It's hot. Why do I always feel like writing about what makes me cranky? I'm pretty sure I'm not cranky that much.

I bought a new sketchbook a while back, because I was only about ten pages away from the end of my current sketchbook and I'd been scribbling in it a lot. Then I didn't pick up the sketchbook for weeks. It's finished now, but I like to put something special on the front page of a new sketchbook and I haven't thought of anything yet. I think maybe I'll use my water color pencils; I'm in the mood to make patches of color. Maybe I'll get out the Xacto and cut holes.

When B gets back from Rochester I'm going to have him put my wedding ring back on. Hooray! I don't miss it too much when it's off, or at least not once I stop fishing for it (I'm always flicking it with my thumb to make sure it isn't sliding) but I don't like having it off and I'm really looking forward to having it back on. Plus, it means that the Evil Rash is gone, which can only be a good thing.

This weekend is mildly crazy. Not really, but I wasn't able to get things set up until the last minute. I had to shop in the morning, not for too many things, but I forgot the thing I needed most. Then I had to make sure the kids got chores done, since nothing will get done tomorrow. The W kids coming over at 1:00, F being picked up by T at 3:00 (overnight) and D's concert at 4:00. I don't know what I'm making for dinner. I have to get up tomorrow at an unholy hour (for me) because P is acolyting. I have to get V to church and then dash to the airport for B. Since I wasn't sure until this morning exactly what was going on when, I was under stress from worrying that something wouldn't mesh.

Now it's all meshed, but I still have to make it through everything and make sure everyone lands in the right place.

When real life is happening, I sometimes get caught in the crush. I'm not saying that I'm involved in an unusually busy life or anything like that. Life happens, and if I spend my time whining about how I'm so busy and I have no time for anything and life is so awful, I won't ever pay attention to what's really going on. I do have trouble keeping up, though, sometimes.

I need to get out to the gardens and spend some time enjoying them. The front flower bed is filling out very nicely, and I smile every time I go past it, but I'm not paying much attention to the vegetables or the hanging pots. Everything is doing fine, but what's the point in having a garden if I don't enjoy it? If I sort out my checkbook, I can buy bean towers. It's almost time to plant beans. If I order the towers now, they should arrive just in time for me to plant.

I went out and looked at the pot of nasturtiums. They're showing leaves, not the proto-leaves but the big ones, and it looks as though that pot is going to be pretty luxurious.

Time for lunch and some more reading. We're all doing the library summer reading program. I can't be bothered to keep track of how much time I actually spend reading, so I just cross off an hour for each book. That's low, but who cares? Most of the prizes for adults aren't that interesting, anyway, except for tickets to the music festival. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure why I do the program. I read anyway, and since I'm not really gaining anything from the program, why do I bother? Inquiring minds want to know.

I have the house to myself. The house is unnaturally clean, too. It took awhile for F to catch up to her siblings, but they finished all their chores and are now off to P's girlfriend's house to "swim" in her pool. It's not very deep, but if they want to call it "swimming," there is probably no need for me to argue.

I take it back. They're home. That's okay.

B is in Rochester, NY for a funeral. A's mom died on Tuesday, from lung cancer. She'd been pretty sick with it for a long time, so it wasn't a surprise, but it sure is a wrench.

She didn't have any grandchildren -- A doesn't even have a girlfriend, and his sisters have either chosen not to have children or haven't been able to. So she liked to see ours when they were in the Philadelphia area. She liked to send them little gifts sometimes, too. V cried when she heard A's mom was dead.

I'm doing really well compared to my usual collapse when B is away. I've been trying to take some of the usual household pressure off of him since I got the news; he was very attached to A's mom and seemed depressed after hearing. I knew that he wouldn't be in the mood for doing much, so I tried to get stuff done without asking him.

The night before he left, he sort of obliquely asked me if I could please try not to let the house dissolve into chaos the way it usually does when he's away. I promised. He's going to come home tired and stressed, even though there is going to be a lot of love and support going around there, and he's treated like one of the family. He doesn't need to come home with half a day of weekend left, work stress waiting for him Monday morning, and have to deal with a stressful disaster in the house, too.

Hence the house's unnatural state of cleanliness, F's hatred of doing the dishes not withstanding. There were some tears on behalf of hating to do the dishes (and not in response to being yelled at,) but the dishes are *done*, dude. I talked with P, and we even have dinner sort of planned for tonight.

I need to figure out what's going on tomorrow. I've given up tickets to see "Oedipus Complex" (yes, that's "complex," not the classical "Oedipus") because we also have kids coming over to spend the night. I could actually go ahead and see it, but we also promised to attend a senior recital for a friend's daughter. I can't manage both, and given the choice, although I love good theater, and the Goodman is very good theater indeed, I'll support the kid. But I need to figure out where the concert is, and when the sleepover kids are coming over, and when they're going home, because we also have something going on Sunday morning. It's all quite possible, as opposed to being impossible, but I don't have a grip on it yet, and I need to ask B a couple of questions before I can *get* a grip on it.

I'll get it sorted out. Another big thing for me to do. Usually I let B sort out the tangles. He gives me too much support, sometimes; I get lazy.

i took a shower today. it seems i've begun bathing again...twice a week now! that's an improvement over once a week.
i'm feeling alright, finally. alright. not great, or even good. more like ok. ok not a-ok. just ok, alright, fine. surviving.
not too sad. definitely not high.
yesterday i ventured out of the house and went to see adrienne shelley's (RIP) film "Waitress". the cost of the ticket (matinee) was $6.50. a medium coke, which is gargantuan so i said load it with ice, and one regular sized "oh henry" ran me $6.95. when i left the parking was $12!
fuck me. they used to have a deal downtown, with a movie ticket stub you get a reduced rate.
but that's off track. ok, so i used to go to the movies by myself all the time. when i took a year off between high school and college, that is pretty much all i did. back then matinees were easy to find AND $4.95, i'd stay for 3.
last year in telluride i finally felt like myself again, seeing multiple movies in one day, pretty much on my own.
there is something really liberating for me to spend an afternoon alone at the movies. don't need to talk to anyone, i don't have to worry if my companion(s) like the film. there is no arguing. i just see what i want to see.
last june in NYC i went out to the movies on my own 2 or 3 times. it was so perfect. that's my therapy. going to a late show or a full day of matinees at the UA at union sq (i know it's an AMC now i think). or the Quad...whatever.
anyhow, now i glance through the movie listings and every multiplex is showing POC3, Spidey3 and/or whatever else stupid is out right now...oh right, Shrek3. no offence, but the artsy films are few and far between these days in deadmonton.
we have the metro, but that is only weekend evenings. the princess and the garneau (which i can go to for free as i am currently technically still an employee) have good stuff, but only weekend matinees, otherwise it's the standard 7 and 9pm shows. and they don't change then up enough.
maybe this weekend i can get out to see "away from her" the new sarah polley film. it looks superb.
anyhow, i'd love to be spending my days out at the movies, but it's not really feasible in this town.
mind you i have enough dvds to watch, and access to anything at the video store of course, but i don't have the energy or the concentration to put something on at home. everything is too distracting.
i mean, ok, this week i did watch "the lost honor of katharina blum" and last week i watched "friends with money". but in the evenings jared and i have been watching Tv shows on dvd. Weeds, Big Love, Chapelle show, Mr. Show, Oz...
TV feels like a step down. but i know that before i know it i will be back in Telluride with more movies than you can possibly see in 4 days.
by the way, i got the internship and am the administrative assistant for the 2007 34th annual Telluride Film Festival. i head out to colorado for july 30th and stay until september 8th ish.
too excellent!

I'm melancholy. I always distinguish that from real depression. Melancholy is just minor sadness, rather than a feeling that nothing is well with the world and disaster is immanent. Melancholy can actually be fun, or at least creative, if I'm feeling motivated, leading me to understand what all those damned Romantic poets found so attractive about it.

I'm reading Something Rich and Strange, one of the "Faerielands" series. The series is based on illustrations by Brian Froud; this particular volume is by Patricia McKillip, which is why I'm reading it. McKillip is my favorite fantasy author, even more than Tolkien and Lewis. That's going some.

"Something rich and strange" is a good description for any of McKillip's books. She has a real talent for deeply sensuous description which is very different from any other writer I've ever read. If you read enough of her work, you start to see the themes she uses in her descriptions, but you always feel as though you've been let into a world deeper and more mysterious than the one you started in.

The only trouble with reading McKillip is that it always makes me feel troubled that my own writing is not as original as hers. I don't want to write like McKillip, although that would certainly make for some excellent writing. I want to find a voice of my own that is as unique as hers, as attractive as hers.

For now, however, I will have to content myself with oatmeal for breakfast, as it were. There's nothing wrong with oatmeal for breakfast; it's just that I'd rather have shrimp scampi, which would certainly make for a rich and unusual breakfast.

The kids are listening to 2001: A Space Oddysey. It's been a long time since I've read it. I'm not overly impressed by this reading. I could live very easily without listening to it, but the kids have it turned way up so that they can hear it even when they aren't in the main part of the house. I may decide to put a stop to this, if my head keeps vibrating to the narrator's voice.

B bought a pair of play balls for twenty-five cents each yesterday, one for V and one for F. It didn't occur to me at the time, and I would have dismissed it if it had, but it might have been good if we'd bought the third one, too, because P is fascinated with them. I've had to tell him quite firmly that he may not attempt to snatch them out of his sister's arms. Of course, part of the reason I had to tell him that was that he hadn't done the dishes yet.

