I've read my fourteen books for February. No re-reading, and some "serious literature" in there. I'm going to stick with this for this year, but I don't think I'll repeat a year with such a high reading goal. It's edging out other things, or else the reading is preventing me from getting out there and doing some other, more interesting things. I'm looking forward to the spring, because the garden will get me out-of-doors more.

Even if I am reading too much, I love the look of the library basket, all piled up with everyone's books. Everyone in the family loves books. Right now, V and F get out books on tape, and history and biography and science books for me and B to read out loud, because neither one of them reads fast enough to finish a book by themselves. Or more accurately, V can't finish a chapter book that quickly, so she prefers her own books, which don't have to be returned, and F can't read a short book that quickly, so she also prefers her own books.

I like the comfortable seating in the children's part of the library. The children's section is huge, and relatively new, and has lots of big windows high up, so it's light and airy. At the end of the section is a big bay with about ten giant panes of glass in a half-circle, and there are little two-person couches and padded single chairs there. When we go to the library, I go hunt the adult section first, then join the kids in the bay while B goes looking for his books. The kids are getting more independent, too -- except for the occasional help with a history book, P picks stuff pretty much on his own, and we don't have to stick with the other two constantly any more, either.

P is baking "Oops" cake today. A couple of years ago, he was baking "Cockeyed Cake" from The Compleat I Hate To Cook Book and inadvertently left out most of the flour. The result was charmingly gooey and fudgy. We've made Cockeyed Cake a few times recently, and today he decided we really needed Oops cake instead, so the whole house smells like chocolate.

V would like to be baking, too, but I've managed to annoy her. She wants to experiment today, and I'm really not alert enough. I was eating my breakfast and reading (Agatha Christie again) and she sat down and just started to chat about what she wanted without really getting my attention. All of a sudden, she stopped and asked if I was paying attention. No, I wasn't, and I explained that I would appreciate it if she would wait until I was finished my breakfast. Well! That was just not acceptable, and she flounced off to her room. At least she didn't stomp off and slam the door, or scream. For V, these days, she was positively demure.

Right now she's doing dishes, everyone's favorite chore. She's being quite cooperative. In fact, the one who's giving me trouble right now is P, who doesn't want to put in a load of laundry. Deep, put-upon sighs. I don't know how my children ever survive my continuing efforts to destroy their lives by making them do chores.

F looks to be cooperative, but looks are deceiving. It's amazing how often the bowels call right in the middle of chores. Then, of course, there's hand-washing patrol, to make sure my charmers don't go directly from the bathroom to unloading the dishwasher. The trouble, I think, is that germs are invisible, and they don't quite believe me when I say that their hands are dirty when any fool can look at them and see that they're perfectly clean.

I hate being sick. And it figures I would get sick just before going out of town, when I have a million and one things to do before I leave and when I have a workshop to do this weekend.

No bookwork yesterday. My head was too stuffed and my brain wasn't working and the minimalness of the central heat in Office #1 was not conducive to thinking anyway. Plus I was only there for two hours, tops.

And then Job #3 was just as cold and I spent a lot of time just sitting around waiting. The boss came in early for a meeting and, although he was in the meeting most of the time, his being around prevented me from writing out some long long e-mail or 300 words in case he walked in midway. and I still managed to finish all the registration information for a grant registration that's due Wednesday.

My head did clear enough though that I could do an interview about zines later that evening. I sped out of Job #3 20 minutes late and walked as fast as I could uptown. I passed the Golden Bridge restaurant where a number of people wearing large posterboard signs around their necks were chanting, "Boycott Golden Bridge! Boycott Golden Bridge!" It seemed a lot more energetic than the Xmas Day boycott even though last night's temperature was probably 20 degrees colder. I saw an old pre-mamahood friend--whom I see about once a year and whom I'd seen at a (month-late) Lunar New Year's celebration the day before. We hugged briefly and I told him that I was working at Job #3.

"What is it? Where is it?"

I get the feeling that, even though the place is over 25 years old, it's still relatively unknown in some parts of the Chinatown community. I'll have to change that, at least a little bit.

Managed to make it to my interview destination in half an hour. Maybe the cold makes me walk faster. Or maybe the constant walking to and from Job #3 is building up my leg muscles again. (I really should start taking martial arts again. Now, of course, that I don't really have any time to do so)

Got to the cafe and, after not figuring out who my interviewers were, I sat near the door and stacked all of my zines on the table, figuring that they would see the stack of zines and figure out who I was. they rolled in shortly after 8 and recognized my stack immediately.

The cafe ended up not being conducive to them audio recording an interview, so we went back to the zine library, which they'd never been to anyway. They were flabbergasted at the shelf after shelf after shelf of magazine folders full of zines, the piles of zines still waiting to be shelved in boxes, zines everywhere. We did the interview and I showed them my zines and they took pictures (the first pictures taken of my personal travel zines and, aside from Cariad's review of them in XEROGRAPHY DEBT, the first extensive coverage of them). They had me do a mini-demonstration of how to make a zine. Since I decided that I didn't necessarily want to rip apart the book that I had snagged from the BTB refuse pile to make the "how-to-support-mamas-and-kids" mini zine (the book actually seemed pretty cool once I started reading it), I grabbed two other random travel books from the pile on the ledge and ripped them up and made a random mini zine of pictures of Zanzibar and text from both a guidebook to Zanzibar and one of food in Tuscany.

Later, I left the cut and pasted colorful minizine outside the ATM of the local credit union. I wonder if anyone will find it and flip through it and be like, "What the fuck?" Or if the wind simply knocked it over and it got stepped on and finally swept up as trash.

Don't know how much writing work I'm going to get done today. I shouldn't be such a wuss and should just push myself on, past having a cold, but I feel like that might not be such a great idea. I could do more prep work though or maybe devote the day to playing catch-up on all the things I need to do that aren't necessarily bookwork. And of course there are things I need to do before heading off on Friday, like calling the woman we're staying with and getting directions. Xeroxing the zines to take to La Rivolta. Xeroxing the zines to send to the distributors who have been waiting over a month to get these zines. Editing the two pieces for Job #2 which need to get done and sent to the writers so they can work more on them. Calling both one of the writers about my proposed edits and suggestions and also calling the person who's helping one of my women in prison write a book. Reading the little bits and pieces I need out of the library book sitting behind my desk and then returning it before I start racking up overdue fines on it (if I haven't already). Going through the rest of the copies of the women's prison newsletter which have been sitting behind that book for an even longer period of time.

There's a pretty long to-do list of things that need to get done. Guess I should get dressed and get ready to go do it.

I've had pneumonia now for over a month. wheee! And it looks like it will be with me for another 3-4 wks if the doctors are to be believed - and why not, they've been right so far.
Bah. This has really cramped my style. And then I developed an alarmingly high blood pressure to go along with it. Had an EKG today and am on bp meds, doing better. And heart is fine. whew. But a bit of a scare. Middle age I guess - no no no!!!! Can't submit to that category willingly.

So, now that I can breathe somewhat had better get back to rehearsals for a new show. Have been playing hooky with everyone's blessing. But actually there are 2 new shows opening in March. Plus Q is the lead in her high school show opening Mar 9. And D and The Midget and Q are all in a production of Hello Dolly opening Mar 24. D and Q are leads, M just thinks she is. Plus, she's got everyone else's lines memorized for them.

A few wks ago M had to do a 1st grade project on a famous African American. She was assigned Dr Mae Jemison, astronaut. Her buddy Madeleine was assigned Condoleeza Rice. The two of them decided they would write a play featuring their two characters. So - what would Condoleeza Rice and Mae Jemison say if they literally bumped into each other at a cocktail party? Right in front of the punch bowl. Yes, a punch bowl. For the answer to this and other exciting screenplay you'd have to ask The Midget who got an A.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. -RW Emerson

So I don't know, now I'm wondering if I'm turning into one of those women who has a mini-psychotic episode before every period. Because the day after I wrote that sad sad rant, I got my period like a ton of bricks -- the kind where the entire uterine lining falls out in 24 hours, which I actually like because I barely cramp and then it's over -- and immediately I felt like a human being again. Or maybe I just needed to not be sick and not feel so recently jilted and to pay enough attention to notice that J has not in fact fallen out of love with me. Some stuff just takes time to process, I guess. But admit it -- that part about my little dog dying made you cry.

And the F Month is nearly over, which is a good thing. Not a big fan of the F Month over here, even if it does contain the birthdays of a bunch of good people, including my mom and the man I love. Mom just turned 78, which is far too old to wrap my brain around. She's amazing, too. Getting a little fuzzy around the edges, but she still does just fine for herself, teaching English to nice Japanese housewives up in Westchester and having lunch with her various friends and relations. We all went out to dinner with my sister and nephew and his girlfriend at some nice Italian place in Irvington on Saturday night, and it was actually more rollicking than I'd thought. My powers of prediction never fail -- if I think something is going to be kind of a chore it ends up being great fun, and if I think it's going to be a high old time it falls flat. There's some kind of inverse rule of family get-togethers at work here that I should examine more closely, but I don't have the patience.

She approved of my hair, anyway, or at least gave a very good imitation of approving. My mom's into the whole nine yards -- you don't leave the house without makeup on, you accessorize carefully, you get the French tips on the nails every two weeks, and by god you touch up those roots. Well, not you, her. And sure as hell not me. I think she's finally given up any hopes that my lack of interest in those kind of niceties was some kind of youthful rebellion, because if anything I'm getting worse. She'd consider it Letting Myself Go if I'd ever had myself together in the first place.

And now with the silver hair. She can't deny -- and in fact she said -- that it's a great cut. And my sister seemed to like it too. ("That's been your real color all along?" "No, it's just been a really tough couple of months.") I'll bet we look interesting side by side now, me and my mom, her dark hair and my gray. 35 years difference between us, although she looks a good ten or fifteen years younger than she is. She keeping herself together, me letting myself go.

That sounds like fun, actually: Letting yourself go. Like sledding down a hill, or jumping off a swing at the height of its arc. In a way, that's what I'm aiming for. Here I am; I'm almost 43 years old. My kid is up and out from under my roof, I live with my lover and our pets, I own my own house, I support myself. Well -- barely. But I don't take money from anyone, don't owe a soul I know personally, and mostly I don't have to answer to anybody. Maybe J, since he's my partner, and maybe the Squid, because I'm still his mom, but that would be it. And this is pretty much the apex of my arc. So if I want to let my hair go gray, if I want to wear clunky eyeglasses and Eileen Fisher knockoffs and short short nails and save lipstick for special occasions, then goddammit I'm going to. I guess by now I've earned the right to let go.

