What an idiot. I posted in the wrong place. Can't seem to do anything right. So I shouldn't be surprised that nobody lets me do anything. I try to do the right thing. I try to be there for the laboring couples, a constant. The nurses are in and out, the doctors are in and out, anesthesia is in and out. At least I can stay there for the duration. And if I sense the family does not want me I leave, I do. But I felt good being with this family. He wanted to talk to me. She wanted to hold my hand through the contractions. We shared two-year old stories, we shared what part of town we lived in, we shared the time. The doctor came when it got close. This was the first time I had met her. I introduced myself and waited for any instructions or guidance. Got none. We got to the second stage. She was pushing. I was standing back as I usually do even though I would like to be a quiet voice next to the mother instead of the yelling "Push, push, PUSH, PUSH" that the nurse does. But I know my place, to watch and learn. Then the doc turned to me and waved me out into the hall. This is it I thought, she is going to either ask me to not be present during the birth OR she is going to talk to me about actually doing something. So she said, "I know this is really inappropriate but would you mind going down to the parking lot and checking on my dog in my car and make sure she is not too hot?" What in the...I thought. I was not paying umpteen dollars (going into debt for life) to go check on dogs in doctors cars. But of course I did it because she is the doctor and I am the third year medical student who has to grovel now and then to learn. I made it back in time to observe the birth. But afterwards, when I had a few minutes to think...I was pissed. It was lunchtime anyway so I thought, maybe I would just take the rest of the day off damm it all to hell. I proceded to get on the most screwed-up elevator in the hospital (kept going up instead of down) and fumed a little. There was a cleaning lady and an elderly couple on the elevator too. They were also annoyed with the malfunctioning elevator. As we started to go up again I looked closer at the elderly woman and suddenly realized I recognized her...my husband's Great Aunt Jewel. I asked "Are you Jewel?"
"yes"
"I'm Troy Ireland's wife."
"Oh for heaven's sake, you're going to be a doctor, Iris must be big now, how is she?"
We chatted for awhile and she made me feel sooo much better. My blood pressure went down and I forgot my pissyness from earlier.
After lunch I went back to the L and D floor and Dr Cooper was there with a laboring patient. I had not worked with Dr Cooper before and he just took me under his wing with one great swoop and said put your hands there, pressure there, check for the cord there, down, then up, hold the baby while I suction, put the baby on mom's abdomen, clamp the cord, traction, deliver the placenta, collect the cord blood, a few stitches (only first degree tear)..I mean... I got to do everthing. I finally got to feel with my hands, the most amazing feel (besides pushing one out myself) of a birthing baby. My lucky Jewel I found in the elevator and one of the most amazing days ever.

the countdown to telluride has begun. we leave at 8am tuesday morning. it is a 22 hours drive, meanwhile only jerrie and i can drive a stick. too, no a/c in the car...and there will be 5 of us in a small 4 door. 2 people i've neve rmet before.
i'm a tad nervous, anxious, about getting along. as always i'm going through the needing to be liked-nerves.
i haven't been in a car longer than 4 hours straight for a very very long time.
what do strangers in a car to colorda talk about?
is it rude to listen to headphones?
what about playing cds on the stereo?
what if we all like different music?
what if they don't like to talk?
i honestly think i am more nervous and scared about the driving than i am about being at the 33rd telluride film festival.
and then once we get there i have to manuever with 50 film geeks, and celebrities. yikes!!!
i think this "no ones will like" me fear is a self-perpetuatuin distraction so i don't have to think about how brilliant this whole experience is going to be. cause it's pretty much a dream come true. it's a pretty overwhelming feeling.
and then school commences.
my loan forms came today. i was assuming i wouldn't get it till mid-late september. last year i waited a long time. this year it took 2 weeks. i got 5 grand in grants and another 6 in loan cash. this year, i did not get screwed! this year i got the maximun allotement of canadian millenium grant. too excellent! that is a giant stress taken off. but, tomorrow is jared's last day at the summer camp and will be unempolyed all over again. plus we need to renew our daycare subsidy before the 31st. and revenue canada "can't confirm" lared's income for 2005 and are once again telling me that they will have to cancel my health care.
he filed a tax return. i have been dealing with this since may. apparently it's inconceivable that one could earn $0. (and of course two full time parent/students living in the basement on one person's income (of two part time jobs) definetly don't need any subsidized health care.
ah well. that's my rant. i needed to get out some of my governement agencies frustration.

I'm reading The Good Girl's Guide to Bad Girl Sex. I think it's time to put it aside until I'm ready to go on. A lot of what I'm reading now, I already know, in general, and I'm bored. Besides, I've come to the chapter about orgasms. *sigh* Talk about orgasms is starting to bug the shit out of me, and especially here, where along with pointing out that it's good for the woman to have an orgasm (no argument,) it's such a wonderful, wonderful thing to have your guy watch you orgasm. She doesn't quite say that he deserves to see you orgasm, but she certainly skirts the edges of it.

Anyway, this irritates me. B has always been good about not pressuring me about the fact that I don't orgasm. He has enough else to keep him pleased. And I have more than enough to keep *me* pleased. But all the books that insist that every woman can have an orgasm if she just uses the right techniques irritate me. I know plenty of women who have tried it all and just haven't been able to have an orgasm. Most of them are plenty satisfied with their sex lives, so do we absolutely have to go on and on about orgasms instead of maybe talking about other things we can do to have fun?

Ooh, I am a crankypants tonight. Anyway, it's clearly time to put the book aside. At a later date, I might try some of the stuff she talks about, but for now ...

B and I went out for dinner tonight. Mexican; there's a place near here that does really good Mexican. I ate about half the basket of tortillas, because the salsa was just *excellent*. I love cilantro. I ordered sopa de marisco, 'cause I love the seafood. I'm always amused when I order it at this restaurant, though. In the menu, they list the seafood that is supposed to be in the soup. What they don't list is squid, or calamari. I like calamari, so it's no big deal to me to find a tentacle in the soup, but I'm guessing that the occasional customer is pretty badly startled.

We leave for Minneapolis at the crack of dawn Saturday morning. We spend Saturday with the big brother and his family, then a chunk of Sunday ditto, then we hand off P and V for their week of mother's helpering (is that a word?) and come home. F is going to have to live without her siblings for a whole five days. Of course, I've arranged playdates for at least two of those days, and her grandparents will be here for at least two of those days, so it won't all be crepe and mourning!

