it might be too late.

hi!

a lot has happened, and i had written and REALLY long blog post about everything and all my thoughts about it with clever links and such, but i kinda ran out of steam. it might be too late for the really detailed recap, so i'll do a quicker one, with the highlights.

the biggest highlight is selling my mom's house, FINALLY.

after a bunch of stops and starts and it seeming like it might not happen, it finally happened, though up until we saw the money in our bank account, we were still hanging out in a 'we'll see' limbic zone. i know i was afraid to get my hopes up, after things falling apart with the sale the first time.

it's such a miracle that the house sold at all, in this economy, and makes me wonder why these buyers wanted the house so bad, but i'm certainly not complaining. just saying. it was really lucky for us. it was lucky for the buyers, too, since the house is gorgeous and obviously a good buy, being sold for considerably less than it is appraised for, but still. we were worried we'd have to sit on it forever.

with the house sold, we got to close the book on our involvement with allen. up to the last days it was looking like he might fuck the whole thing up, in his own special allen way, but it happened, anyway, thank goodness. it's nice to know there is no reason why i HAVE to answer the phone if he calls; nice to know all remaining ties between us, of unfinished business, are gone. i owe him nothing now, and have no reason to even believe i'll hear from him again. while there is considerable joy associated with that, and SO much relief, there's also some sadness. though he was a source of incredible discomfort and negativity in my life, he was also another connection to my mom. he was crazy and a total asshole, a weirdo and a giant problem, but he loved my mom just as much as i did, and he was the only other person who was as deeply affected by her death as me. i wish we'd been able to share that a bit more. it sucks that his insanity was like a solid wall between us, totally impossible to get through. he didn't seem very interested in connecting about it, anyway, but it would've been nice if we hadn't had so much negativity between us. for a lot of reasons, obviously.

with the house out of my name, and the mortgage paid off, we have a lot more money per month for other stuff. it also means shannon doesn't have to say 'yes' to every single job he's offered, because he can afford to not work for a bit, since we're not trying to digest two mortgage payments, two sets of property taxes. hello, fancy tropical vacation! i've been wanting a really big vacation pretty much since mom got sick, and have taken a bunch of smaller ones, staying with loved ones in LA and NY, but i really want a lying-around-with-drinks-in-coconuts vacation, that looks like a cerveza commercial. that's a possibility now, with the money from the sale of the house and the added money per month that we'll have. i can say truthfully, without a hint of self-effacing or bragging, that we fucking deserve one.

we each got new laptops! they're so sexy and little and light, it's awesome. obvs they're macs. i got the macbook and shannon got the macbook pro, since he's a bit more of a 'power user' than me. it's actually ridiculous how little of my computer i use, in general.

in other news, i've had the flu for a couple of weeks. fever and sore throat for two days in the beginning of last week, then fading to a gnarly cough and copious amounts of yuckiness in my sinuses. i'd like to get more graphic about them because it's a total medical freak show in there, but i'll save it. if you want to details, email me, i'm happy to supply more details. suffice it to say, it's not pretty.

i pulled it together for a saturday afternoon departure for los angeles with shannon. a couple of movies he worked on last year were nominated for awards from the sound editors organization (like the oscars for the sound business), a guy shannon works with was being given his lifetime achievement award, and lots of people from up here were heading down for the awards ceremony, so we decided to go to. in hindsight it was a really dumb idea, totally not worth the trouble, but we did it anyway. i still wasn't feeling the best, but i felt good enough, i thought, so we drove down. we got there about 45 minutes before the dinner started, so we rushed in and changed. shannon looked very dapper in his new suit jacket and shirt and tie, with jeans and some fancy man shoes. (we didn't have time to get his pants tailored and they looked a little silly, but the jeans looked awesome, and were actually more 'him' anyway.) i dressed up, too, looked totally fine, in a new dress and new fancy shoes. my voice had gotten really hoarse and croaky, so i had a rough night trying to chat with people. it was a struggle to make myself heard over the ambient noise, but i persevered. (like anne frank, over here.) neither of shannon's movies won, but it was still fun to see everyone all dressed up and chat with some of my favorites of shannon's co-workers. the meal was nyeh.

by the end of the awards show, my voice was pretty much blown and i was really tired, so i snuck out, without saying my goodbyes, which weighed on me, and headed up to the room to crawl into bed. i couldn't sleep because of the indecorous amounts of fluid in my sinuses, and the gods were cruel in their TV programming. (so unfair! i don't have a TV and only watch TV in hotels or at other people's house, so it's kind of a special occasion!) shannon stayed and hobnobbed for a long, long time, and didn't get back to the room until 1:30am or so, which was unfortunate for both of us, because we had to leave at 5am for the drive home because my friend's baby shower was at noon in marin. oof.

one of my skills is coping well on limited sleep, which is very useful. so, i told myself that i wasn't going to SLEEP, i was laying down for NAP. pretty impressive, huh? it worked like a charm! i woke up tired, but not groggy and miserable, though by mid-morning i was pooped. the drive was long and boring, as usual, though the rain has made the central valley really green, so it was less ugly than usual.

i got to the baby shower in time, despite some rain-related traffic on the way. my voice was pretty much completely gone, and i had a terrible sounding cough, so i checked in with the mama, to see if my wretched soundingness would be unwelcome, and after she checked with her mom, who's a nurse, she said it was fine. i'm really glad i went, too, because it was tremendously beautiful, in a way that i've never experienced with traditional baby showers.

first, a bunch of my best ladies were there, and we've all been friends for over ten years, and it was pretty amazing being there to celebrate the first one of us moving into motherhood. we don't get together a lot, aside from major occasions, and the last times i've seen all of them have been sad ones - my mom's funeral, ana's mom's funeral, some birthdays. it was nice to be in a not sad, not loud gathering with them, where we could really talk.

