Well, my giant strap on boobs got cancelled. I think the guy couldn't deal with giant boobs. Now I don't know what to do with them. They are quite lovely. Delicate in a wierd way. They are huge though. If nothing else, it got me working on a project. I think it could make an interesting short video. I could film it across from where the intrepid aircraft carrier is parked. It could be interesting.
Other thoughts today- work is hard. Not difficult, just tiring.

and not only am I unmotivated to sit down, put my nose to the grindstone and make the edits that my editor is requesting/suggesting/demanding, but when I do start compiling lists of what I need to go and look up, my lists vanish.

The NYPL has some books that are only available in their research library and I can sit there for up to 2 hours looking at each one. Fair enough, but I want to make a list of each and every one of the books that I, as a non-student, non-professor, non-academic, can only get there. Then, list in hand, I plan to spend my day there. (I should remember to pack a lunch. Last time, having misread its Sunday hours, I arrived an hour early. I ate my bagel while watching the people and started scratching revisions to my article. Then the library opened and I joined the line of people filing in, getting their bags searched and trooping up the stairs to the research room. I spent 4 hours there and felt totally zonked by the time I left. This time, I have to remember to take breaks. Walk not only outside the room but outside the building. Eat my lunch outside. Rest my eyes (and brain) a bit.)

So on Saturday night/sunday morning, I started to compile a list of books that I want to look up while I'm there. The only title that I concretely remember is Natalie Sokoloff's "Domestic Violence at the Margins." The other 3 books on the list? No fucking idea and no easy shortcut to recreating that list.

This is extremely frustrating, to say the least. It's on a bright yellow sheet of paper, so it should stand out from any surface that isn't too piled upon and, since this list was last seen Sunday morning/early afternoon before hustling dd out the door to do Food Not Bombs, it shouldn't have gotten *too* buried.

But still, I can't find it.

I really want to lose my temper in a more obvious way and throw things, overdramatically clear surfaces and act out. This is not going to get me my list back and so I have to just take a deep breath, finish my coffee and get down to the nitty gritty of rewriting that list and stapling it to my forehead.

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

well, march was a very busy month for us. we quickly organized a speaking event/potluck and a place for the longest walk 2 norther
route walkers to stay during their time in gj. it was the first major event i helped organize after the birth. i also went to the anarchist bookfair in s.f. and it was an epic trip that i will remember for a long time. i got to meet china , jessica, rahula, and tomas of rad dad. it was interesting to meet these folks after having 'met' them or at least knowing of them in 'cyber-community.' or thru zine exchange. i really enjoyed every minute of the trip (except maybe the long layovers compliments of cheap buddy passes, so can't complain about that). it being easter weekend, instead of leaving easter sunday as planned, i had to wait till monday and take a train to san jose to catch a plane out. i was happy to stay one more day. peep handled the trip very well and for the most part was a good tempered traveling baby. sometimes he got tired and i'm sure overstimulated, but i'm glad he could make the trip with me. and hopefully i might be able to do it next year.

we then organized the most successful anti-war protest at the end of the month that finally got some younger kids more interested and involved in the activist scene here locally.

also just this month we organized a tax day protest--basically just handing out literature and dick cheney came to town so we had a good showing for that one as well. on the route to the house, where he was fundraising for colorado republican 'big oil bob' schaffer, sits a private catholic school. cheney staffers asked the school to have the kids outside waving little american flags to greet him, as he and his convoy flew by at 'protester flattening' speeds, for nice photo op. apparently some parents weren't too happy, their kids were out greeting cheney, or used in this manner, i'm not sure what part of it pissed them off. probably both.

not to mention all the stuff i do everyday with nicolai. i've found that he's a very socialable baby. if we are alone in the house for too long, he gets fussy. he calms down when we go for a walk, to concerts, the tattoo shop, it seems anywhere where there is a lot of people and activity. then he calms down. sometimes hangin out sometimes sleeping. he had a very good 2nd month check up and is growing so fast. he loves his little front pack thingie ( he falls asleep most of the time), but not so much the sling. he does like the looser one better tho, than the ones that snuggle him closer to me.

