Evening adventures & a puzzle, to boot

For the day after the day after Christmas Eve, my family celebrated by doing the thing that all families are so good at doing: splitting up. My sister and mother have been appointed Pair Productive and my father and I have are Pair Out and About (technically 'pair' is a misnomer as we went along with my wonderful 9 year old niece, but she's in training, yet, so does not get to count as a whole member (no voting rights) of the pair and there is no single descriptive word for 2 and a half).

But, I am not going to tell you about the day. Not yet.

We regrouped this evening and my father and sister took the Christmas decorations out to the shed (productive, see) and I helped Mama in the kitchen by blathering on and making a pot of tea and doing some dishes while she made dinner and tried to keep the 2 year old from getting too much in the way (boiling water type stuff). Dinner ended and the puzzle was brought out. it's a mary engelbreit-brecht-brucetta-whatever. It is a round puzzle. Not a sphere, but round.

the 2 year old was dressed in his pajamas, laid down in his bed and left there. we knew there would be no sleep. we knew this. we sent my niece upstairs to lock all of the doors and the gate. she came back down, we chatted about Jorge's toilet playing habits, ha ha ha.

i began reading, as i had promised my wonderful 9 year old niece (i am learning on this trip more about the value of trust in relationships. mostly i am learning it because of Ethel and her presence on this vacation. she lets me drape her around my shoulders and will stay there for many moments only minimally supported and without complaint, until she is ready to hop down . she hasn't hurt me yet on her descent. yet.) and my family collected around the dining room table to put together the round puzzle of letters and bowls and cherries and a cute cat.

and then there was the sound of water falling on the kitchen floor. coming from the light in the ceiling.
what followed:
Papa ran upstairs to find my nephew stark naked in the bathroom surrounded by water flowing happily into and out of the bowl of the toilet.
my nephew found himself standing in the hallway crying in surprise and because he got swatted once on the butt to get him out of the bathroom where he had created this playland for himself.
my nephew then found himself in dry pajamas and a new diaper, in bed, with the door closed, much to his very loud chagrin.
my mother came upstairs to get big towels to help collect the water from the floor of the kitchen.
i worked kid magic and got doors open so that the dream of dry floors could be realized.
my sister put a bowl under the light through which the water was running which we then stood and watched until the flow had subsided to a drip and then to nothing (i believe that we truly could sit and watch paint dry if we felt it was the thing to do).
the plunger was applied with great vigor to the toilet upstairs, to no avail.
it was decided that though my nephew usually just clogs the toilet with toilet paper, this time he must have dropped something stubborn (but not feline, all the cats are accounted for) into his favorite play area.
very quietly we all agreed that it was really very funny.
the grumpy emergency maintenance man came and said that he'll have to be back tomorrow to really fix things, but that my sister shouldn't expect him before 3.
we all hate the emergency maintenance man.
the cats are fine.

oh, and my sister did turn off the light that became a fount of water not unlike a breast spewing a steady stream of slightly off-white milk.

and now?

everyone is in bed. the book i was reading out loud (remember that part?) is still unfinished and my nephew is still trying to get out of going to sleep.

the couch awaits me. i get to spend some time alone in DC tomorrow, and will have to sleep in my clothes again tonight.

oh, and we gave up on the puzzle about 5 minutes before i knelt down to write this. they will finish it tomorrow. i have faith.

The Great French Toast Negotiation

notes for later, because i cannot find my notebook right now...

Family road trip: 3 adults (plus or minus adulthood), 1 child, 1 kitten (usually asleep inconveniently) (the kitten plays no role in the action to follow. i just like talking about her because she came with and has been a wonderful traveler and is suffering from the snobbery and intolerance of my sister's cats)

Mindy's Corner Restaurant: Ohio somewhere. on the corner of one street and another, across from a gas station, on the other side of the bridge from the highway.

Round about 12:30pm ET

Mindy's is your run of the mill family run restaurant with a huge dining room, wood tables, paper placemats (with a word search) and meatloaf special for lunch.

9 year Sierra asked if it would be alright to have breakfast for lunch. it is a peculiar thing, having breakfast for some other meal than breakfast. makes the whole day feel decadent somehow, just because you had an omelette for supper. johnsons are all for daily decadence where food is involved, and her request was granted.

she wanted pancakes. i resisted, knowing that pancakes are merely a vehicle for syrup - liquid sugar - more potent than regular coffee, and said no. she wanted french toast. i reminded her that it was just for the syrup.
- I don't always have syrup on my french toast.
- no, sometimes you use sugar, and that's just the same thing.
- okay.

the waitress came by and it was clear that none of us, minus the 9 year old, knew what we wanted, but since the aunt (that's me for those of you not following along) was being stubborn and marginally health concious (mostly of my own). she left us to continue or negotiations.

i countered finally with one scrambled egg, 2 strips of bacon and one piece of white toast with grape jelly (she, like me, doesn't do strawberry jam). negotiating with me is really not a possibility. i decided what she was going to eat, and forewarning was pretty much all that she was getting.

the waitress returned.
- we have finished our negotiations, i said
- alright, so what're you having?
- if i get a slice of french toast, then -
- oh, no, that wasn't it -

we ordered the mostly protein and starch meal for her (tire her out, clog her arteries, make her sleep)

and the little shit just sat there and smirked at me.

when the waitress brought our meals, she handed over the egg and meat and bread saying "here's your french toast" and my neice had the decency and good humor to laugh.

later i will tell you of the Fog of Doom and the Mortification of the Felines, but for now, i have a book that is fucking with my head, and i am happy that almost everyone else is asleep.

A.A. Milne essay

I don't generally post work by other people on this blog. In point of fact, I have never posted anything like this before. It's my blog. My words. That kind of thing.

I read this and immediately thought of at least a dozen people who are my MyFriends who would enjoy this and decided against making it into a bulletin and running the risk of strange changes made during reposting and such. Because it's that kind of a thing. For bibliophiles, anyway. I specifically thought of Erick and Ula and Chandreyee and Jenny and the folks at A Novel Idea, etc., etc. I found this at Quotidiana which I have just found and am enjoying hugely.


"My library

by A.A. Milne

When I moved into a new house a few weeks ago, my books, as was natural, moved with me. Strong, perspiring men shovelled them into packing-cases, and staggered with them to the van, cursing Caxton as they went. On arrival at this end, they staggered with them into the room selected for my library, heaved off the lids of the cases, and awaited orders. The immediate need was for an emptier room. Together we hurried the books into the new white shelves which awaited them, the order in which they stood being of no matter so long as they were off the floor. Armful after armful was hastily stacked, the only pause being when (in the curious way in which these things happen) my own name suddenly caught the eye of the foreman. "Did you write this one, sir?" he asked. I admitted it. "H'm," he said noncommittally. He glanced along the names of every armful after that, and appeared a little surprised at the number of books which I hadn't written. An easy-going profession, evidently.

So we got the books up at last, and there they are still. I told myself that when a wet afternoon came along I would arrange them properly. When the wet afternoon came, I told myself that I would arrange them one of these fine mornings. As they are now, I have to look along every shelf in the search for the book which I want. To come to Keats is no guarantee that we are on the road to Shelley. Shelley, if he did not drop out on the way, is probably next to How to Be a Golfer Though Middle-aged.

Having written as far as this, I had to get up and see where Shelley really was. It is worse than I thought. He is between Geometrical Optics and Studies in New Zealand Scenery. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whom I find myself to be entertaining unawares, sits beside Anarchy or Order, which was apparently "sent in the hope that you will become a member of the Duty and Discipline Movement"—a vain hope, it would seem, for I have not yet paid my subscription. What I Found Out, by an English Governess, shares a corner with The Recreations of a Country Parson; they are followed by Villette and Baedeker's Switzerland. Something will have to be done about it. But I am wondering what is to be done. If I gave you the impression that my books were precisely arranged in their old shelves, I misled you. They were arranged in the order known as "all anyhow." Possibly they were a little less "anyhow" than they are now, in that the volumes of any particular work were at least together, but that is all that can be claimed for them. For years I put off the business of tidying them up, just as I am putting it off now. It is not laziness; it is simply that I don't know how to begin.

Let us suppose that we decide to have all the poetry together. It sounds reasonable. But then Byron is eleven inches high (my tallest poet), and Beattie (my shortest) is just over four inches. How foolish they will look standing side by side. Perhaps you don't know Beattie, but I assure you that he was a poet. He wrote those majestic lines:—

The shepherd-swain of whom I mention made
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
The sickle, scythe or plough he never swayed—
An honest heart was almost all his stock.

Of course, one would hardly expect a shepherd to sway a plough in the ordinary way, but Beattie was quite right to remind us that Edwin didn't either. Edwin was the name of the shepherd- swain. "And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy," we are told a little further on in a line that should live. Well, having satisfied you that Beattie was really a poet, I can now return to my argument that an eleven-inch Byron cannot stand next to a four-inch Beattie, and be followed by an eight-inch Cowper, without making the shelf look silly. Yet how can I discard Beattie—Beattie who wrote:—

"And now the downy cheek and deepened voice Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime."

You see the difficulty. If you arrange your books according to their contents you are sure to get an untidy shelf. If you arrange your books according to their size and colour you get an effective wall, but the poetically inclined visitor may lose sight of Beattie altogether. Before, then, we decide what to do about it, we must ask ourselves that very awkward question, "Why do we have books on our shelves at all?" It is a most embarrassing question to answer.

Of course, you think that the proper answer (in your own case) is an indignant protest that you bought them in order to read them, and that yon put them on your shelves in order that you could refer to them when necessary. A little reflection will show you what a stupid answer that is. If you only want to read them, why are some of them bound in morocco and half-calf and other expensive coverings? Why did you buy a first edition when a hundredth edition was so much cheaper? Why have you got half a dozen copies of The Rubaiyat? What is the particular value of this other book that you treasure it so carefully? Why, the fact that its pages are uncut. If you cut the pages and read it, the value would go.