We're starting to talk about whether we want to have a party for B's 40th. It was originally my idea, but now it's pushing on my fragile places. I think we should do it, but I may be a mess by the time the party actually comes around. And I hope, I sincerely hope, that my mother is not in a mood to question whether the party is a good idea. At least this time, she won't be demanding that we invite Dad's mother. I don't get along with Grandmother *at all*. And after last time, she knows that Dad agrees with me. That obviously shocked her last time around. Of course, a lot of things were pretty shocking last time around. Hopefully, if we do this, there will be less drama. Of course, reasons for drama number one and two -- my mother and me -- have both changed a lot since last time. Bad memories ...

i had the day off so i slept in, missing my doctors appointment (which i was lucky to be able to reschedule for 12:30, instead of 11...since it was 11:45 when i woke up).
my doc seems pleased at my bag of tricks regarding dealing with these/this killer migraine. yet, we've also run out of tricks.
i may be going on topomax soon. hopefully that will help. i've heard good things regarding migraines and topomax.
doc put me on heavy duty muscle relaxants for the next three days, three a day. whoa. i am drowsy. i also had to call in a nd get someone to cover me tomorrow. cause i can't be at work and completely stoned on prescription meds. not gonna happen. so at least i have the rest of the week off. more movies.
at the same time, i hate hate hate calling in sick. i hate it. i have never called in sick when i was not sick. but even still i am always freaking sick, so it's always a battle to decide what 'sick enough' is. cause to be honest i feel like shit 90% of the time. so usually it is illness on top of the usual crappyness. or like in the winter when the xyprexa was throwing off my inner ear/balance. i wasn't sick, and felt pretty good. but couldn't NOT walk into the walls or fall over. no way could i handle work. we have to go up and down a ladder to get dvds. forget that.
anyhow, i stayed in my jammies till 5:30, when we picked up my darling friend mikey and his girlfriend paige. went for indian food buffet. soooo good.
always good. always my favorite thing.
since we only see mikey once or twice a year this was a lovely treat and we all had the nicest time. dimitri came too.
it's all good.

The last of the colossal med screw-ups has finally been straightened out, except for one last detail which should be easy to clear up. I have my meds, all of them, including the sleeping med, and I won't be turning into some kind of emotional berserker any time soon, God willing and the creek don't rise.

I'm pretty good about not getting too upset when there's a screwup with my meds -- although it has happened far too many times, and never trust someone who tells you that pharmacies are always very careful, because it isn't true -- but being faced with a lack of certain meds does get me wound up. Sleep meds especially. At least this time around I didn't have any rebound insomnia, which was my worst fear. And the nurse at the doctor's office obviously wanted to straighten out the problem as quickly as possible.

At least I don't really have to worry about where the money's coming from.

F started gymnastics today. It's been a year, and she's enthusiastic. The class was supposed to be small -- no more than nine kids -- but instead it's infintesimal. Two kids. I love the student/instructor ratio, but I'd hate to think that they'd cancel the class because there aren't enough students. I'm hoping F and the other student make friends. F could use a few more homeschooling friends, especially ones who live nearby.

I almost got us lost on the way to the class; it's a good thing I decided to leave early. We needed the extra time -- class started about three minutes after we got there.

J is the other student's mother. We've met before at homeschooling events, but I never remember her name and we've never had a chance to talk. Today we got the chance, and I'm liking it.

Tomatoes are ripening; so far I've eaten all the yellow pear tomatoes all by myself, thank you. I suppose I ought to start sharing, but I'm greedy. And they're so tasty. We've been getting a few red tomatoes each day, but I ought to feed the plants and see if that results in some more production. There are plenty of green tomatoes, but no indication that we're getting anything I would consider a big crop.

V's green pepper plant is doing nicely. It really is a miniature, as advertised, and it's doing nicely in the deck box, and it has one mature, almost-ripe pepper on it and three more smaller ones. Peppers grow slowly, so V has had to be very patient with it. There's a volunteer tomato plant in there -- cherry tomatoes -- that technically belongs to F, but that irritates F because she didn't plant it herself. The nasturtium belongs to P, but he planted it and basically never looked again. He's not interested in nasturtiums. He wants a garden of his own. (So do the other two.)

Quick and dirty for dinner tonight. Cook a pot of brown rice. When it's cooked, stir in two cans of diced tomatoes, two cans (drained and rinsed) of garbanzo beans, two teaspoons of cumin, and some salt and pepper. Welcome to our table. We do need to get more green stuff into our diet, but it isn't happening tonight, unless there turns out to be a bag of spinach in the veggie drawers. Chop that up and throw it right in there -- then it's no longer quick and dirty, it's "Rice Florentine." Although I don't know if anyone from Florence would recognize it. It begs for cheese, but I'm going to ignore that.

I'm short on sleep -- I kept waking up last night, and even though I would go right back to sleep, it made for a very disturbed night -- and I think I'm silly enough to have gotten dehydrated. I kept thinking of things to eat and thinking, "No, doesn't sound appetizing *at* *all*." I finally realized that what sounded appetizing was a big bottle of water. I've had my big bottle, and now I clearly need another; the gripping question of the moment is whether I'm going to bestir myself to get it, or shout up the stairs for V to get it for me. I think I'll do it; I need to check on the rice, rinse the garbanzos, and look for that spinach anyway.

I've just been putting my fabric and book cover ON TOP OF the mess of papers and tapes and zines on my desk at the office. It's been working out just fine. I've finished sewing one book cover and will try to finish the other one at the playground this evening while dd and her best friend run around (and hopefully don't fight).

I looked through my South Africa zine today and realized that I have misplaced most of the negatives and images that I used for it. I don't know where they could have gone. I'm hoping that I didn't leave them at the asshole ex-boyfriend's house. If so, they're simply gone gone gone. But maybe they're in that box by my window at home. There's a box stuffed with folders that has patiently been waiting for me to go through it for I don't know how many years. Maybe that's where they are.

It's too late to print new images for the show now. I think I'm supposed to drop the work off tomorrow. But the images that aren't in my folder marked South Africa are the more interesting photos and I'd like to know that I still have them, that they haven't gotten tossed into a dumpster by a vindictive ex or haven't been forgotten someplace else.

The book seems to be coming along well though. C showed me a way to make the covers better, less messy-looking. It makes me feel more confident about my piece and a little less nervous about showing in a real gallery.

They asked for a price list. Apparently, someone is interested in buying a print of one of my house photos. I don't have any house photos in my South AFrica zine. I wonder if I should just give them a list of prices of my other prints which have nothing to do with Africa.