m is getting more involved. found out thru the work grapevine that he and l (his on again off again girlfriend) are engaged. i wish he'd be able to talk to me a little bit more, so i didn't have to find out this stuff through rumor. i'd much rather get news from him, but that's not how he works i guess. at first m was going to move to denver, but he's changed his mind and she is moving here. i was glad to hear that, cuz i think it's important for peep. i'm appreciative of her sacrifice of whatever she was doing in denver to quit that and come down here to a place where she doesn't really kno anybody.

peep met her for the first time this weekend. i had met her once before briefly during a visit before i was pregnant. she and m took peep for about 2 hrs. later that evening i took peep to work, where there was a band and a brew fest going on. i wanted to meet a friend that came from denver to participate in the brewfest, he's a really good friend i met in austin back in 2000. we both left austin in 2001 back to colorado. we found each other six years later. of all the people on my list to run into again after losing contact, he was number 1, he is one of the most wonderful people i've ever met and it's good to have a relationship with him again, however brief his visits are. i wish i could get up to denver more often to visit friends i have there, but it's a bit difficult when one doesn't have a car. it's ok tho. it is a choice. i prefer not having the added expense,tho if i need one, someone in my community always help me out with that.
l was as the brewfest. she came up and talked to me. when i wasn't hangin out with s (my friend from denver) i was hanging out with her and just talking. it was good and i'm glad we were able to talk about stuff. i think it cleared the air for both of us to be able to relax and get on with the relationships we will be having together basically for the rest of our live. she is going to be the step mother of my peep. i'd much rather we be able to get along while m and i raise this baby and as much of her involvement as she feels she can do. i'm not sure of that level yet. but it's good to be able to form relationships with m's family and l without his involvement. everyone's been pretty supportive and happy that peep is here and a part of their lives.

i've had 'the peep show' mama-baby zine kinda done for about a month and a half now and haven't gotten around to making the corrections that i found in editing. i wonder how interesting my stuff really is and if there are people out there who want to read about my mundane life. i don't want to say i'm boring, but really it's just a journal of sorts about my life and my life with peep from the past several months--from gestation to now. i'm definitely going to get it done, i'm looking forward to keeping up this project, we'll see how it grows...

we're getting into the 'busy season' of bellydancing and i'm loving every minute of it. L, friend and doula, and JC usually watch him while i go. he gets pretty fussy when i'm not around and i feel bad, cuz they have to deal with a fussy baby, but he usually calms down after a while. i do enjoy being able to still belly dance, it is hard taking him to dance, cuz i can't really concentrate on what i'm doing. so it's helpful. i'm just worried about how he's going to react when i'm gone for longer than a couple hours one a work shift. we'll see... well, i'm sure this is long enuf and i'd like to stretch and brush my teeth before a) i go to bed or, b) peep wakes up, whichever comes first.

I'm trying to write about what it feels like, as a stay-at-home mom, to be treated like some kind of idiot because I don't have a "real" job. I'm not getting very far with it, because so far what I have come up with is, "Boy, this really pisses me off."

Oddly enough, the incident that keeps coming up in my mind isn't one about someone treating me badly as a SAHM. It's about someone treating me badly as a woman and a mother, in general.

The man in question was a friend of B's. Really, he and his wife were friends of both of us. His wife and I used to trade the kids back and forth so that each one of us would get a day off every other week. Sometimes we'd leave the kids with the guys and take a field trip. I have a great memory of going to Longwood Gardens during the Festival of the Fountains.

Somehow, the longer we knew them, the more he attacked me for being "a ball and chain." His exact words, on more than one occasion. Early on, it was just him being a bit whiny when C and I asked him and B to take on the kids for a day. Later on, it got worse.

Every spring, he invited a bunch of guy friends to come to NH with him to open his parents' cottage and drop the dock into the lake. Big guys weekend. All the married guys and all the single guys together, no women to interfere. I used to encourage B to go. He enjoyed it, and I knew the break was good for him. After all, he used to make sure I got my weekends alone, too; fair is fair.

For some reason, this guy kept assuming that B was going in the teeth of my objections. He made a big deal about it every year, trying to "persuade" me to let B go. Repeatedly telling him that I thought B *should* go made no difference; he would not shut up about it. I got awfully tired of it.