P seems to be interested in starting to read some more serious literature than he's read up until now. Next year, he'll be in "ninth grade," so he and I discussed having him start reading some classic lit this summer. Now I can't remember what he suggested starting with, though. Figures. I'll talk to him. Anybody who has any ideas, feel free to pm me!

We bought sidewalk chalk, and the front step is covered with stick people. F showed me her "family." A drawing of V, a drawing of P, a drawing of B, a drawing of me. Then a drawing of F herself, with a big frown.

I asked her why her picture was so sad, and that led to an extended cuddle, in which she told me how she's been feeling lately. Namely, that she's been feeling as though she isn't a part of the family. We talked it out, or rather, I mostly listened while she talked, and eventually she felt better. Later, with her present, I talked to B so that he would know what we'd come up with.

F worries me. There's an elevated chance that the kids might have mental illnesses, specifically bipolar, so I try to keep an ear out. On the other hand, I try not to go over their every response with a fine-tooth comb. I have to give them plenty of room to be who they are, including any moodiness, without immediately thrusting them into therapy at every little twitch.

It used to be that V worried me, until she and I started having long talks. She's very good at articulating what bothers her, and at dealing with it once she has it out where she can get a grip on it. I'm pretty confident that, while she'll always need someone to talk to, and may choose to get that through therapy in the future, she'll be all right.

F, on the other hand, is mercurial. She's such a happy child. I call her my bubble. But she can flash from happy to angry and miserable so quickly it's almost scary. And she has trouble believing that we love her as much as we love her sister and brother. Feeling rejected unusually easily is a characteristic of bipolar disorder, and I try really, really hard not to get all het up about the fact that I was very much like that at her age. I think that the problem is just that I'm accustomed to her sister's ease with dealing with emotions, and not her style of struggling.

F has gymnastics this afternoon. This is her last class before she's done for the summer; B and I have decided that, aside from martial arts, the kids will not do activities over the summer. (P's choir will be over anyway, once he gets back from Italy.) It saves us money that we'll need if we're traveling east, which we are. It also makes for less crazy on my part, trying to get everyone to a thousand and three different activities. It won't make things all that much better, because the real problem is that P has martial arts four nights a week, and some nights he goes in twice, so the chauffering needed is tremendous. If we can think of a way for him to carry his gear and weapons on a bike, I think we'll let him chauffer himself. Tomorrow night he's walking home on his own; the rest of us have an event with the conservation district.

F and V were supposed to have an event with the district today, but when B scheduled it, he forgot that it would conflict with gymastics. I had to call this morning and cancel. What a pain in the neck.

Memorial Day. Small businesses are closed and so my after-printing dinner consisted of a half a veggie patty sandwich from the Subway on Delancey street.

Maybe photo chemicals can be confused like pheremones because the boy behind the counter seemed to be taking an interest in me.

"Wow, you have long hair. You must be Japanese."

If said-Boy Behind the Counter was not obviously Asian himself, I might have snapped. Said something rude. Attempted to leap over the glass counter to punch him or simply have stalked out of the store.

But Boy Behind the Counter was very obviously Asian and so I simply smiled and said, "Try again."

"You're not Chinese..."

I nodded. He looked startled. "you look mixed."

Mixed.

For some reason, people have always thought I am mixed. When I was a baby, they would comment to my mother that I looked mixed. My mother was horrified at the implication behind that comment.

I wonder if people assume that, at least these days, because of the way I carry myself. I never learned to be "Asian" or what might be perceived as "Asian." I learned to be loud Puerto Rican or juvenile delinquent white or any number of other traits and characteristics never attributed to Asians, especially not to Chinese.

Boy himself was from Nepal. He grew up there, but has been here for two years, living in Queens.

"Maybe I don't look like the Chinese in Nepal," I remarked as he fished my bread from the toaster. (Boy for some reason decided that my bread should be toasted)

"No, I've met Chinese here too. You don't look like them."

Today's been an awkward day. Started the morning trying to incorporate some of my articles into my article. My writing didn't flow. It stopped and started and stuttered, but I couldn't get it to just BE. I left it on the page and I'll have to go back and revisit it, but at least I got the basic gist of these added facts onto the page. They're there and I can try to make them blend into the rest of the piece (which is also full of starts and stops, stuttered and mumbled phrases, and much in need of a thorough smoothing) at a later point.

Then I dawdled around, checked my e-mail, drank too-bitter coffee, and sketched out a possible timeline for getting this article done. A radical librarian has agreed to read it and give me feedback on it, so I am giving myself until almost the end of the month to get a readable draft ready.

That means carving out a Tuesday evening to sit and go through Genderwatch and Lexis-Nexis. I should probably take that Tuesday off from the energy-sucking job so I am not braindead or nearly braindead
while poring over database files that I would not normally have access to.

Then I called my friend who had offered to give me his old faucet since mine not just leaks, but trickles so much that China, when she spent the night, had woken up thinking that it was raining. Hard.

He came by with his faucet and replaced it for me. Then we went to a 3 o'clock brunch at a cafe where the music was played way too loud and the prices were way too high, but fuck, it's Memorial Day and every hipster joint and place catering to white people was going to have the same overpriced weekend menu. We waited for our food and tried to shout a conversation over the music, I grumbled about the slowness of getting the food, eyed the ketchup and tabasco sauce and threatened to eat them instead.

Afterwards I went to the darkroom. I didn't really feel like printing, although I had dug up a set of negatives from Circus Amok in the park a few years back. Printed one that wasn't great, then switched to Coney Island. That was a bit better, although I didn't print anything overly exciting. Then I found an image from Wednesday's housing demonstration--of a mother and her son with signs protesting the gentrification of our neighborhood.

After a couple of tries, THAT came out splendid.

Then I decided to call it a night, cleaned up, went off to forage for food. One would think the stink of sweat and photofix would repel most people, but perhaps fastfood workers are accustomed to worse.

Still hungry. Guess that means it's time to call it a night and go home. Or something like that.

So it seems I have rectal bleeding. And chronic diarrhea. And upper GI pain. So the day after my 43rd birthday I brought myself to a GI specialist who is "100% sure" I need an endoscopy and a colonoscopy.

Sam ended up in the ER last night. He is six years old but seems so much younger. He couldn't breathe. What was a cold quickly turned into enormous difficulty breathing. We brought him to the ER and they admitted him. They did this and they did that and now he has improved and is home "to rest". Having children is a long dark night sometimes.

I will be having the endoscopy and colonoscopy on June 20th. My anxiety disorder is in overdrive. Staying in the present moment has always been a challenge for me. Now it is impossible. I worry they will find something terribly wrong with me - colon cancer or maybe ulcers or some other horror I can't put a name to at this moment. I am afraid of the tests themselves. Will the doctor puncture something with the endoscope? Will I have a bad reaction to the anesthesia? Will the anesthesia mix fatally with the medications I take for anxiety and depression?
Sam is coughing and walking up and down the hallway, still wearing his hospital ID around his ankle. His idea of rest and my idea of rest differ greatly. He wants to play. He has no fear. He tells me he feels much better through coughing spells. "Listen to me breathe" he asks and proceeds to breathe without the extreme difficulty of the night before. He is proud of his improvement.

My psychiatrist tells me I may need more of the ant-anxiety medication as I await the tests. She tells me I should have the tests and not back out. My sister tells me that too. Their conviction adds to my worry and I start thinking about my own death. What is they find something, what if they find something? What if they do something wrong during the tests and harm me and I die or am severely injured?

I am two little boys mom today. One needs a haircut badly and wants to play in the sprinklers. The other needs to rest. That is what is going on today.

Regina
"Karma is a boomerang"

I'm all done with my little brother for now. Good.

My mother warned me this weekend that he was thinking of coming down.

He's known for more than a week that he might come this way. I didn't know, but he's known. He called me on Tuesday to tell me he was arriving Thursday.

Not to *ask* if it was okay for him to come Thursday. To tell me that was when he was arriving.

Because he has to come practically through our front yard on his way from Minneapolis to Philadelphia, and because we haven't seen him in quite some time, there was no polite way to tell him, "Fuck you, we have plans and you can't come. Call a little further in advance next time, asshole."

I *did* tell him that we had plans we couldn't change and that wouldn't accomodate him on Saturday and Sunday, so that it made more sense for him to leave early and join our parents at their cottage than to stay here and have nothing to do. And I refused to change our plans for this evening, or to include him. If he had called us last week to warn us that he might be coming through, we would have rescheduled to accomodate him, but damned if I'm going to go through gyrations if he doesn't have the common courtesy to let us know what his plans are.

Want to know the truth? The real reason I'm pissed is that he told my mother and our older brother that he was planning to stop here, but didn't bother to tell me. Mom was the one who warned me he had plans. So I know for sure that he not only knew the possibility existed, but had made firm plans without ever consulting us. So, yeah, I'm cranky.

Oh, well. He's out until midnight with B and P, watching a movie. I'll be asleep before they get back, and he's planning to leave before I'll be up in the morning, so I gave him his goodbye hugs tonight and good riddance. I love the man, but I wish he'd exercise a little common sense.

We did have a lovely dinner out with J and J. B became friends with J (female) while she was managing P's choir, and when she left abruptly, we were concerned. The rumor was that she had overwhelming family obligations, but the ones that were mentioned were sick parents, and we knew that both of her parents were recently dead, so it couldn't have been that. So B contacted her, thinking that something had gone wrong with the choir, and sure enough, there had been a major rift, and she'd been forced out.