So, then, your library is not just for reference. You know as well as I do that it furnishes your room; that it furnishes it more effectively than does paint or mahogany or china. Of course, it is nice to have the books there, so that one can refer to them when one wishes. One may be writing an article on sea-bathing, for instance, and have come to the sentence which begins: "In the well-remembered words of Coleridge, perhaps almost too familiar to be quoted"—and then one may have to look them up. On these occasions a library is not only ornamental but useful. But do not let us be ashamed that we find it ornamental. Indeed, the more I survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might spoil the colour-scheme. Baedeker's Switzerland and Villette are both in red, a colour which is neatly caught up again, after an interlude in blue, by a volume of Browning and Jevons' Elementary Logic. We had a woman here only yesterday who said, "How pretty your books look," and I am inclined to think that that is good enough. There is a careless rapture about them which I should lose if I started to arrange them methodically.

But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their heads the same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet nights) I shall take my library seriously in hand. There are still one or two books which are the wrong way round. I shall put them the right way round.

(1920)"

If you are interested in more, I suggest you head to your local library and pick up a copy. If you like it enough to buy it, or just think it will look pretty on your shelf, head to your local locally owned used or new bookstore and pick one up. Please buy books responsibly.

SJ

does it count if it’s on CD?

one of the more difficult parts of being in a space with no other human there is filling it. if you live with no other humans, it is occasionally oppressively silent, even with the royal twins tearing through the house at break neck speed and getting yelled at for thinking that the ball of yarn that i'm working with, thankyouverymuch, is something to be hunted and carried off to the den under the bed. if you live with other humans and find yourself alone in the house for awhile, the silence can be a relief, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be filled with the personally chosen sounds of the individual.

i have always enjoyed a silent home, partly because there was always enough going on outside or in the house that adding noise to it just made no sense. there are the wonderful sounds of a house settling into the ground and all of the creaks and grinds and breaks associated with that motion. it takes time to sink a brick house, even in a swamp that has been filled with concrete pylons and dozens of layers of city that have sunk into the muck and built on over and over again for an hundred and fifty years, and the sounds spread out and go slowly or jerk for a few seconds, adjusting to some milimetric difference.

as a child, most winter evenings were spent in the living room, many involved a fire in the fireplace and listening to my father read to me/us from Laura Ingalls Wilder or Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. (thought - it sounds so much more impressive to speak of reading from an author than saying we read Little House on the Prairie and Tom Sawyer and A Christmas Carol. i wonder what trick of the language allows for that?)(yes, alright, idyllic childhood, without it, i would likely be a much more depressing combination of cliches without any hope of escape) it helps that my father has a pleasant reading voice and that he chose to read to us about young people who lived in places we knew of and had visited.

remember that Dream On guy? the one who was of the first generation of people raised in front of the television? yeah. I don't get that guy. i wasn't that guy. every now and then i go into cable addiction and Cannot Turn It Off! but then i move or get divorced or something like that (cable = husband or roommate(s), i never have it when i'm single.) as a child i hung out in the library upstairs, reading the spines of my parent's books. this is something i have written about almost ad nauseum.

part of the difficulty i have with sitting down to read a book is that it's one thing. i'm doing one thing, and only one thing. it is nice to read for information or for a class because then there is a notepad next to me and a pencil in my hand, and i can write things down, tease out bits of fun information, beginnings of theoretical underpinnings etc. it is my way of being actively involved with a text, there is a dialogue, not just parasitism for quotes or someone else's opinion or philosophy, but the recognition that there is something here that i find fascinating, that will be around for a while, that i will want to continue to engage with and in. i am allowed the illusion of multi-tasking, even though i'm sitting still only engaging two of my senses (unless i'm reading aloud, but we'll get there).

i finished reading Possession by AS Byatt. again. I read it about every year. and every year when i finish the book, i immediately turn to the front and begin it again. this year, i didn't do that. i wanted more than just a rehash. i wanted to find bits of it in my world and my home. i started writing - one of those dreaded book responses from college. and then i started looking for, and finding easily (because i've read the book so many damn times) discussions about certain themes - most notably the theme of what we call education, knowing, information having, can do to people - and i marked them with color coded post-it tabs. that is the reading that i truly enjoy doing, but rarely get the chance to - rarely does a book warrant that kind of attention. rarely do i have that attention to give.

i took a class in World Music at the end of last century and learned about this amazing thing: balinese shadow puppet shows accompanied by gamelan music (move my soul to heaven) that tell old and very well known stories, like the Ramadan. people crowd into these places. they smoke, they speak to each other, they watch the show, they eat. this goes on for near to 24 hours. gnungh! so want to do this. so want to.

i look at Trilogy Tuesday from years ago (lord of the rings - all three movies to herald the release of Return of the King. 12 hours in a movie theatre. Bad bad food. Smelled like a locker room by the time we were done. So. Much. Fucking. Fun. i was in tears for a week - just emotionally exhausted. it was wonderful) as a sort of test run. the culture of Bali and of Omaha are vastly different, though, so we'll see how much of a test run it really was.

part of my multi-tasking at home involves yarn work. more than a few years back, i discovered that commentaries are the most wonderful things ever, because they allowed me to watch a beloved movie, without having to watch it, while still being somewhat involved with it - thinking about the process of the end product. i tend to find commentaries sort of inspiring. sometimes they are awful, but that's for another blog. the point here, is that i enjoy listening to people speak about what they did, and why they did it, and what the thoughts were about it. but, i'm listening to it. (over and over and over again.)

yesterday, after i found that i could lift my head without unendurable pain (aftereffect of surgery - i recover okay, but when i get sick, i get sick right now and a lot and it sucks), i worked on a new project while listening to the new adventures of sherlock holmes - it's at the library, except for the ones that i have, they are the recordings (organized in someone's drunken notion of order) of the radio show from WWII and just after. it's taken some time and practice to pay attention the way that you would were this the only time you would hear it, and in fact, i'm sure that i don't, because i know that i can listen to them again.

in the last few weeks, i have listened to something like 4 or 5 books read aloud and recorded for my listening pleasure. i have wondered if listening to them counts as having read them. particularly in the case of non-fiction, although why that should be different simply leads us to a discussion of how i'm an elitist bitch, and we all know that already. i've answered the question for myself by deciding that it is just as easy to not pay attention to a book that is sitting in your lap, open, with your eyes fixed on it and moving over the words on the page, as it is to disregard the voice reading to you those words. the only real difficulty comes when you want to cite something or remember a specific line. when it is a machine controlling the reading (to some extent) and not a person sitting in the room with you, it is difficult to say "would you read that bit again" or "what chapter is that in" though not entirely impossible.

i enjoy sitting down to an entire day of a television show. one of these days i will own stargate sg-1 all 10 seasons box set, and i will have a television to hand with the necessary cords and i will do nothing but watch stargate. beginning with the movie. it will be wonderful and food-filled and i will have a headache and bad back for a week afterwards, because it will take me a while to get through it all, but i will - have no doubt or fear - it will happen.

the idea of 24 hours of entertainment, or storytelling or more specifically, story performance, seems so utterly appropriate to me, and i have no clue why. perhaps it's to do with the long nights of reading that i will indulge in on occasion. perhaps it's just the notion of being completely consumed by a thing - i tire of and find annoying the flighty entertainment that is available on a regular basis. i have now one show - two by proximity (one to the show i watch, one to my parents), and that is enough.

i get to go home and listen to someone read to me of war and love and honor and mystery and occasionally engage me in ridiculous conversation in Portuguese.

my home is filled with voices and story and i am not bound to one room or one chair or one attitude. i can do the dishes and move about, chasing the cats and blocking work. it is difficult to take notes, because i cannot look away from the book and now that everything will be in the same spot, but the discs end after very little time, so it is of no real consequence.

the only time it's really trying is when i know that i could have read the damn thing faster myself.

sometimes you only get part of the story

In the classroom next to my office, the Chinese language class is having their last meeting. There have been presentations followed by applause, punctuated by laughter every afternoon this week. All semester long I have heard them every afternoon, the teacher's voice unintelligible even without the bricks of concrete between us, as I do not speak Chinese. It was rather like listening to an increasingly more expressive army or choir repeating her words loudly and more and more clearly. Now they are singing. The music is nothing I know, nothing I have heard. I want to cry for the beauty and the understanding that it is goodbye. The semester is over. Even though it is likely that these people will see each other again, perhaps even in their Chinese study, this time is done. It is time to move on and all that, and they are recognizing it in music. I want to cry.

Walking to work after lunch today, I was behind a group of men all loud and boisterous, less from an exuberant personality trait than the need to speak loudly enough to be heard through the ear muffs that are the ubiquitous and required at this time of year. (in case anyone is coming to the state for the first time, yes, they do hand them out as you cross the border north from Kansas and there are ear muff kiosks at the airports. consider it a public mental health service. cold ears = super cranky.) I do not have any idea what they were talking about, though, not because of my own ear covering, but because I was thoroughly distracted by the precarious position of the pants on the man just in front of me. I have no idea what was holding them up, and I didn't see braces or suspenders, so it might have been sheer luck or will, but my stomach clenched in anticipation of the moment when they would fall, he would fall, and I would have to look away in horror lest I catch of glimpse of underwear I am sure he would rather not acknowledge having. I always assume that everyone is secretly ashamed of their underwear - which is why we keep putting it display - and would not want to make that shame greater by involving myself in it in any way.