Then F was born in March. The annual trip was usually in early April, so that year B turned down the invitation. The trip was usually around four days, and he didn't want to leave me that long with a three-week-old baby, a two-and-a-half-year-old, and a six-year-old. I was glad he wasn't going, but let me be clear, it was B's decision, not mine.

I got so much crap over that. That's when the ball and chain crack happened, and that was really the least of it. B finally told the guy that, number one, it wasn't my idea for B to stay home, and number two, if he kept it up and pissed me off, I was going to stop being agreeable about B going at any time. It stopped the shit about the trip, at least, but it didn't stop other shit.

I finally got tired of it and told B I didn't want to spend time with them any more. And I stopped speaking to the guy. When he asked me why I wouldn't speak to him, I told him I was pissed off at him, but I didn't tell him why. He kept nagging about it and nagging about it -- we went to the same church at the time -- and I finally decided to write down what I thought and let him read it.

Well, I was royally pissed, and he'd picked a time when I wasn't all that stable, and I didn't rip him a new one, I left him with the bottom end of his digestive tract completely gone.

Well, wail, wail, wail. I was unfair, touchy, oversensitive, I didn't have a sense of humor, and I was being unreasonable to boot. I just plain stopped having any contact with him. Stopped going to that church, stopped answering my e-mail (blocked him, as a matter of fact), just stopped.

We stopped going to see them, but sent Christmas gifts for their kids, who were our godchildren. They didn't return the favor, number one, and in the last contact I had with the guy, he told me that they hadn't given the kids the Christmas presents. They were, he said, waiting until we reconciled. Phooey. Assholes. For all I know, those gifts are still sitting in their closet.

B, knowing that I was pissed beyond measuring, just dropped the relationship, as far as I knew. (It turned out later that B kept up some e-mail correspondence, until the guy finally put too much pressure on him to straighten me out. Then B got disgusted and told him to go away.)

I was so angry I couldn't see straight. For years after that, the slightest memory of him would have me shaking. I pictured running into him again (unlikely, after we moved) and just slapping the hell out of him. And then telling him, again, exactly what I thought of him.

A year or so ago, it turned out that he'd given my parents the location of my on-line journal. I was, he told them, obviously seriously ill, and he thought they ought to know what I was thinking. If I ever *do* meet him again, he'll pay for that. I don't know that my father ever looked, but I know my mother did. And was upset and angry with me. I had enough trouble with my parents without that.

He started a journal on the same site, and commented on B's journal so that we'd know he was there. When he left entries -- not often, and I only looked twice before I decided that it was a bad idea, because it made me furious -- they were always entries saying how badly he wanted to be friends with us again. He made a point of saying that he knew I was hurt, but he'd been hurt, too, and wished we could apologize to each other.

I closed the journal and started a new one, but recently had reason to go back to the original journal. (I need to print it out and delete it one of these days.) There was a new comment on the last public entry -- an extensive apology.

He'd had a change of heart. (I wondered, at the time, if he'd done some therapy -- every time he left a comment on the journal before that, he'd made a big deal about how he wasn't sexist, so something changed.) He had, he said, apologized to God and to B, but it had finally occurred to him that he hadn't apologized to me. And he did.

I was actually upset. I did a lot of hard work to get him out of my head so that I wouldn't fucking obsess over how angry I was at him. I'd finally succeeded. And here he was, bringing the whole mess up again. So I read the comment, cursed him mentally, and left the journal. And I've pretty much succeeded in throwing him back out of my head since then. Except that this bit of writing brought him back up.

Vomit.

When the kids whine about something that is not negotiable, I will often say, "That's because I'm mean, nasty, rotten, and awful." Might as well get it out of the way right at the beginning, I figure.

The other day I had occasion to tell P he could actually do something he'd been expecting me to turn down. I finished off with, "That's because I'm mean, nasty, and rotten. If I was awful, I wouldn't have said, 'Yes.'"

P's sense of humor wasn't quite up to it, though.

B wants me to get some more life insurance. We both agree that if something happens to one of us, we want the other one to be able to focus on the kids, not a job. That means money issues. So I'm getting more insurance.

