I'm having stress over friends. I wouldn't change it -- they're good friends, and the stress isn't because of our friendships, but it's sure hard to watch them go through hard stuff.

One of them has a pretty severe chronic illness. For a long time, it was just ("just"!!) severe pain, really vicious migraines and so forth. But in the last year, it's been neurological symptoms, as well. Shakyness, shooting pains in her arms and legs, waking up to find that her left leg won't support her. First she got a cane. She was pretty lighthearted about that, and bought some pretty cool canes. But now the symptoms are getting worse, the doctors have no fucking idea what's causing the problems, and she's pretty much resigned herself to needing a wheelchair.

She has two small children, one of whom is high-functioning autistic. It's hard for her to care for them, although at least they're both potty-trained -- that's been a recent and highly welcome development. But as if her medical problems weren't enough, they've had enough problems with her autistic child's school that they are planning to homeschool next year. I can't imagine. I mean, I know it can be done -- I homeschooled right through some truly terrible years of bipolar disorder -- but I can't imagine. If she wants it, she'll do it.

But right now, she just wants a break. She wants one lousy day without pain. She wants to avoid the wheelchair. She wants a diagnosis and some treatment that works. It seems as though, every time she turns around, something else is going wrong, and she just wants it to stop.

She's left messages a couple of times recently. I've called back, but I keep getting her voicemail. I don't know whether my timing is consistently awful, or I have an old number (I don't think so, since I get her voicemail,) or what. I want to talk to her. She can spill to me without me getting tired of hearing it. I don't judge. When she says she can't do something, or she's overwhelmed by something, I take her at her word. She needs people to talk to. Since she can't drive, most of the time, and she lives out in the suburbs, she's pretty isolated. She has good neighbors, but she needs more. I try to be an ear for her.

Another friend just kicked out her husband. About a week ago, he told her that, while he loved her like family, he didn't think he was "in love" with her, whatever that means. As a matter of fact, he wasn't sure he'd ever been in love with her. That was a real blow -- he hadn't given her any indication that there was anything wrong -- but she took it as well as she could and supported him in getting help with his running depression. And she settled herself down to wait.

Apparently, he spent considerable time with another woman last weekend. It all sounds pretty harmless -- he was helping her buy and install a computer -- but he lied about it. For whatever reason, he decided that it was important to keep it from my friend. That was a mistake. She's willing to support him while he sorts out his issues, but she's not willing to sit around and take it if he's going to lie to her. Everything may have been perfectly harmless, but if she can't trust him ... So she kicked him out. And while she's not ruling out the possibility that he'll sort himself out and they'll get back together again, she's not making any assumptions, either.

Compared to this, my little moments of agitation are nothing. Not that I've been particularly upset about them, but this sure gives me some perspective. Unwanted perspective, if you want the truth. I don't mind having my troubles put in perspective, but I hate it when I get the perspective via someone else's troubles.

And of course, both of them are too far away for me to do much except for sympathizing. One of them really only needs tea and sympathy, and an ear and maybe a shoulder, but the other one could seriously use someone coming in and cleaning up her kitchen and scrubbing the bathroom for her. It figures. I'm well enough to help out a friend, and I have a friend who needs it, and I'm in the wrong place.

P comes home from Italy today. The kids haven't been in contact with their parents for the whole trip, so I have no idea of what his experiences and impressions have been. I'm hoping that I don't just plain forget to go pick him up! In only a week, I've gotten used to the idea that I don't have to drop him off or pick him up from classes, and I'm afraid that I won't notice when it's time to pick him up.

When he gets home, he's going to have to unpack immediately, and throw everything in the wash. There isn't much other wash to do, but we're leaving on Thursday for Pennsylvania, and if he wants to have clothes, he's going to have to do some wash.

Need to whine. M1 has chicken pox. I'm kind of afraid *I* might have chicken pox, but I think they might be sympathy bug bites. I've already had chicken pox. So to recap my life: taking on major new big thing at work, server all the hipmama stuff is on migrating to new server, trying to sell this house & buy a new house, Gramma just passed away... I'm missing something. Right, the chicken pox. There's something else too.