I'll call the curator again tonight and try to figure this out.

it's been about a week since i've gone back on the zoloft. and about 5 days since i cried. so that is a huge improvement. so baby steps, it's all beginning to feel like it's gonna be ok.
i have even been feeling rested and well. and pleasant, not really ragey. i'm working very hard to change that "to kill that part of myself".
i am really craving chinese food, and i never crave chinese. i mean i like chinese. but i never crave it.
harper always wants japanese, sushi to be precise, when we ask what she wants to eat.
jared always wants vietnamese.
my dad always wants chinese.
my mom wants burgers or pizza
and i always want indian or "american".
growing up, the only time we ever went out for dinner it was mcdonalds (which was a HUGE treat, we never ate out) or chinese. we always went to a place called "kwong tong". it was in china town and the building was in thta style, fitting nestled behind a huge huge tree that was taller than the two story building. the restaurant was on the second floor and on the middle landing there was a huge bubble window and the tree was right there, i liked whe nmy dad would lift me up to touch the bubble window and lean into it, out side.
there was also a big window in the restaurant at the front which was sort of made into a seperate room with some of those big round tables.
it was a long dark restaurant, with lantern all over the ceiling. there was a tall bar in front of the kitchen and the owner Chieu (sp?) would make me a shirley temple with an umbrella and a cherry sword. that always made me feel really special. he was so nice.
my dad did his taxes or something. and i remember one year he one a car, a sporty convertible. he kept it for one year and then sold it and made some $$.
that restaurant isn't around anymore, chieu and his wife (i don't know if he was mr.chieu or if his name was chieu) retired.
anyhow, i always had the sweet and sour pork and it was the best there. i've never ever had anything close to what they made.
but i'm also completely burnt out on chinese cause of my dad...who insists on chinese. and maybe after enough negotiations we agree on a "vietnamese" place and whe nwe get there, no doubt, really it's chinese food and some pho and spring rolls.
but right now i would really like some.
i really really enjoy food.

Feeling scattered today. I really want to sew the red brocade onto the messed up piece of canvas, but I think I should safety pin it first so it stays somewhat even. I thought about starting it from home this afternoon, but considering it took me several hours to stitch a simple square Friday evening, I thought it best to wait till I was settled somewhere for a longer period of time.

I brought a bunch of unbound copies of my latest zine to practice the Kangzi binding technique since that's what I want to use for my art book. I did one this afternoon and finally figured out what I had done wrong with the first book. I'm supposed to go BACK up through the four-hole, NOT go directly from the corner hole and finish the stitching. So I did, but the stitching is still a bit loose. I need to practice more.

I'm not motivated to bind books today. Part of it might be because I'm hungry. Part of it might be because I got a late start, waited around the house for too long for a phone call that came several hours late. I could have started my sewing then and simply left it there to finish later, but I didn't think of it. I simply knew it would be awkward to travel with when it was time for me to roll into work and I still hadn't finished stitching.

This afternoon, I got invited to blow off all my responsibility and go on a one-week tour with a polka punk band from Mexico City. I declined right away; I'm part of a show that opens on Friday and I need to get that done.

AFter the band drove off, I thought about it. I've never been on tour. I would probably get sick of it really fast; I'm not much of a party person and I don't drink every day or all that much. At the same time, this is a band that I went and saw three times in one day, following them from show to show, staying at the last party till 5 am just to see them. It would have been fun to go and dance every night or every other night at the various shows they play. I haven't been that excited about a band in a while. This morning I was humming one of the songs as I unsuccessfully tried to straighten the mess on my table (once again). I can hear the sound the clarinet makes on the song I heard several times that night. I don't know the name of it; the CD is in my bag, but I don't have a CD player at work. (I wonder if my computer would play it if I plug the earphones in. It's worth a try, I suppose)

Yesterday, at BTB, I played the CD twice in a row. I would have probably kept playing it over and over had other people not been there. I can hear the vocals. I can hear the CD. I told the clarinet player that I really like his music, that I never buy CDs but the first time I saw them on Saturday, I bought one. (Hell, I went to three of their shows in one day. I even went out to Brooklyn for their shows, to a birthday party for someone I"m barely friends with. I really like this band)

Starting to get a headache. I would think it's from lack of caffeine except that I was sipping coffee until two this afternoon. I do know that I'm hungry though and hopefully my friend will call soon so we can go grab a bite to eat.

quick! quick! before i loose it! get it down, type damn you! type!
now quick....say something...
oh shit i think she lost it.
...no wait, she's typing. slower. but she's still going?!
really? she hasn't killed this yet?
...
ok. she lost it.
if i were a film, i would be one of thse lovely quiet little films about orderly, lonely people who politely go about life without anyone noticing. and then one day...
lastlifeintheuniverse.
3-iron.
la'avventura.
myownprovateidaho.
gerry.
something with stunning colors. minimalist lighting. steady subtle maginficent cinematography. with little to no dialogue, as the sad protagonists floats through spaces where the details count.
jarmusch?
i'm reading, intently, kate bornstein's "hello, cruel world: 101 alternatives to suicide for teens freaks and other outsiders". and today it helped. i pulled a nice combo. went into the backyard, got a sunny spot on the grass and stretched out on my back, i held the palms of my hands tight tight pushing against each other and slowly let go to feel the life running between the palms close but not touching. what does she call it? the risilent edge edge of resistance? and then i felt the grass under me, and touched the ground around me. and i was silent, and i lay there longer than i wanted to allow myself. i let go. and stayed.
and it really helped.
and so does exquistite and delicate filmaking.
i have hit a lucky streak of stunning cinema, and thta gives me something to look forward to tomorrow. thinking in small steps. tomorrow i have another hopefully beautiful haunting film to watch.
underground
time of the gypsies
while father was away on business
black cat white cat
arizona dream
last life in the universe
3-iron
the terrorist
it's perfect "this is bliss" makes me feel a little less lonely, a little less sad, like i can breathe even if it only lasts 90 minutes.

Okay, okay, okay. I am not agitated, but I am very, very nervous.

Lately I've been trying to set some goals, both short-term and long-term. It's like speaking a new language. My understanding of myself was always that not only did I not know how to get from A to B, I simply didn't know how to figure out where B was. Now I'm learning to look for B.

Up until today, that hasn't been scary. It's just been a matter of setting down some fantasies and saying, "I can actually do this if I bother to pay attention. Today, I sat down and talked with my therapist about it. The more I talk about it, the more concrete it gets. That's scary, because it's totally new territory, actually looking ahead and deciding where I'd like to be.

The thing that *really* freaks me out, though, is sort of roundabout. A good friend of mine who suffers from chronic pain has been hired to blog about it. She has to write two articles a week and maintain a message board, as well as start discussions.

She's getting paid something like $5000 a month to do this. That's $60,000 a year, lower management pay. This for someone who will tell you with a deer-in-the-headlights look that she's not a published writer, and she got picked out from a very large group to do this.

I'm extremely happy for her. This will make her life much easier. Her pain makes it hard for her to hold down a job and she has son with some learning issues, so she's been staying home and pinching pennies.

The part that leaves me freaked is ... they're looking for someone to do the same for BPD. She has suggested I take a whack at it. She's sending them (with my consent) the address for my on-line journal.

My guess is that nothing will happen unless I actively pursue this. But what's really going on is that a big part of me is screaming, You couldn't do it anyway! You couldn't do it anyway! So I'm trying to shut out the possibility entirely by coming up with reasons why I couldn't do the job, couldn't get the job, couldn't handle the job.

B simply commented that he thought I could do it and the money would be helpful. Understatement of the century, that last. And now I'm nervous, nervous, nervous.