the shower itself was much more of a rite of passage ceremony, marking zoe's transition from the maiden phase of her life, into motherhood. her mom was there, running things, as were a whole circle of ladies of all different ages, celebrating the transition. there were lots of tears and lots of laughter. in my head, that kind of thing sounds uncomfortable and embarrassing, but it was perfect and lovely and warm and beautiful and i was very thankful to be included. made me a bit baby yearny, but not insanely so. just a little jealous, managably so.

it also made me miss my mom a lot, and wish she was alive still to throw me a magical, goddess-y baby shower. just another of the myriad things i wish she was here to do, but it was painful being in such a motherhood-centric space and gathering, knowing my mom is dead and i don't have that anymore. i've been a little raw about mom again, with selling the house and saying adieu to allen. it's the closing of another chapter of mom's life, and there aren't really anymore of those, that i can think of. yeah, allen was a huge problem for us, and the entire situation with him is still such a throbbing OUCH in my head and heart, but he was mom's partner and was a part of her and a connection to her life. with each chapter closed, it's almost like she didn't live. not really, but a bit. there are less and less reminders, as the physical artifacts of her life are dispersed, and the people spread out. being at the house was so good-bad, and inheriting it was like everything else that was left over, where the reminder was both extremely painful and also comforting. so, losing that was great, because i have one less irritant, but still.

as i'm struggling to recover from the flu, my wisdom teeth have begun to really bother me. lame timing, body. not cool. so, full of snot and coughing, i met with an oral surgeon today, to get them taken out. just the toppers. i guess i don't have bottom ones. (because i have absorbed them, and their accompanying wisdom already, probably. that's what got me through mom's death.) so, removal next week. i've never had nitrous oxide, and i get to take valium, too. so, that's something. i'm really sick of coughing and having to sleep with my mouth open so i can breath through my mouth. i'll be thankful when this all dries up.

i signed up for a workshop next month. i'll talk more about that later, though. it's a long story.

the world, and what it's coming to.

* i know capital punishment is a little stiff and an eye for an eye and blahblablah. but still. shouldn't there be a more serious response to this stuff?

* at least there's SOME good news. we should have civil war there all the time! (just kidding, they already do.) what kind of a monster would kill a fucking gorilla, by the way?

this actually brings me to something i have been pondering lately. both of these stories do, really.

are there some things, some behaviors, that are so heinous that they are deal breakers and deserve execution? killing someone in the heat of the moment doesn't count, to me. i've done some pretty heinous things to inanimate objects in the heat of the moment, so i can't judge. plus, there are totally cases where i feel like someone kinda needed killing. dude's beating his kid to death...should the mom/other kid/neighbor call the cops and wait, or should they just hit the dude in the head with a shovel, or shoot him or something? duh. (well, to me, duh. maybe not to you.) if it's a life or death situation, defending yourself is okay, i say. serial killers, though...

so most serial killers are so fucked in the head that it's unlikely that they will ever be rehabilitated. so, maybe we should just kill them, right? if there's 100% solid evidence, not based on anything debunkable, aren't we all safer if they're just put down like rabid dogs? you don't blame a rabid dog for being rabid because it's not his fault, and i think the same thing about serial killers. it's not their fault, they're just too sick and dangerous to live. a friend referred to it as 'weeding the garden.' if you let the weeds take over, they'll do it. they're not bad, they're just doing what weeds do, but if you want your garden to be harmonious, you gotta get those opportunistic, serial killing weeds outta there. that makes sense to me, though is a more cosmetic metaphor than is really accurate.

what about child molesters? should they be executed? most of them have been molested themselves, and, much like alcoholism, molestation is a gift that keeps on giving a lot of the time. molestation seems like an impulse control problem. i really want an expensive purse, but i'm not going to take it because it's illegal and there are consequences that i'm not interested in accepting. i think about being single sometimes, but i don't act on it. when mykhail is driving me crazy, i day dream about a tranquilizer or ether soaked rag, but i'm not going to take those thoughts beyond idle pondering. IMPULSE CONTROL. we can't help what pops up in our heads a lot of the time. maybe you're a person who has some criminally disgusting stuff popping up in your head. that's maybe not your fault. but when you act on it, THAT is your fault.

(side note: are the people who come up with torture porn movies like 'saw' and stuff monsters? again, you can't necessarily help that some seriously unpleasant ideas pop into your head, but making a movie out of them and then making jillions of dollars by spewing that into the mainstream of culture? pretty monstrous, i think. i know there's a market for it, and if they're not making it someone else will and everything else. but still. *i* think those people are gross and are possibly contributing to the slow and steady slide of our culture into total depravity. i also question what is wrong with someone that they would find those movies enjoyable to watch. i know some totally-mostly-normal people who enjoy them, but i am still concerned. is your head okay? are you a sicko inside? because indulging that kinda stuff doesn't seem healthy to me.)

so, impluse control. i think that we need to have more room in our culture for people to be open about deviant thoughts, if only to encourage them to ask for help. i'd rather a person be going to therapy to address their pedophile thoughts that skulking around in shame, being lurky and having no support in resisting the urges. are there support groups for that? there should be. LET IT BE SO.

i think that finding sexually deviant things arousing would be pretty distressing. i am taking it as a given that people can't choose to be, gay, which some feel is deviant sexuality. if you are from a community that finds homosexuality deviant, the social pressure to NOT be gay is so strong that it's inconceivable to me that anyone would decide willingly to live a lifestyle that possibly alienates them from their friends and family. sorry, that makes no sense. so, i think the same thing applies to being a pedophile, though i am in NO WAY implying that they are equally deviant. AT ALL.

as a culture, we have an agreement that children are not sex objects. (though the child beauty pageant people are waffling on that agreement, i think.) other cultures in the history of humankind have not had the same agreement, but we, in the western modern world think that, say pre-pubescent kids are absolutely not to be sexualized. so imagine the horror with which someone would realize they were having such deeply taboo thoughts. this is not the sort of thing they would choose willingly. but there it is, in their heads. how frustrating for them, to be forever completely unable to act on such a strong impulse. like being a black slave who realizes he's not really attracted to black women and just wants to marry a white lady. totally not ever going to happen. not your fault, but let it go. the frustration. but, given the rules of the time and place we live in, you are just destined to have to live without forever.