We got together with them then, to give her a chance to tell us her side of the story (the board of directors was mute, except for the family concerns rumor) and she was miserable. She was one of the founders of the choir, and to be treated badly and then forced out hurt her pretty deeply. We just sat there for three hours and let her vent.

This time around, she was much happier, and wasn't particularly inclined to discuss the choir, except for a few details concerning her daughters, who still sing in it. I was so pleased to see her feeling better about it. She was really depressed the first time around, and so angry. She had a right to be depressed and angry, but I was so glad for her that she wasn't stuck there.

And she's funny! My heart, is she funny. She had me in stitches. Her husband is just as bad. We'll be getting together with them regularly; she says she doesn't want to lose contact with all the choir families that she's gotten to know.

Her oldest daughter has her senior recital in voice coming up in a few weeks. We're going to make sure to be there, and we've all been invited to drop in on her graduation party that night. In a way, the fact that J is no longer part of the choir has worked in our favor; we've been moved to be far more active in being friends with her than we would have if we were still seeing her every week. And it would have been a long time before we would have met J (male.)

We don't expect the choir to crash and burn without J, although we do think that the Board of Directors does not understand how much effort she put in, and what it will take to replace her. So far, things have been fine, but we have noticed that communications from the choir are not good. It used to be we got a choir newsletter regularly, and plenty of communications about what was going on with the choir and what they needed volunteers for and so on. Now there is almost no communication. *sigh* I hope things work out. But we'll be friends with J and J pretty much regardless.

Job finished. Corrections made, T called, more corrections made, document copied to disk, disk and original disk sitting by the door for T to come pick them up.

Ahhh.

Of course, T is going to have an executive summary for me soon, and he'll want that ASAP, but for right now, I'm free and easy. It's really surprising how much pressure this simple little job puts on me. I like shorter documents better, because I can whip them out in under a week and it's not that much stress. Longer stuff makes me fear that I'm not producing quickly enough.

This makes me think that M might be right. I may never be able to work full-time. I still might try some part-time work as the kids get older, though. I don't want to think of myself as totally dependent. Right now, I don't think of it that way, because caring for the kids and giving them the kind of tailored education they're getting is worth a lot of money. Once the kids are out, though, I wonder.

It might be smart to train as some kind of a transcriptionist. I've done transcription, and while it's not as much fun as proofreading, it's usually interesting. Too soon to bother looking into it, though. I'll put it into the filing cabinet under "empty nest."

Having an empty nest doesn't worry me all that much. I want to do things that I can't do with children, or at least, not yet. Go to school, travel. Try new things. I can do some of them with children, and as they get older I can do more and more, but I can't do it all. Among other things, once we have kids out of the house, we'll have more money. No more paying for food for the bottomless pits, clothes every year, classes, all of it.

Maybe I'll get organized, lest I spend my days sitting around, cruising aimlessly on the net. That's my real fear, actually, that without the kids around to give me some structure, that I'll turn into jelly. It's one of the reasons that going back to school sounds attractive. Plus, I could use the intellectual stimulation.

The wind is blowing randomly around, looking vaguely as though it might rain, but it isn't blowing hard enough, and the sky isn't dark enough. I think. Now that I've written it, F and I will get caught in the pouring on the way to or from her class this afternoon.

I checked the hanging baskets and the mint pot (it's planted in a big pot sunk into the ground, so that it won't spread and take over the yard) and moved the seedlings around front for the sun. The basil seedlings are growing away, just expanding like crazy in the sunshine. My father said they'd almost double every day in the sun, and he's right.

The mint is finally starting to put out new, and bigger, leaves. My mother said that their mint plant was just starting to emerge, and that one has been established for a long time. That made me more confident that mine hadn't been too badly shocked by the transplanting. The parsley is coming along, too -- sturdy, and larger than it was, although I would still like to see more stalks.

The nasturtiums are finally starting to germinate in the second hanging pot. I think they'll be really striking, hanging over the edge. I need to plant more nasturtiums. I have about half the bed planted out front -- I want the front edged with nasturtiums -- but I need to finish it, and to put nasturtiums in the beds in the back.

I should also put some marigolds back there, but I don't know if the ones I'm getting from the store are French marigolds or not. French marigolds will keep away bugs; American marigolds won't even make the bugs pause to think.

I need, need, need to buy my bean towers. I think that when I get back from F's class, I will pick up the catalog, find them, and order them. It's not quite time to plant the beans, but it will be soon. I should have some marigolds amongst the beans, too. Maybe I'll plant some garlic in there. I won't get much garlic from a spring planting, but it might help with whatever ate all of the bean leaves last year.

We commented to my father, the master gardener (he's not a certified master gardener, but he knows a ridiculous amount about gardens and indoor plants) about V's varigated English ivy. It had some sort of mites on it for a while, and got kind of droopy. It lost some leaves.

The mites wove webs, so we put the plant in the shower and rinsed it off. Without knowing it, we did exactly the right thing. The mites were spider mites, and the best way to get rid of them is simply to wash them off. The plant is still looking a little beaten up. Dad recommends repotting, it, maybe clipping it back a little, giving it some fertilizer. Fortunately, I have some houseplant fertilizer that is really good stuff -- organic, and very effective. Until then, though, I have some liquid fertilizer, so he said go ahead and give it some of that.

Habia una vez, hubo un viejo. Paso sus dias a su ventana, mirando al mundo afuera.

Once upon a time, there was an old man. He passed his days at his window, looking at the world outside.

He became a fixture of my days, of my walk down the block to the post office which was a parking lot away from his window. I would walk past his window, smile and say hello, walk past the always-empty postal parking lot, then enter to see what awaited me inside that little rectangular box I rented by the year.

Sometimes, the man sat outside on a folding chair. He had a little brown dog who would run around off-leash. dd liked that dog. When she was little, she would sit in the stroller and the dog would try to jump on her and, depending on her mood, she would either start and shudder or giggle at the dog's silliness. When she was on foot, she would run around with the dog and the little dog would yelp as if laughing to play with her.

On warm days, the man had two pitchers of dark-colored liquid on his windowsill and a hand-written sign. "Mavi frio." I don't remember how much he sold it for--maybe 50 cents or a dollar a glass.

I never tried it.

Once, I asked Titi what mavi frio was.

"A drink from the island," she told me. She didn't like it; it was too sweet.

Now I wish I'd bought a glass, tasted it, even if it might have been too sweet for my liking. When else am I going to have the opportunity to try mavi frio?

I don't remember when I started wanting to ask him if I could take his portrait. He had been such a fixture in my daily life, him sitting in his window. He would smoke and Titi would cluck, "He shouldn't be smoking. He has cancer."

One year, he was gone. The building was under the Tenant Interim Lease program and was going to be renovated. Unlike the crappy agreement our buildings have, the TIL program was relocating the residents to other housing while construction happened.

I missed the old man. I wondered if I'd missed my opportunity to photograph him. Titi's words, that he had cancer and really shouldn't be smoking, haunted me. Perhaps I shouldn't have waited. Perhaps I should have taken my medium format (what was I shooting with then? A seagull? A Pearl River?) with me to the post office everyday and just sucked in my gut and sucked up my nerve and asked him. "Can I take your picture?"

But I hadn't and he was gone. Perhaps never to come back and sit in that window.

A year passed. In that year, Titi died. Of cancer. I saw the old man once at a city meeting--city planning or something like that. He came with two other people and sat in front of me. He gave no sign of recognition when he looked at me and I had never learned his name. I wondered if he knew that Titi had died. When we had walked down that street together, on our way to get breakfast on a Sunday afternoon, she would greet him and try to avoid getting sucked into a housing conversation.

"Being a housing organizer means that people think they can bother you all the time," she grumbled whenever a conversation with him--or anyone--went on too long. "I'm NOT working right now."

I don't think she ever said that directly to him, but I can't be sure. All of their conversations were conducted in island Spanish, the kind that flows too rapidly for me to follow.

So that day, I didn't tap him on the shoulder and ask him, "Hola, me recuerdas?" I did not tell him that Titi had died.

The next year, he was back. Sitting at his window. Selling mavi frio on summer days. Talking with people through his window or sometimes sitting outside with a friend or neighbor.

Two days ago, walking to the post office, I saw a platform outside his window. Votive candles. A memorial to a new death.

Today there are white wreaths. White roses in a jar. Votive candles. A wrapped cigarillo with a plastic tip to keep the paper from getting wet between your lips.

IN the window is a small snapshot of him and his sign. "Mavi frio."

"What happened?" I ask a young man who had come out of the building.

"It happened two days ago. At 2 in the afternoon. He had cancer."

I took a couple of snapshots of the memorial, feeling somewhat slimey for doing so. But I never did manage to take a portrait of him and soon the flowers and the candles, the platform and the wreath, would all be taken down. Someone else would occupy that apartment and most likely that someone would not sit at the window or sell mavi frio. Most likely that person will not become one of those everyday fixtures of my life.

His son came out. He stood on the steps. He didn't say a word. Finally, I turned to him.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He looked at me and I saw tears in the corner of his eyes. He nodded his appreciation.

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

So, so irritating.

I didn't check my e-mail this morning. I've been trying not to leap onto the net first thing, because if I can hold out, I spend a lot less time on the net. What I forgot is that I have an assignment right now, and yesterday I sent out my queries. So I've had answers back since sometime today, probably early, and I found out too late to get anything done about it. And now I feel guilty.