Which doesn't include getting really heavy and wearing flowered muu-muus, in case you were thinking that. Flannel pajama pants yes, muu-muus no. It's a fairly particular aesthetic, actually.
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"Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having babies; life is the other way round." - David Lodge

I bought some Greek yogurt from the health food store yesterday and I think I will probably get very fat eating it. It’s SO good. Like thicker than sour cream. I have a big old weakness for dairy – like I would eat a bowl of whipped cream straight if it didn’t make me sicker than a dog to do it. I love the mouth feel. But yogurt I can do – and I didn’t know there was yogurt like this yogurt. So thick and creamy and delicious. I ate a bowl for breakfast with blueberry granola and honey from my in-law’s hives. And then I ate another bowl for lunch. Actually, it’s all I’ve eaten today. And the calories I consumed eating it would probably last me out the week, judging from its texture and consistency. Low fat yogurt this is not. Not that I really give a fuck. I’ll be eating it day in and out until I get sick of it, anyway, I’m guessing. Greek yogurt. Good stuff.

It’s cold here. I think I haven’t had a chance to build up my usual winter resistance to the cold because it’s been so warm/cold/warm/cold this year. I mean, 25 degrees feels a lot colder when it was 60 the day before. I’m very worried about my plants this year. No snow cover, freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw. It might be a bleak spring.

I finished Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica last night. I know Gaitskill is everyone’s favorite writer – I know I should love and learn from her – but I have to say that there is a cold angry kind of twisted thing about her writing that really turns me off. I can see the skill she has – that is obvious to me – but her characters are so unlovable. I can’t help feeling that she doesn’t love or sympathize with the characters she creates. I don’t need the characters themselves to be sympathetic, necessarily, but I would like some kindness shed on them sometimes. I need to see some tenderness on the part of the writer. And I feel like Gaitskill is ruthless with her characters. Not that it was a bad book. It wasn’t. It was very, very well done. But it left me kind of shivery and angry. Ah well. Need to go to the library and stock up again.

Everyone’s still a little sick in this house. The Boy is still coughing (though not as badly) I have a scratchy throat that’s making me nervous, my brother and R both feel like they’re getting chest colds. Whee! Fun place to live.

Nothing is real until it is recorded.
-Virginia Woolf

The coffee seems to be affecting me this morning, undoubtedly some kind of fallout from forgetting my meds yesterday morning. Usually coffee tastes good but doesn't do much else, but today I am getting a sort of mellow, tired feeling from it, which usually means something is out of balance. Couldnt' possibly be the old brain chemistry, could it? Since I screwed up yesterday? Given that I was incredibly irritable yesterday afternoon?

It's probably good for me to have the occasional reminder that my balance can be a bit precarious, but I don't really have any appreciation for it.

I need to make an appointment to see my therapist again. I missed my last one -- that is going to become an expensive habit if I don't learn better soon -- and didn't have another one scheduled. I need to make a lot of calls like that. Dentist, eye doctor, therapist. Not very surprisingly, I'm not getting anywhere near a phone. I'm stubborn like that. I don't really know why; it's counter-productive.

Oooh, I've just noticed that the folks across the street have an absolutely lovely purple car parked in their drive. I can be like a magpie, distracted by shiny objects, if they're my kind of shiny objects. I like bright color, especially in the winter. I was noticing yesterday that the grass does not have a speck of green in it -- it's the most colorless brown in the world. Thank goodness for the purple car.

B filled the feeder and put out the bacon grease/birdseed cylinder yesterday, and the lilac bush was full of birds. They always know when the food is out, even though we're erratic about keeping it filled. There was a female cardinal out, striking even though she's positively dull-colored compared to a male in full winter plumage. Mostly it's chickadees, which seem to live happily in our suburban landscape.

One year we had a robin make a nest over the electric meter, and we've had various different birds, including a grackle which came back two years in a row, nest in the lilac. I can't see how the birds can fly through the lilac, the branches are so close, but I've watched them do it over and over, so obviously it's more than possible.

I purchased a seed-starting tray over the weekend. I need to go through all of my seed packets and figure out what needs to be started inside and when, and mark up the calendar. My garden book says winter squash, pumpkin in this case, doesn't need to be started inside, but my experience last year was that it didn't sprout at all outside. So I'll check the package and we'll see.

I'm especially looking forward to the front flower bed. Even though it's for flowers, I'm being liberal in my interpretations this year. I'm planting Red Stalker corn with giant sunflowers in front of it, and in front of that a fringe of various kinds of basil, both purple and green. Enough basil that I can cut it hard and still have a nice-looking row there. A thick row of annuals in front of that, most likely French marigolds, since my playing with annuals is pretty much limited to French marigolds, nasturtiums, and the occasional flat of commerical petunias.

I was going to make two additional raised garden beds out back, in the broken ground where the tomatoes went last year, but I think I may wait. I'll dig and plant there, of course -- I already have that space planned out -- but I'll leave the actual framing and building of the beds until next year, when it fits the budget better. Unless things look better by bed-building time. We'll see. Right now I am assuming no beds, and then if I get them I can be pleasantly surprised.

I'm trying to decide whether to dump out the deck box and give it entirely new soil or to put some organic matter and organic fertilizer in what's already there. Whatever it is needs to be relatively rich, because I'm planting pepper plants in there, and pepper plants believe in rich soil. Maybe new soil accompanied by some compost and rabbit manure, although most of the rabbit manure is slated for the front flower bed to go under the corn. Speaking of heavy feeders.

Except for basil and onions (onions will be scattered around the beds as usual) the herbs are all going into the bed where the thyme is already established. I don't know how well some of the herb seeds will do. It's usually not hard to get annuals to sprout, so the dill and so forth will be fine, but getting perennials like lavender to grow from seed can be a challenge.

I have to remember to soak the parsley seeds before I plant them, too. I think I need to soak pumpkin seeds, as well, which might explain why they didn't sprout last year but used to sprout spontaneously from discarded pumpkin innards at the Pennsylvania house. Last year's seeds were unsoaked, just went right into the garden and got watered the standard way. The ones at the Pennsyvania house were out all winter getting frozen and soaked and Maude knows what-all. By the time spring came, they sprouted in sheer self-defense. I still remember the year that the volunteer vine actually grew a nice, big, orange pumpkin. P took it into Montessori school for show-and-tell, and we carved it for our Hallowe'en jack o'lantern.

This year, of course, we bought our jack o'lantern, and we ate it, too. It was delicious, especially the part that P made into pumpkin pie. I like pumpkin pie. Oh, yes, I do. I hope we get at least one carving-sized pumpkin out of this year's vine. We can save the money we'd spend on pumpkins that way. And I'm definitely feeling like a cheap-skate.

The crop I always want to do the best is lettuce, especially mixed greens. Last year I planted too late, and all the mixed greens gave us one bowl of salad and then promptly went to seed. What a waste. This year, I'm not sure whether I can find the same kind of mix -- I'm not sure the local stores are carrying that brand of seed, and the few seed catalogs I've checked don't have anything equivalent. I do have the old packet, so maybe I can find the company and order on-line. I'll check the stores, first, though.

The first year we planted that lettuce mix, I wasn't sure the family would eat it, since it isn't all lettuce. It's various kinds of greens, including endive and some other rather sharp greens. But the family adored it. We planted about two square feet of it, and got easily a dozen salads out of it. The girls especially loved to come out and help pick, although P didn't mind a bit either.

I didn't ask the kids to help me plan the garden this year. I planned it myself, and they can pick and choose what they want to help with as it's ready to go in. P wants to handle all the herbs, so I'll let him work with me. (I like doing herbs, as well, so he can't have all the fun to himself.) V and F will plant or transplant anything, and they'll weed, too. Of course, weeding is easy in our bitty beds, but that's all to the good if I don't want to do it. And I don't. Although I will get in there and do it if necessary.

Feb 19th, 2006

Cold medication. I hate getting over one illness only to be hit with another. Doesn’t happen very often but it did this week. Got over the flu only to get a cold. Maybe it’s the weird weather lately – thaw and freeze, thaw and freeze. The Boy came home with a stuffed up nose last week – but it didn’t seem very bad – and then developed a nasty cough last night – like one that kept waking him up. In the meantime, I got the nose – but it seems worse for me. Sigh. Boring. Boring to be sick. And especially sucks when I had lots of things planned to get done this weekend. So I took some cold meds – and they usually just knock me out – make me completely incoherent and then I pass out for a good 12 hours or longer – and then I usually feel a lot better – but this time the meds have somehow combined to make me totally stupid and slow and definitely sleepy, but not enough to actually sleep. When I try to sleep, my mind suddenly speeds up and starts working out all these problems – but not necessarily useful ones – mainly it makes plans for gardens and changes to the house – things that just make me want to spend money and wish R had more time to be around the house. Started with hearing a dog fight outside the bedroom window – my dog, unfortunately, meeting up with her nemesis – a Rottweiler named Rosy who gets walked past our house several times a day. Usually I keep my dogs on a leash anytime I think there’s any chance of anyone coming by, but R had Twyla (the pit) out with him and wasn’t thinking about Rosy. So – dog fight. Which made me think about how much I want a fucking fence. I am dying to fence in the whole property. Big tall privacy fence around the backyard and a pretty little picket around the front. But we have an acre of property and fences are ridiculously expensive – plus the labor of putting them in. Still – we talk about getting one all the time. It would make such a difference to our quality of life. Not only because of the dogs (though that’s the main, huge reason – what a pleasure it would be to be able to just open the door and let them out in the morning without having to go out in sub-zero weather in my bathrobe and slippers and watch them and wait on them – or think of this! A dog door!) but also because we could have a private outdoor space. We’re on a corner lot, so as it stands right now, we have a lot of open border around our yard – several different ways to peer in at us. In the summer it’s not so bad – the trees fill in – but in the winter I feel naked, exposed. And I also feel like if I could frame the yard – landscaping would become much more natural. I really want to let a portion of the yard grow into a meadow – Queen Anne’s Lace and Blue Sailors and Buttercups and high grass – with paths mown into it – but I feel like without a frame, it will merely look unkempt. And then also I’ve been reading this book about how architecture and our home surroundings effect our psychology, and there was this whole thing about how important it is to pass through a series of entrances before actually entering a home, and a fence is a huge part of that, too. You could go from our driveway, to a gate, go down the path, to another gate, this time with an arch over it, and then into our mudroom (which doesn’t exist right now – but my speedy mind made big plans for that as well). And then finally, after shedding all the things you carried in from outside (boots, coat, mail, backpacks etc) you would enter our actual house (and the room you enter would be all changed around, too – because my drug enhanced mind figured all that out as well). Also? A small pond just outside the dripline of the black walnut tree, trimmed in flagstones and planted with aquatic plants (and filled with goldfish both for interest and mosquito killing purposes).