And I discovered M1 had the chicken pox, just about five classic pock lesions, while she was in the tub with her sister. So in about two weeks, just as M1 finishes healing, M2 should bust out in spots. Argledy-bargledy. I guess at least it will be over then. Just at a time when I need to be physically present at work for some fairly critical app releases. Blah.

So I have to remember tomorrow to put a different message on the answering machine -- "hi, you've reached us. Please feel free to stop by any time today between [blah & blah], but please let your clients know we do have an active case of chicken pox in the house & to take appropriate precautions if they are individuals to whom this presents a risk." Good times.

I'm tired. Last night was the first night I was trying to get back into the routine of exercise & practicing guitar, but M1 was up not feeling well & it seems that nights are going to be rough for her for a while. Poor baby.

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

Kid off to Italy. I am reminding myself that this is not the first time that he is spending extended time with someone who is not close family, but then I remember that, when he did spend time with someone who was not family, it was a close and trusted friend. This is not like that.

No, this is a tour group, nearly thirty teenagers with only a few (like six or seven) adults to keep track of them. He's one of a bunch. There is no adult whose primary mission is to keep track of him. There is no one to supervise his packing, no one to make sure he checks his concert clothes early enough to deal with wrinkles, no one to obsessively check to see if he has his passport.

It's not exactly total independence, but it's a step.

Part of me worries that something will happen to him; part of me worries that he should have more independence than this trip will give him, that we are not encouraging independence enough.

Bad enough that the world spends so much of its time second-guessing me, why do I sit here and have these internal, eternal debates with myself?

He'll be fine. He'll be fine now, in Italy, and he'll be fine later, when he's fully independent. He isn't going to be perfect, but that's fine, too.

Of course, if I'm honest, the real question is, "Will I be fine?" I'm agitated today, partly because of the car accident, partly because of the Italy trip, partly because of the family trip to Pennsylvania two days after he gets home, partly because of the business trip that starts the day after we get home from Pennsylvania. Or more accurately, any one of these would be stressful, but I'm mixing them all up into a fine froth, and me with them.

One of the things that has me stirred up is that, with P in Italy, it will be hard to find a sitter for F and V, and B and I really need to spend some time together. It's been about two weeks, and we won't get any time in Pennsylvania, most likely, and we won't get any time while he's away. Well, maybe we'll get some time in PA, if A takes the kids to visit friends on Friday, but that isn't certain and I don't want to depend on it. Besides, I'm feeling squirrely *now*.

F said an interesting thing the other day. She said that when P is babysitting, he's in charge; when I'm home, I'm in charge; and when Daddy gets home, he's in charge and I'm second in command. I know exactly where she's picked up that impression. For years, while I was sick, I was unable to make even small decisions, and I deferred practically everything to B. B handled the money, B did most of the driving, and while I made decisions about where we wanted to go and what we would do once we got there, I always gave my answer in light of B asking me the question. Some of that still lingers.

What to do? I remember assuming that Dad was in charge of some things, and Mom was in charge of others. A lot of that division was down gender lines (the day I called home from school, sick with a headache, and Dad came to pick me up -- he worked from home -- you could have knocked me over with a feather) but plenty of it wasn't. I did end up with the impression that Dad was in ultimate control of the household, which must have been, in a large part, a cultural thing, because it's not hard to see who's in charge of that marriage these days -- nobody. The same as it's always been. Decision making is by concensus or by battle to the death, depending.

I remember my mother commenting about a friend of mine who was deeply troubled, with an alcoholic mother. She observed that because my friend was afraid to straight out ask for anything, she manipulated to get what she wanted. She was right. I sometimes see myself in that description, although in general my manipulations are to get out of doing something that I find stressful. Either way, it's not a comfortable thing to look at myself honestly and realize that "manipulative" is part of an accurate description.