That is such, such bullshit. I'm moving along just fine on this item, and I've been keeping up. Missing a day isn't the end of the world. I just feel strange about it because my parents were here over the weekend and aside from working on it on Friday, I put it out of my mind until they left. No big deal; I don't generally work on weekends anyway, unless I have an awfully tight deadline. So how about I let up on myself, already?

I'm also a little agitated because I finally got around to discussing the parental visit with B. I have to be careful about doing that, because the things that irritate us about my parents are virtually identical, so it's possible for us to spiral with getting cranky about it. I need to have the discussion, because it helps me get my feelings into the proper files, as it were, but for some reason, this visit was both wonderful and unusually fraught. Mom, dear Mom, please understand that just because you think it needs to be fixed or changed doesn't mean that I have to fix or change it. It's my life, and I get to make the decisions.

And while we're at it, Mom, your comments to B about Adam had better not mean that you're going to try to go behind our backs and get V together with Adam and his family while she's visiting you. If you do, there will be trouble.

Hey, whatever. The rash has almost completely faded -- there is still a ring where my wedding ring goes, but even that is almost gone. We finally got the silly chuck roast into the crockpot, and I have almost finished being irritated with Mom's comment about having the kids as servants. (I keep telling myself that it wasn't meant as a criticism, wasn't meant as a criticism, wasn't meant as a criticism. Eventually, I may believe this.) We shopped. Cooking chuck roasts and exchanging broken sandals for new ones and buying vegetables and fruit and milk for the week were all partnered with B, which always makes me happy. And now the house smells of pot roast. Can't argue with potroast.

I can argue with the fact that I don't have a lot of spare money. I might pack up the laptop and go work in the coffee shop tomorrow, anyway, until I get all of the corrections made and can e-mail T that I'm done and can we get together to exchange the disk? but I should probably just do it at home.

We have blackberries. I ate some. Boy-howdy, are they good. Not as good as mangoes and yogurt, but then, I'm reluctant to eat mangoes again. I don't think they're what triggered off the rash -- when I'm honest with myself I think it's the med, much as I hope it isn't -- but I'm a little reluctant to experiment, since further rashes, regardless of source, mean we reduce the med and no more arguments, Zanne.

My younger brother is coming by for a day or two. He lost the Wyoming job over something stupid. His fault, but not him doing something stupid; just the way a company policy worked. It's a pity; they liked him and wanted to keep him on, but couldn't contradict their own policy. A job that he like, where the bosses like him, where he got along with his coworkers. A miracle, really. My younger brother is most definitely an individual, and "plays well with others" is not a good area on his report card. The funny part is that he used to get along with others, when he was small. But he's changed a lot.

He's coming down on Thursday, spending Friday with us, then leaving Saturday. After driving from Wyoming to Washington, then Washington to Minneapolis, then Minneapolis to us, it's a pity he can't spend more time with us, but this is literally the first I've heard from him (my mother warned me that he was thinking of coming by) and we already have a lot of plans for the weekend. Plans, I might add, which will not easily expand to cover another adult. So I encouraged him to go ahead and travel on Saturday, which he was considering anyway. That way, he won't be sitting around here with nothing to do, and can go to the cabin and hang around there, instead.

Family is complex. Damned shame that we have to actually relate to people, blood relatives or not. Life would be a lot more unpleasant without relationships, but there are times when I swear I will become an old curmudgeon who collects newspapers and chases kids off the lawn. I might keep B, though -- he'd probably enjoy being half of a pair of old curmudgeons.

maybe not this week, but soon i think i might have a movie day in my future.
when i took a year off between high school and college i used to spend whole days at the movies...when i lived in NYC also. of course those were the days when you could see a matinee for $4.50.
i've got a pile of dvds piled up to watch, and books to read, but a day at the movies has always been the best therapy for me.
i haven't been watching many movies, i don't have the concentration right now. that's always a bummer. i can't even concentrate on a film.
i guess that is about all i have in me for now.

My psychiatrist commented something to the tune of being sorry that we seem to be having a running series of trouble with my meds. I shrugged and said that I'd understood a long time ago that my disorder is what it is, and I might as well adjust myself to it because it's not going away.

That matter-of-fact assessment is only true if things actually work out. Right now, I'm having the occasional random rash. That's a possible side-effect from my favorite med. Up until now, it's been incredibly effective with no side-effects. It's the med that takes me from, "Well, geez, I guess I'm okay," to, "Hey, yeah, I'm *okay*." And to be blunt, it's the med that finally, FINALLY released me from depression-induced sexual boredom. Turned out that I've never been fully responsive in my life, probably because I started with the depression before I ever became active.

And you know what? That's not something that I want to give up.

But if the rashes continue, I'm going to have to go off my med, pray for stability (which I doubt) and probably go onto something else, which may or may not work as well as this med. Up until now, I've been reasonably free of side-effects, which makes it less likely that I'll go through what some of my friends have gone through, having to give up effective med after effective med because the side-effects were so destructive, but it took me so long to find this combination. I don't want to give it up.

my doctor has prescribed me a "time out", until the end of june.
time out.
no work, no school.
i had to withdraw from my spring biology class. at first, when all this started i was having huge anxiety about having to drop out. but i'm glad now. and anyhow, at this point i've missed 4 days and i'd never catch up. especially on the lab work. so it all went through officially on friday and now that it's done i feel ok about it.
not sure what to do about work. it's been a really bad year, in terms of my health. back in the fall i had to take off a month because of the mood swings and side effects from the endocort that was treating my crohn's. depression and breakdown last february (2006) and then mood swings october-december. then mixed moods with hypomania january-march. then stress, anxiety, irritability, headaches, crohn's flare and depression.
now i've crashed. and maybe this time out will finally get me right. i had to take off work in the fall, but still did school obviously. so i didn't really get the chance to heal and let my body catch up.
too much stress. i feel it wearing on me. i push too hard.
so they got me on a jump start 7 days of zoloft and 50 mg of seroquel at bedtime. the seroquel is making me feel really slow and a lot calmer in the evenings, but the mornings/afternoons are rough.
the zoloft makes me really buzzy and agitated. very jumpy. hyperalert.
i'm sleeping 10-13 hours in a night, which is what is supposed to be happening right now. the seroquel puts me out. some people get so drowsy they can't wake up at all the first week.
once i'm up i'm up, and then i'm buzzy and nervous. finally around dinner, i start to feel really calm. numb. it's sort of unnerving, cause it's a very flat feeling. i don't really like it, but at least i'm not crying anymore and it makes me sleep.
so i've got a couple of books on my agenda and a whole lot of nothing for the next few weeks.

So said a friend on Friday night as we shared a tallboy of Country Club malt liquor and shot the shit.

Well, she actually said that she thought that one's twenties should be spent fucking around, not tied down to responsibilities, obligations, serious work stuff or grad school or whatever.

These days, that sentiment resonates more and more with me. I never had a carefree twenties. I was a rather serious early 20-something-year-old, the one who took responsibility for the projects I was involved in, making sure that everything was running smoothly, that whatever glitches or obstacles arose were dealt with (usually by me), etc. The closest I got to fucking off was spending 3 months working on putting in a potable water system in a rural farming community in Latin America.

But I never went trainhopping or hitchhiking or aimlessly traveling to find myself or my destiny or hell, just to see the world. There was always some project or program depending on my presence, demanding that I be in town and dealing with it.

then I got pregnant and had a whole other set of responsibilities. One doesn't go trainhopping either physically with a newborn or with a newborn still dependent on her. One doesn't (or shouldn't, I suppose) abandon all responsibility for three months to travel cross-country and see everything that one has missed.

So I never had that and, maybe because I no longer have my twenties either, I find myself longing for that wild sense of freedom. To be on the road, with nothing but the sky above me and a long empty stretch of land in front of me. No little person to interrupt my revery or conversation to ask plaintively, "Will you play with me?"

Or to do something silly and punk and oh-so-fun sounding, like taking a road trip to Virginia to view the circus that Falwell's funeral is sure to be.

My friend, a childless 21-year-old, sent out a group e-mail proposing what she termed a whiskey-fueled road trip. She writes about the possibilities and, even though my 21-year-old self would have dismissed such a proposal as silly, proposterous, a waste of energy, my 30-year-old self is intrigued. And sad that I miss the chance to talk to crazies at road stops (although I still smart from my trip to NOLA, a decade ago, when a well-meaning white Southern grandfather seated next to me on the train asked, "So, what are you studying in school? How to make General Tso's chicken? No? You already know how to make it, right?"), run around with my camera and pull myself out of my photo slump, and just have an adventure.

But now, I cannot. Not because I am no longer in my twenties, but because I have built a life in which I not only have a small child (I wonder what she would make of such a road trip. I wonder if I would have been able to pull her out of school to take her. "Dear Board of Ed, Please excuse dd from school for the next 4 days. We are going to the funeral of Jerry Falwell and I think that this experience will be far more educational than anything that she can learn in the classroom this week.") but also a job with responsibilities that mean that I can't just fuck off on a moment's notice.

Well, I could, but it would be unfair for the people who are depending on me to actually do my job.

True, my job is dealing with artists. I'm not a doctor or a lawyer. I'm not saving lives. I'm not saving people from eviction, from fires, from death or long-term incarceration. I'm simply giving artists an opportunity to show their work and my job is to make sure things go as smoothly as possible and they get a good showing, not just a slapdash job. I can't resent them too much--I would want the same from any gallery or space showing my work.