I'm trying to drag myself out of a depression this last week. I'm panicking about school starting. H is doing 3 full days this year and S wants me to come work for him. I'm worried that now I won't have any time to do my stuff. Also my mother freaked out on me last week. Which sent me into a panicked state. Then I wasted a few days feeling angry. Then I wasted a few more days feeling guilty about feeling angry. Then I wasted a few more days feeling guilty about feeling guilty about feeling angry. Now I'm back to panic. But it is subsiding. I can't think too far in advance or I mess myself up. I finally got to the post office today and mailed off an rfp. It made me feel good just to physically walk over there and mail the proposal. I haven't heard back from the people who I did all the drawings for a few weeks ago. I know I need to call them, but I am worried since I didn't hear from them that they hate the drawings and I just don't have the emotional whatever in me to take it at the moment. I'm gonna read this back tomorrow and think it is really whiny. Which will give me something more to feel guilty about.

dd's gone. Off to visit relatives and eat too much sugar and watch tv and whatever.

I burned a CD of Second line images last night to submit to a photo journal. They looked good on the screen(s) at the computer center. Today, I test the CD on this computer and the images are all dark, shadowy, half-unreadable.

WTF?

I'll bring the disk to work with me and see if I get the same results there. I'm not sure who to ask about fixing this problem; ddd would be the logical choice, but he's the one who took dd out of town. I suppose I could e-mail and ask if I can't figure it out on my own. Sucks though; I was hoping to get this mailed off today and cross it off my to-do list.

Got an e-mail from one of the curators of the show I'm going to be in. Work needs to be in by next Friday. So I need to figure out the final format for this book, dig up my paper negative of the family and print a few copies on singleweight paper to sew onto the cover, finish my narrative and e-mail it to myself, go to my friend's house and pray that his inkjet printer will just take my paper-backed cloth and then pray some more (wasn't I just telling one of my interns yesterday that I am far from a spiritual person?) that I don't fuck it up while trying to sew it onto brocade fabric.

And of course I left my to-do list at home. That's what I get for scribbling it in the margins of yesterday's meeting agenda. I think I just recreated my to-do list for this particular piece in the paragraph above. It's a good start at any rate.

Off to start my day. For real. Step #1: find the messed-up photo paper to xerox interesting little tidbits onto. Remember to take it to work.

Went to Kinko's and the machine decided it would jam everytime I tried to run everything other than white paper through it. I think I spent more time clearing the paper jams out than anything else. So I have 10 zine covers done and then 10 zine covers on regular white paper which I'm not sure I really want.

Now I'm in the office and it's technically afterhours, but not only is the current e.d. still here, but so is her predecessor. So making even 10 copies of the body of my zine is out of the question. There's no way I can pass off photos of the Second Line as anything work-related. Maybe they're just meeting to go out to dinner or to the bar; maybe they'll be out of here soon and I can run off some copies. I want to try a new bookbinding stitch; I feel like I now have the simple Japanese four-hole stitch down. There's the Chinese kangxi stitch that adds a couple of holes to the mix; I tried it once while dd was prattling at me and messed it up. Luckily, I'm practicing on zines and not on the actual art book itself.

dd leaves on Wednesday. I have an entire childfree week to get stuff done. This morning, L and I started brainstorming a two-part visual arts exhibition about New Orleans. The first part will be work created pre-Katrina from people who were there before or who were living there before. We're both really enthusiastic about that because none of the shows that we've read about now really address WHY New Orleans is so special and important and unique, WHY it's worth saving. It's not just politics; it's culture and history and a pervasive vibrancy that I haven't found anywhere else. The shows that I've seen advertised don't address that at all; it's all disaster-related.

The second part is the post-Katrina, works by people who have gone and volunteered. ddd suggested that I extend it to other artists, but I'd like the focus to be on what people saw when they went down to do relief work. I should bounce this idea off L a bit more and see whether she thinks we should keep such a narrow focus or if we should extend it to other artists who may not have been down there doing relief/volunteer work.

Big plans. Hopefully I don't drop the ball on them. And I need to finish my art book for the opening coming up this month. Looking at the calendar, I realize that I have less than 2 weeks to finish it...EEK! The good thing is that the show will be for 3 weeks instead of 1 night and it will be in a gallery in Harlem and not a loftspace in Brooklyn. I have some of the pages printed out and need to print some others out on the cotton and canvas that i have leftover from previous artistic explorations. (Now that I realize I have less than 2 weeks, I'm kicking myself for not having gone to Art Central earlier this summer and asking about printing on fabric, or for not ordering printable silk from the on-line company I found). And this morning L offered to help me stretch fabric over book boards to make a hardcover book instead of a flimsy cloth and paper one.

Wonder if the e.d.s and all other parties who might frown on my on-the-job zine xeroxing are gone. Guess I should go find out.

at this point i really doubt there is much i can do, bt give in and admit i'm fubard. totally 100% run off my feet exhausted. i feel like i've wasted july, and now half of august.
i have lists of aspirations. stacks of books calling in a soft low whine to me. movies are piling up in front of the vcr/dvd. and i just can't seem to get outta neutral. like my wheels are spinning, but it's only draining my battery, and not getting me anywhere. and i don't even really care.
i had so many big plans for this july.
nope. didn't happen.
and i'm slowly coming to terms with it. and felling kinda sad and disapointed in myself. and sorta ok with it.
not complacent, just too tired to sweat the smaller things.
i dunno, i am pretty down these days.
it was just extremely difficult to leave ny at the end of june. i felt so 'right' and happy and healthy there.
i don't feel like that here.
anyhow.

If I see that stupid Quizno's sub ad one more time ... A friend of mine just referred to something as, "verbing large donkey nouns." Yes. It's rather like that.

Or maybe I'm just cranky because it's Sunday night and we're into pre-season football. The Eagles aren't playing, so why do we have the television on? Maybe I should remind B that he wanted to watch Friday Night Lights, but then, that would be nothing but more football. Well, okay, it would be tear-jerker football.

I scribbled in the sketchbook this morning, while I was out "supervising" B and the girls painting the new playhouse. No great inspiration, but the inspiration doesn't drop by until I put pen to paper, so I figured I'd stick out the welcome mat.

I sent B the manuscript of the incomplete novel; I want to see what he thinks about it. If he likes it, I'll at least think about picking it back up. On the other hand, or in addition, I might start thinking about NaNoWriMo '06. It might be interesting to see what I come up with if I actually start with a plot. Of course, I could always buy No Plot? No Problem! I can't decide if I'm too much of a snob to buy it, or if I'm too oblivious to recognize that I could use the help.

I keep having the feeling recently, when I write journal entries, that there is something I'm missing, something that could come out if I just caught the tail and wrote about it. Something. Maybe I need to write with more intention.