The whole thing is making me crazy. Crazier than usual, that is. The insurance companies want the names of every doctor I've seen in the last seven years. I've never been asked this before. I'm not sure I can remember all of the reasons I've been to doctors, and it's damn sure I can't remember all of their names well enough to get addresses and telephone numbers.

I've been sitting here gathering up as much as I can. In a couple of cases, I've come up with the name of the practice, and that will have to do. In one case, I know I went to see a doctor -- a once-off to an ob/gyn to have my tubes severed -- and I can't remember her name, the name of her practice, anything. The hell with it; I gave them the name of the practice of midwives I went to for usual ob/gyn stuff, and if the insurance company asks, I think they have the name. And if they don't, too bad.

I've posted a new review on the food site, and I am nearly frantic with frustration. The toolbar isn't showing up, so I can't underline the titles of books, and for some reason the editor is refusing to put in paragraph breaks.

First of all, grammar and proper structure mean a lot to me. I don't always use correct grammar, but when I don't, I make a conscious choice. Grammar that is just sloppy for no reason makes me nuts. That hypersensitivity is what makes me a good proofreader, and makes my writing a lot easier to read.

Second, the rhythm of my style of writing depends a great deal on paragraph breaks. So instead of nice visual pauses, I'm getting one great big visual blob. It's hard to read, and some of the changes of subject between sentences don't make sense unless they're split into paragraphs.

In retrospect, once I figured out I had a technical problem, I should have waited until tech support got back to me before posting. Now that I have something up that is not right, it's like a bad itch. I do not want people to read my writing and evaluate me as a sloppy writer. I have a nice little chunk of pride in that area. I'm a good writer, and I want credit for it.

B dug me out relatively early this morning for a walk. Walking around here is a bore, because we're smack in the middle of an extremely white-bread suburban subdivision. (Technically we're urban, but facts is facts.) Nothing but house after house as far as you can see.

We do have a variety of houses, at least, but it's more a matter of variations on the theme of split-levels than anything else. The rich diversity of houses I'm used to from living in old neighborhoods isn't here. Most importantly, there are no parks and no woods. The only parks are basically tot lots, very nice if you have small children but not very interesting if you're walking there as an adult.

There are lovely places to walk around here if I'm moved to go to them. The trouble is, I have to get into a car to reach them. The closest one is about two miles away, and I'm not looking for a five-mile round-trip stroll. Getting in a car to go for a walk really rubs me wrong, though. What's the point?

I don't want to go back to our old house and neighborhood in PA. It was time and time again to leave. But there are things I miss, and the extensive park and walking paths just a few blocks from the house are one of them. I could walk to the library. I could walk to the farmer's market. I could walk to the elementary school for the kids' classes.

Around here, if I want to go anywhere, I get into a car. Even the grocery store is too far to walk for a gallon of milk. I can't ride a bike, because the roads just aren't built to accomodate bikers.

With the hunt on for B's new job, it's possible we'll have to move. I don't want to, because we're thoroughly settled in here, with friends and activities which I do not want to give up. If we move, though, it will give us the opportunity to move into a neighborhood that is more walker- and bike-friendly.

One of the jobs B's looking at is actually as a training manager with a public transportation authority; the job includes a free bus pass. If he gets that job, our house hunt will most definitely be aimed at getting us a place somewhere near the public transportation lines. Just think -- totally public transportation commute. It would be even more awesome if we could live close enough to stations or bus stops so that he could walk in decent weather.

V dragged me out into the garden to see that the radishes are already sprouting. Not all of them are up, but I'll keep an eye out -- they're planted on a square-foot grid, so it will be easy enough to replant. The peas are sprouting, too. Maybe, now that I know how to cook them, I'll cook pea shoots this year.

I watered everything -- might just as well get it while I'm out there, because it's hard to get off dead center when I'm comfortably ensconced inside -- and then got sucked into blowing soap bubbles. Blowing bubbles is very meditative, because it encourages breathing deeply. I recommend it as a stress-buster.

B had a "webinar" -- I don't know why, but that word annoys me, probably because it's just a bit too clever -- this morning, and has two phone screenings this afternoon. I'm thinking hopeful thoughts. Right now, things are as they were before, when he had a job; I'd like them to stay that way.