I drove B to work yesterday and today. Yesterday I hinted around and managed him for a cup of coffee for me. (No money in my budget, so it has to come out of his.) Today, I just said straight out, "I'd like a cup of coffee." It's only a cup of coffee, but I have to admit that day two is better than day one.

I'm down.

Not horrible, but definitely down.

I have been thinking on and off that I might do better if I can do something creative ... but I can't think of anything. I mean, I could do something crafty, or cook something, but I'm looking for the kind of thing that comes out of my core. Craft and cooking are excellent, but they don't touch that core place.

Writing certainly can, but I've been a little reluctant to write at all. Often times, when I feel like this, I do the written equivalent of running off at the mouth. I have a special journal just for running off at the mouth, and I don't feel like using it.

I'm thinking that it would be fun to have a zillion different papers and scraps of cloth and stick things together. Or to paint in water colors. Not anything concrete. Just paint. Water color pencils, since that what's I have.

I want to take a painting class so that I can learn technique. Not watercolor. I've done that. Water color is hard to control, and once it's there, it's there. You can't erase it, you can't paint over it, you're stuck. So I want to learn how to handle acrylic.

Or maybe I just don't take myself seriously since I don't paint. Question: will I take myself seriously if I do paint? More to the point, once I can paint, will I paint?

I'm down. I believe I've said that already.

I missed a night of sleep because I forgot to take my meds Saturday night. I took my Saturday night meds, sans sleeping med, at four-thirty in the morning. Then I forgot to take my morning meds when I actually got up. So I'm wondering whether I've knocked myself off balance a bit.

On the other hand, I've been feeling off balance for a couple of days, and I don't know why. Physically, just not right. If the body goes, the brain eventually goes with it, and sooner rather than later, for me.

When the work they send me is small, I get a small check, but on the other hand, I can turn it around in jig time and get it off of my laptop. The latest was just a teeny-tiny thing, and they wanted it by Sunday. I don't like to work on the weekend, so I whipped it off in two days, including queries. And they'll send the check for that one -- and the last one, which got lost in the shuffle, and was very. big. -- on Monday.

I need the stupid check. The neighbor and I backed out of our respective driveways into each other yesterday, and I'm going to have to pay a $250 deductible. That's $200 I won't have for meds, and $50 I can't save for the Seattle trip. Seattle can wait until I've made enough to go, but the money for meds is going to have to come from somewhere. Goodbye, savings. Not all of it, of course -- I squirrel away money every chance I get -- but enough of it that it's going to hurt.

At least I acted like an adult after the accident, instead of dumping everything onto B.

I'm trying not to be anxious about meds. Because of the way my mail-order pharm handles expired scrips, I'm going to have to really concentrate to make sure I get what I need in time to fill it. And somebody, either the doctor's office or the pharm, screwed up one of my prescriptions. The doctor's office says they gave me three refills; the pharm says they gave me none. Theoretically the pharm is mailing me a copy of the prescription, but it hasn't shown up yet. I need to act like an adult again and call them to see where it is. Given the pharm's long-standing habit of losing paperwork, I'm guessing it never went out.

I'd use a different mail-order pharm, but this is the one run by our insurance company, so it's a lot cheaper. Given how expensive my meds are, every little bit helps.

I need to transplant the basil. I have given up on the beans; what with the accident and the deductible, I can't afford bean towers, so planting beans will have to wait until next year. The front bed looks marvelous, but I should dead-head the marigolds.

Huh. I think I made a mistake on the job. I had an item I wanted to go back and search to make sure it was consistent, and I didn't do it. Oh, well. Hopefully the consultant who wrote it was feeling consistent that day. I think I caught all the inconsistencies.

I'm reading a lot. Some of it is re-reads, because I'm busy reading Mercedes Lackey, which means some new and some old. Pretty much none of it is particularly challenging. A friend gave me a reading list of black feminists, warning me that a lot of it is out of print and I'll have to try libraries and out-of-print places, so maybe I'll get started on that. Heaven knows that my knowledge of mainstream feminist theory is spotty as hell; it's only in the last couple of years that I have discovered how much mainstream feminists have left out.