I've screwed up my checkbook, and until I figure out what the problem is, I don't want to draw money out of the account -- nothing will bounce, but the money protecting me from that is a chunk of emergency money that I'm not supposed to spend. I could simply go to the bank, close the account, and open a new one with an all-new ledger, but B and I have decided that I'll spend a month where he just hands me the cash I need, and we'll write checks for the couple of bills I need to pay out of his account. Hopefully I won't have to go very far with that -- I'm hoping to get the account sorted out in the next day or two.

It's the funniest feeling. For years we had a joint checking account, and even after I started staying home with P, it was always "ours." When B started to travel, we opened a separate account for me so that we didn't have a problem with having a whole week's worth of stuff getting written up all together, only to find we'd overspent the account. A chunk of B's paycheck is deposited straight to my account. I get less than he does, but my portion increases every time I take on a bill. Now, all of a sudden I'm literally dependent on him to hand me the cash, and it feels mighty strange. I don't have to account for what I spend, although obviously I need to keep it basic because we won't have the money that would normally be deposited in my account. So things are technically the same ... but they're not the same.

Someone recently asked me about the equation racism = prejudice + power, with the addition that they wondered how it worked for gender. I haven't replied, but I've been thinking about it. This situation feels as though it plays into a power structure I don't like. B would never use the power of money against me -- as far as he's concerned we're equal partners -- but it's still *there*. Including the fact that, now that I've been out of the job market for sixteen years, I wouldn't have a third of his earning power. And I was never aiming for corporate positions, while I think he's always wanted something like that as security against what he lived with when he grew up. And he has it.

I don't. I'm dependent, even though, as he says, what I do in terms of caring for the kids and educating them is worth far more than he is paid. It doesn't carry the kind of clout, money-wise or status-wise, in the world I live in. Well, the homeschooling thing does, because most of the people we know are homeschoolers, so I get a lot of respect from that crowd.

Lots of things to think about.

So. I don't want a doughnut any more.

The checking account is still a disaster, and I'm thinking that the savings account, which is theoretically straightened out, is possibly also not quite right. I'm printing out the check register tomorrow and having another go at it.

I swam half a mile this morning. I've come to the conclusion that for the sake of my shoulders and neck that I'm going to have to improve my form if I'm going to swim breast-stroke. I've also realized that it's better aerobic exercise if I do. I'm not so sure I want better aerobic exercise (lazy scut!) and I definitely feel unenthusiastic about the work necessary to change the bad habit of nearly thirty years. Still, it felt pretty good.

One of the women swimming today asked after P, who was swimming with me yesterday, and had chatted briefly with her. It was rather nice to say that he hadn't come because he was volunteering. It's no hardship for him to volunteer, of course, and it's only going to do so much to counteract the fact that he's being raised surrounded by privilege, but ... I'd rather say he's missing exercise because he's doing something for someone else than that he's missing it because he's off playing somewhere. Geez, inner conflict much?

B finished the playhouse today, except for anchoring the rope ladder at the bottom, and the kids and the guests spent a lot of time climbing up the step-ladder and sliding down the slide. Or just hanging out in there, giggling a lot. We got some good pics.

It's late, and I am nursing a hard cider that I cracked open about three hours ago. I don't dare drink it any more quickly than that -- alcohol and the meds do not play together nicely. And I'm tired. I should go to bed, but I'm waiting up for B, and I think half the reason he hasn't gotten up is that I haven't. Sooner or later, one of us is going to have to take the initiative. It will probably be me, since I definitely feel that if I don't get up soon, it will be physically out of the question.

Okay, let's get down to brass tacks.

I am stressed and I want a doughnut. Preferably several doughnuts.

Fortunately for me, I'm too lazy to go out to get them, too broke until the paycheck tomorrow to afford them, and B won't go get them for me. (I will remind myself firmly that, yes, this really is a fortunate thing, because I'd rather sit here and stew at him.)

I'm not amazing with money. I'm learning, slowly, how to handle it in terms of getting monthly bills paid and so forth, but I still make mistakes. It's a bother, too, because I tend to be extremely anal about money. I want to know that every penny is accounted for. I'm just too lazy to be the one who does the accounting.

Needless to say, neat financial records are an issue. It used to be, B paid the bills, and at the end of the month I firmly took control of the checkbook and the bank statement and did a formal reconciliation, because his math wasn't so good. (His math is like his spelling -- he figures that's what a calculator is for. Problem was, he wasn't using a calculator.) You have no idea how relieved I was when we discovered Quicken. Now we use Microsoft Money, but it does the same thing -- legible finacial records and automatic calculations, as well as a dead-easy way to balance the account.

Back when B was traveling, we set up separate checking, because when we weren't communicating every day about the checking account, he tended to think that all the money was available to him ... leaving none for me. Which was an issue, what with gas and groceries. So now I get a portion of his check directly into my account, and we each handle our own.

It is really important to me that those records actually reflect the absolute reality of what has happened to my various accounts.

Today, I screwed up three out of four accounts. *sigh* And I am so stressed. I used up all my energy balancing the checking account and paying my bills (no joke; these things wear me out very quickly because I'm so uptight about them) and had none left to deal when I made a series of incorrect deletions. And I had no recent backup. My last backup was months ago. Tomorrow I'll be sitting down with the bank statements and unscrew the mess, but for tonight I'm stressed.

And I want a doughnut.

What a thing to have happen on my first day of trying to be disciplined. I'm trying to set goals, from daily lists (not too long) to where I want to be in ten years when the last child is getting ready to disembark. Today's list was, "Clean up math workbooks, assemble P's workbooks, sort out bank accounts." It was hard, but I did it ... only to end up with ground beef, $.98/lb.

At least I have something to strive for. *hollow laugh*

Mostly what I'm thinking about is the very mundane chocolate I just had (B shared some of his Hershey bar, 'cause he's sweet and an evil temptor) and the prospect of getting out this evening for some coffee and maybe a pecan bar. I don't know if it's going to happen -- B seems pretty tired. I did set up for it by telling P that if he wanted to spend the evening with his buddy, it had to be here and his buddy has to go home by 7:30. Chances are good that it's just going to cut P's evening short without producing anything for me, though.

We picked up printer paper yesterday, so I'm thinking about printing out The Opus so that I can spend some time each morning looking at it and seeing if I can pull it together into anything. I was looking in some of my journals earlier today, and there is a reference to drawing the thing to a close and maybe picking up the story in a second volume. In March. I guess it's been a while.

I have to transfer the whole mess onto the house computer to print it; none of the other computers, and most especially not my laptop, are connected to the printers. The easiest way to transfer it would be to copy it onto my USB drive, but there is a problem with that. Which is, uh, that I have misplaced my USB drive. Both of them, actually, the original drive and the one we bought to replace the original drive when I lost it.

My guess is that both of them are lost in the no-computer-land of my desk. I really need to bite the bullet and do something about that desk. Hiring a dumpster and just pushing the whole thing in comes to mind.