Last night, while the dinner was taking much longer to cook than it should have, B and I went to a seminar on budgeting. We try not to spend frivolously, but we're not very good at it. I suggested we sit in on the seminar to get ideas on how to monitor and control.

I'm thinking I'll take the expenses handout they gave us and put it into a spreadsheet. Then, any time I update the checkbook, I can update the spreadsheet and get an idea of what I spend. On the other hand, I bet that the money program I already use has some kind of tracking system on it. I should look. Spreadsheets can be bulky.

Today at work, I was going through some old files and started to doubt my ability to do the job. I was looking at old pictures and proposals, and research and thinking to myself, I can't possibly be qualified to do things like this. And then I found a poem tucked into an old folder and it sparked an idea and what do you know, I came up with a grant proposal that I think is kind of good all by my unqualified self! My new mantra is: who cares if you think you can't do it- just do it and it will be fine.

This mantra may have gotten me into trouble.

High on my attitude of "just do it" I agreed tonight to do a performance for an art exhibition next week. NEXT WEEK in which I told the guy that I was going to strap myself to these giant boobs I made and balance UPSIDE DOWN on them. Now, I'm pushing 40. I'm not so sure that I can balance on anything.

I work at a maritime museum and one of the poems that inspired me today was a Walt Whitman poem entitled, Aboard at a Ship's Helm." The last lines go like this:

"But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!
O ship of the body--ship of the soul--voyaging, voyaging, voyaging."

Here's to voyaging [on my giant boobs of the soul...]

We're into Week #2 of B's new career as a job-seeker. I find it reassuring that he's hunting with a great deal of enthusiasm. I will go down into the family room, only to find him on the computer, applying for yet another job. He's applied for dozens.

Some of them have contacted him for screening interviews. We're waiting to hear if he's going to be called for any face-to-face. One of the companies hasn't contacted him at all since the screening, and he's pretty sure they've tossed his resume from consideration. He's annoyed they haven't contacted him -- he says it's unprofessional. I'm sure it's not easy to contact people and tell them that they are no longer being considered for a job, but good HR people do just that, even if it's just a few lines in an e-mail.

I have moments of deep nerves. I'm no idiot, and I know the state of the economy. I know it's likely to get worse. Unemployment is going to rise. I have moments of fearing that we're going to end up on the wrong end of the statistics. If we do, unemployment has a limited duration and a limited maximum. Realistically speaking, not too many families in our area could make it on what the state pays in unemployment, no matter how restricted their lifestyle.

B will probably start looking for an hourly job sometime in the next month or two. He won't be able to find something that pays what his current job pays, but it will help pay the bills. And the kids know that a whole lot of things are going to be cut back if Daddy doesn't get a job. They know what's going on -- we've explained carefully -- and they understand that things may have to change drastically.

I don't know that the reality of the situation has really come home to roost yet, though. It's early, we're still optimistic, it isn't imperative that B get a job right this second. I don't know how long that will last.

For now, I'm taking what I can out of the situation. B is home, and while he's putting in his time job-searching, he's also much more available to do things with the family. Plus, just being able to go sit in the same room with him sometimes is a pleasure. Sometimes I have to leave him be -- he's taking "webinars" from the outplacement firm his old company hired -- but if he's just applying for jobs, I can go bother him a little bit.

We've finally built the compost sifter I've been wanting, and unless it's raining, B and I go out every day and sift a couple of barrows worth of compost. We're getting lovely black dirt out of the pile, although the fact that part of it really wasn't built correctly shows in the thick layer of completely un-broken-down material on top. We've added a nice, thick layer of compost to two of the vegetable garden beds, and another barrow or two will finish off the front flower bed.

It's not practical, because there are to many reasons why we wouldn't do it even if we had the opportunity, but working with B this last week has almost made me wish we farmed together. Doing physical work together is something both of us really enjoy. Unfortunately, neither of us has the knowledge we'd need to earn a living as craftspeople or farmers.

The idea of having enough space for a market garden is an attractive one for me, but honestly, given that I have trouble keeping track of my little garden here, I have that one labeled as an amusing dream. I don't want to do the work involved. Of course, maybe if we were doing it together ... but it really isn't B's thing, gardening. He does it with me because it needs to be done, but given his choice, he'll manage people, not potato patches.