February 26th, 2006

Apparently I passed out in decongestant haze without finishing that last post. I’ll post it anyway – just to show that I was thinking about my 300 Words, even if I wasn’t being technically faithful.

So, spent this last weekend with various siblings in the house. My little sister came up from Sarah Lawrence on Thursday night, and my brother is still (!) here. It was nice. There is something soothing to me about a house full of people because I grew up with a house full of people. I’m sure it’s not soothing to R – but it makes me comfortable. We made lasagna, and watched marathon showings of “House Hunters� (which, I’ve come to believe, is everybody’s dirty little secret). On Friday night we siblings stayed up much, much, much too late because my brother and I were arguing about racism in the U.S. – and our little sister (who is the only actual minority amongst us) was tolerating it. Then I got up too early. So most of Saturday was given over to dozing fitfully on the couch. We also watched Hairspray. Put my sister back on the train to Sarah Lawrence this afternoon, had a late playdate for Spike this evening (doing my friends a babysitting favor) ate yet more leftover lasagna. Feeling a little headachey right now. It might be the enormous bouquet of lilies on the table – but I don’t want to admit to it if that’s true. I do so love that scent.

I had a dream last night that I was pitching a book to an editor, and half way through the pitch I realized that I was actually describing a book I was reading (Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica, which is apparently just disturbing enough to enter my dreams) and not one that I had written. But the editor was so into my description that I felt like I couldn’t stop – but then I realized that I hadn’t actually finished the book yet, so I didn’t know how it was going to end – so I was suddenly panicking, trying to come up with an ending that I didn’t have a clue about.

My other big project this weekend was finally getting my blog back up and running. (As you can all see by my shameless plug below). I’m actually very excited about this. I’m excited that I can post photos so easily (I always like a blog with nice illustrations) but more excited that I have a space again to post my more composed non-fiction. 300 Words is great for day to day journaling. And I love feeling like I’m part of a bigger community here, but having a blog makes me up the quality and thoughtfulness of what I’m working on. Plus it creates an automatic deadline – because I feel bad if I don’t post often enough. Oh, and I get comments on the blog. I fucking love comments.

So yeah, lasagna, muffins (I made those, too) lilies, blog, sister, brother, sleeping on the couch, decongestants. That just about sums it all up.

Nothing is real until it is recorded.
-Virginia Woolf

I'm restless, I'm bored, but I won't go out.

I'm stubborn, I'm shiftless, I'm lazy.

I should call Katie.

I want to go swimming, the swimming pool's closed.

I ought to go out to get coffee.

My book pile is boring.

Bigglest's photographs all over the sill.

We haven't a one of his sisters'.

I won't touch the phone.

I could go walking, it's good for me.

My shoes are so heavy

I won't put them on.

Seventy-seven words.

Not counting these ones.

i left the house today and it was actually ok. i still have the shakes, which i think now may be a side effect of the zoloft or zyprexa. i didn't panic, but did have some serious anxiety.
my mood however is on the up. i'm basically fine, if not happy. not stressed, but we'll see how the week goes i start school on tuesday.
i had a short matinee shift today and saw my friend kailen. it was also nice to just get out for a bit. prove to myself that i can do it. and i did!
things are looking up indeed.
my dad retires in two more days. then both jared and dad will be home. that will be weird. i wonder what my dad is gonna do now. i bet he will get bored...maybe not. it's good for him to have a break finally. i just wish my mom could muster herself a good deal, and take a break. she keeps saying in two more years. when she will have 20 yrs under her belt. or is it 25? i don't know anymore it's been forever.
i can't imagine working somewhere for 25 yrs. i can imagine working at something temporal like acting or writing or filmaking. something where you do the same job for years but the projects and people constantly change. i don't know if i would ever want that. i'm sometimes terrified we'll get stuck here and buy a house. i don't want that for us. buying property maybe, somewhere good. like new york. baltimore? ha. that would be cool.
but not here. i would have to run away...
er, one day at a time.
china told me, to get through it you have to go through it. you can't go around or over or under. through it. and i am.

http://otherflowers.blogspot.com/

New blog. I missed having a space to post more composed non-fiction pieces. And there's space for pretty pictures, too!

Nothing is real until it is recorded.
-Virginia Woolf

After arriving at the hospital, the midwife came to check me. Unfortunately, I was only 3 cm dilated. Looking back, I wish I hadn't been told this. It upset me that I wasn't very far along with led to stress and ultimately slowed my progress. I had a very long fetal monitoring strip ran, until I finally said, "Enough!" so I could move around. I moved around the room, sat on the edge of the bed, leaned over and rocked and bounced on the birth ball. The contractions became very intense and Mary the midwife suggested I take a hot shower to get me through the pain. I was resistant because I didn't want to change positions, or frankly, to be wet. During my shower I entered transition and I am ashamed to admit that I completely lost control. I cried because of the pain, I begged my husband to get someone to help me, I begged for drugs, I told Mary I wanted to trash my birth plan and get some drugs. This shames me so much now, I can't think about it without crying. I held this against my husband for a long time. I don't know if I'll ever forget what it felt like to be in so much pain and ask him for help and have him just look at me. What made it worse in my mind is that dh is an anesthetist at the hospital I gave birth and he handles anesthesia and pain control. I wanted him to sprint from my room and get some drugs to make my pain go away. Irrational, I know, but that didn't help at the time. I did not receive any pain meds. I got out of the shower and semi dried off and put the goofy gown on and shuffled over to the end of the bed. I bent over and began pushing. All of my hysteria ended because I knew she was in the birth canal and ready to be born. I don't think I was completely dilated, but pushing felt right, so I did what my body told me. The nurses were beside themselves trying to get a baby monitor on me and I was not being cooperative. They were also trying to get one more dose of penicillin in me for group B strep, but my IV catheter had slid out of the vein, so they pulled it out. Mary half helped, half wrestled me onto the birth ball so the nurses could get another strip of the baby's heartbeat. I let out two bellows with contractions, what my husband now calls my rebel yells and laughs about it. I stood back up at the end of the bed and continued pushing. A portion of the amniotic sac came out and had meconium present. The neonatal team was called while everyone encouraged me to get in bed to start pushing the baby out. I could only move a very small distant at a time, so again the team was anxious about getting to the next stage when I wasn't performing as they wished. I made it laying down in the bed, and Mary had told me she wanted to deliver the baby with me laying on my side. My husband sat in front of me, holding up my leg. I didn't push a lot at first because I wanted to see what my body would do without me pushing. I could feel the baby moving down, so I gave two good pushes, then waited, then pushed again and her head was out. I wasn't supposed to push again, but I couldn't wait and pushed her the rest of the way out. My husband and I both thought she looked like her biggest sister. I wanted to hold her immediately, but because of the meconium she was whisked over to the warmer and the neonatal team to make sure she didn't inhale any. I did have a small tear that had to be repaired, and I had to get an injection of methergen to stop my bleeding. I remember asking over and over if I could have her. Dh was with her at the warmer with an enormous smile covering his face. She was weighed next, and everyone in the room marvelled at her 11.1 lbs. Mary said she was the biggest baby she had delivered. Finally, I got to hold her, and she stuck her thumb in her mouth before I nursed her. She had beautiful dimples, smooth rosy skin and only a dusting of fuzz on her head. After some discussion, a few hours later she was named Riley Elizabeth.

I am having the strangest realization lately. Maybe it is not so much a realization but an episode of massive confusion and contradiction. I believed and still believe to some extent, perhaps due to a certain type of stubborn nostalgia, that I am an independent loner who is more comfortable solely in my own company than in the company of anyone else. But I have been noticing lately that I am bombarded with feelings of loss. What is there to lose if I choose not to attach to anything? I think I have a broken heart too which is also strange because I was sure it was made of titanium and plus, I have never been one to hand it over to anyone else, maybe lend it for a bit in a superficial and noncommital way in exchange for alittle fun and a taste of temporary connection. But someone told me some time ago (and I am talking AWHILE ago) that I broke his heart and talking to him recently I realized he broke mine too. Now, he broke mine by telling me he was over me. What does that mean? So I stopped and I thought and I got sad because I tend to only notice things when they are leaving. I recognize people I love by their backs as they get smaller and get closer to the door. So I did what I realize I do which is I tried to get a "do-over" and return to the past for another shot but it was too late because he is over me. So now I feel rejected because he rejected me after getting over me rejecting him. So now what do I do?

Regina
"Karma is a boomerang"

I finally found an anthology of O Henry's short stories, so now I can read "The Last Leaf." I read a book, When the Last Leaf Falls inspired by the O Henry story, which I disliked fairly intensely, but I'm curious to read the original story. I've decided to read the whole anthology, though, since I generally like O Henry.

B decided to orchestrate a vigorous housecleaning this morning. How vigorous? Clean out the cupboards and straighten the disaster on the mantelpiece vigorous, that's how much. I think all of the kids did plenty of paid jobs along with the usual household duty stuff.

We have some pictures up on the mantel, mostly professional shots of my side of the family. When my parents had their fourtieth wedding anniversary, we arranged to get the whole family together and get some group shots, including some shots of all the grandchildren together.

My favorite shot is all four grandchildren cuddled up together. F is looking down intently at the toy we gave her to distract her (she did *not* want to have her picture taken) and J has a fistful of her skirt wedged firmly into his mouth, so that her diapers show. The photographer was asking us if we could get F to look up and J to let go of the skirt, and my sister-in-law and I both yelled, "No, get the shot -- that's perfect!" So he did. I think he didn't believe we'd want prints, but it turned out to be one of the most popular shots we took all day.

F was so particularly cute that day. Her hair was still light, and she was wearing it in a crewcut in imitation of me, and it just showed the beautiful shape of her head. And she looks like a girl, thank you very much, in spite of all the people who accused me of making her "look like a boy." Humph. She is a girl. Therefore what she looks like is, by definition, what some girls look like. Deal.

The rest of that weekend was so bad. I was tied up in knots, I was so unstable, and I knew I needed to confront my parents with some serious boundaries. And that made me hyper-anxious. Actually talking to them was a blur -- I remember sitting down and reeling off all of the things that I wanted them to know while they sat there in shock, but I don't remember actually talking. I must have talked, though, because they didn't.

Then there was the confrontation with my older brother. I don't think he expected quite the reaction he got when he tried to tell me I'd been wrong to confront Mom and Dad. I was unhappy, unstable, and by golly I needed those boundaries, and I was absolutely not going to let anyone tell me different. It's just as well that B, and I think my sil, put things together for us to meet with my therapist -- I think I still wouldn't be talking to my brother otherwise.