Also, I learned that Iowegians change lightbulbs that are blown. Apparently Nebraskans don't, at least not the ones that work at the university. The man who said that was wearing stupid gloves, therefore I do not trust him, even if he is from my mother's home state.

Ula had today off. She was "sick," a condition brought on at her office manager's insistence. Sometimes I am amazed that she can tolerate me, as I would be happy to be unsupervised and have days off randomly with nothing to do but roam around town, and she was so flustered at the change of routine that her phone wasn't ringing properly. Yes, I am convinced that was the problem. Her phone would ring, in her pocket, and neither one of us would hear it. This is the woman who can hear her phone ringing in the bottom of her purse in a crowded bar on a Friday night. And she didn't hear it.

Partly that could be because we were both very unsettled at having just seen/not seen my ex husband, who I didn't see because I was looking at the sandwich shop sign - a thing which I have never done as it is a place into which I will not go on principle (chain) - and she saw him and his girlfriend and I totally missed it, thereby, I am sure, being thoroughly rude. This actually bothers me. Not that I am not rude by nature, but it's disturbing to me to be rude on accident. It indicates a lack of awareness of my surroundings followed by the several moments of concern over how to make it okay - how to prevent any more negativity about me going out into the world. It's selfish, I'm hip.

Ula really should not have days off. Everything is thrown off balance.

Every now and then things are just floomey. They just go all odd and there's really nothing to do but wait them out and read a good book. That's the problem - there's really nothing that you can "do" - not just to make it better, but at all, because everything is all topsy-turvy and any action that is committed will very likely end up having to be committed again. I recommend a nice long read in a very warm place with a glass of water - seriously, I mean water. It's good for you and will help avoid the hangover you are likely to give yourself otherwise. Because, remember, it's not just you for whom the world is all upside down - it's everyone around you and it's the kind of thing that is catching.

It's a good thing that I have a healthy sense of the goddess's humor.

The students are gone now. The hall is quiet, and there is much to think about that has nothing to do with any of this.

I hope you all have wonderful weekends and are safe and warm.

it’s not that I don’t want to complain...

I just can't bring myself to it today.

I bought myself slippers at random while at target with Ula last week. I promptly developed a cold and stayed in bed for an entire Saturday (my first Saturday at home by myself with nowhere to be, mind), but I don't believe those things to be connected, necessarily.

The reason I mention this has to do with a late evening's adventure last night when it was required of me to go out of my apartment, down the stairs, out the front door, around to the back of the house, down the newly re-done (thank you, Howard) stairs and flip my fucking breaker. Again.

We moved the fridge. I am convinced that all of the things that are happening in my house are as a result of moving the fridge. I could have been content to live with a kitchen whose accessibility was severely hampered by the bottle-neck effect of the world's most ridiculously large for one person fridge placed right next to the stove giving an already narrow and dark kitchen the feel of a very strange vaginal canal leading to and from my womb-like bedroom (which I've decided to decorate like a cloud, just in case anyone was wondering). It's not that I'm a prude or anything, it's just that I really do have better things to do with my brain that actually have to go through the thought process every morning that 'I'm just now being born into the world. Again.' And believe me, I would. I'm very routine oriented when I feel like it.

The fridge was, therefore, moved to a much more acceptable spot and now holds a place of prestige and honor and occasionally acts as a very tall and not remotely cushion-y cushion for the terror twins who like to hang out there while I bathe. Don't ask, I don't know. And everything in it promptly froze. Which has been mentioned before, so I may continue.

With the fridge moved, the next project was the attempt to prevent wind from coming through the house by putting plastic up on all of the windows. There are ten in my cloud-room alone. This was not going to be, and in fact was not, a single evening's adventure. Now, I have been putting plastic up on windows since my parents discovered this wonderful new thing many many years ago. Which means that I have been used to using a hair dryer to shrink the plastic so that you can't hear the plastic billowing in the wind or see wrinkles - in effect, the only real purpose I can see for using the hair dryer is to make it look as though there is no plastic holding back the winter coming in through the windows that it will cost many thousands of dollars that not one of us has, to fix. I'm sure that there is some other, rational, not cynical explanation, but I don't know it.

If you ever come over to my house, you will notice that the plastic on the windows billows and is very visible. Because the hair dryer was not used to tighten it. Because I blew the breaker. Three times. I got tired of blowing the breaker every time the hair dryer got turned on. We turned off all of the lights in the house, lit candles and unplugged the clock. We forgot to unplug the fridge. And blew the breaker. At that point it was 7 at night and dark and I was tired. So I went to the bar with Ula. We had earned it.

A few days later, I was moving the second of two bookshelves from one side of the living room to the other and deciding how much more I was up for doing that evening when everything went dark. I had blown the breaker. I had Nothing plugged in! Nothing. There were only 3 lights on. And I blew the breaker.

So, I turn off lights when I leave rooms. I am comforted knowing that my heat is gas and the electricity in my cloud is on its own circuit, therefore guaranteeing that I will be warm even if I am in the dark. I have developed a very uncanny sense of time passing. I never bathe right before leaving the house, as I cannot dry my hair and have not pursued getting the toaster oven I would love to have, because it is something which gets plugged into walls and they are walls which I distrust.

Living alone means that I have lots of projects: going through boxes and sorting stuff, baking things, finishing craft things, starting craft things, cataloging my books, reading, listening to radio, cataloging my books, writing letters, exploring themes, cataloging my books.

In order to catalog my books, it is necessary to decide on the specific items of information which will be listed in combination with the title, author, publisher, edition, year of publication, pagination and illustration, if applicable. I have decided to include at least one quote from each book and perhaps some indication of whether I have read it before, if I remember why I have the book, etc. As I have no computer, but do have much paper and binders and a typewriter, it seems appropriate to use the typewriter to record the information I would like on some of the filler paper that I have collected over the years and to the put that paper into one of the many binders that I have, and perhaps to decorate that binder using the other kinds of resources that are at hand.

The sticking point is the typewriter. It's electric and makes a certain amount of noise, particularly when it's on my desk, which is wood, which is sitting on a wood floor which is the top of the ceiling of my downstairs neighbors. I do not want to rattle at them, so I decided to make a sort of pad to put between the typewriter and desk. I decided to use yarn for which there seems to be no other purpose and found a nice stitch (star stitch, in case you are interested) which I worked into a sort of frame, 24 x 18 inches, give or take. It was intentionally large, the cotton I used shrinks considerably when washed, which I did next. and since it's going to be stitched with ribbon to a piece of fabric and then to batting and a backing to make a sort of not quilted knotted-quilt pillow, I wanted to do what I could to make the piece square, which it didn't naturally want to be. So, I plugged in the iron.

It blew the breaker.

By the time I got outside, slippered and coated and ready to head to the back door, down the stairs to the basement and almost immediately back up again, there was no wind, the sky was as black as the clouds and light pollution would let it be, which was something like slate gray and the freezing rain had begun.

I stood under a tree in the backyard and smoked a cigarette, not wanting to walk up the snow covered back stairs, and also not wanting to be seen on the well-lit front porch by passers-by. It was unbelievably quiet. There weren't many cars to be heard and none to be seen moving down my street or through the intersection several feet away. Frozen rain crunches underfoot and as long as you don't make any sudden moves, is really not slippery. I paced back and forth ducking under the lowest of the evergreen branches under which I had taken shelter for my cigarette.

My fingers were a little cold, but with a hat and a coat and no wind to speak of, the winter wasn't so bad. It helped that my feet were warm and felt sturdy against the weather on the sidewalk, a thing which for a pedestrian is an odd study in ice and snow and salt and human habits. I really like my slippers. I'm glad I bought them.

no really, it's all true...

Today is a day of gray clouds hiding the sun which has been on verge of sunset since about 11 this morning. Earlier, I wrote this in an email to a friend: "it's so lovely out. I'd really rather be on a park bench with a cup of hot chai and maybe a bag of some ridiculous Pepperidge Farm cookie or other. And my book. Which I'm loving utterly - the Wordsworth and Coleridge one."

And it's true. All of it. The part about the chai, the cookies (preferably one of the kinds with ridiculously huge nut bits or chocolate chunks - you know which ones, the kind that are named after cities because that's how big they are - not the nice little fancy you-can-drink-tea-with-them cookies that I really like, especially the variety packs of the tidy cookies, yeah - not those), and the book. Even the park bench thing is true, which is cool, because there are a few benches on campus, but no one ever sits on them to read, because why would anyone read?

I have finished the baby blanket and am now seriously contemplating beginning another one, because I know someone else who had a baby and they are small creatures and can get cold very easily, this being winter and all, and we all know that the only reason I'm thinking about it is that I'm still on a high from the completion of the one I've been working on for more than a year and that it's really a much better idea for me to continue going through every single box in my home and re-sorting and throwing away and all of that. Yes. I know. It's a much better idea.

But but but but there's a book at the library that's entirely ripple stitches - entirely!!! and and and I like the baby silk that I used for this last blanket (OMG! softest blanket ever! E-VER, do you hear me?). Yeah. Well. there are about 30 pounds of yarn at home that will not be used for anything that will ever touch a baby that I know - icky grody acrylic (does anyone know how to spell grodey without getting the red squiggly line?)

So, everything else I have to say is all kinds of thoughtful and serious and I'm really just not in the fucking mood.

It's beautiful out. And I'm in. And that's pissifying. But it's beautiful out.

Applesauce and other disturbances

Two days ago, while listening to a book about William Smith and the first geologic map of anything (Bath, in case you're curious), I decided to try my hand at applesauce.

Normally, I would not do this.  Fruit is kind of a mystery to me, and I prefer to let it be.  However, during the grand moving of everything around my place, the refrigerator got moved and everything inside of it promptly froze.  Including the apples.  Which then became not good for munching or salads.  Very good for cooking down to bits with spices. 

