts away with heat.
I want thirteen million kelvins at my core:
the sun's molten fire. No less, no more.


c.rbp 07

It's that Month again

National Poetry Month has arrived. This is the day of the year when I ponder the irony of identifying a time specifically for poetry. Why is it necessary? Because its value will be lost, forgotten, otherwise? Because 30 days a year is all we can stand of it? It feels like an endangered species act to me.

But then again, there are lots of other important things being honored in April which are not necessarily endangered. I have researched and learned that this is also (apparently) Alcohol Awareness Month, Emotional Overeating Awareness Month, Learn Thai Month, National DNA & Genomics & Stem Cell Education & Awareness month, National Pet First Aid Awareness Month, Prevent Lyme in Dogs Month (which seems a little redundant to me), Soy Foods Month, Stress Awareness Month, and Workplace Conflict Awareness Month (especially important for those times when one worker has had it with another worker's insistence on reciting poetry in April).

At any rate, in honor of the label assigned to the month, and because I just saw her read 9 days ago, here's an Ellen Bass poem. It's from her new book, due out in June.

DON'T EXPECT APPLAUSE
-Tibetan Buddhist maxim

And yet, wouldn't it be welcome
at the end of each ordinary day?
The audience could be small,
the theater modest. Folding chairs
in a church basement would do.
Just a short earnest burst of applause
that you got up that morning
and, one way or another,
made it through the day.

You soaped up in the steaming
shower, drank your Starbucks
in the car, and let the guy with the
Windex wipe your windshield
during the long red light at Broad Street.
Or maybe you were that guy,
not daring to light up
while you stood there because
everyone's so down on smoke these days.

Or you kissed your wife
as she hurried out the door, even though
you were pretty sure she was
meeting her lover at the Flamingo Motel,
even though you wanted to grab her
by a hank of her sleek hair.

Maybe your son's in jail.
Your daughter's stopped eating.
And your husband's still dead
this morning, just like he was
yesterday and the day before that.
And yet you put on your shoes
and take a walk, and when a neighbor
says Good morning, you say
Good morning back.

Would a round of applause be amiss?
Even if you weren't good.
If you yelled at your kid,
poisoned the ants, drank too much
and said that really stupid thing
you promised yourself you wouldn't say.
Even if you don't deserve it.

by Ellen Bass

Yes, I'm still here

In case you were wondering.

Perhaps after I finish preparing our tax information for the accountant we're seeing tonight, I can write about going to San Francisco with friends, about the school Knighting Ceremony, the shoji screens in our bedroom, about the MEPS survey and Snow White.

Until then, there are SO MANY other blogs worth reading. I suggest jumping into one of the ones I list and going from there. Have fun, kids.

Saint David's Day and other news

I celebrated at work with scones and wiki links for my coworkers. They're so kind to humor me.

In addition to it being St. David's Day, a few other things of note happened today: R. announced that she and her "boyfriend" had broken up (note the lack of quotation marks around broken up, thereby denoting my desire that the breakup be real where I was hoping the "boyfriend" concept was not).

She said that she just felt tied down and stressed out by having a boyfriend, and she agreed that I was right (I love this kid) that she was too young for all that.

I have learned over the years to hide great happiness when it's necessary. I played it casual.

"How do you feel now?" I asked.

"I feel great."

"Oh. That's good, then. How did he take it?"

"Fine, I guess," she said. "Later, I heard he borrowed someone's cell phone and called another girl asking her to be his girlfriend."

Now I wonder about this boy (whom I do like): if you start rebounding at 12, does that establish the pattern more fully? Is it like cigarette smoking in that way?

Also, yesterday I had a long talk with my 93-year old paternal grandmother. She went to the doctor at the beginning of the week for problems she's been having with her hip, and while she was there, they had a hard time finding her pulse. One thing led to another, and although her doctor for her hip says she's got a few more miles in her, another doctor is talking about by-pass surgery to address serious issues with her heart. She says the cardiologist is such a nice man, and he's done so much to help her, she's sorry she's going to end up turning down his surgery suggestion. "I hate to disappoint him," she told me. But she says she can't see dealing with the recovery at her age, and really just wants to spend the rest of her life peacefully on her farm in remote northeastern Colorado. I agreed that not disappointing your doctor is probably not the best motivation for having open heart surgery, but it's hard to think of her body winding down when she's always been so amazingly tough.