I look back on it, and I think, Well, I wasn't as innocent as I felt at the time. I'm guilty of bad timing, at the least. I deal, though. I was sick, and I did need to set those boundaries. And setting them has worked very well -- I now have quite a nice relationship with my parents, and I'm looking forward to them visiting in a couple of weeks.

Still, one day I sat down with my mother and let her express how she felt about the whole time that I was sick. She understands about bipolar disorder (the first thing she did when she heard my diagnosis was to research BPD) and she's done some therapy about the way she relates to her kids (my younger brother stopped talking to all of us shortly after I stopped talking to Mom and Dad) but she still needed to say that she spent a lot of time worried and hurt when I was sick. It wasn't as hard for her as it was for me or B, but it was still hard, and she still needed to say it. One of the nice things about my mother is that, having said it, she won't bring it up again.

i am having a bit of anxiety...a lot of anxiety...about going back to school and work. last night the family persuaded me to go out for dinner with them. i threw a sweater over my pjs and put on shoes. i was ok in the restaurant, but shaking. i am shaking constantly now and it is not so much a side effect from meds but from anxiety. it is almost twitchy. my hands are shaking all day long. i didn't drive or anything, but it was really hard leaving my house.
i was supposed to go out today and i procrtastinated enough, and worried about it till i had worked myself into a tizzy and didn't go anywhere. i do have to go to synagogue tonite for my reilgion class though. and if you think i'm not freaked out about it, you're way off base. what the hell does one wear to a synagogue? we used to dress pretty nice to go to church. i look like the living dead.
which reminds me of my insane dreams last night. i think it's the zyprexa. i have been having seriously vivid dreams, that are repetitive, linear and very very epic. long linear storylines and they loop like a dvd on replay. the whole dream happens then it goes back to the beginning and starts again. at least twice in a row.
i have also been experiencing terrible night sweats. the sweat dripping down my neck actually woke me up two nights ago. my shirt is soaking wet when i wake. it's super yucky.
so i have frizzy french braided and slept on hair, blood shot red eyes, zits and the shakes. oh yeh, i'm so up for going out of my house.
school starts up again for me on tuesday. i have alot of reading to catch up on. well, review and a few new readings. i'm worried my brain can't deal with post-structuralist feminism right now. rightfully so. i don't even have the concentration to deal with a movie. i've gone from 5 movies a week (on top of what i watch at the video store) to 2 movies since i've been home on leave. that has got to be a record. i haven't watched this much tv in years. i practically have a tv schedule worked out for weekdays.
1-2 two episodes of welcome back, kotter
3-4 daily show and colbert report from night before
4-5 ellen
5-6 oprah
it makes me sick. tv is so fucking weird. last week i was shocked and amazed and blow away, like a car wreck i couldn't look away from, i could not turn the channel and watched "wife swap saved my family". what has the world come to. is that not the most fucked up thing ever? "wife swap saved my family". i had no idea.

For the last two days, I keep hearing about the autistic teenager who played some decent basketball for his high school team in upstate New York and is now a momentary hero. He had been the team mascot, actually team manager was what they called him, and the coach took pity on him because he always wanted to actually play the game but he was never allowed to because he was too short and autistic and all. So the coach let him play for the last 4 minutes of the last game of the season since the team was way ahead anyway and he probably couldn't do that much damage. Throw the kid a bone. Lo and behold, the autistic teenager didn't screw up entirely and made some good plays. Who would have guessed? The autistic kid. Didn't see that coming. Heartwarming, really.
But not for me. It made me scared then sad the angry. I should be happy for this kid and it should make me hopeful. This may bode well for my kid. Maybe my autistic 5 year old will grow into a 17 year old autistic teenager who will be given 4 minutes to play at the end of his high school team's basketball game that he has basically for years been the towel boy for and score a few shots and get made a big deal of.
Then what?
The autistic teenager said he is hoping to play more basketball once he gets to college. Well, he certainly couldn't play less. Why am I so cynical? Why is my fear draped so unattractively in sarcasm? Sam doesn't say he wants to play basketball. A lot of what Sam says I don't understand so maybe he does want to play basketball afterall. But why is it that my greatest hopes are that he doesn't get beaten up at school as he gets older or called a freak or exploited or victimized. Why is it that all I hope for is that bad things won't happen to him? Why am I so attuned to the depth of cruelty in everyday people? All of my anger and sarcasm won't protect him for the long run and so I am feeling like the victim too. I am vulnerable because he is vulnerable and I realize that the sadness is about how hard it is for me to imagine Sam being a 17 years old at all. My imaginings are all about my fears and my fantasies about the future fill me with rage.

Regina
"Karma is a boomerang"

I had a critique yesterday at a gallery in Manhattan and despite the fact that the guy hated my drawings he is still keeping my work "on file" in the gallery. I swear, being an artist is so masochistic. I don't know any other field besides the creative arts that people just feel free to rip you to shreds. He did have some valid points and it was helpful but a couple of times I thought I might just burst into tears in the middle of the meeting. It didn't help that I wasn't feeling well. I am coming down with a cold, but also I was feeling extremely crampy. I may just be ovulating. Sometimes it seems like I don't feel well when that happens. Hopefully I am not pregnant. I kept imagining during the critique that I was pregnant and was going to miscarry right there while talking to this guy. While he was telling me how bad my drawings were I was picturing blood pouring down my legs onto the floor of the conference room and how embarrased I was going to be when the gallery discovered that I was bleeding. Twisted thoughts- it did however keep me from bursting into tears. Oh well. On the good side, he did like my sculpture and performance work very much and his point was that the drawings just didn't have the same intensity as the other work. So it was helpful and generally insightful criticism. He gave me his card and said I was welcome to come in anytime and discuss my work with him. So I think it generally went well. It is just so hard to take criticism gracefully.

I wrote yesterday's entry up, then got called away and put down the computer in the midst of saving it to my hard drive. Naturally, I forgot to come back to it until I picked up the computer today. I was halfway through saving it -- you'd think I would have at least taken the time to finish that.

A friend gave me some incense for Christmas. Lavender and sandalwood. I like lavender, but I love sandalwood. When I was small, my mother had a little lion made of sandalwood, and I loved to pick it up and smell it. About fifteen years ago, when she finally got a chance to go home to India for a few weeks, she brought home various things carved of sandalwood, including an elephant for B, who loves elephants. When I started buying incense, which I don't do all that often, it's always sandalwood that I buy for myself.

Mom had various other things that went with the sandalwood lion. There was an unused fireplace in her bedroom, and she had various pieces scattered along the narrow mantelpiece. One was a beautiful glass horse, which I think she got when she was touring Italy, on her way back to the States for college. She visited a glass factory, and actually watched a glassmaker pull and twist the little horse into existence.

Mom says she must have driven her chaperone crazy. She was seventeen, and they went through various museums and so forth on the trip from India to the US. I think there was another teen with them, as well. The two of them were interested in Italian ice cream, not Trabian's column. And so on. Their chaperone, poor woman, was traveling because of some trouble in her family -- a death, I think -- and had these two obstreperous teens to keep track of. Mom has said since then that a lot of what she saw was wasted on her -- she didn't care much about culture at that point. Actually, Mom has never been much of a culture vulture. Museums and so forth have never been her strong point.

I need to buy balloons so that we can make a snake pinata for F's party. And we need to get started soon, so that it has time to dry before the party. We need to buy little toys to put inside the pinata, too -- I try not to send kids home with so much candy that their parents don't know what to do with it, so we put things like miniature rubber ducks and tiny bottles of bubble solution in there along with the candy. I think minature rubber ducks are more interesting than candy anyway. I'd put devil duckies in if it weren't for the fact that I'm not too sure how some of the parents would take it.

I'm restless again, but it's not an agitated restless. I'm just not doing as much as I would like to be. It seems as though I can't make it out of bed early enough to swim, either. Maybe next week I'll try to take advantage of Ford Free Tuesdays and take the kids to the Art Institute. Although I'd rather go in on the weekend with B along. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure I want to spend money on train fare just yet. I suppose it will have to wait a few months. Hopefully only a few months.

I'm taking a break from more serious literature and reading a back-to-back pair of Agatha Christies, Sleeping Murder, which I have just finished, and Murder at the Vicarage, which I have just started. I also have the Chanur trilogy out of the library, but I can only count two of the three, because I've already read Pride of Chanur. My list of books that I want to read continues to grow, but I need to print it out and take it to the library with me.

I want to read some George Eliot, since it came up over and over in The Odd Woman. I also want to read Virgina Woolf's A Room of One's Own. And James Yee's For God and Country, although I don't know if that will be in the library. I bet I can get it on interlibrary loan, though. Eek, I'll have to figure out the computers.

F has started reading again. She came up on my lap with The Burglar's Breakfast yesterday, and between reading it to me and reading it on her own, she finished it this morning. She's still stumbling, and anything that breaks the pronunciation rules (which is practically everything, Maude bless the English language) still gives her trouble, but she's getting there.

I've been having such vivid dreams. There's a good chance that the vividness is meds, but the content has been really satisfying. I'm so much more competent in my dreams than I used to be. No more scrambling around to pick up thousands of objects that multiply like crazy the more I try to scoop them. I have a place at the school/college in my dreams. B shows up regularly, and makes dreams pleasant. It's weird, but it's fun.

Plus, I've been thinking a lot about what my dreams might be trying to tell me. (It was funny when I finally realized that my repeated dreams about being unable to find the college post office was a big, fat, obvious symbol.) My dreams have been progressing. I seem to be dealing with issues well enough in real life that they don't recur over and over in my dreams.

I think I'll pick up The Interpretation of Dreams again. When I'm finished with the Agatha Christie, of course.

I want to cuddle up with some tea and cookies, so I have the kettle on. I'll have to keep track of it, since it has no whistle. I could get behind a kettle with a whistle that didn't break -- I can't tell you how many perfectly good kettles I've managed to fry because their whistles had given up the goat and I was inattentive for a moment.

I've started scribbling in the sketchbook again. It's rather flattering to have the girls hanging over my shoulder and telling me how wonderful my sketches are. I don't know that I agree with them, but I'd rather be doing them and unhappy with them than not do them at all. Besides, there's something about them that is ... right, I guess. Something about them that I like.

S was here last week, overnight. It's always good to see him, although I find myself amused by the vast differences in our knowledge sets. I do kids, and he does literature and history and theology. There's overlap, but sometimes I have to remind myself that it is okay that I'm not trying to get a master's degree. S suggested that next time he comes, he could stay over Thursday and Friday, instead of just Thursday, and then he and I can go into the city on Saturday. I'd like that, since I'm hesitant to do much exploring on my own. I'd like to spend a weekend in the city with B, staying in a hotel and wandering around, but that's not happening any time soon.