Which reminds me, another thing that all these responsibilities (and my depression about having all of these responsibilities) seems to keep me from doing is that I haven't looked at any possible exhibition possibilities since before I left for Mexico. And maybe even long before that.

Well, it's not really the responsibilities themselves, but the way I'm handling (or not handling) all these responsibilities. Having work worries on my mind instead of having that empty canvass to paint on, to work with, after hours or early in the morning.

dd wants me to play some game with her. I asked her twice to let me just finish writing this. Twice she responded by asking me, "So, do you want to go first or should I?"

I just lost my temper. Not in a major way, but I snapped at her. "LET ME FINISH THIS! I already asked you twice and you still kept talking to me. So Let Me Finish This and then I'll listen to you. If you don't, then I'm going to yell at you and not play with you."

Now that I no longer have my twenties, I wish I'd used them better.

Transitions ahoy. Job stuff is shifting around, sell/buying house, and just because that's not enough it looks as though my Gramma is transitioning from this world to whatever comes next. Oy. Apparently her condition deteriorated some over night. I called my mom last night to see how she was doing & she & Gramma seemed to be doing ok. I guess that changed. I haven't called tonight. It's too late to call at the hospital now. I assume I would have heard if something dire had happened as my aunt would be taking Grampa down to see her in the morning & she watches M2 during the day. As far as I know, the usual plan is status quo. If I find out my aunt is taking M2 down to Oly with her, I might very well just take the day as well & blow off work. Dammit, one of the things we've been looking at in houses is "is this house big enough to have Thanksgiving at" with family... I still can, but it won't be the same without Gramma.

So I've been fighting off the weepies which is not how I tend to be. I'm not really weepy about any of the other transition stuff in my life, but Gramma's condition has my eyes going like leaky faucets. Blah.

So in other news, I read this article by Matt Haughey of metafilter about stuff he's learned about running communities. The one that hit me was actually a sub-point of one of his primary points. It was this one:

Be the best member of your site. Lead by example by participating as much as you can in your own community. This is a good way to attract other well-intentioned members of your site and also reminds everyone a real person is behind it all and building the best community they can for everyone. Speak honestly and be supportive of other members. When I think of all the communities I'm a part of, the ones I love are the ones I see the creators using everyday.

I'm consistently impressed with his participation, and Jessamyn's, and now Cortex's participation on the metafilter sites. I remember back to when we were moderating the hipmama sites (though we never really required moderating so much at mamaphonic) & it seemed like the mods really were lightening rods for attention & attacks, in addition to having to figure out a really hard line of how & what required moderation. Mefi is moderated, but I think I've learned a lot about community & just how much dissension & what kind of dissension a community can take. I think both mamaphonic & hipmama have done pretty spectacularly < knocking on wood > in terms of not requiring a/multiple nannies to watch over the discussions since we reopened hipmama... But I have to admit, I haven't been particularly an active participant. I'm here & I'm watching over stuff on both sites, but I don't pop in & participate as a regular jane. I think some of this is residual to what went down on hipmama when we decided to take it down. Some of it, I think, is that I've learned some of my limits better in terms of how much energy & time I have to give to actually engaging in online stuff. I'm online a ridiculous amount of time, but I don't get sucked into hot button discussions like I used to & I tend to think that's a good thing. I used to think that I needed to get better at presenting my points on matters, but I think really... in the end, I don't think I ever convinced anyone to change their mind, although at times I have changed my mind on some things I've discussed with folks (though nothing comes to mind at the moment). My life feels saner, somehow for not being so heavily involved in the day to day discussions (or any as I spend a ridiculous amount of time on the metafilter sites, but don't contribute substantially there either), although I am, behind the scenes, an active supporter of the hipmama communities. I don't know really where I'm going with this. One thing I've been trying to avoid to might be being visible & known as "the admin" who has to step into disagreeances. Folks are going to disagree with each other. Sometimes they'll flame out & leave the site in a huff. Or just rabble about. I don't want to step back into "moderating" that sort of stuff. And I don't like feeling conspicuous when I step into a conversation, like I'm setting out some sort of "how it should be"... That might just be my weird perception & not reflected in reality though. It can be hard too, to put oneself out there when you're already invested, so some of it is just self protective, I guess... But I guess I do feel like I maybe should be "around" more, which is why that particular point resonated with me. I dunno. I went through a phase last summer where I was trying to decide where I was with the whole producer thing. I think I reached the point where I felt like I had "paid my debt" to the site/s for carrying me through my girls' early years, and for the benefits I received in learning about web stuff & organizing info stuff that helped me through library school... I looked it in the eye & came to the conclusion that I really believe in what these communities are supporting & that I can, in good conscience continue to do what I'm doing, I just needed to shift my perspective from one of feeling like I had repaid a debt of gratitude to one of this is a cause I believe in & I'm proud to be a part of it (and y'all, of course, make it easy to be proud of!). Don't mind my rambling. I also got some weird email this week. Basically a "partnering" opportunity where I would get you guys to sign up & write for thier site & then I'd get an $8 kickback for each one of you that started writing on that site. It makes me a little queasy to think about, really. Like I'd pimp folks out? Um, what? If people like the site, why are you offering to pay *me*? Why don't you give them $8 for signing up? I dunno. It was one of the odder things that's come across my plate in a while. I don't think you can sell/buy community that way.

So anyway. Life has been wackily transitioning away & I have reached a plateau in my guitar stuff &... I guess maybe that's ok since so much else is going on, but I'm tired of some of what I'm doing & want to do something new... but I don't have the energy to sink into something new. I guess that just means there's one thing stable in my life, eh? I'll take it. Here's to an occasional plateau in a time of transition!

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

Well, it could be the prednisone, or it could be the benadryl, but whatever it is, I've spent most of the day without trying to scratch my face off or pluck out my eyeballs to stop the itching.

I hope it's the prednisone; that would mean a permanent change, whereas the benadryl is mostly for my comfort while the prednisone does its job.

And I'm tired of looking like an octopus tried to eat my face, so the sooner this goes away, the happier I'll be.

It's raining. V's only question was whether this means we won't have to water the garden tomorrow. Since she's the one who usually gets the job, it makes sense that she'd care. She's the one most interested in gardening, so we tend to give her gardening chores. She even likes weeding, if I'll come out and do it with her. I don't ask her to weed, though. Either she proposes it and asks me if I'll come join her, or I decide that I'm weeding and let her know that she can join me if she wants. She always wants.

The parental units are due the day after tomorrow. That means I should do some thinking about what goes where, because my father, bless him, is bringing me seedlings. All of the stuff that I started, but which is growing totally pathetically, he's bringing. Basil, peppers, eggplant, even an extra tomato plant. So I need to figure out locations so that we can plant everything.

I also need to buy bean towers. I keep saying that. I need to do it *now*. I need to plant the beans!

I like the rain, although I'm not really getting into it. I was up too late last night, and that always ruins the next day. Usually it's worth it, because I don't stay up unless there's something significant going on, but last night it was just stupidity.

M loaned P his Gameboy DS. If it weren't for M, my poor, poor children would never even get close to a Gameboy. When M gets the next fancier one, he gives the last one to P. This one, though, is only on loan. And all three of the kids are fascinated with it. Apparently, it has Nintendogs, which is, excuse me, the cat's pajamas. I need to remind them that the Gameboy counts as media time, and that they're limited to an hour a day. I might need to go back to setting a timer for them. They're perfectly capable of finding other things to do to amuse themselves, but with unlimited access to the computer, they'll spend unlimited time on it.

The members of B's group, along with significant others, are getting together at K's house tonight. I'm invited, but they're already there, and I can't get there until well after nine, because I have to pick up P from choir practice first. I don't know that I'll stay long. Two late nights in a row = badbadbad.

In a way, I'd like to go and have a wonderful time and sparkle and party and blah, blah, blah, but the fact of the matter is, groups, particularly groups of people I don't know, are hard for me. I've met K, and I like her very much, but everyone else is a complete mystery to me. In a way, when B called to say they were already done with class and ready to go over, I wish I'd just said forget it, I'm not going to bother. The original plan was for him to come by and pick me up, but the class lasted a lot less time than they expected. So I'm going to be a trailer, and I'm going to have to drive home in the dark and the rain, tired, and alone.

*sigh* I'm whining and feeling sorry for myself. I need something to change. I had a couple of really good days, and now I'm slumped back down. Nothing horrible, just not as good as I could be.

I'm having a not-very-drastic but horribly nuisancy allergic reaction to something. I have no idea what caused it. The left side of my face is welted from under my chin up to my eye, which is swollen up. The PA says we'll probably never know what caused it, and there isn't much reason to try, unless it happens again. For now, if I want to, I can load up on the benadryl (which isn't helping) or take steroids. I vote for the steroids. If it was just a matter of itchyness, I'd head for the Aveeno products, but with all the welting and swelling, I'm thinking something a little stronger is in order.

You know what really bothers me about this darn rash business? There is some on my hands, specifically including my left ring finger, and I've had to take off my wedding ring to make sure it doesn't get stuck on the swelling. It's just an inexpensive, plain gold band, but it means a lot.

V made "fry bread" -- simple pancakes, really -- and deliberately made them with whole wheat flour and no sweetner, so that I could have some. So I've been good today. Oatmeal and bacon for breakfast, zucchini/tomato/chicken salad and frybread for lunch. I need to do some thinking about dinner. I'm assuming for now that B will be home from work in time for me to take P to class and just stay there, leaving the girls home. If I have something ready to cook, or in process, B will probably take over, but if I leave him in the lurch with no plans, everyone will eat the equivalent of cold oatmeal for dinner.