The other thing of note from yesterday was that I submitted 4 poems for possible inclusion in a local anthology. One was oldish, one was new, and two were pieces from quite a while ago that I reworked extensively in the last few days. I also have two other brand new ones in the works, and as long as my family and friends can handle me being vague and distracted - even more than usual! - I feel like I can really only grow as a poet. It's been a long time since I sealed up manila envelopes with cover letters and SASEs, but it's a little like riding a bike. It's just that now I'm less interested in a Sunday ride and am more interested in training for the Tour de France. I haven't bought the little black pants or funky shoes, but I've got a hat that will do, and I'm starting to pedal, baby.

Cheers

Sometimes my life feels like an unevenly written sit-com. I think if anyone could witness what happens once I pick up the kids from school, if anyone were to shadow me as a me-in-training, they'd either be astonished that I was sane or would be selling my life to a producer. Or both. But at least I would have someone else with whom I could laugh or cry or shake my head in amazement or hang my head in despair. Or drink.

At the moment, after my first day back to work in a week and my first day picking up kids from school in as long, I think I may not survive this parenting thing.

My eldest daughter now has a "boyfriend" (I'm putting it in quotes so it seems, to me anyway, less real). She has "kissed" him "a couple of times" but they're "taking it slow." She is 12 and a half. Almost.

Did you like the kissing? I want to know, hoping against hope that she did not.
She did, sorta. Did he? He seemed to, she says. "In fact, he just smiled afterwards, like he didn't have a care in the world."

I wish I could say the same of me.

It's not even 6pm. I'm having a glass of wine. It seems to have helped. I think this is a bad pattern. The wine-drinking and the boyfriend kissing. Both bad, so young in life.

I'm trying to slice garlic for dinner, now - after realizing that a head (not a clove, a head) of garlic was missing from the fridge and had been put in daughter #1's desk drawer for her private snacking (which may, actually, solve the boyfriend kissing problem). And daughter #2 tag-teams the pre-teen announcements with her own emergency:

"Mom, there's a big problem with my room." She looks like she may cry.

"What is it?" I ask, thinking maybe more plutonium has been found, like that last time.

"I don't have any hanging files."

This is what happens when you add hanging files to one daughter's desk and not the other's.

"Hmm. That is a problem," I agree (because the wine is already making me agreeable) "But," I explain, "We can't have hanging files until we find those 2 metal bars that go in the bottom desk drawer. You need those to hang the files on, and I have no idea where they are."

"Or," I stupidly muse out loud, "we could make something to go there and hold the files."

So for your entertainment, you can guess what I'll be doing after dinner:

a) sleeping, because I wake up at 3:45am every work day, and one glass of wine will knock me on my butt

b) figuring out a way to make faux hanging-file-bar-things, because it's only fair, and besides, my second daughter's problem is easier to face than my first daughter's latest development

c) offering more raw garlic to daughter #1

d) sending both kids to bed early so I can lose myself in an intellectually pointless episode of Friends. You know, the TV series that the rest of America watched 15 years ago

e) gloating over having written a blog post

f) all of the above

Cheers.

Vacation

I have been on vacation. I have been on an extended sabbatical-like vacation from family and work but not from home, and it has been lovely. I have evidently been on vacation from blogging, too, but I have rough-drafts (for my own reference) of what happened between 2/10 and 2/19, as well as those other days between then and now.

I have written a couple of poems - although one was a haiku and such hardly counts in my mind. Sorry, but there it is. So little, so little.

I have figured out the next important plot points in the old novel. I have started to write them.

Most importantly, I have reorganized the office in our home to be my own space. A writer's study, as it were. I've cleared out everything that was not mine, or didn't have to be there. And now I'm reintroducing what didn't fit before, finding better places for it. And I'm getting rid of things, too. Thank heavens for the school rummage sale!

I have written. I have given blood - literally, although I know some writers who consider that writing amounts to the same thing.

I have done much less than I thought I would, but I guess that's the current lesson I'm learning. Great expectations not quite fulfilled, but certainly more done than would have been if I'd set my sights too low.

A thought about messengers

I've always loved that the word for angel comes from the Greek for messenger, άγγελοσ. It's always felt true that angels, those messengers from outside (or perhaps far inside) our day-to-day perceived realm, might be so beyond our current ken as to be terrifying. I have a poem with a line, "The angel's first words are 'Do not be afraid.'" It's a telling greeting.