up until this point, i can sympathize, in the sense that i can really imagine that would be very painful. you didn't ask for this, you don't want it, but it's in your head and it's not going away. tragic, really.

but if you DO act on it, either in pursuing the acquisition of child porn or being pervy in other ways that don't include actual molestation but do cross into actively indulging your desires, i say you're guilty and that's on YOU, not your messed up head.

so, in that case, should the person be allowed to have another chance to work on their impulse control? should they be allowed back into society? let's use the best case scenario and have a sex offender who is genuine remorseful and absolutely does not want to repeat their behavior. should they be allowed to struggle with their potentially deeply damaging urges, or should we, as society, just say, 'sorry, man, not worth the risk' and, like, chemically castrate them? or should we manually castrate them, just to be sure? the ACLU says chemical castration is cruel and unusual punishment, and while i tend to agree with them and am all for rights, i think i might have to beg to differ.

this sort of gets into another issue. obviously other cultures have very different ideas about what rights humans inherently have. in cultures where there is tremendous poverty and overpopulation, people seem to have a 'swim or sink' attitude about each other. human life is a lot less precious than it is here. i think we can afford to think that each human life is precious, because we're living our lives much further from death than the majority of the world. but it seems like in much of the rest of the world, people are seen as darn-near disposable.
"whatever, it's another orphaned toddler huffing a glue soaked rag in a doorway. pesky kids. i'm gonna throw a rock at them!"
as opposed to:
"holy mary mother of god, that toddler is filthy and starving and is possibly huffing glue! that child is in danger and needs to be taken care of NOW! I'M ON IT!"

it's easy for us, in wealthy nations, to judge the inhumanity of another culture's attitude towards their less fortunate. (though we shouldn't be too smug, considering the state of our inner cities, which are barely better than shanty towns.) but this idea that each person is a unique, magical being who deserves to be allowed to pursue its destiny in freedom is based on the assumption that people have the luxury of thinking about their destiny and their heart's desire, which is a HUGE assumption. most of human history is paved with millions of people who lived at subsistence level, at best, and died hard deaths. they lived hard, died hard, and no one knows who they are or who they were. even US history. industrial revolution. westward expansion. the eradication of the entire indigenous people's population. those weren't places or times where people were spending much time questioning their heart's desires. their heart's desire was to not die like a dog in the street and most of them didn't achieve even that meager goal.

so who says that we suddenly deserve this? i'm not saying we don't, i'm just asking WHY we think we do now? because it's a pretty unrealistic expectation. the idea that we all deserve true love, deeply fulfilling lives, total self-determination... those are ideas we are lucky to be able to expect. certainly religion makes the pill easier to swallow, with a 'do your best now, it'll all work out in the after-life/next-life' rationale for waiting out the crappy parts.

but this is all human logic applied to circumstance.

what is true is that some people will live satisfying, joyful lives. some of them will be rich and some of them will not be. a lot of people will live lives in which they feel powerless, hopeless, loveless. they may or may not get another chance to work it out. this might be their only shot at living.

so, by letting a dangerous person muddle along, doing their best, but maybe making mistakes that ruin other people's lives, are we saying that the destiny of that one person is more important than the destiny of all their potential victims? i mean, there's not guarantee that they will be repeat offenders, though recidivism among sex offenders is discouragingly high. is preemptively punishing them cruel, because it doesn't give them a chance to NOT do it, or is it smart because it doesn't give them a chance TO do it? i don't have an answer, i'm just wondering.

there was a scene in the last season of 'the wire' where some kids are pouring lighter fluid on a stray cat, obviously getting ready to do some gnarly fucked up stuff. let's not get into how upsetting it was that the writers and directors had this be in the scene, though it was deeply upsetting to me and shannon, and how unnecessary it was to include it, though i think it was totally unnecessary. let's just say it's a real thing that happens, since it is. what is wrong with a culture that raises kids that think that way? or that raises adults to see street gangs of orphaned kids as no better than stray dogs?

there is a famous ethnography called death without weeping. it addresses what i think is the central cause of these levels of cruelty, where people live such grindingly difficult lives, without any tenderness at all, that the softness is just seared out of them. even in shannon's town, i see some of it. if you and everyone you know has been raised by alcoholics and meth addicts and you had the crap beaten out of you by your parents and older siblings and everyone who was physically able to beat the crap out of you, and every dog you've ever known has spent its entire life on the end of a 5ft chain in someone's yard, all year round, it's not hard to imagine you'd end up a hard person. no one ever did anything kind for you, so where would you learn that kindness was even a thing that existed?

so, those monster kids who were getting ready to burn that cat, are they basically destined to be future criminal and monster adults, given that they have been allowed to develop that kind of mentality? can people change?

again, i don't know. i'm wondering myself.

* on a lighter note, is "greasy bear" the best/worst nickname ever, or what?

adzuki bean mills.

so, we got a dog. this is him. his name is adzuki bean. mostly zuki, or bean.
he's a shiba inu. as a puppy, he looks like a little fox kit, obvs, which is almost unbearably cute. when he grows up, he'll look like a fox mixed with a husky, kinda.
him and the cats are learning to cohabit. he thinks the cats are awesome, and would like to spend more time with them, maybe with their faces in his mouth. they are not enjoying his company.
i'm sure i'll have tons of mind-numbing anecdotes to share about him, but i'll leave you with this stuff for now.

the second picture is zuki on his first canoe ride with shannon.

i have more to talk about, but i need to get going on my holiday cards, if i'm going go get them done at all.

the cutest thing in the world.

Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

i think i spontaneously ovulated while watching that.

this just in...

oh, hi!
haven't been here in a while!
i mean, i posted that 'west wing' thing, because duh, but i haven't really been keeping this thingie up-to-date. here's a grab bag of things going on...

1) lucy is in town right now, visiting from NYC. her fam is having some health stuff going on, so she came home to see them. lucky jerk gets to go to hawaii to visit her sister and the kids in a week. yo soy hellsa jealous. it's VERY nice having her here. it's like visiting home when you move away, where it's so good it kills you a little and you almost wish you hadn't gone home because it just makes it harder to be away. we went to get our hairs did all fancy today, washed and styled and stuff on account of...

2) brian and libby's wedding is tomorrow. i am feeling for them because it's supposed to rain and they had NOT planned on rain. i'm really excited and nervous for them. i know how much stress they've gone through to get everything ready and how fucking relieved they'll be to have it done with. also, afterwards, they'll be mr. and mrs. halpin, which is pretty exciting. it's made me think a lot about how sure me and brian were that WE would get married and how not correct we were. it's also made me even more and more grateful for how beautifully everything has evolved with our friendship. i consider my ex-boyfriend and his soon-to-be wife some of my closest, most important friends, and i am very, very lucky to still have all the benefits of our relationship, as well as a fantastic partner of my own.

3) so, in preparation for the wedding, which feels pretty high stakes, as far as social events go, with all the long-time friends attending, i have purchased my first pair of spanx. my dress isn't super va-va-voom, but it's made of a clingy jersey material that will do a person no favors, so i bought some crazy girdle bike shorts to smooth stuff out. totally embarrassing and old-lady feeling, but if they let me relax in my dress and know everything is where it should be, then it'll be worth swallowing my pride.

4) mom's house (a.k.a. money pit #1) is officially On The Market. anyone want to buy a lovely house in redwood valley, ca for a good price and save me and my husband from impending destitution in the process? anyone? anyone? it has taken a lot of stress and annoyance but it's up and running. please aid us in thinking desirable thoughts about the property. please envision the PERFECT buyers being drawn to it like magnets. allen tried his hardest to alienate all the real estate agents by totally losing his shit today, as only allen can, but i think it's going to be fine. oh, allen.

5) 2 or 3 months ago i started meditating regularly. me and LW took a seriously life changing class together in berkeley, led my a freaking amazing teacher named james baraz. on the first day of the class he made the statement that meditation has made the difference in his life. liesl and i came away wondering what he meant by that, and feeling admittedly skeptical, but i can honestly say i get it now. the change for LW has been the most dramatic, just the level of peace it has brought her, but i have experienced a profound transformation, too. (ugh, with the healie-feelie talk, i know. but really, homeys. it's unlike anything i have ever experienced.) you might recall that i read a lot of pema chodron while i was coming to terms with mom's illness initially, especially 'when things fall apart.' i found that book to be so comforting and calming, in a way that nothing else was. believing in a god whose plan is for my mom to die slowly of brain cancer is totally unacceptable, but the idea that there is only this moment and how i live it and the courage and wonder with which i greet it feels true to me. so, taking it a step further and meditating felt really natural. i have slacked a bit on it, not doing it everyday like i was, but i am in it to win it. more on that forever, probably.

4) lots of mykhail time. we watch him two days and two nights a week now. he is funny and HARD and growing so fast. (such a cliche, but still true.) seeing his verbal skills develop is just mind blowing. from "dat?" (what is that?) to "cow!" to "see cow!" to now "auntie, see cow eating!" dude, that is language, RIGHT THERE. no wonder linguistic anthropologists love to study speech and language development in kids - it's so easy to see the changes! and so satisfying! my last blog was me being scared and feeling like i might suck as a parent and not be able to take it, but things are fine now. it's still overwhelming sometimes, but also really gratifying to know i am good at this. dudes, seriously, i am GOOD at this. i'm like the dog whisperer - totally the pack leader. i have healthy boundaries, i am good at being fun. i am getting a lot better at working myself out of snits when he's being crabby. having kids is going to be fine. not a piece of cake because duh but totally fine. shannon is so cute with kel that it makes me spontaneously ovulate just listening to them.

5) we have two cats now. they were my mom's cats and, rather than give them away to strangers or something, we took them. we love/hate them. one might call us 'frenemies' with them. love the funny animalness they bring to the house. hate the fur, the smell of cats, the catbox, the sometimes scratching. oh well. we sometimes joke that i am a part-time crap handler now, since i spent so much time taking bags of crap out to the garbage can, between the cats and kel. i'm mostly used to it. i think i might be allergic to one or both of the cats because of the re-occurrence of an uncomfortable, unsightly rash, whose presence i have been free of for years, but i am not yet ready to jettison the cats to save myself. getting there, but not quite.

that's enough for now.
i'm going to try not to be such a stranger, though.

mykhail.

so tired, guys.

so, so tired.

i've had to watch mykhail a lot this week and it's pretty much destroyed my sleep schedule. because stef works at 6am, when i watch him at her house i have to get up at 5am, to get to her house by 5:30am. then, i go to sleep in her bed until the kid wakes up, around 9ish.

but i am always nervous about oversleeping, so i don't usually sleep well before the 5am wake up. i don't sleep soundly. and then, once i am at her house, i don't sleep soundly. partly because i have already woken up and driven for a while, so i pretty much awake, and partly because i am listening for the kid. so, on those days, i just don't have much sleep. thank god for nap time. mykhail had never slept over at our house, so we tried it out last night. we'll keep him for a few days, to give stef a break. the timing stinks, but oh well, right?

last night was not good.

shannon's dad is visiting, so he's in the spare room. we tried putting mykhail in there to sleep, but he woke up crying so we had to bring him out, into the living room.

he seemed fine, so we went to bed. i slept for, say, an hour, and then mykhail woke up again, crying.

shannon went out to check on him, but i never got back to sleep.