So, I hauled out the handy dandy bland but available Betty Crocker and found the recipe for applesauce which said I needed 4 apples - the same number of apples currently languishing in a frozen state in one of the crisper drawers of my increasingly moody refrigerator!  What are the odds.

Peeling frozen apples.
Yeah.

Cold hands and some not entirely certain passes at cutting the ice-apples in my hands had me pulling out the cutting board and creating not fourths but eighths out of the whole apples.  The smaller bits are easier to carve the icky bits away from and the pan I was using is small-ish and I don't like to wait for things to fall apart on their own.  I use force.  (The metaphor is not available for extension at this time.)

The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of water.  It isn't lying.  It is very tempting to say that it's lying.  Resist the temptation.  Fight the Borg within.  Trust the knowledge of your elders.  One half of a cup of water is plenty for 4 medium sized cooking apples cut into fourths.  Or eighths.  Or rhomboids. 

I currently live in an apartment with a gas stove.  which is stupendously wonderful for things like fried chicken and boiling water, but soup and slow cooking - it's user error, I know this, but I'd really like to blame it on the very very old gas stove trying desperately to prove its worth at the very end.  It needs love.  And an overhaul.  I have Brillo pads.  I will win the battle of the ick on the burners, but I am no oven mechanic, I do not understand the tricky aspects of gas lines and burners that won't burn when something is over them. 

The water boiled very quickly.  And then didn't stop boiling.  Not when I turned down the flame to the barest suggestion of gas spewage, not even when I pointed to the cookbook and informed the stove that I have explicit instructions saying that boiling is not any longer required.  It boiled on.  I found my potato masher.  And I mashed the apples. 

I love my potato masher.  Truly.  I don't know if my parents know that I have it.  It is a combination potato masher - cudgel.  In times of dire need, I can wallop someone over the head with the rounded end of my wooden masher and probably leave a very oddly shaped mark.  None of these permanent plastic mashers for me, no, I will have something heavy and breakable, yes. 

Mashing apples is very much not the same as stirring fudge.  They both require standing at the stove, one hand on hip or the handle of the pot, one hand using a utensil to manipulate the contents of that pot in a specific and defined way.  This is where the similarities end.  Mashing apples releases energy in a focused and productive way and is destructive all at the same time.  Stirring fudge is endless and frustrating.  Even after the fudge is poured and chilled and cut and ready to eat.  You still wasted a huge portion of your life stirring the fudge.  I only stirred fudge once a year one time.  Probably only 6 or 7 times in my life have I stood at a stove wooden spoon in hand, stirring fudge.  And yet it is an overriding image in my mind, one of my favorite analogies and holiday memories and a great family joke.  Because it is easier to explain than the 30 miles thing, I suspect.

The apples got mashed.  I cooked them a bit longer, hoping that the boiling wouldn't hurt them, pulling out the stringy bits that I hate in applesauce - does no one else value consistency in their mush?  If it's mush - I don't want to know what it was before it was mush.  I want no lingering attempts at pre-mush identification.  It's distracting.

In preparing the brown sugar and spices combination, I was still thinking that a half a cup of water would be too little, and planned the spices accordingly.  Also, I didn't read the fractions before the word teaspoon until it occurred to me that maybe I didn't need that much nutmeg.  and I added cloves.  It is winter.  If you are going put cinnamon (cassia for those of us who buy what's available) and nutmeg into something edible, you add cloves.  It's my new rule about winter cooking.  Fortunately, I enjoy dark brown sugar and I enjoy cloves and nutmeg; cinnamon (cassia) makes me twitch when there's too much - everyone's got their spice thing, this is mine.

It came out fine.  It cooled down and is in my refrigerator right now.  I haven't had any of it.

I will later, but right now my mother and I are waiting for the ice to melt from the trees and roads and maybe even sidewalks before venturing out into the world where it is gray and raining and probably wonderful.

Oh, and: Ethel eats soap.

recent thematic occurences

Every now and again in my life there are repetitions of ideas or words or conversations - it happens to everyone that I know, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it is difficult to go an entire year without a day of someThing. There were two things recently - one of which I cannot remember, the other was Mystic. As in Pizza and Connecticut. I wondered where it would lead. There are some themes which are not really for contemplation, rather they are like the flashing light for don't walk or slow down or almost to go.

It helps to counteract the beginnings of the cool down after the move. I am gaining weight, the kittens are well and healthy, the job is being what it is, but it isn't changing, and suddenly the past is swooping in on soft huge wings to cover and smother me when I am making turkey soup or sorting through cards or reading a beloved book, or doing crosswords.

The distraction back to the world of productive thought is a good and useful and enjoyed and somewhat desperately grabbed.

I think of the quiet and dark of the womb - well, quiet, not so much, but definitely dark. The quiet is for the cave of the bears who pace in my psyche, comfortable in their sleep, sharing dreams and birth and rest all winter until the spring comes and I am again given to the wandering, snuffling loss of my self into the world. Summer is a time of great confusion for me, it always has been. Winter is the time when I know myself best, when I am most at peace. And this year, I can be at peace without a draft on my face.

The books I find seem to be filled with rhythms and words that I understand in a way I could not have imagined even months ago. I find the goddess a carefully approached entity, I am careful not to get too close, for I know how easily she folds you in to herself. But I cannot stay away for long. I enjoy too much the danger of treading close to the fire, to the energy of the words, that place where all could be lost is where I find what that is.

Now I am hungry and must go downstairs to make some bad food for my tummy. All are well and healthy and maneuvering through this season joyfully if not smiling.

this is not the blog you’re looking for

Rather, not the blog I was going to write. I have Things to talk about, Big Important Things to say words about. Not to be confused with having Big and Important Things to Say myself. I prefer to let others act, and to be the critic, the observer, the person who doesn't have to synthesize the information or provide the ridiculous sound bite. In other words, I am not yet ready to be the person whose words I want to ridicule.

It will come. I am not worried. I'm writing again. The more words there are, the more likely they are to become fuel for someone else's fire.

So it was snowing. the kittens watched it for a good hour this morning, Miss Ethel's head jerking about trying to find one flake, one movement, one thing to follow to the ground, one thing to watch but everything else prevented it, she couldn't stop from looking at every flake as it fell past the window, the large breezy window in the front room, at the end of the runway of wood.

Boris is much too laid back to be distracted that way. He is a sucker, though, for getting right in my way every time I read or write on my writing desk. He will stand on it, butt heads with me (literally) and prance about to get love, until I stop what I am doing and pet him and he's had enough and walks away. Since he also hasn't figured out that if he doesn't kill me on the way to the food bowl, he will continue to get fed, I do not take it personally.

Tomorrow is thanksgiving. One of "those" holidays, so correctly smirked at. Not because it is a bad idea or inappropriate to celebrate through gratitude, or with much food from the recent harvest, or the coming of one's family before the winter begins, but because the origin story is really cheesy. I don't care how true it is. It's a fucking made for TV movie and we all know it.

I grew up in a church associated with the Congregationalists. For those of you who have had better things to do than study the history of the Christian churches in the colonies and then the US, they were very like the Puritans. Most of the East coast was Congregationalist for a very long time, the church founded Harvard and Yale and that college where Richard Jewell worked before he was accused of putting those bombs around the Olympics that year. We are a very tense people, as you would be if you were the descendants of a group of people who believed that no matter what you do in life, your afterlife has been determined from before your birth - predestination is the word for that belief and all of its extrapolations. Conservative Calvinistic Congregationalists. There is a reason we did not have business cards or a song.

There is something fundamentally wrong with making the teachings of John Calvin even more conservative. These people didn't dance or wear anything but black or grey. Okay, I can get behind that - not my style, but that doesn't give me the right to say don't do it - even West Coast Zoot suits were mostly monochromatic because of the rationing, and they made it cool. They made it really fucking cool, but I digress. What I can't get behind is the double whammy that comes after predestination has been presented - if you are marked for heaven, it is shown through beauty and wealth, but just because you are beautiful and wealthy doesn't mean that you are marked for heaven, it just means that ugly poor people aren't. And - now, this is where I start to twitch - it is morally required of all beautiful people to help the non-chosen ones to live good and God-fearing lives, for even though they are not destined for heaven their time in hell can be made less if they have lived according to God's Laws (What I learned from studying Shakespeare: the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism as seen through the eyes of the faithful).

They got on boats. My theological ancestors left from Leiden (Holland) and came here. On a boat. And then they got off of the boat and the rest is an odd mix of fact and fantasy told as History.

Thanksgiving was a bigger holiday in my church than any other. Even Easter. Well, we liked each other and Lenten dinners were a big hit, so why be glad when it's over. Congregationalists, appropriately contrary to their name, don't congregate unless they have to. And they like to be seen congregating. They are an odd bunch. I am glad that we left behind the mystics, though. I just don't think that a faith that is as pragmatic (to a degree) as I was raised to be has much room for mysticism. Also, there are a lot of wise people who are really ugly - how can you trust an ugly (bound for hell, remember) person to help guide you on your way to a greater understanding of god?

Now there is much eating and rejoicing in each other's company to offset the dread that in one month it will be time to do this all again, hopefully in someone else's house (Not Me!) and with gifts! More money, more expense, more dishes. Great.

This year there is much for which to be thankful in my family. Some years the gratitude is directed less personally. I will not share with you my list of things for which I am thankful. I find something in every day, therefore, the list is too long to be remembered, much less shared.

The sun has come out a bit. Just in time to melt the slush that will turn into ice the second that sun drops down past the stadium.

Oh - I added new pics of the babies and I from this morning.