First. B lost his damned job. The layoffs finally happened. It's scary, but frankly we're both really overjoyed -- the stress of being in that office as everybody spent seven weeks in fear of losing their jobs was really taking a toll. And he's been job-hunting intensively, and has a couple of interviews lined up.

Second. Stress put B in the hospital overnight with chest pains. Nothing going on, just stress, and we were both pretty sure that was what it was, but it's not something you play games with.

It was a thrilling night in the ER waiting room, really. A woman brought a man in, hunched over, obviously in pain and equally obviously loaded to the eyebrows. Turned out he'd crashed his car and been flung through the windshield, and somehow or other called her to come pick him up. She drove him to the hospital instead of calling an ambulance, which was stupid and dangerous.

I'm guessing she was hoping that the police wouldn't get involved, what with the alcohol, but obviously they're going to notice a wrecked car by the side of the road, and were apparently pulling apart the nearby landscape looking for the driver.

What happened then wasn't too clear, but somehow or other the woman who had brought him in had told the police she didn't know where he was when she actually did. That brought an irate officer into the hospital, looking for her and him, waving a citation for obstruction. She kept saying that she'd just brought the guy to the hospital, and was it illegal to save someone's life? and the officer kept repeating that she'd lied to the officer she'd spoken to.

The guy's parents eventually showed up, and his mother decided to get belligerent with the officer over the ticket and why the police were involved at all. 'Cause the guy wrecked his car in their jurisdiction, that's why. And why was the officer making a fuss about alcohol? How did the officer know he'd been drinking? Because he smelled like a still, ma'am. Not in precisely those words. And did the officer realize that there's a terrible deer problem on those roads, and there's no proof he was driving drunk when he wrecked his car?

Right about that point, the officer declared the conversation over and took himself off to get further details from the hospital personnel. I was glad; being anywhere within hearing distance of the conversation was incredibly uncomfortable.

It was interesting to note that the guy's father's response to his wife, after the officer had left, was, "He drinks too much anyway. There's nothing we can do for him here; let's go home." A little cold, maybe, but it sounded like maybe the guy has been trouble and Dad's a little tired of it.

I agree that police officers tend to have a stick up their asses, and heaven knows they need a short leash to keep them in line. But given the stories some of my friends in enforcement have told me, I sometimes wonder if the police would give protesters and activists less shit if people who are doing things that really are legitimately illegal would hand out less bullshit themselves. Sorry, but the man was drunk, and it's legitimate for the police to get involved. Had the woman just told the officer where the guy was, instead of trying to get around the alcohol issue ... Ack. NMP, Zanne, NMP.

We were sitting next to a couple of kids who were waiting for a friend. After the contremps with the police was over, the young man murmured quietly to B, "That guy looks like I looked the first time I came out of a mosh pit." That led to a completely hysterical conversation about the risks of moshing (apparently he'd gotten knocked over the first time he moshed, and came out of the pit with a concussion and two black eyes), and how much fun it is. I wish we'd run into the young man in slightly different circumstances -- I'd have liked to get to know him, but exchanging names and phone numbers with strangers in the ER isn't quite the thing to do. A pity.

It's been a rough week. We lost our dog, Gauge on Thursday night. She's been with us for about 14 years. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed. It seems like it was not so long ago that she was a little fluffball. It's the second dog that has died in the past month. I miss them both. It seems wierd and empty to not have them around. And my son took it really hard this time. When D passed, he didn't really have a concept of what it meant. It took him awhile to process it. But this time he knew what was happening and he cried and cried. Then he asked for a new puppy. Sigh. I'm not ready for that yet.
I started my new job this week too. It is a little overwhelming, but I think everyone was pleased with me. After my horrible "interview" with the board member, I think everyone was a little unsure if I could do the job. So they were delighted this week when I turned out not to be a total idiot.
I'm enjoying it so far- it's nice to go to work and think about things that are completely outside of myself.

it's totally fucking glorious, i am in love with the whole world. spring has sprung like a lion and a lamb, i have the fever really bad. the moon is almost almost almost full, so huge and so bright and i wake up in the night with the barred owls going hoo! hoo! hoo-hoo! insistently and i lie there in spring's night hatching schemes and generally hoping i will live to see a thousand more springs. i think winter being long and cold and isolating has contributed to this kind of exuberance cause sure i've seen springs before but this one, this one is just magical. the sun is shining, the birds are singing, flowers are blooming and i planted the potatoes, i planted the peas, and the kales and the onions and some cauliflower too and i'm just plotting and planning and foraging......it is a kind of crazy, but a kind i actually welcome after the other kinds which are not so uplifting.