V and F used wash-in, wash-out dye on their hair on Sunday. F is now coppery red, and V has a lovely purple sheen to her dark hair. She almost had a purple halo, right after it was done. It's not quite so brilliant as it was before we washed it out for the first time (V's hair absolutely bled purple) but it still looks nice. I've done my own hair red a couple of times, but I get frustrated with going through all the trouble for something that's going to last a couple of weeks at best.

I got out the bubble solution, and everyone has been blowing bubbles in the living room. I remembered just in time to close my laptop and move it out of the line of fire. When the weather gets warmer, maybe I'll remember to get it out and we can blow billions of bubbles outside. Blowing bubbles is tremendously soothing, because of the long outbreath you use. At various times during my last episode, I would remember to take out the bubbles, and blow my way into a semblance of serenity. Sometimes it was an oasis in the middle of some serious misery.

H and I spent the entire day together, alone. Which we haven't done in a while. I miss that- waking up in the morning and saying, "what are we going to do today?" Like the day is one big adventure just waiting for us. We didn't do much- we hung out at home and built a mountain out of expandable spray foam for his train table. It turned out so cool- we sprinkled dirt on it while it was wet and then after it dried we stuck bits of pine needles into the top to make a forest. Then we had a blast sticking plastic animals into it and crashing helicopters into the sides of it, etc... We did take a walk to a little cafe in the middle of the afternoon to get black and white cookies and coffee for me, hot chocolate for him. We played chess- which with a 3 year old really is alot like Alice through the looking glass's version. Basically we took turns moving whichever piece we wanted, wherever we wanted, taking eachother's pieces and hollering, "checkmate!" whenever we felt inspired to. Definitely the dada version of the game. Speaking of which, I am going to perform in a dada festival this spring with these wacky people that I have met. I'm going to wear this crazy suit that I have been making for the last year that is covered in thousands of bungee cords and rubber straps with hooks on the ends. I was going to build some kind of structure to attach myself to, but now I think because of the nature of the festival, I am just going to wear the thing and strap myself to whatever I get hooked up to- chairs, stairwells, people passing by- as part of a silly performance. Everyone involved is going to be doing these nonsensical performances so it will work well I think. It should be pretty funny. Not sure if it will be funny ha ha or funny wierd, but funny nevertheless.

So no no no, I didn't get the job. Cinderella stories only happen to Cinderella, dumbass. That's kind of a good thing to remember.

Still, it was so close to a sure thing, and everyone was so sure it was all sewn up. The woman and I loved each other, and she wasn't even talking to anyone else. But the cost of providing medical coverage made her rethink the whole idea of hiring someone, and the whole thing just tipped up and sunk underwater, leaving a momentary stream of little bubbles and then nothing at all.

I did my absolute best to put on the good face, too, and gave a lot of lip service to concepts like Well, on to the next thing and Hey, life is full of disappointments and the only way to avoid them is never to take a chance, ever and all that shit I'm so good at spinning. I can talk myself into all kinds of things if I put my mind to it. Plus, it makes me look good, and keeps people from watching me out of the corners of their eyes to make sure I'm OK. Because I hate that.

But really? I feel like I had my feet kicked out from under me. Or rather, I felt that way for a good two weeks, and am just now actually starting to walk the walk. This month has been lit, for the most part, with the soft, luminous glow of self-pity.

I'm reminded of someone I met on the old HipMama boards, a very smart and spikey woman who wasn't much liked over there, but I dug her, and we kept in touch for a while. She used to say that instead of "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," the aphorism should be: "Whatever doesn't kill you softens you up so the next thing has a fighting chance." I've been thinking of that line of hers lately, because it's the only reason I can come up with for this feeling of terrible fragility lately.

I've always been a tough girl. Not pugilistic tough, or hard tough, but resilient, proud, always keeping an eye on my momentum. Adversity has always spurred me forward. I've rebounded from plenty of hard times. But lately I'm noticing a certain diminishing of elasticity. Maybe it's just age, same as the way the skin on the back of my hands doesn't snap back if I pinch it, like my tits will never, ever, even vaguely be in the ballpark of perky, if they ever were. Maybe emotional resilience mirrors the physical.

Or maybe it's one too many blows to the good cheer mechanism. Back when the whole drama of this house was unfolding, when construction was nightmarishly bogged down and we were about to be kicked out of our apartment in Hoboken and I had just been laid off and Mike was being an incredibly abusive and cruel asshole about it all every single day, I'd sit home in my bathrobe and yell at the contractors on the phone and then rock back and forth and cry so hard I thought I might have a stroke. I really thought I might die during those couple of months -- not that I'd kill myself, but that I'd just die of misery and fear and horror. Maybe instead of giving myself some kind of crying aneurysm, and even though it's 2-1/2 years later and I'm sitting here in my beautiful house that was worth everything, all of it, and I'm blissfully free of that selfish fear-driven sonofabitch, maybe I tore some kind of emotional ligament that I never even knew existed. Even though I bounced back, eventually, and had myself a really damn good year. Maybe I hurt something that hasn't grown back.

And again, when Milo was sick and died. Lying in bed with him last summer listening to his ragged breathing, touching his soft belly and feeling the heat rolling off him, wide awake and terrified at 4 a.m. with no one to ask if they thought I should take him to the emergency room, this tiny sick creature who loved me and trusted me so blindly. Even now, seven months since he died, I can't type this without sobbing. I could go upstairs and sweet Dorrie would lick my tears and thump thump thump her long tail on the bed, and if I woke up J he would hold me, but all that love still doesn't alter the fact that something inside me broke when that little dog died. I'm well aware that he was just, in fact, a little dog. But I loved him as completely as I've loved anyone.

Or maybe I'm perimenopausal. Lord knows it could be that too.

Or perhaps all of the above. Whatever, I feel weirdly delicate and needy, not my usual hardy self. The physical world doesn't scare me, at least. But there are plenty of other things to jar me awake when I'd rather be sleeping. I worry that J isn't happy in New York, that this was an impulse move he quietly regrets, that I'm not sexy, that I'm not employable, that I'm never going to have enough money. I worry that my teeth are more messed up than I think they are. I worry about my mom getting old. I worry that the cat's outside and it's cold.

I'm not consumed with this stuff all day, every day, or even all night every night. I have long worry-free stretches, and it's not like any of these fears are the crippling kind. But I didn't used to worry about stuff like this. It didn't used to be so easy to hurt my feelings. And god knows I didn't used to cry so readily.

A little crisis of faith, I guess you would call this, if I were of the faithful variety. And I'm not 100% sure on that count. I could also add being premenstrual to the variables... premenstrual plus perimenopausal. Jesus, look out. I need a vacation. I need to find room in my withered little budget for that bottle of cheap wine every week or so -- I think I do much better if I can medicate just a tiny bit. And I need to stop convincing myself that a cup of coffee at 10:30 is a good reward for cleaning up the kitchen, because it's not. And it's late. And now I'm worried that I'm going to be really really tired tomorrow.

At least the cat's in.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having babies; life is the other way round." - David Lodge

holy night sweats batman! damn, i wake up drenched these days. it must be the zyprexa. i'm sleeping well, aside from the hyper-somnolence, the repetitive epic length dreams and the sweating. oh, and when i am out, i am out. i don't budge. wake up in serious pain hip to shoulder from being like dead weight on the mattress. all my insides, like it's my heavy soul pressing down from all the gravity, slumped to one side. the pain is quite astonishing.
jared has introduced me to toast with butter and honey. i'm addicted and it's madness, i had half a loaf of bread yesterday. 7 pieces of toast. it's so exactly what i need!
i've got the shakes too, i think it's ativan withdrawal. it sucks supremely.
harper is home today as in alberta it is 'family day'. she has a headache, which concerns me. i started having headaches quite young, and this is the second day she has complained this weekend.
i look like the walking dead, blood shot eyes, glassed over, i stumble around clumbsy and heavy and can't figure out what the hell i am doing, was going to do, what is happening. i'm extremely bumbly and mumbly and tense.
oh, and i spent a wad on giallo for the old collection and got a pile in the mail today. sucre-boeuf! as we say round here. 7 dvds, classic giallo, rare itallian glory glory gore gore!

Whew. Things are moving alarmingly quickly right now. New job that just sucks my week away from me. It's good, but it's kind of intense right now. I was back to full time on-site in December, but with this new job, the new schedule is wearing. I'm happy while I'm there, with what I'm doing, but it's going too late, and I'm not getting enough time with my little family. I want to get home by dinner time so I can spend the evening with my girls, and my fella too. But for now, this is how it will be. At least until I'm settled in at work, until I know what my daily tasks will be, until I have a good feel for what I can do from home, etc, etc. And then, I hope to be able to work out something where I can work two hours from home early in the morning (like 6-8), and then be on-site from 10-4. Still puts me into the middle of dreadful traffic, and I anticipate that there will still be times when I need to go in and spend full days, but any little bit would help... It's just. It's too much time away. I'm missing too much.

But it's a good new job. It's a good move for me. I'm excited to see where it takes me.

"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library

More work on the finances, especially the budget. It's still B doing the work, but at least I'm following along and I understand where the numbers are coming from. I can even provide my part of the numbers. Next thing you know I'll be ready to learn about paying bills. No sarcasm; it's just not something I've ever been stable enough to handle before, and my frustration level was too high for me to deal with it. I'll feel much better when I have a better picture of our finances.

We hied ourselves to the bank this morning to find a notary public and sign papers in front of her. Lovely woman, didn't seem at all put off by the fact that we had a very restless nine-year-old along for the ride. (We had a six-year-old along, too, but she was her usual mellow self.) I suspect that the nine-year-old is having trouble with the antibiotics she's taking. I think they're making her feel off, which is probably the reason she's been so irritating and cranky lately.

I'm keeping an eye on her, though -- if the sudden change of behavior switches back to her more usual self when she gets off the meds, that's fine, but if it continues, I'm going to consider taking her to counseling. She reminds me of me when I wasn't exactly swinging, as a child, but was certainly cycling a little bit. I don't think she'd appreciate the feeling, if that's what is going on. It always made me feel a little bit out of control. I just don't know, though -- what's her normal, somewhat difficult personality, and what is caused by the meds or something less benign? I can't tell.

I try not to read into things. The kids have a higher risk of BPD because I have it, but it's still not that high -- something like 15%, if I remember my figures correctly (and I might not.) So most likely there's no issue. But I can't help worrying when one of them is acting really off. Particularly V; she's naturally a bit moody, and I can't help occasionally worrying whether it's *just* moodiness. But I am moody, too, aside from the BPD.