i spent the entire night just lying there, staring at the ceiling.

about once an hour, mykhail would wake for a second and make a crying noise, then go back to sleep.

around 4:30ish, i finally fell asleep.

at 5:30am, he (mykhail, not shannon) woke up crying, and got out of bed and started walking around the house. we grabbed him and brought him into bed with us. he fell asleep, but lying on me, so that if i moved, he would wake up and whimper. i just lay there, staring at the ceiling.

eventually, i extricated myself and snuck out into the living room. i would have loved to just hang in the living room all night, since i wasn't sleeping, but mykhail was in here. i didn't want to keep shannon awake, with my typing or a bright light from my reading. shannon and his dad are re-roofing our house, so he needs the sleep.
but guys, watching the kid is really tiring and i needed the sleep, too, and i didn't get it.

what if i don't like being a mom?

i mean, i know it's rocky in the beginning, and you're tired all the time and you're probably scared since you don't really know what you're doing, but you get the hang of it. i'm sure that, given enough time here, mykhail and shannon and i would get the hang of it, too.

but i am resentful of having to 'get the hang' of another really hard thing.

remember my mom's cancer?
remember allen?
remember money drama?
yeah, me, too, and i'm still pretty exhausted from all that.

i was looking forward (foolishly, perhaps) to a chance to just take care of shannon and me for a bit. i know there was no reason to believe that nothing dramatic was going to happen for a while, or that life would get easier. there was no guarantee of that, so me hoping for it was folly. but still, doesn't that seem like it would have been fair?

i know, i know. there's no such thing as fair.
still.

i'm just tired.
tired of stuff being so hard.
tired of having to handle stuff.
tired of not getting enough sleep and always having such a full plate.

a conversation that happened day before yesterday:
me: you're my special guy.
mykhail: no, auntie special guy.
me: auntie is your special guy?
mykhail: yeah.

that's cute.

so cute that it compensates for no sleep?
not quite.

but it's still really cute.

i think i'm doing a good job with him, but it's just hard. i've been googling 'temper tantrums' and reading about picky eaters. i'm asking strangers for advice. i want to make sure i'm not screwing him up. then again, i can't really remember anything or anyone from when i was 2, so probably very few small things will even make an impact on him at this point. i guess i just want to make sure i am using an overall good approach. firm when it matters, fun and easy-going and silly when it doesn't. since we're thinking of babies soon, it's hard not to think of this as an indication of how we'll do parenting our own kids, and the results are kinda mixed.

course, toddlers are pretty tough, and it would probably be a little easier if we were his parents, and knew him more intimately. i mean, we know him intimately and have spent plenty of time with him, but i bet it isn't the same.

i don't know, guys.
just really, really tired.

p.s. i wrote yesterday for the first time in months. not for long, because there was a kid emergency, but it was something!

peep.

peeps diorama competition.
it happens every year!
so happy-making.

i'm in la, visiting shannon for a few days.
it's more wonderful to see him than i could have possibly predicted.
i think i ignore/avoid thinking too hard about how much i miss him, because if i did, i might never stop crying.
i told him the other day that, while i am capable of keeping myself alive while he is gone, i am incapable of thriving without him.
going through the loss of mom makes feeling so dependent, so needful of someone very scary. you know, one of us will die, eventually, and the other one will be really, really sad.
but until then, he makes me so happy i just can't even believe it.
i am staying an extra two days because i just couldn't bear to leave him.

on a personal note, i am having a little bit of a crisis, trying to determine what i am doing with my life. now that i'm not in school, and not ready to get back into it, thinking about babies soon, but not quite yet, know i want to write but not sure what that looks like...what the hell am i doing with myself? i'm having trouble writing, which sucks. i'm feeling scared and confused and lethargic and aimless.

it'll all come together eventually, but the not-together-yet phase is particularly painful.

not sure...

how do i know if the difficulties i'm having with the memoir are healthy challenges, to be transcended for a glorious finale OR the natural obstacles of something that needs to be given some space and rest, i.e. take a break from the memoir for a bit?

i don't want to be a quitter, and give up because it's hard, because writing is hard, and that's part of what makes it satisfying, is grappling with something so slippery and occasionally feeling like you get a handhold on it. and yet....

i am not enjoying writing the memoir. since i started the fiction project, writing the memoir feels like homework. fiction feels so much more natural, but still hard, whereas the memoir writing is just hard, in general. after writing so much about what happened this way, in my blog, letting it all come out as it would, sitting down and writing it all over again, in a more rigid way, with forced dialogue, just isn't working. after discussing it in class so many time, i am SO self conscious, SO concerned about making the dialogue gel, making sure it's not too much in my head and that i'm setting it firmly in a concrete place, that the story is moving along at a steady enough pace, etc. etc. etc.

you know what i've realized, guys? i write crap dialogue. i can't write it for shit. it sounds dumb and stilted and unreal. at least, i can't recreate dialogue from something that actually happened and have it not sound bad.

i felt like my writing on here was good, strong. it felt real and honest. and the things i am writing in my memoir don't feel honest or real. they feel forced. but the feedback i got from my writing class, both the teacher and students, was that having everything be like this, like my blog, was suffocating, there was no perspective and no air. i can understand that, after reading a couple of smothersome books, with narrators that barely ever come up for breath out of their own consciousness. you want to know what the air smells like, what the nurses look like. you want to be able to sink your feet a little in the setting before being carried off in someone's rickety little rollercoaster of a train of thought.

but how do i do that, if this is what feels the best? and i don't mean the writing of it feels the best, though it certainly feels better than what i have been doing, but this writing, to me, is more honest. i can remember and recreate what i was feeling and thinking and how i responded to a certain situation and why, but i can't remember what was said, specifically, and every time i try to bring it back it immediately bleaches all the color out.