Good weekend. P got in some hours at work -- I think the boss decided some spring cleaning was in order, or else they'd had an unusually busy week, because she kept him busy washing dishes and jockeying a mop for almost five hours. Good. He wants to be in the local music academy's summer musical, and he has to pay the fee himself -- I don't have $200 to spare. He's lucky he's found a job that will take him at fifteen.

B and I went down to the Goodman to see "The Journey to Bountiful." For the first time ever, a Goodman production disappointed us. We have a family joke about the fact that, half-way through the movie "Titanic," I was chanting, "Sink. The boat. Sink. The boat ..." under my breath -- all I wanted by that time was for the movie to *end*, already. Last night, B reached that point about an hour in.

I enjoyed it a bit more than B, but I think that the director needed to tighten it up a bit. There were scenes that just dragged. Too many scenes that just dragged.

The actor who played Jessie Mae was a pleasure -- Jessie Mae is a self-centered, selfish woman, and every time she opened her mouth I had the urge to slap her. Just a lovely job on the part. I was aggravated by the part of Ludie. I couldn't tell whether it was a bad actor, or just a good actor struggling with a part that was tough to get a grip on. I wouldn't want to play the part -- tough enough to play a laconic man from south Texas; harder still to play one who has withdrawn almost totally because he's caught between two feuding women and is in an almost untenable situation anyway.

B was annoyed by the lighting. There are a bunch of night scenes, and while he gets that, hey, it's night, it's supposed to be dark, he'd also like to be able to *see*. I agreed with him. Especially in the bus scene, it was frustrating when the only light was directly overhead and I couldn't see faces.

The set was claustrophobic, which I'm sure was intentional -- the set designer was probably looking to express how confined the characters all feel in the apartment. Unfortunately, the effect was not to express the character's confinement, but to annoy the audience. It's a tough job, designing a set that gets across a strong emotion without either taking over the play or doing things that annoy the audience. I made the mistake of putting people on a stage with a bunch of moving platforms, once; turned out that half the audience was so worried that an actor would slip and fall they couldn't focus on the play.

Today B brought me a cup of coffee when I was getting up. Usually, I'm on my own for coffee; he even discourages the kids from bringing me any. This is a good thing, you have to understand. My morning sleep patterns aren't good, and anything that will help me get out of bed, instead of waiting for things to be brought to me, is a help. But we were up well past midnight last night, because we got caught in truly horrible traffic coming home from the theater, and he knows that's a rough thing for me. I need sleep, or I totally don't cope. So he let me sleep in, and when he heard me moving around, he brought me coffee.

Now the kids are watching "The Return of the King." Well, except for P, who is out at rehearsal -- they're singing Vivaldi's "Gloria" Tuesday night. "The Return of the King" is in my top five list of Most Annoying Movies Ever Made. "The Two Towers" is in there, as well; "The Fellowship of the Ring" didn't make the list, miraculously enough.

I'm ignoring the television as hard as I can, and trying to avoid my usual Sunday night funk. I hate when B goes back to work on Mondays, and this week we're under the gun of rumors about the layoffs again.

One thing that isn't a rumor. B's boss said to one of his coworkers, "I don't understand why everyone is so nervous. It's not as though we're going to come in and just slash jobs all over. We're going to do a couple now, a couple later -- it will be gradual." B's boss isn't a very good manager, and that statement is just another example of the fact. She actually thinks it's a good idea to spread out the layoffs. She doesn't understand that everyone is going to be jumpy every single time people are laid off, until the company announces that they're done. If she's right, and that's what upper management has planned, they're incredibly stupid. That place is strung as tight as a bowstring as it is; if they're going to cut people gradually, there's an excellent chance that something will break.

I don't envy B. He likes to work, but the atmosphere in that office as they wait for the layoffs is getting very dense, indeed.