I'm feeling really negative about everything right now. Chores seem to take forever, I'm having trouble keeping track of what the kids are doing for school. (I'm pretty sure they're doing it, it's just that I don't *know*.) I'm not accomplishing anything with my writing other than making entries in various journals, mostly not my private journal, most days. No art, except for occasionally picking up my sketchbook. I don't seem to have any intention of turning the few ideas I have in there into anything concrete. And I don't have any goals, which is preventing me from meeting any goals, which is making me feel badly at loose ends.

I have trouble thinking about what I want to accomplish. Writing seems like the thing I most need to pursue, since it's the area where I undeniably have talent. (Okay, I feel bad about saying that, but it's all right to say it. It really is.) Part of the trouble is, I have talent at the techniques of writing, but only a very intermittent talent at storytelling. In other words, I'm short on inspiration. I need to write regardless of inspiration. The question is, will I be satisfied forever with daily renderings of my activities and the occasional article or short story? And will I start actively looking for venues to publish?

Man. Just writing about it makes me feel like going back to bed to avoid it all.

Honestly, I wonder if taking a creative writing course would get me back in the groove. I'm gun-shy after Professor Party-Pooper in that awful poetry class in college, and truthfully the value of a class like that would depend entirely on the instructor. But maybe I need something as a jump-start.

Maybe I should start outlining a book for this year's NaNoWriMo. Having a daily goal of words was good for me -- I produced. No deathless prose, but I produced.

Mango for breakfast. I don't know who picked it up -- probably B -- but around here it's almost always V who asks if she can cut it up to share it. So when I finally dug out, there it was, about 1/4 of a mango, waiting for me.

That part was good. We won't discuss what else I ate for breakfast. Except for coffee. Right now we have really good coffee.

There's a meme going around livejournal. One of the questions is, "What was the last thing you got in the mail?" I was going to answer, "Football tickets for B," and sigh, but then I remembered that the last thing in the mail actually addressed *to me* was a wedding invitation for A's sister's wedding.

We're going East for a week and a half this fall, timed so that B and I can go to the wedding. V is really disappointed that she can't go. She loves visiting H and C in the city. Personally I'm really looking forward to it. The wedding is at the Mask and Wig Club, and H and C have interesting tastes, so it will be fun to see what they do for the actual wedding and for the reception.

We don't have anything else planned for vacation, except for B going to a pair of Eagles games, one with his brother (the Boys on their Annual Game) and one with P. It will be P's first pro football game. B has already sat down with him and told him what to expect in the stands -- the section where he has his seats is pretty rowdy. Personally, I think it's because the seats are so high up that they can't see the game, so there's nothing to do but insult the other team's fans and dump beer on each other.

Some time this fall the Eagles are playing in Indianapolis. That's only about a four-hour drive from here, and it's around the same in the other direction from Dayton, Ohio, where B's sister lives. She and her husband are fanatical Philadelphia fans in every sport, so B suggested to her that we get together in Indianapolis to see the game. I'm not sure why, but I agreed that I would like to go. I suppose, just once, I want to see what all the fuss is about going to see the actual games, physically, as opposed to just watching on the television. I hope it's still early enough in the season that we don't freeze.

The kids have friends over. M to play with P, A to play with V and F. The boys are on the computer (as usual; I will have to drag them off and make them play something else eventually, as they tend to be a little overdone if they play on the computer all day.) The girls are doing something that involves emptying out the downstairs bathroom and cleaning it (and I mean real housework here) so that they can play in there. I'm curious to know what they want to play in there that they can't play just as well in the upstairs bathroom, which is where they usually play. And which does not require them to move a stack of laundry hampers and mop the floor. And now, by the sound of it, they're vacuuming something ... I don't know what has gotten into them.

I'm feeling restless, as usual. I went out to walk around and check the garden, but I'm not in the mood to do anything. The beans are growing again, but whatever ate the leaves into lace has chewed on the beans, too, so that they're hardly worth picking. I know I should pick them to encourage the plants to put out another crop, but it's so discouraging to pick them when they look like hell.

The front garden could use a good weeding and mulching. Somehow, there's vetch growing in there. I have nothing against vetch; among other things it's a nitrogen fixer. But it doesn't belong in the front garden, and it's all wound up with the marigolds. The corn is big enough that the weeds don't really compete with it, but the bed would still look better if I weeded.

I should have gotten out weeks ago and pinched blossoms off the basil. Really, teh basil is pitiful this year, and I don't know why. I have a bunch of basil in the refrigerator that I got from the farmer's market; I should cook it with something.

The bed for the salad greens is just a mess. The greens have long since bolted, and the second crop just developed zillions of weeds growing closely in with it, so closely that we couldn't really weed it. So now it's a mass of bolted greens and out of control weeds, but I still need to be careful with it, because V's blooming onion is in there, and I don't want to trouble it until we've collected its seeds.

The herb bed is doing very well; surprisingly few weeds in there. The sage is looking sturdy; I should have picked some to rub on the duck Sunday night. The dill can't decide whether to be healthy or not, but I keep cutting it anyway, and it survives. Even the chives have decided to survive the shocking experience of being transplanted and then watered with hot water (I didn't realize until too late that the first water coming out of the hose would be blazing because it had abeen lying in the sun.) The thyme is certainly healthy. I think I will cut it waaaay back and dry the cuttings. If I don't, it may take over the bed. It's already well on its way toward conquering the other plants.

The tomatoes look to be producing generously, but as usual, they're going to hold on to those first green tomatoes as though they're gold. (In the case of three of the plants, they actually *are* gold.) Once they begin to ripen, they'll just flood in, but they're not going to start ripening until they're good and ready. There are four big, lovely looking tomatoes on the two round tomato plants, and the paste tomato plant looks good. The plants that are going to keep us running, though are the Golden Pears. Fortunately they're miniatures.

V's pepper plant in the deck box has long since had a full-sized pepper on it, but just this week it started to turn red. (She decided to wait to pick it until it had turned red, since she likes red peppers better than green.) The tomato plant hasn't even set blossoms, unsurprising for a volunteer plant that started so much after even my tomatoes had gone in. I don't know whether we'll get tomatoes off of that plant; the growing season here is really too short to grow tomatoes without starting them inside or in a greenhouse.

"The road goes on forever and the party never ends." Is it good or bad when the 3 year old quotes Robert Earl Keen? And he delivers it with sagelike wisdom. "It's gonna be a long ride home isn't it?" "Yes mommy but 'the road goes on forever..' " Well the ride home wasn't too bad and it was worth it because we had a nice weekend. We were upstate and as usual I spent most of the weekend rearranging rocks. And trying to identify wildflowers. We have raspberries and blackberries which are not quite ready. And we went to the fruit farm down the road and picked 6 quarts of blueberries. Which turned into an all day jelly making affair with giant pots boiling over the campfire. Yum. But I can see I am going to get really tired of blueberry jam fairly soon. I guess we will have to give it to friends and family.
I started to cut stairs into the side of the mountain and put in slabs of rock because the incline is fairly steep. Under the rock layer is beautiful clay so to H's delight I dug up a big mound of it and let him play with 'real playdough.' I had to abandon my stair digging efforts to help him with his creations so we ended up covered in mud. Then we did a wild mud and jelly dance in the swimming hole. Hmm. The party did have to end though. Now we are back in the hot city. Gotta get back into the swing of things here.