See, told you it wasn't what I wanted to say - I am thinking of taking that one slightly more seriously. Also, I keep losing the page where the quote is. Cough.

poem after felix’s

this pleasure in the silence of the sun and the breeze and the paper-soft dead leaves is only made because of the absence of you, for how could i stop and look and see the world around me when there is you to see instead. how to feel the breeze on my face when my hand itches to hold yours, to touch your cheek, your warmth. there is no room in me for the world when you are near. there is no room in the world for me when you are living in it so close to me. but here, alone in the park with the cobbles underfoot and the dancing death of so many leaves just waiting for that final rain, snow, wind to bring them off of their branches and into their sleep, here i can see what you had eclipsed. here i remember and know that without the shadow of you, the sun would shine not at all.



a pair of lovers stopped their chat as i walked through the gates of the park today. i did not envy them their togetherness. i pitied their noise in such loveliness as i saw all around me. they stayed silent, perhaps out of respect, more likely out of paranoia, such is the egotism of all lovers. and i walked free.

I’m only here because this is where the phone is

I have been overly publicly grateful. I have unpacked many boxes. I have still not found the screws to put the desk together, even though they were on the china cabinet and I grabbed them specifically and put them ... somewhere? ...
The kittens are racing each other from one end of the apartment to the other. There is enough hallway that they don't even have to start at the far end to get going at break neck speeds. The kittens sleep on me. And when I say "on me" I am speaking literally. There is no cuddling on the side. There is lying on my hair, my arm, my leg, my face at times. Ethel is small enough that she can curl up around my skull and until I move in an unfortunate way and receive small claws in my scalp, I don't even know that she's there.

The books are entirely unpacked. They are oddly shelved, but I will have plenty of time and space for cataloging and re-organizing. I am thinking of grouping the craft and needlework books together, the cookbooks together and the dress-up books together, lined up by size, of course. As for the others, I am seriously considering putting them in order by date of acquisition. Which means that I get to keep most of the very fragile children's books in the front room and relegate the ever more trashed trade books to the sort of non-room-place. I really need to come up with something to call that room. It has a purpose, but who wants to take people a tour of their apartment and have the second room people walk through to be "the place where I keep everything I can't find any other place for. And my closet." My One Closet. And the track lighting. I may move something else in there at some point. Definitely not a sitting room. Too many mirrors. Ug.
The kitchen is completely fun and fits me well.

I've just had news that someone relatively unconnected to me has passed away. That seems a very cold sentiment and why should it matter, but it does. He was the husband to someone for whom I care very much. He has been in a vegetative state for more than a decade. Their two children have grown up without him and now have a good male role model who loves their mother very much. Their mother has struggled and, like most of us who can only handle the struggle for so long, has found happiness and has raised children who are enjoyable and intelligent and completely wacky people. I like them very much. She has no idea how she could have raised them to be so utterly un-screwed up. Her utter confusion is wonderful to watch. I send good thoughts to them and to the family of the man who has passed away. I know that it cannot be an easy thing to watch someone deteriorate slowly and feel totally powerless to stop it or to stop whatever suffering may come with it without ending that person's life totally. From what I understand, his body stopped on its own. He was ready to go.

It all does go away eventually. If you let it. The pain, the ecstasy, the frustration, the confusion. If you let it go - it leaves. I have what is occasionally an unpardonably long memory, and occasionally it is unpardonably short. There are some emotions that will allow me to forget that I have been treated with uncommon kindness or uncommon disrespect. There are head spaces which do not always allow me to be as aware of my surroundings and their impact on me as I would like. I imagine it is similar for most people.

Last evening I read poetry for the first time in ages. Read the same poem three times for the joy of it.

Been finding little bits of my past lying about in boxes. I have been putting them on my refrigerator (which is HUGE) just because they make me happy.

The move was good. Having people over to help me get started unpacking was good.

My phantom appendix does not want me to sleep on my left side right now, but that is an acceptable price to pay, I think.

Because I just can’t help myself...

Phases of Moving – The Picture of Before

Phase 1 involves getting all of my stuff out of my parents' house.
Phase 2 is getting the keys.
Phase 3 is packing at the old house.
Phases 4-8.6 involve the movers moving things.
Phase 9 = beer
Phase 10 = friends + books
Phase 11 begins when my parents arrive with the kittens and more snacks or beer, I haven't decided which to ask for.
Phase Oh My God Who Cares Anymore!?!?! will, I think, be when it's been all it can be and there's still more to do.


I would like to acknowledge that these phases were listed, and therefore numbered, in the order I thought of them. There is nothing sequential about them in reality. Nothing happens chronologically in a move. The clock is there to taunt you. It is a challenge, a duel to the death with the technology of time in western thought. This will be a very challenging move.

I am so fucking excited. I dislike being in limbo. I need to see that there is a very definite end in sight - and that sight is tomorrow evening.

oh, that’s right - I’m having issues

So, our glorious football team (American style) lost again last weekend. Pedersen is gone (remind me to cry over a sad movie later) and Osborne is back in the stadium, although not as coach.

I have a few observations to make:
1) fair weather fans suck and it's about time the athletes starting talking back
2) heard a rumor that someone has come up with the money to buy out Callahan's contract
3) if that happens, we are the coach-for-4-years school

1) I grew up in the Chicago. The Bears won the Super Bowl one year - 1. It was in January of 1985. They beat the Miami Dolphins 64-14. The only game they lost that year was against the Dolphins. I started moving before the Bulls had Jordan. No one in my neighborhood followed hockey as loudly as they did football, and did I mention the baseball? No. You know why? Because they lose. They lose a lot. They always have and it's okay. In the long run, I am a White Sox fan. When in the position to choose a side, I root for the Sox or whoever is playing the Cubs. It's the rule. Even when they suck. Why? Because they're my team. I know nothing about stats anymore and couldn't name a player if you paid me. I would go to a game in a heartbeat and will take any White Sox merch over anyone else in an instant. Why? Because they are my team. I don't care if they lose all the time. I don't care that the way things work with the Sox is that they do really well for a while (anyone remember what year they got a pennant thing? it wasn't all that long ago) and then, they suck. The Bears used to be a 3rd quarter or 4th quarter team. They made it work. And then they won the Super Bowl. 1 year in the 10 that I lived there. It's about not hogging the spotlight. It's about the sport, not self-definition. I am, of course leaving out the part about McMahon's unmanageable ego and Ditka's perfect hair. The point is that while I love how energetic Husker fans are, I do not love how much people seem to depend on the Husker football team for their self-definition. Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but why else would someone accost an athlete who is also a college student with the kind of negativity that has been getting reported in the Whirled Herald? What kind of a person feels justified in yelling at someone on the street that they suck? (Unless you are me and it's someone you know and don't care about) I see nothing good from that, I see nothing heartening about it, I see it being destructive and if I were the Huskers, I'd pay the hotdog shooter guy to shoot loaded dogs straight at the fans who are booing from the stands. That is not how to cheer on your team. It does not show support.

2) So, you've got 5 million dollars and you want to buy out Callahan's contract, huh? I have a great idea for another option for that money - first off, though, keep your fucking mouth shut unless you want everyone in town to know about it - Lincoln is a small city, everyone knows where everyone lives and everyone knows everyone else's business. When it comes to the athletics department, particularly in times of coaching stress, this town gets smaller and people's mouths get bigger (Solich was fired for bad coaching, my ass). Take the money and buy a few homes for Friendship Home, fill them with clothes, beds, bedding, kitchen appliances, dishes, etc., hire a personal trainer, a tutor, a nurse and few policemen for each one, because for every game that the Huskers lose, more women get beaten by their husbands than when the Huskers win, and we are going to need to find a place for them and for their children when they finally have had enough of Husker fan life and have to run away.

3) What the hell is this athletics department about anyway?

Also - I weigh more than I have for about 18 months, and am somewhat distressed to find that Godiva Chocoiste dark chocolate with caramel only has 180 calories in it. The gremlins are fine and growing, although Boris is growing faster and more than Ethel who is a lemur-slinky. I swear that creature has no bones - she's all nose, claws and fur. They are both very lovey still, and Horace and Boris's relationship is calming down and is now mostly based on grooming. We'll see what happens when the nephew comes to town (toddler attack!).

The thing about socks

I just threw away about 5 socks and four pair of underwear. The reason for this is as follows: plastic tubs on sale at Pamida, therefore there was buying, therefore there was using, therefore there was some consideration for the number of socks and underwear I own and so, some of them had to go. I threw away socks that had holes in them. As I don't match my socks, as a rule, and so don't have to deal with the pain of finding the single one, it's not like there should be any big deal about it. There are certain things not to keep - socks and underwear with holes fall on this list.

And yet. I haven't thrown away a sock that wasn't practically lace in years. And I mean like Years - more than 2. My socks are tough. They can stand on their own with any other sock I choose, they got drug around the house by Til who liked to think they were her kittens (did anyone else (Anne) notice that she stopped doing that when Wigs had her first litter?)(I just realized it.)(I think she went to scarves and sweaters after that), and now they suffer from the affectionate rubs and clawings and occasional attempts by Ethel to pick them up and carry them away while they are still on my feet. I collected them like they were a drug after Joe and I split. Anne was the one who noticed that I was developing a problem with the dollar sock bin at Walgreens.

But, But, But - Dollar Socks!!!

And now some of them are gone. Probably more than some of them, but that's not the point, my current pain is the point - focus, please.

I wonder: how many socks are too many socks? Same for underwear. Bras, too. We are talking about functional foundation wear only. Because I've lived with people (husbands) who seemed to think that the best way around having to wash underwear was to buy more. I never got that. But, maybe someone else does - I don't know.

Anyway, I'm kind of sad now. I'll live. The felines are being distracting and demanding and wonderful and Cloud is staring at me as if I was the one responsible for levitating her food bowl away from its rightful spot and into the microwave. Well, I am, but that's neither here nor there.