All too often, we translate ignorance into fear into hatred. There's a connection between this and ideology and (un)holy wars, too. But what do we know about angels? And yet instead of angels being something we cannot comprehend and therefore hate, we have made them into tall people in long white robes with wings and halos. We've simplified them and humanized them, the way we apply human characteristics to animals. How far apart are angels hovering above us with harps and bull dogs playing poker?

I like Madeleine L'Engle's concept from A Wind in the Door of a cherubim being a compilation of wings, eyes, and spurts of flame and smoke. A creature with a voice like a cello.

There is so much we don't know, can't know. Yet. And most of us therefore don't think about it, while others (I'm not specifically singling you out, Josh) spend a lot of time thinking about the unknown. I could get lost there, too, and sometimes I regret spending so little time seeking enlightenment through the blossom of a weed or the swirl of steam over a teacup.

But even if I don't delve into mystery on a regular basis, I hope, I pray, that I will avoid reducing the sacred to pablum.

Friday on the fly

Today I did not go to the gym as planned; instead, I ran a couple of errands and then, before picking up the kids, sneaked a peak at the very beginning of the new Battelstar Galactica series. There was a time when I was such a big Battlestar Galactica fan (not when it was first out, somehow, but when it was already in syndication), that I knew every line to more than one episode. I was aided in this memorization by the audio tape I created by holding the black chunk of a tape recorder up to the TV screen so I could replay the sounds, even if I couldn't record the video. My friends and I tried to figure out how Pyramid was played. I swore using BSG swear words. (I sometimes still do.) I made satirical drawings showing how to tell the difference between Cylons and Storm Troopers. This would have been around 1980 or 1981, I’d guess, just as puberty was tweaking my already overly imaginative brain. But it seems like a million yarens ago now.

**
After I picked up the girls from school, we ran one more errand to buy a birthday present, came home and sewed for a bit, then took R to school for the long-anticipated sleep-over. There were more chaperones and no one was sleeping outside, thanks to the rain, so I felt better about leaving her. We had celebratory sushi (D’s A was my excuse this time), and I watched a video with D & S until I fell asleep on the couch.

I woke up to watch one more episode of Friends. I seem to be doing a lot of escaping into video these days. I doubt it’ll turn into any kind of trend, but it does feel like I'm living on the edge. Whoo-hoo. Look out.

Thursday tidbit

In my ongoing retro-post series

R. was taken out to the barn for her knightly task by the other girl’s mom, and S. and I took a 3-hour nap. THREE HOURS. Ahhh....

We got up for dinner only, and got to bed fairly early again. D. came home much later to report that he had gotten an A on his class mid-term and an A for the first semester. I’m so happy for him. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when one is in school because one wants to be, and not because one has to be.

Wednesday, a little less brief

I helped with the 6th grade lit. circle again today. Josh had brought it to my attention that the book (The Bronze Bow) was recently taken off the curriculum at a nearby school district because of criticism from parents and religious leaders in the community that the book is anti-Semitic and promotes Christianity, and is in general not good enough as a literary piece to warrant teaching in spite of those other factors, besides being considered not applicable to the Roman history block it was supposed to compliment. This prompted me to do more research and speak individually to the class teacher (who was aware of the debate) and to the other two lit circle leaders. There were fascinating reactions from everyone, who felt (as did I, frankly), that the book does not degrade Jews or make the case that Christianity is better than Judaism, and felt even more strongly (as I did not) that there was such a thing as being too politically correct or careful. My concern is that I might have cultural blinders on, or be underestimating the hurt this book has caused people.

However, the whole hububb simply emphasized for me the need to teach children to be smart readers: be sensitive to the influence of an author’s own background or intentions, understand that historical fiction is both liberated and handicapped by our incomplete knowledge or skewed perspective of history, understand the power of the written word for good and ill.

As it turned out, none of the 4 kids I worked with saw a reason for the fuss at the other school, and in the cold rainy weather at the tail end of a demanding school day, they certainly weren't up for any philosophical conversation about the dangers of mis-interpreting text. So I didn't push it. These are kids who have been exposed to a lot of religions and mythologies in their years at this Waldorf-inspired school, so maybe they are just more accepting of the idea that people have different belief systems? (A tolerance that some friends of mine would call "open-minded" and others would call "lukewarm" - and therefore to be spit out.) In any case, we ended up focusing much more on the story and the characters and how the children responded to both than we did discussing anything else.

After school, R. went to a homework club and S. fell asleep on the couch for the 2nd day in a row. The flu has clearly taken a toll on her. That, and/or it's another growth spurt.