I really want to go to P's class, not because I want to watch, although I might watch a little, but because that will be the better part of an hour when I have nothing much to do but proofread. Then I can do the same for P and V's judo class later in the evening. With what I already have done, that should take me a long way towards finishing up the Monster.

I'm already halfway through. What I'd really like is to finish up by dinnertime tomorrow so that I can send the disk back to T when B goes to class. Among other things, I'd enjoy impressing him. Come to think of it, though, that's not happening, because I'm already on my fourth page of queries, and it's going to take a while for T to get back to me with answers. So I guess I'm going to have to do the disk exchange dance with T, once I have the beast completely in hand. Pity it's too big to e-mail.

I forgot that, since tomorrow is the last night of class, and it's Big Presentation Time, B wouldn't be home this evening. He's spending the evening with his group, putting together a marketing proposal that is supposed to "wow" the instructor. B is irked, because the class isn't *about* marketing, at all. And apparently, T is really leaning on the marketing proposal as something he's going to use heavily in determining grades. B doesn't mind working his ass off, but working his ass off on something that is irrelevant to what he is supposed to be learning rubs him wrong.

Having looked carefully at the steroid dosage instruction, I can't start taking them until tomorrow, because the doses are spread throughout the day, and each day has different dosages. So I have to start in the morning on day one, which means about sixteen more hours before I can even start on the relief. I took a bigger dose of benadryl, because it will at least help the itching, even if it does nothing for the rash and swelling. And if I don't do something about the itching, I will tear my face off in an attempt to get it to stop.

You know what the biggest nuisance about it all is? It's making me feel bad. Emotionally. I've been feeling pretty good about myself recently, competent, sexy, intelligent, attractive. And now I have this *stuff* up the side of my face. I don't want to look at me; I have a hard time believing anyone else wants to, either. I've been in and out today, and no one has stared at me, so either it isn't that bad or people are polite, but I feel like my face is inside out.

F came and sat on my lap today, and commented that I "looked pretty, but not as pretty as you usually do, because of the allergy." Thinking back on it, I think she was trying to find a way to deal with the fact that I look all wrong, and a little scary. Not scary-dangerous, scary-unhealthy. I might tackle that with her tomorrow. Put aside my own ego -- it's amazing how a child's opinion of me can be so important -- and give her some support to process things.

It's more than a month later and I still miss Mexico.

Little details of everyday life make me remember little memories. Like riding in the band's van the day after my opening, heading to some smallish barrio 2 hours out of D.F. The van door was busted and the slightest pressure would make it slide open. Sometimes it would slide open while driving along the highway.

The person sitting in the shotgun seat had the task of holding onto the door so that it would stay (mostly) shut.

The person that day was the drummer. he wore a plastic mask, a bit more detailed than the one the Phantom of the Opera wore, but something along those lines. The driver also wore a plastic mask.

We had no idea how to get to this barrio and they stopped to ask two women standing at the bus stop.

"Excuse me. How do you get to...?" they asked.

The women took a step (or four) back and either said they didn't know or gave vague directions.

The driver realized that the beat-up van, the plastic masks, their ability to see that there were 10 people packed into the vehicle, made them leery of getting too close. He took off his mask and tried to ask again. But they had already moved away, towards the corner, behind the van.

There is no date for a future exhibition. Soon all of my musician friends will leave to tour Europe for the summer.

For now, I have a lit review book to puzzle out, an article to finish by August and now, a submission to write for the punk parenting zine in ARgentina (en castilyano!). And, of course, a crazy job with way too much going on for one month and no motivation to do any of it.

I'd rather be there.

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

Sleepy mama here. Happy mama. But part of that is that I just loaded up on white-flour pasta that I'm not supposed to have; I think I'll be happy when the last of the white-flour stuff is gone and I don't have to remember not to eat it. Stupid, stupid triglycerides.

The bosses have sent along more proofing, finally. I was supposed to have a monster of a document in late March, but it got hung up with the client, and they didn't have anything else in the pipeline. Boy, has that ever changed. I got a short document on Monday, which I promised to turn around in two days (and I did it with time to spare, too -- it was really short,) and they sent a big document, too big to e-mail, on disk via B, who takes classes with them. Then there is potentially a third, which will take precedent over the big one if it ever arrives, and possibly have a tight deadline.

T was teasing me that he hoped I wasn't planning to do anything, including sleep, this week. He thinks the big doc will take "at least a week." I blew through a quarter of it today -- I'm betting I can finish it in four days, five max, unless something happens to interrupt me. He has no idea how quickly I'm able to process this stuff, and I'm not rushing, either. That's fine with me. I don't want to work under tight deadlines unless it's really necessary. I get a little agitated under those conditions. It's okay on occasion, but I don't want it as a steady diet.

Everybody is watering my garden but me. B has basically taken on the responsibility for sending someone out to water, and has done it himself a few times, too. Part of the reason is that I've been sick since Saturday afternoon, and while it was only a cold, it hit me pretty hard and I've been slow in recovering. Part of the reason is that he knows that if I'm not feeling 100%, things get cut, and the garden is definitely on the cut list. But I'd be frustrated if it went down the tubes, so he's watering it.

I need to order my bean towers. I'm going to have to use my too-small, ratty-assed tomato cages for at least one more year, and if the tomatoes grow the way I expect them to this year, those cages will be completely overwhelmed, but I'm growing pole beans, and I have absolutely no way to support them without buying something. The bean towers are the best thing I've seen so far -- they actually look as though they'll stay up, and they're constructed to last more than one season -- so I'd rather buy them than do something cheap that will leave me looking again next year. Maybe next year I can get tomato towers. Heaven knows those cages are pathetic.

I also want a compost bin. I want something enclosed, with a lid, so that I can put in kitchen scraps without the local fauna coming by to dine. You'd think, living here in the "city" -- really it's more suburban than urban -- it wouldn't be an issue, but I've seen a fox and a raccoon, and I'm not sure what else is out there. Best to get something to keep the kitchen compost under control.

I know which bin I want to get. Trouble is, it costs money. It's not hysterically expensive, unlike compost tumblers, which start at about $250 and go straight up like a kite, but it's going to cost about $100 plus shipping, and I can't really force it out of the budget yet.

I did disassemble and properly reassemble, complete with wetting down the layers, the compost heap last summer, and when B broke it open this weekend, there was actually compost! Will wonders never cease? He's in the process of forking everything back over to where the old heap was, in order to turn it and maybe get the last couple of layers of the old heap to break down. I'm glad. I was beginning to think I was compost-incompetent.

Much to my disgust, none of the perennials I planted last year came back up. I'm not surprised by the lilies-of-the-valley; something chewed them right down to the ground last year before they ever had a chance to blossom, and it would have surprised me more if they had come up. I am disappointed in the primroses and the phlox, though. Primroses are usually pretty sturdy, and these ones were in a protected bed. B is pretty sure the phlox got stomped out of existence, inadvertently, by the kids. I'll have to try again, with plenty of compost dug into the holes next time. It won't be this year, though. This year, I'm going to plant bulbs in the fall and see what I get next spring.

I am feeling better and I am feeling worse. There is something about this spring that gives me hope but also puts into perspective just how bad things have been. When I was at my bottom; unable to get out of bed from the depression, I couldn't see myself objectively. Just getting through each day was an accomplishment even though I was sleeping through most of the day to get to the end of the day when I could go to sleep.
Now I am back at work after a month of that. The antidepressant has seemed to make inroads into the dark cave that was my internal landscape. I feel better but now I can see more clearly how bad off I was and how bad I still am. I get through the day but it is still a major struggle, punctuated by acute anxiety and fears. I am better but I am still not good. I feel like a boat that has taken on a tremendous amount of water. As I have gotten some of that water (depression) out of the boat it has simply refilled with more water (anxiety). I wonder if there is an end or if I will continue to bale water until I am too tired to do it anymore.

Regina
"Karma is a boomerang"

I have a wicked cold. Actually, it was miserable but not too wicked yesterday, but today it has me on the ropes. I don't think I've done much but sleep, except for lying on the recliner with my eyes closed, asleep in all but name.

Just at the moment, I'm having a reprieve. Analgesics and a nice, powerful anti-congestant for whatever nasty thing is going on in my sinuses. When I woke up from my first nap, this morning, I had sharp pain on the left side of my face, and I was really afraid I was starting a sinus infection. I don't think so any more, but wow, am I glad for over-the-counter cold meds.

It's been a little hard to eat. The best thing for me to eat, cold or no cold, is fruit and vegetables, lots and lots of fruit and vegetables. Protein and complex carbs can fit in there easily, but managing fruit and vegetables, especially when I don't feel well, is hard. Today I had a peach, which, for an out-of-season peach in Illinois, was darned good. (I dripped all over myself, which is one of the hallmarks of a good peach. If it isn't juicy, it isn't good.)

We have a couple of mangoes, so I think I'll see if I can talk B into peeling one and blending it up with some plain yogurt. I love fruit blended with yogurt, but I almost never get smoothies. Most of them have sugar added; can't have that.

We do have apples, but I get tired of cutting them into thin little slices so that I can eat them without trashing my braces, and frankly, apples get boring pretty quickly anyway. There just isn't much to an apple. No matter how you slice it.