I'm going to read a book and contemplate something. I haven't decided yet what it will be.

It’s not ’made-up,’ it’s just never been said before...

Floofy is a word that should have been said before. By someone not me. Probably was. That person doesn't seem to know anyone that I do, though. I suppose that's a good thing. Can you imagine if there were more than just one of me (or any of my acquaintance, for that matter) running around this town? Yep. It would be good. But oh so wrong.

The newspapers would report incidents of road rage between thirtysomething men trying to out-punk each other with their radios, comparing trophy tattoos. The reporter with the state legislature beat would be proficient in many dialects of international sign language, able to distinguish the Beer from the Sandwich because of how they mime the concept of bread.

And yes, there would be pop-up shrines in the desk drawers of my co-workers. One specifically. It would be a vision of connected cords and coding with an altar for the daily offering of chocolate to the goddess Pandora. (not a deity, I know, that's not the part that is the joke, trust me)

There would be a strip mall wherein a shopper could find such businesses as "Where Do You Want To Go?" a bar with a busy drug trade in the alley, "I Don't Care" adult toys and gifts, "Somewhere Different" a sandwich shop specializing in soup, "Like Where?" the hobby store (with jigsaw puzzles made of wood!), "I Don't Care II" for mom-to-be and baby, "Fine, We'll Just Stay Home" your specialty and whole food grocery store. I would love it there. actually, I wouldn't hang out at that strip mall, I'd be too busy hanging out at the one across the street specializing in obvious (un-ironic) store names: laundry, books, pizza, beverages, newspapers & magazines, quiet place for reading or fucking, cell phone friendly plaza - you know, the kind of stores that only have exactly what the name says they do. Of course, I would complain endlessly about the lack of maps in the book store and why there are no newsletters at the newspaper & magazine store, and the fact that you couldn't get a t-shirt if you stole it out of someone else's laundry basket, But I'm okay with that. And hey, free condoms in the reading place! Score.

It occurred to me the other day that I wasn't in the mood to complain. I was concerned for a moment. It didn't last long, sometimes moods just hit and there's really nothing you can do about them but relax and breathe and wait for some schmo to fuck up your morning by feeling the need to have a 'conversation' over coffee and a cigarette. Whanyeh?! I don't like to 'talk' that early, especially not with cleverness and caring - ew.

As to my whining earlier this afternoon - imagine the squeaking of metal parts in my brain just trying to work their way through a slightly changed routine - not much of a change, but enough to be noticeable. Floofy, my ass.

Oh, in case anyone else is keeping track - 4 incidents of deja vu in the last 2 days. None of them particularly layered or inspiring, just, you know, freaking me out again. Dreams of driving. Kind of miss the dreams of water. I liked those. And the caves. Those were neat, too.

pledge drives and resumes

I have decided to listen to NPR on my computer at work. It keeps me from spending too much time listening to my brain while I'm here. I am remembering the sound of it while I stay at the farm. There is no other human noise, no worry about much of anything except chores, which are just nothing anymore. I remember what the silence holds for me. It is good.

Decided to approach the resume as a skill-set list instead of the reduced bits of my personality and job history made pretty on a page or two.

Friend John loaned me tapes of a show called The Power of Art - the episodes about Picasso and Carravagio. I love them. There was an ad for one about Bernini. I love him, as well. Tortured artists dying of fever on the beach. What more could a girl ask for? Really.

Much good friend time this last few weeks. Looks like much good friend time for a while yet. Is good. Is doing. Is hitting the thrift stores on Sunday with Jenny and Ula - yes, yes, the thrift store is good.

Have many other things to say, but they need time and attention and proper grammar. I have put up more pictures - some of my office, some of my gremlins, some of other people's gremlins (Chandreyee's and my parents' specifically).

Also - yes, yes, I love commentaries. What did we do before DVD's? Really? Reviews and interviews and all sorts of even less believable shite? Ah, the good old days are good and gone, and I enjoy the endless entertainment of other peoples' self-aggrandizing. There's good stuff in there, Maynard - you just have to listen for it.

Ethel, the quiet, loving kitten, has found her voice and boy is it loud! She's got the best purr, though. And she lets out some loud loud loud growls - impossible for such a small creature. She really is just the smallest little thing! And she has a thing for hanging out in the dryer. Cleaning herself. She gets mad when I take her out of it. She is so her mother's child.

I'm done now.
Thank you for listening.

Comfort food and other evils

It is my new theory that what resides in the appendix is not, as had been previously suggested, silent suffering. It is my new theory that what in fact resides in the appendix which I no longer support inside my body is fear. I feel no fear. I do not fear anything. Pain holds no mystery. Love is a sign of universal stupidity. Inaction is what happens in between chores. Death and I have never been at odds. Other people will fuck up their own lives. There is no such thing as perfection and being at peace is just another way of being.

Today is a day of fragile. The vodka cranberry sprite of yesterday evening left me with a dry mouth and slightly wonky head this morning. The beer and wine that preceded set all of it up, of course, but that last drink is what sent the head over the edge and down into the doldrums where I find myself today. Being fragile. Slightly broken. No more than usual.

I will leave the library at the end of the month. There is no need to find myself in a situation where I am very aware of my replaceability. It is a depressing habit of all former 'victims' to persist in reminding the world and therefore themselves that 'I am not a victim anymore!' Bullshit.
Last night I learned of a goddess who lives in books. I remember the sound of her name, though I do not know how to spell it.

When I was a child living in a home where the kitchen was yellow, as all good kitchens are, there was a kitchen witch who hung by the window, keeping her broom at the ready, a kerchief holding back the wiry hair, revealing a hideous nose and one or two teeth and a smile like a cackle on a wrinkled old face. She kept us safe. Baba Yaga of the missing hearth.

The ethnologists who studied the Nacerima believed that this culture worshiped at an altar made like a sink. I wonder of the name of the god or goddess who may have lived there. I can find the meaning and saint or angel or protector or goddess or god or holy person of every room and item in my new home. The new religion is not about understanding and love. The new religion is in the icons that we collect, the stories that we tell about them and the constant conflict that rages in the absence of pan-dimensional understanding when Bast meets Odin and the kittens hide.

I would find a kitchen witch. Mayhap I will craft a new one out of what I have already. All parts accounted for. Some assembly required.

Horace meets Boris

The morning was early, earlier than yesterday, but I didn't have anywhere to be, so there was no reason to resent getting out of bed. Mama is making omelettes for breakfast, I can smell the eggs from here.

Boris and I are settling in quite happily upstairs. He has discovered that aloe is not-so fun to chew and has stopped. This morning, he helped me write a little poem and then fell asleep on the desk worn out from the effort. He does not seem to mind my reading habits, and, unless aided and encouraged by one of his siblings, doesn't have much interest in book corners for chewing. He does not much like falling asleep on my arm to be awakened by my sneezes.

It is incredible to me to see how small his is in relation to Horace and Cloud, neither of whom would win any cat pageants for slimness, mind, but Horace seems to have accepted his diet and is losing weight and Cloud is of a good, healthy size. They are both just big cats. Boris is about one third of Horace's size. I'm so accustomed to him being almost the size of his mother and Street that this is taking a bit of getting used to. Also, I forget what it means that he is only 3 and half months old. He is amazed at everything and kind of freaked out by the breeze coming through windows and doors.

I will be happy when he stops being quite so jazzed about playing with my hair at 5 in the morning, though.

The grandparents have, of course, fallen in love, and Boris goes from being adored to being scolded and chased off of counters and tabletops. Just like any small child visiting relatives, not quite managing to stay as calm as the adults have learned to be. Even my father has put aside his general dislike of felinity in all of its guises to admit that he quite likes Mr. Boris.

Horace and Boris have learned how to play. A little. A very little. Cloud is not impressed and takes every possible opportunity to let Boris know how little she wants him around. She feels that her lap time is being threatened and does not quite know what to do with small-ones. Ethel will be a bit of a shock to her, but she will survive. Cats are very good at surviving without acknowledging adaptation, I have found.

Thankfully, there were fleas here already.

Last night ramblings and other things

Here are some other things:

Inspired by Jenny's blog, I would like to add the following things: hibiscus, peanut butter, photocopiers, double Mondays on Tuesday (I've been walking into everything today), sleeping kittens, long evening phone calls.

I have a new friend. 3 new friends in 4 months. I feel very odd about this. not the person, mind, Just the whole thing where I'm meeting people and then they are my friends - I take a while, I always have - it just doesn't happen that quickly - Ula and I sniffed around each other for like 6 months before we got comfortable - is anyone else having the most deeply layered deja vu ever in the history of ever? Or is that just me. Yeah, this train of thought is annoying me. I have a new friend. It is happy-making, not the kind of thing that should be weird-making.

Sounds like I get to go see King Lear this week. Woot. I lurv Shakespeare performed. Even if it's performed badly - there is nothing to beat live entertainment. 'specially when it's in a cemetery.

Have begun the habit of words again. Enjoying the dopamine rush after writing. I am truly upset about the reality of the idea that it is difficult to create anything worthwhile in a time of happiness. Although, as was once pointed out to me by someone else, I am fueled by angst. my angst tends to be of the shallow variety - while being very sweetly kissed in my dream by a married man (inaccessible and Not In My Goddamn Space All the Time are simply not the same thing. for one, it is much easier to yell the latter and the former is too associated with personal problems.) I suffer because I want to say spam. Yes. Yes. Although it's better than the half-awake rage fueled by the thought of "you fucked her IN MY BED!!!!" stupid half-awake rage. Odd way to begin the day. And I got sleep and everything (whine whine whine).