I'm resisting being sucked in with all my might.

But I got an update e-mail today saying that the blog I posted last night, about a new dish I tried, was "Hand Picked," meaning they put it up front so that it's one of the first things people see.

That's right. Appeal to my vanity.

I'm tempted to dismiss it; the site is new and small. On the other hand, if I'm cold and dispassionate about it, the blog was very good.

I think that, on the balance, I'm going to give myself a very firm pat on the back and start to plot next week's blog. For my own preservation -- I've been getting bored recently -- I'm trying one new recipe a week anyway. Might just as well have some fun with it.

Actually, I'm really trying two new recipes this week. I didn't plan it, and it's turning out to be a mild nuisance. We hit the store too late to get anything from the fish counter, which ruled out farm salmon, our fish of choice. (Why would anyone ever eat any fish but salmon?) As a replacement, we picked up a package of orange roughy and I figured I'd find something or other to do with it.

First of all, I discovered that orange roughy is not an environmentally sound fish to eat. I wouldn't have bought it if I'd known that, and it means that no matter how good the recipe I cook is, I'm most likely not going to use it again.

Second, V isn't big on white fish. Salmon, yes, tuna, yes, white fish? No. She's had fish in the conventional lemon/butter/tarragon/dill spectrum, so I wanted to try something a little different.

The only trouble with that is, I didn't have anything specific in mind, so I couldn't buy anything for a particular recipe and am stuck cooking with what I have on hand. It isn't much.

I did find a recipe for a salsa glaze. I'm not sure how well it will work, as it calls for mayo and yogurt and I'm planning on going with straight yogurt. We shall see.

Who knows? Maybe I'll come up with a recipe so brilliant it will make V want to eat farmed catfish.

I'm cooking on my own this evening. Friday night means everybody else is out at class from six to seven, so aside from lettuce, which is *always* someone else's job (I hate washing lettuce with a passion) I'm going to have to do all my own chopping. There will be nobody to stand over a pan and stir while I do something else.

Just to keep life interesting, I've just remembered that, since it is P's birthday, B will be taking everybody to the grocery store after class to get ice cream. (Little does P know that there is a cake waiting for him; V and F cooked it, with no help from me, while he was out at class, and I stashed it in the cupboard for them.) That means I really don't know exactly when to expect everybody. I think I'll prep everything and actually fire up the stove when everybody walks through the door.

I baked bread today. (I have to clean up the kitchen from it, too -- special projects, clean up yourself. Poop. The rule works better when I'm applying it to the children than to myself.) It was not an unqualified success. The recipe I was using was giving me two anemic loaves of whole wheat, and while it was good bread, it wasn't very useful for sandwiches because the loaves were so flat.

Today I hauled out my old, earthy-crunchy granola-type recipe from the seventies. It's just a plain, ol' whole wheat recipe, but it makes three big, bouncing loaves.

*sigh* I used to bake bread on a regular basis, and I could whip out a batch with no trouble. Since moving to this house and taking a three-year hiatus, I can't seem to avoid trouble.

This batch rose well and baked up beautifully. Lovely, fluffy-looking loaves. That is, they were lovely loaves right up until I tried to take them out of the loaf pans.

Now, I know those pans were greased. I didn't do it myself, but V is very thorough. So there is no excuse for the loaves becoming thoroughly, irrevocably stuck in every direction. The loaves split in half as they came out.

I left the third loaf in the pan, hoping that maybe it would be a little sturdier if I let it cook, but I'm not optimistic. Likely it will be damp from cooling in the pan. I hate to replace kitchen equipment, but frankly, some non-stick loaf pans are starting to look mighty good.

Meanwhile, the threat of downsizing continues to hang over the heads of the Mass at B's job. B's boss has started acting a little weird. Cancelled their weekly one-on-one, avoided him in the hallway. Today, she returned an item she'd had on her desk to sell for V for months. Hmm. Are we cutting ties here? As B says, there's a good chance he'll be coming home early from work on Thursday.

I hope they'll wait until Monday. That way, I'll be back from my trip and won't be fussing about finances when I'm supposed to be getting my head back together.

Well. He's had some calls about jobs, and he's applied to dozens more. We'll see what we will see.