The weather wasn't bad yesterday. For a while it looked as though it was going to rain, but it didn't. B spent a bunch of time mulching everything in site. We got the girls started weeding the front bed, but it's a little too big for them to reach into easily. If I had it to do over again, I would either have made it only three feet wide, instead of four, or cut it into two or three smaller beds. As B says, we could always rip it apart, recut the boards, and do it again, but as I pointed out, that would have to be in our copious spare time.

The soil in the bed is also a little too hard for the girls to manage. The soil in the garden beds has been there longer, and has had organic matter worked into it; the front flower bed mostly hasn't. They had trouble getting the weeds out at all. And I think they had some trouble with the fact that, because I am sick, I was sitting in a chair by them, supervising, instead of getting in there and helping. So they didn't make much progress.

B finally spaded the garden, which isn't as effective as weeding it, but which will do. Then he hauled compost from the heap and mixed it in. This year, since we finally built the heap correctly, we finally have usable compost! Yay!

After that, I pulled myself together long enough to go out and pick flowers with B. Middlest had seen some beautiful wine-red petunias with frothy white borders, so we looked for those, but they only had them in pots, not flats. Instead, we bought some purple-pink petunias (pity they didn't have the blue-purple ones we bought last year,) impatiens in three colors, and two, no, three, colors of marigold. Then we planted the front bed very densely, more densely than the labels on the flats called for. I've planted at the called-for density in the past, and ended up with lousy coverage.

I didn't actually plant more than a couple of seedlings. I spaced them where I wanted them planted, and then B and V and F dug them in. I would have needed help, anyway -- we planted a dozen dozen. That is a lot of plants.

Now the garden needs to be watered. Someone else is going to have to do it. I'm not running around in the cool air with a watering can and a hose that leaks. Stupid hose.

It used to be that my running response to, "What do you want for Mother's Day?" was, "Take every child you can find the hell away and leave me alone."

It wasn't about not liking my children, or about not wanting to be around them. I really enjoy spending the large majority of my time with the kids. I wouldn't swap my job homeschooling for anything. But that doesn't mean I want to do it twenty-four/seven.

Recently, I'm more reluctant to be alone. And I want to be pampered a bit. Breakfast in bed is not what I'm after -- for a long time, breakfast in bed meant that I'd been sleeping too late and V was looking for a way to motivate me to get me out of bed. And I don't want cards or gifts (although anyone who wants to get me flowers is welcome to.) I just want time to do relaxed things with B and the kids.

If I recall correctly, last year we went out to lunch, and I was fine until about halfway through, when I started to get edgy. That brings back icky memories; the first week we moved here, we ate out for just about every meal, because we didn't have the kitchen unpacked. I would race through the meal, and then I would hardly be able to sit still while everyone else finished. I wasn't trying to eat fast; I just couldn't help it.

So after lunch, I said that we could do anything we wanted, as long as it was outside and understood that I was not going to participate unless I wanted to. The family elected to go fishing. I packed along a chair and the digital camera, and took some terrible photos. But it chased the edgy feeling away, and I was fine for the rest of the day.

This year, I'm encouraging the kids to do something for their grandmothers. I don't know what P will do; the girls are making stuff in Sculpy. I need to get them to decide that they're done so that I can bake it. After that it's not my problem; B will take it to work and package it and mail it there. B and I should at least get cards. He wants to do something else for his mother; I'm feeling cold-hearted and figure that my mother will be completely startled just to get a card from me; anything else and she will die of shock.

Once, before we had kids, B and I joined his sister and her family to go out for brunch on Mother's Day. There was a local restaurant, a huge place, that had this incredible, complex buffet brunch. All you can eat steamed shrimp is what I remember. I ate shrimp until I couldn't move. I wouldn't mind doing that again; unfortunately, that place is two states away from us, and I don't know if it is even still open. P is fourteen; that was a long time ago.

I pulled out a photo album today. I like to do that occasionally. We're terrible about filing photos, but I like to look at the ones we do have organized. We have some photos of V, all wrapped up in her special red and black and white baby quilt, the one I'm pulling apart and repairing now. Some great photos of her being held by my mother, with P leaning up against them with the biggest Big Brother Smile you could imagine. It's uncanny how much he looks like my brother did at that age.

We also have one of my favorite photos in there. P's second Mother's Day. We spent it at my parents' house. P could walk as long as he had something to hold onto, so B gave him the bag for my present and held his other hand so that he could toddle across the floor to me. We have a photograph of that. He looks so serious.

Later that day, he sat on the floor and then pushed himself up into a standing position. He'd never done that without something to hold onto before. He pushed himself up, and then took three or four steps before falling over again. I called B and said, "Look." Sure enough, in a few minutes he did it again.

I want to be spoiled this Mother's Day. Nothing like having P take his first steps will happen -- that's the kind of special you only get once or twice in your life -- but I want something special to happen.

April snow falls bring May rain showers. It's been raining so much that you can't take a step without squishing an earth worm.
Harper brought a small bucket of worms to school for "show and share," she must have at least 20 worms in dirt.
All she cares about these past few days, is salvaging the poor slimy wrigglers. To bad we aren't going fishing, or fish...at all. We'd be so set.
Yesterday, which was actually now technically Wednesday, I was low low low. Sadness. But I've been trying to turn my mood swings to art lately, so I went out on the roof deck and lay in the rain and snapped off a few self-portraits.
My friend Tom jokes they are photos for "the solo album." They're for the coffee table book I say.
In any case, I'm so pleased with the photos. Photography has really been turning my crank lately. It clears my head, and makes me see. I have to take the time to look around me and take it in.
Focus. Frame. Snap.
Classes have ended, I think I mentioned that the other day. I did really well this year. Out of 10 classes the lowest grade I got was one measly B+...which I am chalking up to an A-, since my final paper garnered me a hybrid A-/B+...and it was worth 40%. That's not too shabby. So another year under my belt. Mixed feelings.
I will never do 5 classes in one semester again. It was too much. Fall seemed ok, but in retrospect one class was a directed reading and another was a 100-level intro class (symbolic logic). This semester I took all upper level classes. It was rough. I don't even really feel like I pulled my weight. I skipped too many classes. Slacked on readings, and generally felt down on myself. Especially about my writing skills (which have greatly improved, if I don't say so myself).
I suppose in many ways this has been an ultimate year. I survived, even when I didn't believe I could. It was so gut wrenchingly brutal at times. A lot of shit has happened this year, outside of school and maybe that is why I did so well. I had something with a clear, linear goal to work towards, while floundering all other aspects of my life.
On the other hand, since January, I have actually made friends. I mean I have friends. I have wonderful friends. I have the best friends anyone could ever want. But I also made new friends...friends from school. Friends who live in my city. Friends who I see daily, and that has really helped to pull me through.
I have mixed feelings about spring now. I got a 9 day break (that ends on Monday morning) and then, the dreaded Biology 108. I'll pass. I'll be fine. But I just don't care, I don't want to do it, I don't want to take six weeks of biology.
But then, when it's all over, Jared and I are going to Montreal ALONE for one whole week! We've never travelled together without Harper, since she was born that is. I'm very excited! I am dying to get Jared hooked on Montreal, because I desperately want to go to Concordia for grad school. I need to start applying in the fall. I need to go east. I need to. It's what I want.
And damn it, I WILL get in!
I'm all registered for next year's classes also. I'm excited about Jerry's Third World Cinema class and Contemporary American Political Documentary film (post-Roger and Me to present day, with a theoretical bent on Debord...I've been dying for someone to teach Debord for two years now!). I've got a few more required Women's Studies classes to do, Feminist research and methodologies and two 400-level WST courses. So, I'm registered for Mebbie's Feminism and Eating Disorders class...I like Susan Bordo so it will be good.
Winter semester I'm taking Jerry's Quebecois Cinema class and Elena's Feminist Avant-Garde film (for cross listed WST credit). I think I may be forgetting something else, besides the full year french reading comprehension class...
It's looking good, even though Tap is leaving.
It'll be good.

Come to think of it, May flowers are just what I need. Thank you, Susan.

The weather has been nice. We all got out and worked like crazy on the yard and garden on Sunday, as a result of which an awful lot of things are weed-matted and mulched (aggh! we buy soil and mulch! this is so different from living on a big plot with its own mulch pile and compost pile and enough grass to mulch the entire big garden four times over!) and most of the vegetable garden is current.

I think the thing I'm most pleased about is the tomatoes and the mint. I could have gotten everything out two weeks sooner, but at least the 'maters are out, all cozy in their Wall O'Waters, and we should have mint for iced tea and tabbouleh this summer. Now if only I can get parsley and basil to grow, I'll be a happy mama.

I promised V a couple of months ago that when the weather got warmer I'd get out my roller blades and learn to skate again. I went out for the second time today. The first time, I wasn't sure I could even get moving -- it took me a while to get my legs to remember how to push off on roller blades. And I used to be such an instinctive skater! Then I basically toddled three times around the cul-de-sac, making short little pushes and pausing frequently to give my legs a break.

Today, I made it around four times. That means I hurt a bit more -- my calves still ache a bit -- but it felt better. I'm actually remembering how to stroke, and how to evenly transfer my weight from one foot to the other without having to pause and think through every step. V told me that I was looking better, but that I "look a lot like a flounder."

She teased me a bit about being a mommy flounder, and suggested that we nickname my car "the Floundermobile." I told her to remind me to cut her allowance. She just laughed -- she doesn't get an allowance. She earns her money by doing chores.