i just don't know.
maybe i have already written everything i needed to about this, in here.
maybe i need to focus more on THIS, the writing that's here, and fill in periodically with setting and stuff.
maybe i need to just write about it the way i want to write about it, if i want to write about it at all, and let go of writing it the way my class is encouraging me to write about it.
it just feels like i am trying to walk around in shoes that are too small. yeah, i can probably get used to it, but there have got to be shoes that fit better, right?

last week, after having some stuckness problems and feelings like i wasn't enjoying my project, my writing partner, clara, suggested that i take a break from writing episodes and just write for a while on characters. i was having trouble creating everyone with my writing so she thought, why not JUST write about your characters, to make them real for you?
so, i did.
in the midst of my illness, i did some writing, describing my mom. i wasn't really trying to tell a story or even writing anything that fit in any obvious way into my memoir, just writing about her. anne lamott wrote two of her books for other people, one for her father as he died of a brain tumor (fuck you, brain cancer) and one for her best friend as she died of breast cancer, i think. (fuck you, cancer, in general.) her goal for writing them was as a gift, as they died, a love letter to them. she talks some in her book about writing your stories not for publication, but you have them written so other people can read them and know you better. so, i felt like i was writing about my mom for me, for when i miss her, and for my kids, who won't get to meet my mom, but will hopefully be able to know her through me, and you, too. so, i wrote and wrote and it was fun to just write without the self-consciousness.

i read that stuff in class last night and two people said that they liked it the best out of everything i've read thus far, which was nice to hear but really surprising, because i was totally ignoring all the rules we've been taught and just 'going for it,' as they say. my teacher was one of the people who said it was my best work, and i was just stumped. i didn't really follow any of the rules, there is no dialogue or anything, it's all just skipping from one place to the next, one time to the next, but that's the best? why isn't that suffocating? because being smothered by mom is interesting and evocative but being smothered by me is boring? i don't fully understand. i'll need to email him about it.

an interesting thing happened, later on in my writing about mom.
i switched from talking about her past, before me, and was writing about her with her cancer, trying to describe the change in her from the cancer.
one of the hardest things i have had to chew on, while processing my mom's death, has been how hard a time i had connecting with her, in a way that felt meaningful to me. i felt farther away from her at the time of her death than i ever have, because it came after years of living apart, where allen had taken up so much space in her life.
she was so close-mouthed about her illness, and i just wanted to talk and talk and talk about it.
are you scared?
are you mad?
are you sad?
do you have regrets?
she just wasn't really open about it. all of my tearful monologuing led to not one instance of her really opening up with me about what was going on inside her.
it was so frustrating and scary for me, kira fisher, who can't have an emotion without observing, labeling it and discussing it. i assumed she had all these teaming emotions inside of her that she wasn't dealing with, because she wasn't talking to me, she wasn't talking to allen, she wasn't talking to her friends... there was so deep depression when faced with her mortality, no dizzying highs of elation over the preciousness of life, and i really wanted that, with her, because that was what *i* was having.
but, while writing, i thought about her, and how she processed things.
she didn't seem like someone tormented by inner demons. she was peaceful, all the way up to her death.
yes, she was probably avoiding some of the unpleasantness, but she didn't seem troubled.
and i thought about how she didn't talk to us about hew feelings and how she was doing much, in sickness or in health.
and then i thought about her relationship with god and how supported and confident she felt through that.
she found peace in giving things she couldn't process by herself over to god. she described this place, her mental altar, to me once. there is a dense forest, and in the center of the dense forest is a clearing, of grass and sun. in the center of this clearing is a boulder that's flat on top. and when she is troubled by something, she'd go to this clearing and lay out her problem on this rock, to dry out in the sun. she'd tell god that she had done everything she could with that problem and she was going to give it to him to handle. and she felt like letting it dry out in the sun, flattened out on a rock to bake clean, was usually enough for her. she'd taken it as far as she could and now it was out of her hands.
so, why wouldn't she have done the same things with her fears about death?
all of my questions:
are you scared? duh.
are you mad? duh.
are you sad? duh.
do you have regrets? duh.
but she didn't need to talk to me about those things because what could i do about them? nothing. i couldn't give her peace. i couldn't take those fears away.
but talking to god could.
she could take all those fears and regrets and angers and she could lay them on her altar to dry out in the sun, so nothing was left of them but powder, and so she was left with just the sweetness of it all.
doesn't that make sense?
there will always be regrets, it will always be too soon. but it seems like the goal would be to end your life in the presence of what worked and what was good and what joys you brought and received.
and it seems so much more like her to have been there at her death, rather than tormented by the loss of it all.
the realization brought me a whole new sense of peace about her death. i would have loved to be more a part of her processing but just getting that she processed it successfully in her own way, and that the pain came from me wanting to see her process MY way, rather than recognizing her own ways, was a big relief.
i think mom was probably totally at peace with herself and me and everyone when she died. i think she was ready, in every sense, as best she could be. i think she felt safe and protected, like she was heading home. which sounds corny, but is nonetheless true.

peace.