The football season has begun. The Hall of Fame game, which officially opens the season, is going on at this very minute. I didn't even know there was such a thing; I found out this week when it turned out that B was planning to watch it for the first time. Why? The Eagles are playing.

Some of the human interest stuff is, well, pretty interesting. The first black quarterback has been inducted into the Hall of Fame. They're celebrating the 60th anniversary of the reintegration of the NFL. Reggie White was posthumously inducted. (Watching his wife and son unveil his bust was surprisingly touching; usually my reaction to that sort of ceremony is to recite the multiplication tables in a desperate attempt to avoid death by boredom.)

I will also admit to enjoying football, at least a bit. I root for the Eagles, and I know enough to follow approximately what is going on during a game. I ought to get a book so that I know what the hell B and P are talking about when football comes up, as it inevitably does during the season. (It says something, although I'm not sure what, that my immediate reaction to the need for info is "I have to get a book.")

If I'm honest, though, I have to admit that I view football, and the football season, with mixed emotions. I didn't grow up watching football. My father and my older brother watched football occasionally, but I didn't get the game, and no one bothered to explain it to me, so I didn't like it and I didn't watch it.

I'm also not sure how I feel about the violence in football. We make a point with the kids of the fact that there are rules against unnecessary roughness, especially when it comes to hitting a kicker, who is vulnerable. And we point out how, after tackles, players from opposite teams often help each other up. But the truth is, it's a game where you make progress to a large degree by trying to plow your opponents into the turf.

If I'm *really* honest, which I will be here because B doesn't read here, I don't appreciate football because I hate having to share his attention on weekends. That's one of the reasons I've learned as much about football as I have; I don't like it when he tries to talk to me about something and I can't respond. He wouldn't mind -- he understands that I'm not totally enthralled by football -- but I mind. He makes an effort to listen and understand when I talk about art, which is not his thing at all. Oh, well. At least he pretty much confines his football watching to Eagles games. He could watch college football all day Saturday, NFL football all day Sunday, and Monday night football into the bargain, so I've probably gotten off easy.

P has permission to stay up for the game, which should be over by ten-thirty; V showed up after she'd been tucked in to ask if she could watch the game. I don't think she's all that interested in football. She usually announces quite firmly that she doesn't like football and disappears somewhere else on Sundays. I think she's having trouble falling asleep (she often does) and scents a chance to stay up with Daddy. Good thing we homeschool. And a good thing that F has stayed in bed. She claims she can't sleep, but she does, and she's a right little monster when she doesn't get enough sleep.

Don't tell anyone, but I wish the Eagles would hurry up and lose this game. (I don't expect them to win it; since it's not a regular season game, they've long since pulled the first string. Now they're mostly playing people who are still working to gain a position on the final roster, and that means that victory is a secondary goal for the coaches. They want to see what these people can do.)

I'm bored with football for the night. I've seen a bit of Warren Moon's acceptance speech. I've been thoroughly irritated with John Madden, who made a very rude comment about Philadelphia fans yesterday. (Apparently a large group of Philly fans got into some kind of altercation with a group of Dallas fans during the inductions; the Philly fans were thrown out and the Dallas fans weren't, which according to people who were there was not fair, and John Madden called Philly fans "no-class" and called Philadelphia "a dirty city.") I've seen the Eagles drive straight into the end zone for a touchdown, after which McNabb was immediately, but *immediately*, removed from the game. (The Eagles are very concerned that McNabb doesn't get injured this year.) What else do I need to see? I want to go to bed, but I'm stubborn and I'm going to wait for B.

i feel like saying "to hell with it. i got nothing." but that isn't entirely true. not down in my bones. or maybe not even down in the core of me.
nope, i got nothing. i'm tired. i'm depressed. and i feel like i have nothing to say. it was worth a shot though.

P's girlfriend is over. "Girlfriend" I should say -- they're both thirteen, and fortunately they haven't even figured out hand-holding yet. They've been known to blow kisses at each other, but only when they're saying, "Good-bye."

Typical of the Girlfriend, she's been playing with V and F all afternoon, since P was out with B watching a black belt test. She's friends with all three of them, which is handy. Maybe not so handy later, but handy now, and who knows how long this "dating" will last?

The kids are playing Let's Pretend, and the day's subject is a mix of Redwall and Harry Potter. Much to our amusement, the Girlfriend proclaimed herself "a mistress of seduction!" This coming from a girl whose parents are quite conservative; I don't know where this came from.

Things only got funnier. B asked her exactly who she was planning on seducing, and she announced, "Snape!" V chimed in with, "Anybody we don't like!"

Oh, dear. Perhaps we need to add another chapter to the sex ed. book.

It's a long weekend for B; he worked from home on Friday. I definitely like it, but it has me a day ahead of myself. That means that tomorrow will be a pleasant extra. I'm definitely into pleasant extras.

Tonight is watch-sloshy-movies-on-television night. I can't look away from the train wreck. Why do I think that the hostile feminist girl is going to hook up with the geeky but good guy, and live happily ever after? I wonder if the bright-but-pretending-to-be-stupid-to-be-attractive girl will pull it together and be bright and live happily ever after? ... nah. It's a movie, not a miracle. And then there are the CoverGirl commercials. Do we really have to have men and women? Couldn't we all be turned into sexually amorphous purple aliens or something?

Time to sign off. I'm getting crabby.

There is so much going on right now, I don't know where to begin. Today I should be sitting in my new house, looking out over the lake, or sitting in my pool. Unfortunately, realtors are assholes. At least one of them is. We were not told the truth about three things, and a huge buying factor was not disclosed and we uncovered it 5 days before closing. To make a long, painful, teary story short, we did not buy the sweet house with the big oaks on a lake. The day after that decision was made, I had to jump in the car and drive to Florida to find a rental since our house needs to be vacant by the 14 for the new tenants. I also needed to drop off C to his dad's, and pick up B from the sperm donor. I did manage to rent a very sweet 1957 tiny house in a beautiful neighborhood close to B's new school. It will be a squeeze, but I think we'll be fine. It has a Maine camp-y feel to it, and that makes it exciting for me. There is also a big screened in porch that I foresee most of our time being spent there. I hate having to move the kids around two more times, but it is unavoidable.