Well, not very much. Didn't get to work till 2 pm and my mind just isn't into anything.

Bought film developer. Made a dozen more fliers for the benefit auction next Friday. Talked to a friend about the Social Forum and she suggested that I e-mail the contact person for the Kids' Social Forum to find out how many spaces are left on their first-come/first-serve basis since I missed the pre-registration. She also offered to lend me her MP3 player and is going to ask her friend, who has radio experience, about the best way to record a phone interview. AND she's going to find out if there's extra space on the Picture the Homeless bus for me and dd if our first transport option falls through.

So, taking her advice, I e-mailed the Kids' Social Forum coordinator and also asked if she would either write something or let me interview her about the Kids' Social Forum AFTER it's all over.

Then I e-mailed my interviewee about setting up a time to call her and talk.

Now I have to try to track down the radio host who's supposed to interview me and the auction organizer on Saturday morning. The number I have for her doesn't work and she hasn't reponded to my e-mail.

Maybe I'll see about getting some articles out via ILL in the ten minutes left I have here.

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

Well, so the endoscopy and the colonoscopy are done. Gastritis and a polyp that I will have to wait a week for the biopsy result for. That was the doctors diagnosis.
Preparing for the colonsocopy was like something out of a horror movie. I felt like a 90 year old woman. My anxiety was mixed with some of the most severe discomfort I can describe. My mind ran in circles as I headed back and forth to the bathroom every 10 minutes. A day of not eating preceded by days of worst case scenarios floating through my mind. In the end they knocked me out for the procedures so I have little memory of them at all - just waking up in the recovery room with a terrible case of gas and tubes coming from my nose and arm.
What is it about my health that sends me reeling?
I know it must have something to do with mortality. Am I afraid to die? I asked my therapist that question. I asked her if she was afraid of death. She said she was but she wasn't obsessed with it like I was. I guess there in lies the difference. I am obsessed with it though I can't say why. Physical illness seems synonymous with death so I monitor every little symptom as if it were a clue to what is to come.
Anxiety. My mind works overtime creating frightening scenarios that seem to exist only to freak me out. Why has my emotions turned on me? Why can't I be afraid but not obsessed? Why must I be afraid at all.
I look at my children and see time passing. It is amazing how vivid it is in them. I had a fantasy of getting pregnant again. In my fantasy life and death couldn't coexist so somehow the miracle of gestation would displace, at least for a time, the horror of mortality that I battle with.
But that is just a fantasy. No more babymaking for me. I have entered the era of colonoscopies and endoscopies and watching my children begin to reach me in height.

Regina
"Karma is a boomerang"

Weather's nice. Hopefully the evening's activities won't get rained out. I'm disinclined to check a weather report. We'll have to get some rain gear for P, though -- he's going camping. I think we'll just get him a poncho and be done with it.

I'd like to go camping. I haven't done it since I was a Girl Scout, and that was a very long time ago. If we start camping, we may be able to take some of our long trips more cheaply -- hotels get expensive in a big hurry.

I'm in a mood to do something special. It doesn't have to be Big Special, and definitely not expensive special. But I'd like to get out of the house this weekend. I might insist that we go on a hike someplace we've never gone before. There are several conservation district areas (several? more than a dozen) where we've either never been or never hiked; it would be a great combination of out-of-the-house, into nature (which I don't see enough of,) and much-needed exercise. If we feel like getting fancy, we could take a picnic. Two kinds of hummus, whole wheat pita, and as much vegetable and fruit as we feel like preparing.

I wouldn't mind getting some time out alone with B, but as late as we're going to be out tonight, and with Miz coming over to demo (not the same demo as the martial arts demo) when we get home, we're not getting out tonight, and P will be camping all weekend, so no babysitting. Well, maybe Sunday afternoon, after he gets home, if he's not exhausted.

He's coming home from the campout and going straight to the choir director's church, where the choir is singing for the second service. They're singing for the early service, too, but obviously he's not going to be able to make that.