There is much to be thought about and experienced and spoken of, but for now, these are the ramblings:

I am remembering. I remember now. The stillness of mind, the feel of the pen in my hand, the rhythms of words sprung with an energy that never fails to catch me off my guard and shock me to my core months and years later.
I remember thinking and seeing at once, as if the acts were never separated or unbalanced. The leaves on the tree in the yard out font. The storm whose beginning was the single crack of thunder from somewhere just above my head. The slow smile of acknowledgment - the rain begins.
I remember now that staring at one rain-soaked leaf for 10 seconds becomes an eternity of sound, color, movement, with me, the observer, the speaker, the seer, watching it all - the drops of water leaving themselves spread ever thinner on the veined bit of growth; the gold of the street light and the silver of the lightning; the fine lines of tiny raindrops heavier than mist; and the wind, the blessed wind again, calling me, bending the cobwebs and blowing the dust further away from the bits that once knew this path well. Gears of a sort, levers and firing mechanisms and something like a quiet pulsing metronome that had studied and understood the inherent value of variation.
I remember the language I never fully spoke, never wanted to claim as my own. A language trapped in words, fed in sound, sight, touch, taste, smell.
I remember a walk with a poet. On the way to lunch, across a street and a hole in the sidewalk surrounded by orange cones and yellow tape, guarded by a machine with a name.
"There's a poem right there," he said.
It is that poem. That is what I remember now.

Weekend in the country

The morning glories, the gorgeous little blooms of solid pink or purple or white that have resisted blooming all summer long from their perch wrapped about the cottonwood tree which grows so close to the patio outside the back door of my parents' house, have finally decided to show off.

Junior, one of the feral cats that got fixed and gets fed by my mother, is still not quite certain what to do with me. She crouches low and watched with sea-green eyes, careful lest I get too close to my mother, her source of love and affection and lap and food. The three cats who spend much time around the house range all around the out buildings and walk long yards to the patio for food every day.

The wind is blowing like mad today, sending the sunlight scattering all over the blue walls of the living room where I slept, curled up in my father's chair, for most of the early afternoon, done in by a good book.

I slept well when I slept. Dreamt of an orange carpet found under layers and layers of gray disgusting foot traffic.

I have burnt my bagel bites, but my mother is taking me in to town to shop for groceries for the week. There must be milk. And meat. And cereal. And cheese. It is what must happen for life to continue and to grow and to become something other than what it is now. Patience is not my strong suit, but I will get over it and remember that after 34 years of life, I do have the ability to see things from something like a rational perspective.

The obligatory blog about cats

Since I live in a house with five cats, it had to happen at some point. Words must be written about them. Here it is:

Day before yesterday, I walked into my room to see Street curled up on my bed. It is not unusual for there to be a cat curled up on my bed, but things have been odd lately and the adult cats have been avoiding me, so seeing one of them making herself comfortable in my room was a nice surprise. I turned on the light and realized why she was there.

The look of death on her face should have been enough, but then I saw her tail. Still wet from the flea dip. And the giggling started. She was not pleased with me and trounced out of the room throwing me a nasty glare over her shoulder as if to say that she was not speaking at me anymore ever. The insult was somewhat mitigated by the presence of Ethel crashed out on the blue down throw, looking for all the world like a very fuzzy dead weevil larva (of the rhinocilus persuasion)(which are just cute) and snoring. She snores. At three months.

I went down to the kitchen to find some high calorie gut-fill and found Street on the bottom step, watching me very carefully. I know that it's been some months since her dad had to bathe her to get all of the alley grease off of her loveliness and fur, and I think she was hoping she could forget it forever. I picked her up and we sat down and she chirped and balanced on her paws, refusing to get comfortable and shaking. She left my lap shortly thereafter and I suggested that she go pout somewhere else. (We haven't spoken much since then. Some quick morning rubs, but nothing lasting.)

Ethel sleeps like the dead and takes very long naps. With my food in hand, I shut my bedroom door, turned off the lights and prepared to commit to my daily afternoon rest period (still a must-do after everything. not so bad, but somewhat annoying). She rolled around some, stopped snoring for a minute, sort of opened her eyes and then burrowed back down, nose in paws, back feet curled, tail all kinds of everywhere, giving off the faint odor of flea dip.

I ate and snuggled into my sheets for my nap when there came the sound of someone else snuggling in somewhere. Looking over at the source of the sound, I noticed a bulge in the blanket that is draped over the folding chair in the corner. The bulge was on the floor and very small and moving slightly. My eyesight likes to make things move when they oughtn't, but not that much, so I investigated and found a damp, sleeping Novice.

Novice doesn't sleep as long or as hard as Ethel does, so her time on the blue down blanket was restful, but hardly the repose her sibling got. She slept nearer to my knees and watched every movement Ethey made as she snored and rolled and stretched and dreamt and snored some more. Novice and I are finally developing a relationship with purring, so I tend to leave her be mostly and let her come to me as she is comfortable (not including the requisite kitten-grabbing attacks, of course).

By the time it was time to go out that evening, they were both sound asleep, Novice in a gray and white ball of mostly dry fluff, Ethel under the throw, front leg stretched out, holding the blanket to her.

I caught sight of Wigs on Anne's bed, licking at her tail. I didn't see Boris at all until last night. I have decided to call him Boris. Now he is called Booger, so I don't think it will be all that difficult a transition for him as he likely reacts mostly to the "b" sound. He didn't seem all that affected by the bathing process, but if you had your own balls to lick all day long, would you?

Ah, the joys of being on campus

Got to go to a lecture yesterday. One of those pesky revisionist type things. You know the ones. The kind where some hotshot University Professor thinks that doing research based on historical record is going to give a more accurate picture of the past than Hollywood movies or newspapers or dime novels. Who the hell do these people think that they are anyway?

The Oregon Trail. Dooom Doooom.

Not the site of so many massacres that no movie studio could ever keep up with it. At least not between 1840 and 1869. Do tell. Well, apparently, the two Big massacres that have been passed down from generation to generation where big bad Indians killed frail helpless white settlers by the hundreds - the Doniphan and Almo Massacres, if you're keeping track - were made up. Fabricated. Invented. To sell papers in the former case and to increase tourism in the latter.

Seriously. He said so. And he wrote a book about it, and other human interest concerns (trading, medicine, starvation, people shooting themselves in the face accidentally because guns were designed less with safety in mind back then). And the book won him an award. And I believe him. Why? Not because of any particular guilt I have left over, but because the story that he tells makes more sense. Living on the plains now is difficult enough. It is important to know who your neighbors are and how to live in the winter and such and such. Can you imagine what it was before all of that? There were guide books to the Trail, but still. Human interaction works best when it is not defined by conflict (trust me on this one, I know of what I speak). So why turn the prairie into a place of perpetual warfare? I know, I know, that's what it became, and this is dealing with a very specific place (the Oregon Trail) during a very specific time frame (1840-1869). That is important to remember.

People are stupid. We are born stupid. We die stupid. We can learn to be not so stupid, but it is very easy to go back to stupid ways. All we need are enough drink, drugs, sex or sensationalism and boom, the brain is gone.

So the newspapers sold stories. Stories of vicious attacks by savage people. They got folk to leave their homes and head West, looking to kill injuns or have the grand adventure on the high plains, since going by sea would have defeated the whole purpose.

Go back to Little House on the Prairie or Caddie Woodlawn. Tell me what you find and then look at what the adults buy and tell me we deserve to maintain as a species.

Also there was some very bad art hanging on the walls, and some woman asked if I had anything hanging there and then proceeded to talk at me about the colors in an odious landscape.

Can someone please explain to me what exactly is the value of dropping my "get the fuck away from me" vibe if it's just going to encourage bad conversation? Ug.

"Act your age"

I find that statement problematic. I do not deny that part of the problem lies in my own desire not to be categorized or put in a pigeon-hole. But the big question that I've always had, ever since the first time I heard someone (likely my parents, not their fault) say that to me, is: "What does that mean?" "How do I find out what that means?" "Who decides if I am or am not 'acting my age' according to whose definition?"

Is there some behavioral rubric that is used to determine specific age-related personality traits? Am I just supposed to look around at all of the other schlebs in my age range and compare? Do I get to include life experience in with age range? And who does decide, anyway? Why should it not be me? What is so wrong with not acting like a cynical 30-something on the other side of her first mid-life crisis? Is it so wrong that I have no desire to pretend that I am comfortable with the behavior patterns of many people who are 5-10 years younger than me?

Many many questions which will stop now as they become whiny and self-serving or bitchy after a while, and I have better things to do today.

Yesterday morning as I was waiting in the drips coming from windblown leaves by my bus stop, I watched the pups in the yard at hand and wanted nothing more than to go to them and rub my hands and face in their rain covered fur. The smell of wet dog would have stayed all day long, calming me out of my anger and rage and sense of displacement. Taken me back to my childhood and the heavy smell of the large red dog without whom I have no memory before the age of 15. Reminded me of where it is safe, where it is always warm, even under the sheets of rain that came down last night and threatened to drown me walking from the backdoor to the driveway. They sat there, the pups, wagging their tails, ears down, noses pointed in my direction as if smelling my desire to walk over and scratch their backs, and their thick ears, rub their faces and get fur down my sleeves.

I waited. And stood. And, eventually, the bus came.

New Normal Afternoon

I am writing while waiting for the other computer to decide to function and produce the information I require. It is a day of prisoner references. So I get to be that much more aware of my heartbreak. Oh, the joy of melodrama. The ear plugs only block out so much.


It is a lovely gray day and I am pleased that I have brought my bright blue rain poncho. Its presence makes it that much more difficult for people to believe that I have crossed the 30 year mark.

There are windows in my office that show me students lined up like so much cattle waiting for buses and cars and friends. I see the clouds over campus. I love days like this. It is a bit too warm for the weather, but I don't really care. Makes the chore of walking that much less awful.