I've been doing the weird dread/guilt thing on and off, still, but it eases more and more every day. I do best when I have lots to do -- nothing like a distraction. I don't have the time to feel bad when I'm planting peas or remembering how to skate.

I do sometimes have it, and then it eases off into something more like melancholy instead of sticking around to make me miserable. That's actually a pretty good feeling, the times it eases that way. My psychiatrist and I think that I haven't had a straight depression in a long time, if I ever did. It's been depression mixed with a little manic agitation. Dear gods, it's a bad feeling. The times when the agitation lets go but doesn't just return me to neutral, leaving me melancholy, might be short periods of very minor depression. Or they're just melancholy. Whatever that is -- I really don't think it's depression

Anyway, whatever is going on in my head, it's not bad. Not bad at all.

It's Thursday, which means I'm almost done with the week's running around. Judo class, skate show rehearsal, and P's three-hour Thursday night kyuki-do/CIT marathon, and then we're done until Monday. How the hell did we ever manage to get into a spot where he's out until 9:30 almost every night of the week? I love the dedication he has to the martial arts, but sometimes the dedication required from the parent is a little overwhelming.

Tomorrow is special. The stuff our homeschool group has been arranging has been mostly for younger kids, say, under ten. Quite a few of them are things older kids might be interested in, but most of the older kids are interested in stuff that the younger kids aren't. There has been some griping that there is nothing for the older kids. This is stupid; arranging events and field trips is strictly on a volunteer basis -- it's nobody in specific's job. So far, the people who have exerted themselves all have children under eight, so why would they be organizing events exclusively for tweens and teens? None of the complaining adults have volunteered to do any organizing. Idiots.

So I set a date and invited any "tween" -- kids between ten and twelve -- to come over to our house for a game day. Board games, pizza, and maybe some talk about things they'd like to do. This is mostly for V's sake. She'd like to know more kids her age. She's ten. And there are five kids, potentially six, coming.

Tomorrow is the big day. I have to admit I've done a certain amount of twittering and worrying over it. First off, no one replied to my first invitation. I invited about a month ahead so that people could plan, and maybe let me know if another day would be better if there were conflicts. And no one replied.

No. One. Not one person. I was pretty ticked off, after all the griping.

I sent out another invite about a week and a half ago, for anyone who hadn't been paying attention the first time, and this time I got responses. So we're pizza and gaming. I'll be interested to see what the kids are like; two of them are already friends of V's, a third I know reasonably well, but the other three are a mystery. I think all of them are boys, which in a way is a pity, but V is capable of making friends with boys, and already has some close girl friends.

The thing that really had me twittering, though, was pretty minor. I planned pizza before checking around to see if one of the local pizza places would deliver in the afternoon. Obviously I can't just go off and pick up pizza. I could do it if it were just one friend -- P can sit. But no way am I leaving him in charge of six or seven tweens, especially not without parents' permission. So I twittered for a while before calling our favorite place. It's going to be a Friday, and of course they deliver on Friday afternoons. Pizza covered. Now all I have to do is buy some juice (I think I'll skip the soda) and let V make some lemonade, and we're set.

The kids will have a ball. I hope I don't twitter myself into oblivion. And if it works, maybe we'll do something similar for the teens.

my semester of hell is done, and i got by with only one B+...which i'm chalking up to an A-...cause hell why not? it was modern film theory, and on my final essay i got a hybrid A-/B+. bo it's a high B+ anyhow.
blah blah. what i mean to say is: how did i manage to get through all that and bring my GPA up .4 from last year? grades make no sense to me. i think profs should give comments and come up with a system that shows where you sit in the class, and your own personal improvement in quality of work...i suppose that is the grading system. but i just want to learn and get better and better.
cause i know i can.
so this is my week of "break" before i begin biology 108: intro to cell diversity. BAH.
i spent a few days immersed watching HBO's "Big Love" and today i moved onto "the king" with gael garcia bernal. (be still my THROBBING heart).
it's been a downer week of sorts. mood swings like the wind shifting direction.
waking up to daycare subsidy red tape messes makes me sob.
and i just want to get out of this god damned city.
june is montreal. june will be good. i hope.
i'll know at the end of may about telluride and it's making me so nervous. what if i don't get in? i'll go anyways, like celia did last year. but i think it is exactly the break i need so desperately.
i'm too tired to even read. i can't concentrate.
my writing has gone to shit. i'm not hungry. lethargic. depressed. tired. weepy. and i dunno why.
i just wanna be adored.

an artist I once dated, briefly, sent me a MayDay card via e-mail. There is a woman dancing on the card, the same figure he asked me to model for way back when. Seeing it brought a smile to my face.

Skipped out of work early yesterday to go to the immigrants rights MayDay march. The boss was none-too-pleased. "Did you get all your work done? Well, uh, um..."

I should have said, "It's MayDay. Be glad that I came into work at all," but instead I said, "Yeah. All done. I scheduled my day so I could get everything done before I left."

Got there and was amazed at how much smaller this year's march was. I had read earlier that day that, in 2006, after the huge immigrants rights rallies and marches, there had been raids and sweeps, making people more afraid to come out publicly. And this year there wasn't the build-up leading to MayDay like there was last year.

(Today on the news, instead of reporting on the march, NPR repeatedly announced that the police arrested 20-something immigrants in NYC for sexual crimes against children. All had previous records of child molestation, assault, etc. While I don't doubt that this might indeed be the case, it seems too coincidental that this raid--and the publicity given to it--happened at the same time as the immigrants rights' march.)

Last year the park had been packed. I had stood outside and watched wave after wave after wave of people marching past. I had stood on Broadway at some point and looked down the street and seen block after block after block jampacked, demonstrators as far as the eye could see in either direction.

What happened?

Of course, there were good things too. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra came out and there was a small white punk/activist contingent that came out as well. The orchestra struck up songs and played and, even though they weren't as good as I remembered them being during the RNC, the Mexican and latin american folks marching alongside them seemed to enjoy their support (and spirits) greatly and, each time a song ended, shouted, "Otra! Otra! Otra!" until the band started up again. The immigrants marching alongside, directly in front and directly behind the band jumped and danced, their banners and signs bobbing up and down to the music.

One little Latina girl, wearing pig tails, danced in the center of the band as they played, holding her mother's hand. The band had stopped near AStor Place--the entire march had stopped and so the band played and the dancers did a little show for the people standing around.

A few blocks away, a kid wearing a Mexican wrestling mask had been jumped by three cops, beaten and then arrested. For wearing a mask.

Note: most of the white anarco-punk kids with the orchestra were wearing bandannas to half-cover their faces. NO ONE said anything to them, let alone jumped, beat or arrested them. And they actually *were* violating the mask law (a law on the books from when the Klan used to parade through NYC. The law states that it is illegal for 3 or more people to parade around wearing masks).

When I tired of the orchestra's antics, I tried to weave my way up front. I saw that there was a stand-off with the police, the police shoving people, forming a line around a group of immigrants, trying to separate people and move them along. A white-shirt with a bullhorn kept shouting, "Keep moving along. Thank you for your cooperation. We need to clear the sidewalks. People are trying to go home from work. Thank you for your cooperation."

One woman cop, a tall white female cop with glasses with the name Rudlick on her badge, simply pushed people. Hard. "Move on, move on," she said.

One woman turned and said, "You don't have to push me."

"Then move!" the cop retorted, pushing her again.

Unable to wiggle away from her and not quite willing to get arrested, I moved along with the crowd until I reached the corner. Then I doubled back, walking along the sidewalk to the spot where the police had, a few minutes ago, been trying to disperse all witnesses.

The original crowd had moved on and the wave that followed marched along, oblivious to the fact that something had just happened. I saw a legal observer talking with a group of young Mexican men, presumably the boy's friends. I looked around, saw that I could do nothing, and re-joined the march, trudging along.

Maybe it was this that colored my impressions the rest of the afternoon and evening. I remembered that, during the Still we Rise! march during the RNC, the crowd had surrounded the cops and refused to budge until they let go the kids they'd grabbed for chalking on the sidewalk.

This time, with people's statuses uncertain, the ante couldn't be upped, at least not by our side. Not a single person from the march wanted to leave that kid in police custody, but at the same time, the uncertainty about people's legal statuses, the fact that there were so many kids and grandmas, the fact that the cops were perfectly willing to up the ante and shove and push and hell, probably arrest anyone once they decided they had enough, forced the march to move on, to leave that kid behind.

This time I didn't feel the same elation, that same inspiration and re-energizing that I did last year after each of the marches. I think it was that feeling of utter helplessness. True, I could have stayed. I could have used my citizenship privileges, something that I'm not sure how many others had, to try to do something. But what could I have done? I didn't even see the kid--had he been taken away already or had he been whisked into the underground parking garage that the cops had seemed so eager to clear people away from?

Later, I told others what had happened and one of my friends, who had not only NOT seen the incident but didn't even know about it until I saw her later, decided she would go to the precinct to do jail solidarity. I was exhausted, having gone on the whole march, and I was deflated. Perhaps it would have been good for my spirits to go to the precinct as well, to see what could be done, to at least not feel so absurdly fucking helpless.

At the same time, the precinct seemed far. Two train rides and a walk and my legs were complaining from all the walking I'd already done that afternoon.

So I didn't go. Now I should make calls and try to find the person who told me what had happened, ask if she knows that the National Lawyers Guild is looking for witnesses.

Then maybe I should go get food. And more coffee.