I started a three hundred earlier, put it aside to do something that I should have done days ago, and forgot it. Then, when I couldn't sleep, I picked up the computer again, noticed it, and figured I'd finish it.

So I deleted it.

Accidentally.

Damn.

Tomorrow, if it doesn't pour, P and V are participating in a martial arts demo at a local high school. I'm wondering how they'll do. P is planning to break two boards with a downward palmheel strike, and he needs more practice. I know for a fact that he could break one, but breaking two would be strictly a matter of luck.

V, of course, does judo rather than kyuki-do, which is what all the other students present do. Of course, an advanced kyuki-do student knows some judo, and can throw and take falls. But the advanced students are often bigger than she is, for all she's so tall, and there is only one student who is going to be there who is V's size. Master C doesn't know if that student feels like demo-ing throws and falls, or not. V is going to do some of the basic kyuki-do stuff anyway -- she's a green stripe in that discipline, although woefully out of practice since she quit in favor of just. But she may not get to demonstrate what she's really good at.

After the demo we have a picnic for the families of all the choir kids who are going to Italy. We'll all get to know each other, learn a little bit about packing (P will be fine, because he learned how to pack for our long-distance car trips, where there is absolutely *no* room for extras, but they're concerned about kids who will want to bring, as the choir director says, "everything they own") hang out, whatever.

I'd rather skip it, personally. I know a couple of the parents, and I would guess that J will be there, which means that I can spend some time with her and she won't have to think too much about the major split between her and the choir director. But, hey, I'm not a group person. I play reasonably well with others, but not in quantities.

The kids are making a dessert, since that's what we promised to bring. They decided on sand tarts, which works for me, since they can do those without assistance. They made the dough today, since it needs to be chilled (and I can't tell you what a hard time I'm haivng not raiding spoonfuls of the dough from the refrigerator -- I love sand tart dough) and they'll roll them and cut them tomorrow.

I'm going to have to get in on the action on Monday, though. F has a "literary group" -- a bunch of kids from about six to nine get together to discuss whatever book they've chosen for this month -- one Tuesday a month. Since she chose this month's book, she gets to pick some sort of "presentation" or project connected with it. Apparently the kid who chose Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone managed pumpkin juice. (We weren't in the group at the time.)

F chose to read Redwall, the first in line of the "Redwall" series. The kids don't have to finish the books, which is good in this case, as Redwall is quite a project for a kid that age, whether they read to themselves or have it read out loud. At any rate, since we own The Redwall Cookbook, F decided that she wanted to cook some Redwall food.

Fine with me, except that we had to go to the library to get out the cookbook, since our copy has disappeared. Armed with the cookbook, we will make Hare's Pawspring Soup (simple vegetarian vegetable soup, very good, we've made it before) and Abbot's Special Abbey Trifle (sounds tasty, might be a revelation to American kids since trifle isn't all that common over here, never made it before, can't decide whether to make the sauce or take the coward's way out and use the vanilla pudding they suggest as a substitution.)

So on Monday, We Will Take Over the Kitchen. Yippee. Of course, I can probably trust P to supervise F making the soup, but I think I want to supervise the trifle myself. I'll have to exercise control, though -- sponge cake and raspberries sounds awfully tempting, but anything like trifle is forbidden, forbidden, forbidden.

I'm not feeling deprived by the triglycerides diet yet, since I'm going to go on about things being forbidden. I've given up sugar before this, and eating whole grains instead of refined is easy, as long as I can actually put my hands on them. (Occasionally a challenge, and I won't discuss eating out.)

But sooner or later, my currently low-key longing for a turtle sundae is going to rear its ugly head, and then I will discover what I'm really made of. Chocolate and caramel and pecan, all of it beautifully modulated by vanilla ice cream. What's not to love? I may plan a dinner out at the local ice cream parlor/restaurant, since I'm supposed to be able to indulge occasionally, as long as I do it as part of a meal. Supposedly it's the spiking blood sugar that is the problem.