i've been writing a lot.
2 hrs a day, 5 days a week.
so far it's torture most of the time, and the majority of what i write feels like it's probably crap, but the point is to write.
at least right now.
once i have consistent enough habits, i can focus more on self-criticism, but for now, my mantra is: just write.
i'm considering a creative writing class, starting in january.
it's a little pricey for me, but i might just go for it.
it would be a good way for me to put my literal money where my mouth is.
i've been working hard on developing better personal time management skills.
it's been only moderately successful so far, but every day teaches me something new, like what NOT to do.
so, it can't be said to be a failure, even if it's not an unqualified success.
i'm feeling hopeful in a way that i haven't in a really long time.
i felt little sparks of it this year, during the quiet periods of mom's illness. post-treatment, pre-death.
we're planning a wedding, talking about kids, making plans for the house.
it's a level of domesticity that i wondered if i'd ever achieve.
i'm throwing our family's annual christmas eve dinner at my house this year.
it's terrifying, because i've never had a dinner at my house, really, and our house is so little that it's going to be a bit of feat fitting everyone in.
but i just felt like a) i can totally do this; b) these are the people i want to come, and i am not going to make my invites smaller because i am nervous; c) this year is really important, as the first year after mom's death, given that mom was an integral part of this tradition, and it was important that this year feel like the beginning of a positive new time, not the end of a sad, painful time. obviously my mom's absence will be impossible to ignore, so i want some added sweetness to even out the sadness.
i'm doing well.
ariana's dad died at the end of last week.
i've been thinking about her and her family constantly. they didn't expect him to die so quickly, so the whole thing was a real surprise. it couldn't have been more than a month or so after his diagnosis.
having just gone through something similar so recently, i have been feeling a little bit raw for her. just so sad she has to have this in her life. i just want nothing but peace and happiness for my people, you know? not that anyone wants bad things for their loved ones. but still. it's like now that i know about sadness, i wish no one else had to experience it. again, not like i've cornered the market on it, or have experienced it so fully. when i re-read that, it sounds a little pompous and self-important, which isn't how i mean it to. i just want us all to have a break, you know?
that's my holiday wish for everyone - a perfect crystalline period of joy and peace.
please, universe or god or whoever handles these things, please be kind to everyone for a while. this has been such a hard time, for so long, and we are all exhausted. please protect everyone, in whatever way you do or can, holding them in one figurative hand and protecting them from harm with the other.

the morning after.

i talked to mom this morning.
she was MUCH more alert.
she doesn't remember anything about yesterday, which is not cool, but at least she's up and about today.
she was up, out of bed, taking a shower when i called again a little bit ago.
i spoke to her nurse at ucsf.
they're going to put her on more steroids, to help with swelling.
this nurse is the first person to cut the crap and tell me honestly that this might just be my mom dying, basically.
she said, very gently, that the survival rate is usually around 12 to 16 months after diagnosis.
i really appreciated her honesty. i don't need false hopes, i need to have an idea of what to expect.
i think the 'roids will help a lot. they certainly did last time.
i'm looking into support groups for all of us (me, mom, jerr-bear), occupational therapy for mom, maybe even neuropsychology, if she's up for it.
now, i am off to pick up HARRY POTTER!!!!!!!!!!, grab some food for the day, and head over to sit on little mykkie for the rest of the day.
um...kids? they are a lot of work. had you heard? because they really, really are.
i am happy to spend time with mykkie, AND this couldn't possibly be a worse time for me to have to be taking care of someone else. i really need to be focusing on my mom right now.
um, did i mention i am going to start reading HARRY POTTER!!!!!!!?
because i am...

empty.

i felt really, really blue last night.

i think it was the combination of stuff sucking ass with mom and that being an overwhelming energy drain, and then watching little mykkie for 10 hours, which was also an overwhelming energy drain.

man, you know what takes it out of a person?
watching a tiny person who is 1.25 years old.
he was very, very well-behaved for us.

he was super fussy as a small baby, and even recently, he's been slow to warm with strangers, but he's a little butterbean with me and the man.

he took a little nap on our bed (after some masterful coaxing and soothing and trickery from me), shared lunch with us (chicken satay, cucumber salad, cheerios), and generally cruised around touching everything and trying to fall on his head. he doesn't know anything about watching where he's stepping, being careful about hitting himself in the face or head with things, gentle vs. rough, loud vs. quiet. what he knows about is being so cute that it hurts one's tummy and being a cuddlebug.

between the emotional hurdles of helping my mom and the energetic hurdles of watching that baby, i was tired to the point of near meltdown. when i panfully pinched my finger with the bottle opener, trying to open my cider, i started crying.

i just thought, 'really, god? really? i deserve *this,* on top of everything else? what the fuck?' and then i cried because sometimes i feel like god is mean, or confident in my coping abilities to the point of being an over-delegator. i can't be expected to manage EVERYTHING, god/universe. please remember i'd also like to enjoy my life, not just win the sympathy and admiration of friends and strangers alike for my plucky sticktoitiveness.

i went to bed pretty early, convinced that basically everything was screwed.

i woke up this morning feeling an eens-weens bit better, but still a bit down.

i moped around the county until i finally got off my keister and went to the gym. i have spent my entire life not wanting to exercise, and only within 2007 - year when everything fell apart - have i really understood why people like exercising so much. i think it takes a while to get over the hump with working out, feeling uncomfortable, fat, out of shape, etc, and into the zone where just being there makes you feel proud of yourself and better for some reason. i always feel thinner the day after i gym, and more healthy and optimistic. i get it now; i get why people would want to go to the gym after a long day at work. and i'm relieved i finally get it, because i was pretty worried about being overweight later on and bitching about it all the time. i'm learning good, healthy habits now, that will help me in the future and help my kids be healthier and happier, too. i just always felt so left out by the physical activity thing, but now i'm in with the in crowd.

the man and i drove to the 'luma to check out future home at night, and see how loud the nabe is after dark. there is some freeway noise, since we're on a hill, but it was totally within the range of noise levels that are acceptable to me. i think man-head agrees.

on a different note, should i make up code names for everyone, so that when i become famous for my blogging (insightful, inspirational, hilarious - something for everyone, really), my adoring fans aren't mobbing me and my nearest and dearest? am i being silly to even think that? i am just thinking about stalkers or weirdos. maybe i should be more careful about the personal details and stuff.

what do you think? is using nicknames pretentious and self-important, or is it wise, to protect me and my peops from prying?

harry freaking potter!!!