Of course, it could be the beginning of hormones, in which case someone buy me a one-way ticket for someplace warm, which would certainly preclude Chicago. She's a little young to be starting with it, but B's sisters all hit adolescence relatively young, too. And she has had some breast tenderness and so forth, which irritates her no end. (It's apparently very uncomfortable in judo, where your uke grips your jacket in just the right place to bump you if your nipples are tender.

B and I have done some thinking about what to do about adolescence. Some of it is about what kind of ceremony we want to use to acknowledge it. B wants to take each of them out to dinner, just him and her, when adolescence hits. I have every intention of buying them vibrators. (That means I have to try out a wide variety to see which ones work best, right? *grin*) We might have a party. It wasn't really something I was expecting to have to seriously consider quite so soon, though. I'm still hoping that this whole thing is caused by the antibiotics and that adolescence will go away until she's twelve or thirteen.

On a different but related topic, I finally got my wedding ring resized. I've gained a lot of weight on my meds -- one of their major drawbacks -- and it's finally affected my hands. Used to be the ring came off over my knuckle with a gentle tug; recently it's been a firm push at best, twisting and wrenching and occasionally not getting it off at all at worst. It didn't need to be a lot bigger, just a touch. And in the typical way of a jeweler's, where they're anxious to get your attention in any way necessary, it got polished, and is considerably brighter than it was.

The clerk who handled us at the jeweler's was a piece of work. I found myself on the verge of getting offended, and had to remind myself not to get all wound up about it. She was suggesting that we buy every sort of thing, from an anniversary ring for me (a nice idea, but not one we can afford any time soon -- it's certainly no necessity) to jewelry for the girls, who were with us. They were certainly interested in the jewelry, but if they start asking me if they can have $200 necklaces from the jeweler's I am going to go back and strangle the clerk.

We left with exactly what we'd gone in for -- one resized ring and a watch battery, along with the name of F's birthstone. (I do want to get an earring for me in F's birthstone -- I have one for each of the other kids' -- but I have no intention of buying it at a jeweler's. I can get an aquamarine on 14 ct. gold at some store in the mall, and I'll pay $15 for it.)

I'm certainly no angel when it comes to consuming, but I'm not used to being hard-sold when I purchase things. It immediately makes me reluctant to buy or do anything with that particular merchant. The fact that it is a jewelry store just makes it worse. I wear earrings and my wedding ring, and that's it. Being pushed to buy, or worse, watching B be pushed to buy, jewelry for me really bothers me. It's not only unnecessary for me to have i, I actively dislike it. If B ever presents me with a fancy necklace for an anniversary I'd just be disappointed, and he knows it.

So my funk turned out to belong not to me, but my husband. And I think I just absorbed it into me while we slept or something. It's wierd but I've known him so long now that I can actually mistake his feelings for mine I think. Or I just psychically picked it up and assumed it was me. Wierd. Anyway, his business partner came to him out of the blue and dissolved their partnership, claiming he was doing 90 percent of the work- which is totally untrue. My husband works harder than anyone I've ever known. It's just not in his nature. So it was a bizarre turn of events. And I think I really did pick up that something major was going to happen before it did- before anyone knew about it. I just figured it was my usual post-period blahs. I don't know if this happens to anyone else but I seem to have post menstrual syndrome rather than pre-. It always takes me a week to recover from the bleeding. Like a recurring wound every month that I have to heal from. But it makes me wonder if I am more susceptible to things (feelings, ideas, etc) floating around in the air than I would be normally. There has got to be an art piece in that idea somewhere. Hmm. I have to get focused on my own things in any case. I have been totally distracted by these events this week. I think I am on the verge of actually being able to make a living or at least, some money, on my artwork. But it's not going to happen if I don't get focused. I'm having a hard time thinking about what I need to do. I guess I need to make a list. Or several. Just to clear out the fogginess in my brain.

last night i had very lengthy dreams, epic dreams. and they would repeat over and over.
it was so strange, a new york high society woman, very 'kennedy' was a dear friend of mine, her name was charlotte and she was from the past, but was her now as a twenty something. she lived on the 37th floor of her art deco upper west side apartment building.
though she was a movie star-celebrity, she was also famous for diving/swimming. in her free time she would high dive out her window on the 37th floor and do a beauitful high dive into water, sometimes a safety net, a trampoline.
another dream revolved around a homeless man ripping my shirt exposing my bare breast (left) in the middle of a busy book store.
then there was one where i kept travelling up and down this highway, first on a bus with a hobo sitting beside me, we shared a bottle of something and he told me stories about travelling the land. another time in a car with toby mcquire and tom sizemore, but they were characters not themselves.
another time i'm in a car with a bunch of hobos. then on motorcycles. oh even on a horse with viggo mortensen...sorta. he smoked cigars made of lipstick. i think in that segment i was kidnapped and transporting drugs.
and again on a bus. then finally again in a car with actors cast in my dreams as the characters, we stopped at a rest stop, and our driver drove off leaving all of us (?) 5 or so of us running in the dark along the side of the highway.
i think at that point it turned into the movie "the ice storm" and i had a revelation that toby macguire was alive and didn't die.
travel, but back and forth pointless, aimless wandering. and nakedness, being bare, exposed. the hobos, free, but marginalized and brisk, abrupt, smelly, overly friendly. and sex, cigars, motorcycles. and bored bourgeois living, high diving off tall buildings.
maybe even i think jason biggs was in my dream at one point.

Crazy high winds right now. They keep knocking the glass storm door open on my front porch – crash! – and then the dogs bark hysterically. Crazy high winds but beautiful sun, too. And probably fifty-five degrees. And when we get winds like these rushing through all the trees around the house, they converge to sound like the ocean. I love that sound.

R arranged to have more firewood delivered this weekend. We’ve burned through 2 ½ cords so far this winter and we’re coming to the end of what we have. I’ve realized that I never want to live in a house without a fireplace or a woodstove- or just some way to have and see a fire – again. Louise Erdrich once wrote about how you can tell when you enter a house that’s gone dry – where there’s no running water – that there’s something dusty and empty and echoing about that sort of house – and now I feel that way about a house without a hearth. If there isn’t firelight and firewarmth in our house, I feel like something essential is missing. That something is empty or barren. As much as I do when we lose electricity and don’t have water. I suppose it all has to do with having the elements represented. I suppose it’s a very primitive need. But it’s funny that I didn’t miss it sooner, since I grew up in a house with a woodstove that was always burning. But I think you couldn’t watch that fire in the same way. It wasn’t situated in a place where you could sit and stare into it. And for me it just meant chores – bringing in the wood – and that the house was always cold first thing in the morning before the fire was lit. I didn’t understand it as the comfort and presence that it is for me now.

I have to admit that I’m enjoying having my brother around. I worry about how R is feeling about it – I know he’s already annoyed by countless small things that my brother has done/is doing, and probably already wondering when he will leave. But I’m happy to have some family here in this casual way. I’m happy to have someone I trust implicitly with The Boy. This morning he offered to take The Boy into school (we overslept and skipped the bus) and it was so nice to have that kind of extended family around who is willing to do such things. I also like having another adult in the house during the day. I mean, not so much when The Boy is at school – but once he gets home it’s great to have his uncle around. I know that R can’t see it in the same way I do because it’s not his brother – there isn’t the casual short hand between them that A and I share – but for me, there is comfort in having him here. I like my family – and even though some of them have been something of a burden in my adult years – I love the moment when there is that changeover from just sister or brother to peer. And because I choose to live 3000 miles away from where I grew up, where my parents still are, it’s good for me to have my siblings come and be part of my life here sometimes. It’s good to have that extension of my family. Good for The Boy, too. There was a great poem on the writer’s almanac this morning and it made me feel sentimental about sibling love:

Down on My Knees

By Ginger Andrews

cleaning out my refrigerator
and thinking about writing a religious poem
that somehow combines feeling sorry for myself
with ordinary praise, when my nephew stumbles in for coffee
to wash down what looks like a hangover
and get rid of what he calls hot dog water breath.
I wasn't going to bake the cake

now cooling on the counter, but I found a dozen eggs tipped
sideways in their carton behind a leftover Thanksgiving Jell-O dish.
There's something therapeutic about baking a devil's food cake,
whipping up that buttercream frosting,
knowing your sisters will drop by and say Lord yes
they'd love just a little piece.

Everybody suffers, wants to run away,
is broke after Christmas, stayed up too late
to make it to church Sunday morning. Everybody should

drink coffee with their nephews,
eat chocolate cake with their sisters, be thankful
and happy enough under a warm and unexpected January sun.

Nothing is real until it is recorded.
-Virginia Woolf

i'm still here.
i went out of the house today. to go see my doctor. it was the first time i'd been out of the house since i took a walk around the block on saturday. it was -40C outside with windchill. ouch.
but no snow.
still, no snow.
i hear the east got snow, and alot of it.
damn i wish i was in NYC.
so it's done. i have officially been absent from a week of school. i missed a midterm, but my prof ok'd it of course. but no, i haven't been studying up.
i haven't done much of anything.
my doc tells me sleep is good, it's ok for me to be sleeping as much as i am. 11-12 hours and naps. he says my brain is healing.
another thing he said was nice to hear. he said "we push push push, and when we get down or sick we keep pushing, cause we 'don't have time' but soon our body says 'no!' and we shouldn't ignore our bodies. culture says to suck it up and keep going. but we need breaks when we are alive, because sooner or later we will be dead, and it will be too late. and we can suck it up all we need to after we are gone."
i'm liking him this week.
so, i changed my pajamas. took a bath with harper and we told knock-knock jokes and did rhyming.
'my name is earl' is a repeat tonight. i hate that. i haven't even felt like watching movies all week. or anything. i was looking foward to watching MNIE. i probably still will regardless.
i can't believe i've gone a week without watching movies. we watched 'encino man' last friday. but that's it.
today i had an urge to watch 'dawn of the dead 78' so that must be a good sign.
it's funny, i feel so heavy, and sleepy, and sad. like i weigh a million pounds and when i walk i feel like i am walking through thick waist deep muck. i have no appetite, but i'm so hungry. but i'm just sitting with it. letting my depression be there. not fighting. it just is, and it will pass.
so that's got to be worth something.

Things have been going well lately, so it's wierd that I am in such a funk. I wish I could shake it off because I feel like a spoiled American complaining about my good fortune. I just finished Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver and it made me really homesick for the first time in years. I can picture that land so clearly and something in me aches to see the desert. Part of it is that I was planning a trip to visit my grandmother and then my mom freaked out and wants to go with me. My mom and grandmother don't get along very well and I can't explain to my mom that I don't want to go and watch them fight without getting into a big fight with her myself. She assumes that I am taking sides. I'm not- I just want to see my grandma on my own. But apparently I'm not allowed to. Ugh. Also, I feel some need to go home and face some demons on my own. If I go with my mom I have to go on her agenda- visit her friends and get paraded around with H to show him off. Ahhhhh I'm so annoyed! I'm going to have to figure out what to do soon though- it's making me depressed. Husband wants me to do what he wants, mom wants me to do what she wants, kid wants me to do what he wants. One of these days I'll get to do whatever I damn well please.

that should motivate me to get this book into a more book-length (and book-ready) shape.