S. is close to R.'s height as it is, so R. said about the possibility, "God, I hope she's not doing that!"

Tuesday in brief

Today I am able to walk a little easier, but still clearly recovering from the race.

I neglected to mention a Pointy (writer’s group) meeting in the evening yesterday. So nice to share the projects we’re each working on with one another, and I’m lucky to have supportive friends who are also great editors!

After school today, R. went with a friend after school to get her (the friend’s) ears pierced. The friend, like R., had been forced by her mother to wait until she was 12 for this rite of passage.

I was 10 when I had my ears pierced. My mother (then 40) and my sister (then 8) had theirs done at the same time. I remember that it was shortly before our family’s Christmas trip to Hawaii. I can’t tell you exactly why the 2 memories are joined – maybe it was because we’d had to take the ear-care kit with us to the hotel? Or I’d been able to get a pair of shell earrings that I wouldn’t have had a need for, before? Either way, the piercing itself is not as significant in my memory as is the fact that the three of us did it together; a shared new experience for all of us, a small but still (for a 10-year-old) exciting adventure embarked upon together.

I don’t relay this story to S., who at 7 now feels that she shouldn’t have to wait until 12 to get her ears pierced. (The “It’s not fair!” refrain.) It doesn’t help that R. agrees that her little sister shouldn’t have to endure non-pierceness as long as she, the first born trail blazer, had to wait. But I'm standing my ground. For now.

Meet the Press

Quite an exciting day at work.

Literally a bus-load of press arrived to tour as part of a Cisco event: our company was chosen by Cisco to be be showcased as a unique customer case study for their products. We had journalists from several important IT trades including Computerworld, eWeek, Information Week, InfoWorld, Network World, SC Magazine and CRN. There were so many people, they had two separate tour groups going through the building and getting the scoop on who we are and what we do from each department head. There were also journalists from Japan with an interpreter, but even though I brushed up on my greetings and had my meishi (business card) ready, the groups moved through while I was on the phone and I never had to use either. Fine with me.

Nice to have that kind of recognition from the industry in general, though. I've been with the company for 9 years and I still think what we do is way cool. And I am not just writing this because a couple of my colleagues sometimes read this blog. Honest.

Race Day, Day of Rest

There's probably a mathematical way to calculate this - a formula using distance plus muscle fatigue divided by attitude and training with the square root of the power of endorphins and recovery from the flu thrown in, but for whatever equation you use, the last 3.1 miles of a 13.1 mile race are always as long as the first 10 miles. And the last 1.1 miles is as hard as the 2 miles before that seemed to be.

But I promised myself a whole ton of water, and (dog-gone-it) all the little carby snacks I wanted at the finish line, and I managed to run the race slowly but steadily. One pit stop. Only one walking stint (for 2 minutes). Far from my best time - 2:31 (2:36 by their clock, I think, but it took 5 minutes to cross the start line because there were about 9,000 people there). But I did it.

Spent the rest of the day lying on the couch and even watched another video with the kids. Sheer hedonism. Out of control.

Off a beat

S woke up with a fever and the second kind of flu. No ballet class or rehearsal for her for Snow White.
R made it as far as riding lessons and getting on the horse (a well-tempered grey named Harley), but then I was called back 5 minutes from the barn by the instructor, who said R was looking very pale and probably shouldn't ride. Strike two.

I was responsible for food delivery to 9 families for the Food for Families program (through our Committee on the Homeless in town) but because it was the second Sat. in a row - I was picking up someone else's turn last week - I forgot (!) and was an unprecedented 2 hours late with the boxes. Fortunately, everyone was still home and no one was too irritated at the lateness of their groceries. You would think it wouldn't matter what time the food arrives, but it does, because they have to sign for the boxes and can't go anywhere until we get there.

The rest of the day was spent mostly being lazy and even - as a family - watching a video, something that hardly ever happens. The video was lousy. The company was great. And lazing was lovely.

Got to bed fairly early in preparation for the half marathon Sunday, which D. says I'm crazy to try to do since I just got over the flu a couple of days ago. But I trained for this and (more to the point, if you know me) I paid for it. So I'm going and I may run even slower than usual, but I'm doing it, dang it all.

Last man standing, fallen

D succumbed to the flu today (the stomach variety, as opposed to the high-fever/cough variety). We were all in bed by 7:30pm.

I definitely feel like we're out of balance and things are falling apart around here, a little, and temporarily.

It's like our own little family re-enactment of the Dark Ages. Without the fleas.