holy quidditch, you guys!!
it's gonna be here in, like, 1.5 hrs!
people in england ALREADY KNOW THE SECRET ENDING!!
i am freaking out.
oh, also, can we talk about how much this sucks?
i pre-ordered, 'cuz duh, like i always do, but this time they had a delux edition available, with a special cover and special art, for roughly $1,000,000, so i totally bought that one because it's the LAST book in the series.
and then i got a call from my local independent book seller that my DELUX, $1,000,000 version wasn't coming until....wait for it....wait for it....TUESDAY.
sha-ZAM.
totally bammer.
i am basically going to be a one woman media black-out zone until next friday or something.
it's like i am a fan of a popular show, whose season finale i missed, and i have to avoid anyone ruining the surprises for me.
except instead of some dumb show that sucks, it's an entire book series that was awesome.
still, i'm brimming with excitement, trepidation, anticipation, etc.
VERY EXCITED.
don't tell me what happens.
it's going to be amazing, though, probably.

also, this weekend at my mom's was fucking difficult, but i am not in the mood to go into it. suffice it to say, it was tuff, and i was sad and mad and tired and embarassed and frustrated, all at the same time.
and, eventually, i left feeling marginally more positive than i thought i would.
i have to keep the hope alive, perhaps in spite of medical evidence to the contrary, that the mom i love and miss might be hiding beneath this old lady-smelling, pajamas-all-the-time- wearing, forgetting what she's saying mid-sentence, visitor from another planet/century whose home i am staying at as my part-time job.
i connected with jerr-bear in a really great, positive way today, and that felt good.
all the errands i tried to run with her ended in annoyance, none ended in success except getting my poor filthy car washed. (seriously, if my car was a person, she'd have been a normal classy lady, dressed in a business suit made of bird poop, pee, mud and...um...sunscreen. (lotsa greasy sunscreen fingerprints on my little lady.)
she's clean as a whistle now, though. ukiah pricing is brilliantly affordable. $17 for the carwash i usually pay $30 for in san rafael. i guess it pays to get my carwashing done in the poorest county in california.
tomorrow, we babysit the little tater tot, starting at 8:15am. anyone want to hang out with maybe the cutest baby ever borned?

baby 101.

i watched mykhail all by myself today, from 2pm to 8ish, his bedtime.

here are some things that went well:
1) he only cried once, and it was very briefly.
2) he ate for me, which he never does for his mother.
3) we cuddled like otters.
4) i changed his diaper twice, and it stayed on, and it caught the bodily stuff coming out, with no leakage.
5) i did not drop him or hurt him accidentally.
6) he did not choke or come to any harm.
7) he went straight to sleep with no fuss. again, this isn't common.
8) he is very smart, and he clapped at the part in the book where he was supposed to, and he waved at the right part, too. oh, and he points to ducks and says, 'du!' CUTE. he also points to the stove and says, 'hot!'

we are friends, me and this little person. he likes me, and trusts me, and will walk up to me and bury his face in my leg, or will lean in to rest against me.

it is really gratifying to have a baby really like me, when i like him very much, too.

this is promising, so that 2008 - year of the golden baby - doesn't culminate with me having to give my baby to someone s/he likes more.

i talked for a while with stef, when she got home from work. she's having a hard time, like everyone else during this crotch-kick of a year. i think i'll probably be spending a lot of time with mykhail, to help her out.

oh, also, did i mention we made an offer on a house and it got accepted so we're buying a house? yeah. whoa. it's true. we're terrified, and it's a singularly terrible time for it (mom dying of cancer, pondering a baby, stef needs help of a financial or energetic variety, we should be saving for costa rica, i have no job, etc.) but we're just going for it. possibly unwisely, but we're going for it nonetheless. it's a very exciting (SCARY) turn of events.

i'll post pictures of both mykhail (he's so cute you'll LITERALLY pee in your pants from it) and our house(!!!) when it's not 2am.

t.c.o.b.

my family has used this financial lady for years.

when i was younger, and my mom and dad were still together, they used her for financial counseling and bill-paying.

when they split up, my dad hired her and her people to handle all of his business and personal expenses.

when mom inherited the house from my grandfather, and had some money to play with, she called this lady for advice.

so, now that my mom's mental stuff is getting a little iffy, and her organization in her head is the pits, i am hiring this financial lady and her service to handle my mom's bills.

before we found out about the fucking cancer, one of the signs that something was amiss was the piles of unpaid bills that mom's boyfriend found around the house. they thought mom was depressed. so, while my mom was going through brain surgery, shannon paid all of her bills. i paid her bills for a while, but she seemed like she was doing well, mentally, so i let her handle them once she got back home.

but it seems like, given the fact that she can't remember where she puts things, or when things are supposed to happen, maybe expecting her to pay her bills on time is too much. i don't want to find out that things are out of control, because mom was too embarrassed to ask for help. so, i suggested it and mom was receptive.

i know it's scary for mom to have to give up so much control of her life. me and allen are trying to wrestle the car keys from her hand. i am taking the bills away. that's a big loss of autonomy. obviously i don't know what that's like but i can imagine. but she's been pretty much fine with it. i think i was successful in convincing her to think of it like an indulgence, like having a housekeeper.

i knew that this stuff would have to happen at some point, but i expected it to happen when she was a senior citizen. this is yet another wrinkle of crappiness in the whole big elephant of crappy.

in more cheerful news, shannon and i made an offer on another house in petaluma and it was accepted. we are terrified, but also, i think we're excited, too. i think. the offer we made asked them to pay the closing costs, and to leave the island in the middle of the kitchen, and they were okay with both. also, they asked for two extra weeks to move out, and they'll pay us rent to stay for those weeks. so, basically, these people are paying us to buy their house.

there are a lot of reasons to be scared about this. what if the market continues to go downhill and we bought a house for a lot more than we needed to? that's a possibility. what if our little house never increases in value? that's a possibility, too. what if it's way too small and we end up hating it? unlikely. it's pretty cute. what if we can't sell it? who knows, right? we'll just have to see.

moving away from marin will be sad. um, you guys? if i have a baby, i'll probably need a lot of support and help, but i'm moving a little further away. could you please come up and help me sometimes? i promise that i won't be the kind of new mom who never leaves the house, so sometimes i can meet you half way.