Or maybe it won't. Maybe I will continue to let life get in the way and then feel guilty about not being able to reach the daily word count. Maybe I should just focus on sections--Thursday, revise this section and to hell with Endnote reordering your citations. Handwrite them in and keep going. Stop kicking holes into that box under the table.

So I revised one section and it still needs a lot more work. It needs a lot more research. I am at Job #1, which has INternet access now, and this would be a good time to do this research since my co-worker is gone and the office is quiet and i have just had a medium-sized cup of coffee and am no longer falling asleep (although I am using the word "and" way too much).

instead, I am goofing off. Checking my e-mail way too often. (I did reply to one query about a male prisoner whose history includes sexually harassing and threatening women both behind bars and those trying to do prisoner support work. I love how quickly these things fade from our collective consciousness and these bastards can get away with this shit) Writing a couple of responses to women in prison whose letters have been sitting here waiting for me to get around to noticing them. (I just lost one of those letters. Oh wait--it's behind my desk. Shit, maybe I should go to the post office and mail these all NOW before I forget about them and they get buried) Filling out the final report for three projects from Job #3 on-line and submitting it.

So it's not a totally wasted day or even a partially wasted one. But I feel I could have done more. (I always feel as if I could have done more, but that's besides the point) Typing in things I've already written two days ago doesn't really count as writing more stuff; it just counts as having a clean copy to work from more.

BUT if I start writing now, I'll only have half an hour before it's time to pick dd up from afterschool. And then I"ll be frustrated that I have to pick her up and then have dinner with my mom and don't have a chance to type in my changes and have a clean copy to work from tonight or tomorrow. So maybe I'd be better off going to the post office and mailing this stuff off and crossing that off my to-do list (and eliminating the chance that I'll lose the stuff for a month like I did with that big fat packet of zines still sitting behind me). If I feel like writing tonight, I've got a clean copy of that chapter in my bag and, now that I've got wireless at home, courtesy of one of the yuppie neighbors living on top of what used to be my garden, I can always do more research and stuff tonight.

Or not.

If I'm going to go, I should do so now because otherwise I won't have time before having to skedaddle out of here to pick up dd.

Tomorrow I will revise the section on Mothers and Children. I've got more info for that that still needs to be worked in. And maybe Endnote won't decide to reorder my citations this time.

Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.

R came downstairs Friday night after talking to someone on the phone, “Uh… you should put The Boy into the car and drive to the bus station. Your brother is there.�

What???

There had been rumblings. He was in Beirut, then Kuwait, then Syria, then India, then Pakistan. Last I heard he was going to Spain to decide if he wanted to live there or not. Maybe coming back to NY for a while – maybe to work for 6 months or so. But it was a maybe – and I had instant messaged with him a mere two days ago and he didn’t say he was anywhere near coming.

But there he was – at the New Paltz bus stop – and though I could see from R’s face that this was going to be an issue – oh god please don’t let him come and then never leave again – I couldn’t help but be a little excited. And I knew The Boy would be out of his mind. So I put him in the car, only saying that there was a “Surprise� at the end of the drive. And yes – at the bus station – there was my little brother, yet again – come to stay. The Boy went nuts. My brother brought a traditional men’s Kuwaiti outfit for The Boy, and a huge Pashmina for me, and a Pakistani shirt for R. He also gave me a Pakistani tea cozy. And he’s here. And he swears he’ll be getting a place and a job ASAP and I shouldn’t worry. And I’m not quite worried…yet. We will take advantage of the in-house babysitting – see some movies, maybe go out to dinner – and that will spell R’s anxiety for a bit. And this time my brother has not shown up depressed and wracked over a girl – like last time. It took him a good six months to even get out of bed, essentially. This time he swears he’ll be out in no time.

So we shall see. I guess I’ll just appreciate having another adult in the house for the moment. And be relieved that he left Lahore before the demonstrations that are going on now.

Aside from the return of my brother – this week has been slooooow. Probably because there hasn’t been anything to break it up. No snow days. No sick days. R hasn’t even worked from home yet. Next week is winter break for The Boy and I’m sort of horrified to realize that we’ve got something planned for every single day starting Monday. I thought it would just be a quiet week at home –but play date here on Monday, Park Date on Tuesday, another play date here on Wednesday, The Boy at a friends on Thursday, and then two kids here on Friday. Too much. I’m not one of those moms who panic at the idea of vacation time – wanting to fill up every moment. I like sleeping in and then slowly figuring out what the day will bring. The Boy likes that, too (though eventually he gets bored) but somehow I managed to schedule every single day of this break. And I’m kind of bummed by it. Oh well. The Boy will like it, I suppose. Except having to get up early on Wednesday – that’s an all day date starting at nine. Sigh.

The weather is extremely warm today. It feels like April again. But it’s supposed to get freezing starting tomorrow. All this up and down is not good for my plants. They have some covering – decent mulch – but I’ve been wishing they had more. Poor dears.

Nothing is real until it is recorded.
-Virginia Woolf

I had to get an award the other day. I was so nervous. As I stood on the stage another woman who I am aquainted with grabbed hold of me and I kept thinking, if it wasn't for this woman holding me up, I would fall over in front of all these people. It's nice to have people around to hold you up when you need it. I felt like going up to her afterwards and thanking her, but I thought, she was probably nervous herself and needed to hold onto someone too. At the reception I met another group of women who are quite frankly, nuts. And I loved them! One plays the electric ukelele and another is running this performance art festival and they have invited me to participate in the festival. It's hilarious to have a conversation with someone that goes something like, "oh yeah, I do performances too-did you see me light myself up with all those lightbulbs a few years ago?" "Oh yeah- I've done some lightbulb things too... Maybe you've seen my husband's stuff too- he completely wrapped himself up in videotape one time..." We seem to be kindred spirits in some kind of [freaky] world. We are going to have some fun! I am exhausted today. I woke up at 1:30 last night when H came into the bed and I couldn't fall back asleep. S found me at 3:30 rummaging through the bathroom cabinets. "I need drugs," I said. All I found were some really old pre-natal vitamins. I got myself some tylenol pm today so that I am armed next time. S says maybe I need to do more physical activity during the day so that I am more tired at night. I think the problem is that I don't get enough time to myself to think during the day and so my brain is overactive at night. If I thought of anything good in the middle of the night it would be okay, but usually I don't get any productive thinking accomplished. I tend to overthink stupid things, or my brain gets fixated on one issue and I go over and over it in my head. Once in a while I get a great idea. But then I'm too tired to do anything about it the next day. I did get a ten minute catnap this afternoon while H was burying his new monster finger puppets underneath me (I was the cave, apparently). Talk about performance art. Hopefully it revived me enough to get through valentine's day dinner.

B is leaving tomorrow for a business trip. Not tonight. That's my Valentine's present from the company.

We're not going to do much at all for Valentine's. My wedding ring needs to be resized (dear Maude, my hands are gaining weight! *giggle*) so we're going to go have that done. Then we're going to come back home. I don't actually feel like doing anything, but the feeling that right now we can't do anything really grates. I need to relax. It's just for a few days, and honest to Maude, "My futon is broken and my cellphone won't work: I have such first world problems." There's nothing seriously wrong, but I am capable of getting worked up over nothing much.

I'm taking a break on the novel. In a couple of days, I'm going to start outlining the rest of it; I think I've gone as far as I can on a wing and a prayer. I don't feel as bad about taking a break as I thought I would, mostly because I do have plans for furthering the critter. If I'd just put it down with, "I'll pick it up later," I think I'd be feeling pretty bad.

It's Tuesday, which means we don't start running around until about quarter to five. In a way it's a pity, because I could use the time out of the house, but I'm unmotivated. In a couple more months, we can get out of the house to go to parks. I suppose we can now -- the kids like it -- but I don't always like it. I like cold weather better than hot weather, but I like cool, medium weather better than either.

I'm trying to catch up my checkbook from the New York trip. Along with mourning H, I spent a pretty good chunk of money, and that's with me paying only for my traveling meals and dinner Saturday night. And splitting a hotel room. I should have taken along a little notebook to record what I spent cash on; instead I have a pile of little receipts that I'll have to punch into the budget machine a little later, when B comes home and tells me where he put it. The trip didn't strain the budget much, because I pulled the money out of savings, but the plane ticket dI don't know. I'm feeling really down, but I think that for once it's the circumstances, rather than the chemicals. I'll keep an eye on it.

V just came down to whoop it up that the weather's warm. She thinks I should go out on the back porch to get some light and air. She's right (especially since I blew off swimming this morning.) Time to put this down and finish up the checkbook.

but it's kind of sweet and endearing. This person is plucking away and each string makes a high-pitched, almost tinny sound. Plink, tink, bink. One string at a time. I wonder if it's a steel guitar, not that I would be able to pick it out even if it were played well.

I just commented on a question about whether blogs are making zines obsolete. For some reason, I started just running off at the mouth about it. Maybe it's the scene that I come from, a scene of crazy artists and writers and poets, all of whom have, at one point or another, figured out how to scam Kinko's and create lots of shareable art at little or no cost. But something in me just burst and I went off.

I still stand by every word I punched in, every additional thought that I had after hitting submit so that I went back and edited it and then re-edited it again to include my next thought. I remember the pile of SLUG & LETTUCEs sitting in the hall downstairs and realize that I forgot to grab a couple of copies on my way out. I've been told that my latest zine was reviewed in there and that the reviewer took up half a column or so with her review. And that the review is good.

Blogs don't get reviewed. At least not that I know of. Maybe they get reviewed in other blogs, but I'm not a blog-reader so I wouldn't know. I guess maybe they get linked to rather than out-and-out reviewed. It might be rude to review someone's life and feelings. I would think so.

But people don't file your blogs in file folders, reading them years later and thinking, "Wow, I really want to meet this person." (Message to China: the zine librarians of NYC want to meet you. Please consider coming up once the temperature goes above 32F)

I think back to NCOR (okay it wasn't that long ago. One weekend ago) and how we laid my zines out on the table and people came by and perused them, sometimes getting inspired to tell their stories to me and talk and talk and talk, sometimes buying one or two. We put a couple on consignment with the Brian MacKenzie infoshop towards the end of the conference; you can't put blogs on consignment. You can't sit at a table with them spread out before you and talk to people and find out that you and they have something in common. You can't trade blogs with the cute boy who ends up sitting behind the table and deconstructing James Baldwin with you for most of the weekend. You don't get a huge packet of blogs in the mail and have that big manila envelope make your day. You can't carry a blog on the subway and be okay waiting 20 minutes for the train because you've got an awesome little thing in your hands to read.