Bless my mother, she was cheerfully giving me advice on diet without having done her research. She was insistent that I still had to eat plenty of whole grains. No, not exactly. I need to eat whole grain instead of refined flour, but I'm not supposed to eat a large amount of them. She was also insistent that I needed to eat a low-fat diet to keep triglycerides down. Also incorrect. Tris may be a fatty substance, but the research shows that what puts them up is blood sugar spikes from refined carbs. And nothing else, mother dearest. I know she means well, but if I get any more nonsense, I'm going to send her three million links to current research. I'll consider it a low-key revenge for all the times she sends me stuff. Hopefully it will put an end to the advice, or at least prompt her to do her research first.

More trouble with the pharmacy. It used to be, my mail-order pharmacy would call my doctor's office when a prescription ran out. They'll still do that if they simply run out of refills, but if the prescription itself expires, they'll just delete the med from my active list, and it's up to me to figure out what I need to call the doctor for. I don't mind going to the doctor for scrips -- for whatever reason, when my doctor's office faxes scrips to the pharmacy, the pharmacy doesn't receive them -- but it's frustrating not having the list to refer to.

It's not that big a deal getting the scrips, as long as I pay attention to when I need new ones. Right now the trouble is that my doctor's office wrote me a new scrip, which they claim included three refills. I mailed it to the pharmacy, which claims it included no refills. The pharmacy double-checked the original scrip for me, and they're going to mail me a copy. I'll have to take it in to my doctor to get the scrip straightened out.

But let me tell you, if that scrip shows up with a great, big, "3X" on it, I'm going to be mighty upset.

The real problem with all of this is that when there is a problem with my meds, I tend to feel two ugly things. One is, I tend to feel as though the problem is my fault. Really, while it's my job to straighten it out, I'm not doing anything to cause this. But I still feel that way. Two is, I feel as though I'm going to get in trouble with my doctor's office for constantly having to come back to them to get scrips rewritten. And I get scared that it will mean that they'll refuse me a scrip and I'll run out of meds.

I know that my doctor will work with me. It's just that I have friends who have been accused of med-seeking when their pharmacies or doctors have made mistakes, and once or twice they've ended up without the med they need. So I get scared, and then it's hard to settle down and not get agitated.

And I've just realized that there should probably have been more than one refill on another scrip that I was given about four months ago, and it isn't there. I'll have to check with my doctor's office when my latest order comes in to see if there should have been more refills.

Between being scared over my meds and being scared over my mother, I'm thoroughly scared right now. For heaven's sake. I can understand being scared over the meds, although it's totally an overreaction, but at thirty-nine you'd think I'd be over being scared by my mother.

It's been raining for a couple of days. I'm glad for the rain; the garden needs it, and it won't do the water table any harm, either. This area tends to get drought-y over the summer, so anything that bulks up the water table in the winter or spring is a good thing.

On the other hand, it means I can't plant out my basil. Of course, I didn't plant out the basil when the sun was shining, either. And I need to either get off my ass and order bean towers or admit that I'm not planting pole beans this year. Probably just as well that they aren't in yet, what with the rain -- beans have a nasty habit of rotting in the ground -- but if I want beans, sooner or later I'm going to have to give in and actually plant beans. People who plant beans may or may not get them, but the one thing sure as death and taxes is that people who don't plant beans don't get a single one.

I was talking tomatoes with my dad yesterday. He had been discussing tomatoes with somebody who had just seen Dad's enormous tomato cages. They're five feet-plus high and nearly two feet across. And the tomatoes fill them every year. The person he was talking to had just bought those dinky little three-foot, narrow cages that they sell in the home improvement stores. The kind, in fact, that I have. He was asking worriedly if they were going to be big enough! Answer: if your soil is rich enough, bub, your plants are going to eat those tomato cages for breakfast and look around for more.