Transparency is a highly under-rated virtue. No one believes it anyway. My ulterior motives are blindingly obvious, if you know what to look for. And if you bother to listen. It all breaks down very clearly.

Reminds me that there is no such thing as an underground anymore - we keep allowing the media to dredge it to the surface.

Lots of random thoughts today. Trying to get organized, I have a letter to write this evening. This will help me focus.


Well, the other computer is done, so I will get started.

I always forget until I am reminded

"mouth-breather"

It's one of those unspoken universal "things" that mark a person as a complete fool, unable to commit the most basic of unconscious activities without mucking it up. I love this insult

not as much as 'goat-fucker' though.

I had a whole long essay-type thing about bodily functions, but the meds have kicked in, so you all are just going to have to wait in suspense.

The kitten crashed with me last night. I felt special.

I have had to quit smoking

and I don't know when I'll be able to go back to it. It upsets my stomach too much. I am sad. I miss it.

The nurse at my surgeon's office (her name is Colleen) tells me that it could be up to a year before my body is done recovering from the anesthetic and the surgery, assuming I quit pushing it too far.

Taking things slowly is something which is an ideal for me, rarely realized as my own impatience has been conditioned by years of discomfort at intensity or building tension (yes, I am blaming my ex's, I learned it from them and their inability to function around me)(also, yes, I do get that I am the only common denominator in all of my relationships, that does not make it my fault that most of the men in my life have had no ability to let a moment happen or be without fucking it up or making a joke or breaking the tension and then apologizing lamely). It's a Pavlovian response and will take time to be unlearned.

It's funny, when I got the call that Joe was in jail and began the single oddest and most fucked up summer of my life, I knew that things were different, but I had no idea how different they really were, how much went away that night, how easily lost everything was. And I was nuts, drinking whiskey, sleeping with boys who had girlfriends, not sleeping at all, wearing really odd clothing and hanging out with some of the most disrespectful unethical people (okay, person) I have ever met. (I blame the whisky myself. tequila leaves my discriminating tastes in tact.) I don't hang out with her anymore.

Point is, it took a while for me to realize that I was nuts and why.

This time it's a little less difficult to follow given the straight line leading 3 1/2 inches down from my belly button.

Everything is different. It's just that way. There's nothing I can do about it. My body needs to recover from the sickness from before surgery and then the surgery and the anesthetic and the drugs after the anesthetic and the antibiotics and probably the world's worst cottage cheese, as well.

I am separated from the two people I love most in the world (outside of my parents, of course) because I have no idea "where I'm at" and will likely not have a clue for quite some time. which wouldn't be that big of a deal except that we live in the same house. It is too much to listen to the constant whining of a reformed martyr.

I know to walk. To get into the sun. To eat. To rest. To sleep. To not lift anything for a while (ug). To pet the kitten (I adopted one, she is called Ethel Katherine Humphries. I call her Ethey). To read. To make lists. To learn. To work at my jobs to the best of my abilities. To do some dishes when I can. To clean the litter boxes at least once a week.

"Master, how do I follow The Way?"
"Did you have breakfast this morning?"
"Yes."
"Did you wash your bowl when you were done eating?"
"Yes."
"Well, then."

Personality tests results - for Aubrey and John

Idealists, as a temperament, are passionately concerned with personal growth and development. Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self -- always this quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement drives their imagination. And they want to help others make the journey. Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials.

Idealists are sure that friendly cooperation is the best way for people to achieve their goals. Conflict and confrontation upset them because they seem to put up angry barriers between people. Idealists dream of creating harmonious, even caring personal relations, and they have a unique talent for helping people get along with each other and work together for the good of all. Such interpersonal harmony might be a romantic ideal, but then Idealists are incurable romantics who prefer to focus on what might be, rather than what is. The real, practical world is only a starting place for Idealists; they believe that life is filled with possibilities waiting to be realized, rich with meanings calling out to be understood. This idea of a mystical or spiritual dimension to life, the "not visible" or the "not yet" that can only be known through intuition or by a leap of faith, is far more important to Idealists than the world of material things.

Highly ethical in their actions, Idealists hold themselves to a strict standard of personal integrity. They must be true to themselves and to others, and they can be quite hard on themselves when they are dishonest, or when they are false or insincere. More often, however, Idealists are the very soul of kindness. Particularly in their personal relationships, Idealists are without question filled with love and good will. They believe in giving of themselves to help others; they cherish a few warm, sensitive friendships; they strive for a special rapport with their children; and in marriage they wish to find a "soulmate," someone with whom they can bond emotionally and spiritually, sharing their deepest feelings and their complex inner worlds.

Idealists are rare, making up between 20 and 25 percent of the population. But their ability to inspire people with their enthusiasm and their idealism has given them influence far beyond their numbers.

The Four types of Idealists are:

Healers (INFP) | Counselors (INFJ) | Champions (ENFP) | Teachers (ENFJ)

And, yep, Aubrey - INFP alright. At least today. Everything's in flux cuz of the recent life-fuck, but I felt comfortable with those answers, so I'll take them.
Also, apparently, I care not who reads this, but I have no idea how to put the links in for anyone else - Aubrey, help!

Facing the future

It is almost impossible to think of tomorrow while stretched out on a hammock feeling the sun like a blanket and the breeze from all sides. It has been a lovely respite from attempting the impossible, being here. My mother mows in a straw hat with a black band around the crown. She has cleared something like 4 acres of yard and mows it in sections as often as she can. My father has potted plants and planted flowers all around the house. He bought mums for the pots on either side of the driveway. The cats give love and chats with very little meaning to me or any other human. The feral cats adore my mother and her gentle voice and manner. They stand still and let her pet them, rubbing against her ankles and throwing me dirty looks.

I walked out into the world of the trees last evening and watched the clouds rush in, changing and growing and billowing and going gray and white. The sound of the rain and the flashes of lightning filled the room in which I sleep. It is the room in which I slept when I lived here so many years ago. I thought it was green, maybe it was, now it is tan and the bed is much smaller and while I am not sure how well I will take to being in the world again, I miss my bed and my room.

I am dreaming oddly, the hospital dreams have stopped, but there are more people than I am accustomed to and last night there was a man on my arm, and it was good. And Brad was stocking up on water cooler jugs filled with wine and there were smoked turkeys and platters of fruit and I asked if he was throwing a party and said if he was I'd like to know so that I could not be there and he said something about how O'Neill was always saying how if anyone's hungry he's the one to feed them and Brad was pissed and decided he would feed the hungry for a while and see how O'Neill liked it. I thought he meant Thanksgiving and was even more confused as it is not yet September. Upon waking, I thought I would have to remember to ask Brad if he was talking about Jack O'Neill from Stargate or someone that I've never met. Then I fully woke up and realized that wouldn't make any sense at all.

As a younger person I always resented the reality of chores, the day-to-day crap of job and laundry and dishes and cleaning my room. Now it is going to be my life line. I do not know what has happened to my brain, but something is different, bound to show up at some point on the scanner. I have a guess, but I know too much about electrons to believe it can be all true.

Have decided to cut back on the ibuprofen. It works to cut my pain, but my pain is no longer great. I am tired and somewhat more stiff than I would like, but in no way incapacitated or stalled. The only real issue with me being tired is that I am now much more emotional than I am used to being. Still fragile. Not in the mood to fight it anymore.

It is odd to think that today next week I will be thinking of different things, sitting in a different place, using a different computer, reading different books (okay, maybe not), facing the future as me, still, but differently. Why that strikes me today so much more strongly than it has struck me in the past is quite beyond my comprehension, but then, right, there are many things which are.

I am looking forward to the world and the me that I am become, mostly because that's the way my feet are headed.

In honor of today’s adventures...

Old Style does go skunky. I know, I know, it seems a statement of the obvious condition of Old Style, but trust me, I know of what I speak.

After days of spending time wandering like Horace from one soft place to sit and read to another, finding the hammock again, getting run into by grasshoppers mistaking my skull for a bouncing board (maybe not mistaken, who knows?) and having quiet moments with the deer just beyond the fence, I ventured today into town with my mother. The objectives were simple enough: lunch with friends and then to the house to take care of some potentially loose ends in preparation for my eventual return.

Lunch was accomplished with grace and style and good conversation, followed immediately by plans for world domination and cheesecake. One of our number is not of age yet, so there was no rampant drinking to celebrate the event. Though we have been promised a Part II. I am hopeful. Full of hope.

Given my need to go to places I enjoy with frequency, I was fortunate to run into two of my acquaintance whereupon I was given hugs. I enjoy hugs from friends and will accept them with very little chagrin (most of the time) especially now as I have a reason to be hugged with abandon.

The time at spent at the library was filled with pleasant conversation with understanding folks. It's always a crapshoot when you go to the library hoping to see certain people, because you never know who will or won't be on the schedule for that day. Much like Lincoln bar life. There are certain people who are always out. And then there are the people you want to see. It's a crapshoot. Opportunities abound and it pays to listen to the people who know what and where they are. Received a gift of unexpected kindness. Still reeling from that, but I will recover.

And then there was the adventure of the key. I now have a copy of the key to the back door of the house. I am pleased about this on many levels. Except. The part where my mother's car decided that it didn't want to let her turn the key in the ignition. Many many phone calls were made. And then: the mechanic at the service station suggested that she hit the key with a shoe.

You can imagine the mirth. Particularly because it worked. The Shoe Solution.

The end of the day involved a trip to the grocery store for wine and garlic (mother outside with the car running. just in case) and now the wait as meat and potatoes cook and we drink well-earned glasses of wine after a day that will be followed by two days of rest and light reading.

I define light reading as The Muqaddimah by Ibn Kahldun. An Introduction to History. He likes Bedouins. I do, too.