And I note that the drug-addicted, homeless (probably crusty punk) traveler girl stated in her blog: I heart the zine library. NOT I heart the computer center or I heart the squatters' blog community that I am a part of. She said I heart the zine library. I love sitting there reading back issues of queergrrrl zines for hours on end.

Of course, these are all my biases. It's the scene I come from. It's the fact that I sat for my portrait yesterday and saw all the cool portraits that this particular cartoonist was working on and know that she hands out her art as little zines and comics, NOT as URLs or weblinks. It's the fact that my house has zines scattered all over it, but only recently have I finally allowed a laptop in (and instead of, say, sleeping or combining the health resource list for dd's former Head Start or calling my friend to see if she will join our fuck-Valentine's-Day dinner and bubbly night tomorrow, I'm on-line writing this)

And I just had a problem posting this comment. For some reason, the Wireless connection conked out for a few minutes and no pages could be found. While your copying machine MAY decide to eat a few pages, I've yet to lose the entire original of any of my zines.

I don't know. I'm feeling really down, but I think that for once it's the circumstances, rather than the chemicals. I'll keep an eye on it.

Several things that I would like resolved are on hold instead. I don't like the feeling of things hanging fire on me. Too much "what if?" "We'll know by April." "We'll know soon." I don't want to know in April -- I want to know now. Especially since there could be some upheaval involved. Yes, I'm anxious.

P is almost done his OT. Next Monday will be his last day. I packed up all the kids and took them down to E**** to get his therapist a gift. Since the big issue all along has been his handwriting, and since Beth has made a huge difference (he used to be wobbly, printing only, capitals and lowercase all mixed up, couldn't stay on the line, letters different sizes, just a mess) we decided that the gift should include some of his handwriting. So we're buying a simple plaque, and P wrote a message for it, and it will be engraved in his exact handwriting. I hope Beth likes it.

Now that we will have Mondays off, I think I will make Monday swimming day. I really want to start swimming again -- I don't think we've gone since November. It might take some of the goolies away, too -- I'm always happier when I'm getting some exercise.

Plus P needs it. He swims lengths with me rather than coming in just for the family sessions -- he's a pretty good swimmer. Technically he's not old enough to be part of the lap swimming sessions even when they are youth/adult (you have to be fourteen, and he won't even be thirteen until April) and the session we go to is adult. But the lanes are never full, and we often share a lane, so no one makes a fuss over it. Plus, he doesn't goof off. He swims lengths, usually a half a mile, and it's obvious he's being serious about it.

I like having P come with me to swim. It's much easier to do any kind of exercise if I have a buddy. P and I have kind of a friendly competition going over who can swim further. Sometimes he'll swim an extra six or seven lengths just to top me. I can still swim faster than he can, though! Gotta take my points where I can.

I'm obsessed with food, recently. I'm not sure why, although it might be partly because I'm trying to be more aware of what I eat. Or it might be in response to feeling squeezed; I can always widen my horizon by eating different food from what I have at home. I just don't know why it's suddenly such an issue. I like food, and I like cooking and eating, but I'm not sure I want to be this focussed on it. Of course, right now I'm just plain hungry, and if I'm smart I'll finish this up and then eat.

I'd like to get back to the community college and take more classes, but the money just isn't there right now. And I'm not quite ready to leave the kids for four hours at a time so that I can take studio or lab classes. Maybe next year. *sigh* Right now, "maybe next year" sounds like the saddest, most pathetic thing in the world.

Okay, I'm whining. Time to go eat and do something to take my mind off of my favorite subject -- my poor, poor, sad self. And plug in the laptop -- It's beeping at me.

Why did I agree to open up this project on a day in which 26 inches of snow is on the ground and I could have taken the evening off and worked on my book stuff or developed a couple of rolls of film or caught up on my women in prison mail? Why did I think it was a good idea to call the one volunteer willing to come in and say, "yeah, I'm here. Let's do this"?

Because I'm a sucker, that's why. And because I don't know how to manage time that is not slotted for me even though I have a dozen projects which I need to do FOR MYSELF.

I looked over the chapter outline I have for my book project. I figure that if I shoot for AT LEAST 4000 words per chapter, I should have a decent size (albeit small) book. 4000 words isn't a lot; some of my chapters are almost there already and so will probably go over the mark. Some might require more work and more interviewing and more digging and more questions.

that is something I could have done tonight in the (relative) comfort of my house. I could have started answering some of that women in prison mail and asking them questions to fill in the gaps that are missing from my chapters. (Note to self: look at the 2nd issue of TENACIOUS if you get home early enough and are not drunk. Use the article there to fill in some of the gaps in the chapter on EDUCATION)

The phone just rang. I am now officially committed to a project which should be closed tonight. I should have the night off and now I do not.

Hopefully this is not how the rest of the week will go.

We sorted out a tentative budget last night, and now I'm feeling down. B makes enough money that we shouldn't be having money troubles. Damn, damn, damn those medical bills. And that's with insurance. We'd be in it deep if it wasn't for insurance.

I jokingly suggested that I could stop taking my meds and we could save a lot of money. B just looked at me. Not a humorous subject. Even though he knows it would take several crowbars to separate me from the meds. It's too fresh, I guess. Oh, well. I know what I am, and I find it funny. Even if it is that serious.

We can do it, but some extras are definitely going out the door. Unfortunately, one of them is going to be going out in the evening for a cup of coffee in the bookstore. I can take my own coffee and go to the library instead, but it's not the same. I can't get cake in the library. And the library is short on comfortable places to sit.

As usual, I am complaining that the gold raining down is hitting me on the head. I'm just to lazy to want to change, that's all.

The Olympics are on. Somehow, the political crap that has surrounded the last couple of Olympics has soured the taste of the Olympics for me. I'm cynical about the whole thing. Even the ice skating, which I've always loved watching simply because it's beautiful, isn't particularly attracting my attention. I've known for years that the figure skating system was anything but fair, but when it turned out that some judges were actually actively fixing ... *sigh* The Olympics were a lot more fun when I was a lot more innocent.

Actually, I think I'm crabby. And I have a headache because I got my stupid hair permed and the chemicals are nauseating.

i tried and tried to make it till reading week (feb 17-24th) without losing it. hanging by a thread. but i was awoken abruptly early on thursday morning, about 2am sobbing uncontrollably. i couldn't stop. i was absolutely inconsolable.
i got out of bed to blow my nose and shriveled down into a blubbering mess on the bathroom floor.
jared had no idea what to do with me.
finally i got up and went up to the kitchen. took two ativan and i sat there rocking myself back and forth waiting for the calm.
jared eventually came upstairs to check on me. i was still dripping various fluids from the facial region and hyperventilating.
he wiped up my drippings and got me to come back to bed. this of course was around 3:30. and i did fall back asleep.
i did not go to school the next morning.
in fact the moment i half opened my eyes, tears began to pour out all over again.
i spent the better half of thursday curled up in the fetal position, next to jared on the couch, crying intermittently and not laughing to "welcome back kotter".
my mom came home and called my doc immediately, i fell asleep for 30 minutes and then she got me up and brought me to the docs. i slept in the waiting room and in the examination room until he came in. at which point i began sobbing again.
aside from a mild case of fairly well controlled PPD, i haven't swung high or low in 6 years. it was almost exactly 6 years ago i was admitted to mt.sinai's psych ward for depression and diagnosed bipolar.
my doc know how apprehensive i am of meds 'forever'. i struggle to even take my crohn's meds, migraine meds. the only one i take no problem is the ativan, because i know full well what will happen if i don't. and i much prefer sleep vs. feeling the jittery, shaky, buzzy, hypomanic, over exhausted feeling i get when i don't take my ativan.
so he knew that sticking a bottle of anti-depressants and lithium "forever" in my face would not work for me.
we play it by ear. we trust. i have a large family around me that listens, copes and trusts me. they respect me and watch me closely.
i left his office with a Rx for zoloft, which he wants me to work up to 100mg a day within the week. but slowly. and only to stay on until i have felt even for aber one week. not a bad deal. i also can take as much ativan as i like. sleep as much as i like. and he has given me a note to stay out of school and work through the 18th. this is good as the week after next, starting the 18th is reading week. so no school anyways.
really i am only missing two of each classes. and all my profs are fine with that. i have a note. they all know me.
one prof even emailed me my mark on the agnes varda project, i got a combined A- (A on the presentation alone, B+ on the paper). that made me smile. that is 40% of my mark! so i can really sit back and chill till we start on our research papers. but i enjoy research papers too! no sweat.
sandy at the video store was extremely kind and understanding. he is an exceptional person. a wonderful person that i am proud to work for. i hate calling in sick on short notice. as i would have had work on friday. i explained basically what had happened, and he said not to worry and that he would even check in closer to the 18th to see if i was ready to come back.
at the theatre, well, L has been giving me a hard time, since i couldn't/wouldn't go in on short notice, when M should have called me so say he'd added me. instead i find out the day before.
so L had went in instead of me. and it was his birthday. so he pretty much hates me now. even though i was right and if anyone, he should be mad at M not me. but oh well.
life goes on. so yeh, he accepts i have a note and will be out through reading week (as i actually already had booked it off before all this.
who knows what will happen when i go back. but i like my job there. i like kevin and brad and the people i work with. i like that it is really low pressure, and i work two shifts a week. but we'll see.
i didn't take any time off all summer, or for xmas. i've been going going going and i knew i needed a break. i just though i could hang in there a bit longer. i couldn't.
it is what it is you know.
life goes on.
i'm still in my pajamas from thursday, sitting in my bed.
but not feeling too sorry for myself anymore. day by day, more ok with that this is how i am. and sometimes i breakdown. but then i get back on track and it's all good.
one day at a time.

I remain more than slightly amused that I talked to my ex for three hours yesterday from our respective offices on a Friday night. What does that say about either of us, that we're sitting in our offices at 8 pm on a Friday night? And that we talked until 11 pm?

Granted, neither of us was doing job-related stuff when he called. I was working on writing projects--trying to puzzle out a query letter (it still needs work) and typing in the revisions to one of my chapters (I should have brought that chapter home with me. It definitely needs more work and I probably could have filled in some of the gaps with the letters in my file cabinet here. Oh well...I already have a chapter here that I should be working on and the one here is MUCH more in need of work) and trying to finish a couple of library books which are due this w