I already know my tomato cages are going to be inadequate, or at least I hope so. I planted magnesium sulfate, dry milk (calcium) and banana (potassium) under my plants, so they should make a much better showing than they have in past years. I had been hoping to buy tomato ladders, which are very cool, but I don't have a hundred dollars lying around to spend on the garden. So I'm going with the good ol' bitty tomato cages and hoping for the best.

I do a lot of hoping for the best where my garden is concerned. Some things I work on improving, like my watering. I dealt with that this year by corraling everybody to do the watering for me. Some things are just hopeless, like the lettuce. It seems as though, no matter what I do, the nice, neat plantings of lettuce get screwed up enough that I can barely pick and can't weed at all.

This year's lettuce fiasco is that P helped me plant it. I told him very precisely how far apart to plant it. He indicated that he understood and planted away. I figured all was well with the universe, right up until the seeds germinated and I had five little rows of salad greens with the seeds obviously planted less than a quarter of an inch apart. I'm going to have to go in with a pair of scissors and snip out about ninety percent of it. I don't even have a pair of scissors that will do the job properly. (It might be time to go out and buy a decent pair of household scissors.) I asked P about it, and he complained that he'd had trouble spacing the seeds. It looks as though he just poured the packet right down the middle of the row. Give me patience, right now.

Writing 300 Words (more like 800-1000) words here isn't enough when I'm feeling minor word mania, and I prefer not to spam my LiveJournal with endless posts in which I maunder about what's going on. I have another LiveJournal, linked to my old main LiveJournal, which I used for specifically that purpose, but as far as I know, my mother reads that one along with the old one. I don't want my mother to have access to the stuff I write there. I'm not always tactful, and while I have no sympathy if she's hurt (an extremely ex friend gave her the address, and she knew perfectly well that if I'd wanted her to read it, I'd have told her about it) life is easier if she's not reading it. That's why I started a new LJ, and that's why I don't want to use my old junk LJ.

So I'm starting to think about a new one. Just gotta think of a catchy name. Ironic. I'm always thinking, Oh, wow, such-and-such would be such a cool LJ name, but of course, now that I want one, I can't think of anything. Maybe "Woman on the Rocks." It would go well with "rockbirthedme," but it sounds too much like an immanent shipwreck and not enough like something you'd order at a bar, if you know what I mean.

There are moments when I wonder if my mother knows about the new LJ. I let people know I was opening it in a locked post, and I'm pretty sure my mother does not have a LiveJournal account, but it's always possible, and if she did, she may very well have been on the list of people I gave access to that post. I'm a little cautious because of that, but on the other hand, fuck it, I'm writing the stuff to be accessible to the general public, and if she doesn't like the fact that I occasionally gripe about her to total strangers, she can sit and stew about it.

I doubt it's really an issue. I'm just paranoid, I think.

On the subject of my mother, I talked to her today. I need to call my sister-in-law and see what sort of things she and my brother are thinking of doing with the kids while we're all east, and see if we can coordinate a little. We really need to have a firm schedule for the whole week to give to my mother. She does not cope worth a damn with spontaneity, although at least this time, unlike last time, she's acknowledged that, hey, we have friends there from when we lived there, and we're going to visit them, and visit B's family, whether she likes it or not. So she's choosing to be gracious about it, which should keep things a lot more peaceful than last time.

I also need to corral B and get his input on what days we'll be traveling, since I don't know if he's taking just a week, leaving us to travel on the weekend, or not. I also need to remind him to figure out hotels now, since we're going to be traveling the week of the Fourth.

Little Brother is flying to New Mexico this weekend on a job interview. Medivac company -- he'd be doing maintenance on their airplanes. Dad cautioned him not to shoot himself in the foot (Dad's words) by talking about the trouble he's had with personnel and management in other jobs. I think Dad should save his powder. Little Brother is going to do what Little Brother is going to do, and there is absolutely nothing anybody else can or should do about it. I'd rather try changing the path of an iceburg, really I would. And you know, if Little Brother wants to spend the next five years in and out of jobs in his field, only to end up in a machine shop because he can't fucking get along with management or his coworkers, that's up to him. He's a grownup, even if he doesn't always act like one.