Little Riley is 9 months old today. She is the best baby. She has six teeth, she is a super fast crawler and I believe she'll be walking withing the month. Everyday I want to eat her, she's so delicious. Lauren is still Lauren. She finds new ways to frustrate and amuse me everyday. She has not pulled the butter routine again, but she did have a brief stint with poop. Hannah is getting so big, I can practically see her growing. She's got long legs just like her mama, but she has super straight blonde hair and dark blue eyes that are all her own. She is still very cerebral. Moving will be hard on her, she doesn't cope well with change, and we'll be leaving her best friend Kate. Ben is still sweet and softspoken. His face is changing because of his permanent teeth. Whenever I think about him, I still see the Ben of age four. Then I see him and it never fails to surprise me. He has been gone since June, so having him home is wonderful. Curtis is almost 13. He has calmed down so much over the past year. His artwork is incredible, I am going to encourage that as much as I can, and get him enrolled in some kind of art program after school. Being close to him will be so good for me and beneficial to him as well. I think living with his dad and his bachelor lifestyle isn't always easy for C.

I wrote 300 words earlier today, committed an idiocy, and off it went into the ether. Oh, well, it was mostly grousing anyway.

B and the kids are all playing rummy, although that should come to an end soon, since it's bedtime. I don't know if they're tired, but I sure am. I've been a little headachy for a couple of days, with nausea on and off (I would suspect I was pregnant if it weren't impossible.) B and F and I spent a couple of hours out in the heat, playing miniature golf, and that was a hot, hot time. I don't know what I was thinking, but I wore jeans ...

The anti-ism post has actually turned out well. I spent quite a bit of thought on how to make myself absolutely clear without jumping down anybody's throat. Among other things, I don't feel I have any right to jump down anybody's throat, unless it's about sexism, in which case I have justification for feeling angry. Um. Is that mixed up? Anyway, I did a pretty good best, I think.

I got a very good response. She may not entirely agree with me, but she thinks I made some good points and left her with a lot to think about. Score! I just wish that was a more common response.

There are a couple of other responses on that post that I need to reply to. A lot of people don't seem to have run into the "prejudice + power" thing, and it seems to be a possibly fruitful direction to take. So far, everyone is questioning and curious, but not hostile. It's a miracle. It also makes me feel a little more confident that I can do this without experiencing a major emotional crash every time someone disagrees with me a little bit. (I reserve the right to have major emotional crashes when someone gets in my face about it. Some learning takes time.)

On to less fraught topics. B and I went out tonight. We were looking for a Chinese restaurant that a co-worker of B's recommended. We had high hopes, because up until now we've found only one Chinese restaurant in the area that has decent food, and that's quite a ways away. This one is supposed to be quite good and quite close. We couldn't find it, though. Maybe we were supposed to go further up the road it's supposed to be on, but I've been a fair ways up that road and I don't remember any businesses much beyond where we went. B will ask his co-worker on Monday, maybe.

Instead we went to a chain that specializes in noodles. I quite like their food, although the menu is limited and I can see myself getting bored with them eventually. Vegetarian (but not vegan) mushroom stroganof. Very good. I only ate half; I seem to be getting better about eating only what I am hungry for. Stroganof for breakfast.

After that, we tried the local coffee house, hoping for music on a Friday night. No such luck, but their food is good. I usually get coffee -- their coffee is free trade, organic, fresh roasted, and not incidentally damned good -- but I went for a mango smoothie instead. Another thing they do very well. There seems to be a high volume of real fruit in the smoothies, and they put in a minimum of sugar so that you can actually taste the fruit. Once again, I didn't finish, but when we got home the kids eagerly took care of that little problem. They love mango.

Goddamn, it's August already. Where'd my summer go? Two weeks 'til my brother is married. That'll be crazy fun. I have to get my shit together & get his wedding present made. Arg. And figure out where the place is. He's having a 10am wedding.

Work has been insane.

They're replacing the water mains on our little street. Unlike everyone else though, they're going to repave our little street when they're done. Everyone else just gets patched up street. We're special. Heh. M2 is having a blast because there are huge big trucks Every Single Day. She loves vehicles -- cars, trucks, airplanes, boats, whatever. If it moves, she loves it. Funny little monkey.

Late. So tired. Need to retreat to a bath... a quick one, but a bath is a bath is a bath. I think I still haven't recovered from three years of grad school. I remember once upon a time going and reading in the tub, watching a little whose line & then heading off to bed at a reasonable hour. Now I feel guilty if I'm getting ready for bed before 11 or so like there's something I should be doing. And frankly the something I should probably be doing doesn't necessarily include reading the full day's back log of metafilter, ask metafilter, livejournal posts, and everything that's come into my bloglines aggregator. I do, I remember reading in the bathtub, like books & stuff. Now? I keep thinking if I'm not reading professional materials, which are piling up, so I don't end up reading at all because I have things I should be reading so I end up reading teh intarwebs instead. Such a dork.

K. Now I have to watch Danny Devito on The Daily Show. Because teh dork has totally overtaken me.

GNAR! TEH DORK!

Boo.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled intarwebs reading time.

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

Geez. I guess I'm going to have to face up to the fact that, if I post on controversial subjects in my journal, I'm going to get controversial answers. I have a doozy right now. Last time something like this happened, someone much more qualified that I took it on, which was good, and one of the two parties to the debate decided I was the devil incarnate and acted accordingly, which wasn't so good. And now I'm gun-shy.

But I feel it's an important issue, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life being a shrinking violet about it because I'm afraid to have someone angry at me. So I'll spend some time thinking on it -- not too long, because otherwise someone else will get into it, and I don't want people trying to get me to take sides. I'd prefer to state my side right from the get-go.

And I'm here writing my 300 words because I'm procrastinating.

Today was a rotten day, to be honest. I was irritable and miserable in the morning, until I cranked at V and told her off for expecting me to do what I'd said I would do -- help her figure out how to get her room clean. After that I crashed downstairs for a couple of hours, woke up, and was human enough to apologize. But I'm sick with something, not enough to flatten me, but definitely enough to make life unpleasant.

At least the kids were with the program today. Usually, if I crash, they avoid doing school and chores, and when I wake up I have to be the heavy. Today, except for V's room, pretty much everything was done. Thank goodness for that. I don't think I could have put up with driving everyone to get things done.

B is working from home tomorrow. That's always a good thing. He'll get work done a lot more efficiently than he will at the office, where he gets interrupted a lot, and I'll enjoy having the extra adult in the house.

***

I decided that there is no point in putting it off, so I went back to my journal and replied. I don't think I handled it as well as someone with more experience at this would do, but at least I'm not hiding my head. I'll be curious to see whether the people who *do* have more experience will come out to join the discussion or not; a lot of them get tired of stupidity. It's possible that this will remain a calm, civilized discussion, but there's also every possibility in the world that this will turn into a shit-storm.

Oh, well. At least the person I'm challenging isn't my closest friend. *sigh*

I just ruined P's night (and probably V and P's night, as well) by pointing out that they can't get ready to play rummy with B; it's bedtime. I want to go to bed myself. My stomach is rumbly, my mouth is dry, and my head feels as though someone has stepped, delicately but quite, quite firmly, on top of it.