badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

big pictures

I was thinking it would be nice to frame some pictures. And I would dearly love to have one of Minnie's paintings. And more dearly I would love to have something by Sandow Birk. Ideally the LA and SF women from Smog and Thunder. LA; chicana, pregnant, with belly hanging out, baseball cap, and skateboard; SF, boy toy dyke in black leather jacket (rollerblading? at protest march? with queer flag, something like that). I can't find images of them anywhere but to give you an idea of the painting style here is The Romance of Commerce and Portrait of General Juan Gomez. I saw the portrait of the general (from the fictional war between San Francisco and Los Angeles over water rights) a few years ago in an enormous show.

I wish i had a huge coffee table book of Sandow Birk who is probably my favorite artist ever.... instead I have a tiny little book from "Smog and Thunder".

Maybe I can buy a painting from dastardly dan if he has got some in storage somewhere?

home with cookies

Whoever isn't watching the oscars, come over and eat the cookies I am about to make. 8-P Everyone seems to be at the geekhouse oscar party, but I'm too sick to go out.

Otherwise I shall spend the evening playing nethack and reading. A good fate either way.

glad rags

the keeper
luna pads, glad rags, etc.

Pretty neat. I might try it... here is another example of orkut being useful. "The Menstrual Cup" - sounds like soccer doesn't it?

First love

By the way, I think Moomin is in love for the first time. With Her.

prime directive

While I was hurting today my one thought was that I didn't want Moomin to see me helplessly suffering. My other one thought was "Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, OW."

I began having all these heroic fantasies about how I would have some accident and be bleeding to death and would calmly explain to Moomin how to dial 911 without him becoming panicked by my situation. Because I would show no fear! No pain! I had an astonishingly strong feeling that I would, or should, go to any lengths in order to avoid my child seeing me suffer.

My real life strategy: being surly, ignoring him, extra ice cream, and putting on videos.

Aside from an awkward 2 hours, Rook was here doing everything. I slept most of the afternoon with earplugs in, as a true hero would.

dumb luck?

this morning I went to the old house and dealt with police and made a list of things missing. Police sort of shruggy and explaining that fingerprints unlikely. I called all the credit card companies and everything seems okay there too. Why did the "thieves" leave a perfectly good credit card of mine, but take the 25 buck gift certificate to the "wherehouse"? teenagers...? and they took the pink change purse, but left the credit cards and other gift cards there on the floor. Hmmm.

Home. Rook stayed there to move the last of the stuff. He ended up in a giant argument with the landlord who wants to go in there now and in fact is in there now, yet still charge us rent till march 8th.

Meanwhile I was back at the new house. Suddenly I coughed and my back went into a giant spasm that made me cry. Moomin: "Mommy, I will pat you and kiss your back and maybe gently rub it and it will make better. Maybe that will make better your back." Nice kid, bad grammar. Ibuprofen, codeine, albuterol, heat on back, video for Moomin.

I was unable to take a deep breath. In fact I still can't. But at some point about an hour ago I coughed violently and painfully and some stuff came up from somewhere around my navel and the pain all disappeared instantly like magic. Then I realized I still couldn't take a deep breath even without the pain. On my peak flow thing I usually can blow 550+ cubic whatevers. 450 is asthma that is bothersome. Well I was just blowing 350 on the thing and steaming myself in the bathroom boringly. Is this pneumonia? I don't think I have any sort of fever. So I don't think so... just oddly painful bronchitis... My chest does hurt and it has a sort of yucky slurping noise in there. Now back up to 400 which means I feel human. It can be really comforting to measure these things.

I am back to the steam room now with some very garlicky broth in a mug. No more unpacking... I have to take this seriously... and really rest. Nethack, and Hakluyt, you shall be my nurses.

I'm fucked up, yo...

the real luck

But the real luck was the fabulous rest of the evening. Doxie's party had me slightly unnerved because I knew a lot of people from bl@ck le@ther w1ngs would be there and I have not seen them for almost 10 years and now from being Doxie's girltoy hot young thang femmy top lesbo (though at the time I ended up having a boyfriend and living with him too), I show up with husband in tow, smelling of the suburbs. Admittedly, cute, somewhat ambiguously gendered, coolest in the universe husband, but ... just a couple of awkward moments as I get enthusiastic hug and pat on my leather-clad ass from some girlie and then pop! at my elbow looms a large smiling man looking like my outfit accessory and wanting introductions. heh heh heh.

But that was not my main problem. the main problem was that goof-ass article i wrote about being branded that freaked out Fecker and Calla. Now. Yes I said some mean spirited things but the article was playful, funny, and made fun of myself way more than anyone else. I made fun of Calla's accent and how she took a zillion yearrs to prepare herself to appear topless for the camera but I also talked about how I liked her and how she was nice. I made fun of Fecker and his 2 friends for taking even longer to fuss with their sarongs so they could look appropriately tribal for the camera but I also talked about how I saw him as an interesting role model and the odd tensions between the cool stuff and the suburban reality of his life. Then I made fun of myself quite a lot. And made fun of all the smudging with sage fake indianness. And I think I said some separate things that were my doubts about the body mod scene and dis-privileging oneself and making a subculture but where some things were reversible or hidable so that you could go get a good job, but what was considered much cooler was to do something non-hideable in the style of teardrop prison tattoos so that you were guaranteed to remain in the underground economy or work in record stores forever.

But here is the deal. It went into a zine that what, had maybe 100 or 200 copies at most and I figured no one involved would ever see it. (And I don't know if they did see it.) And my dear friend who is a genius writer but sometimes irritating framed the article in a different tone than I meant it so that from the headline and the things in sidebars it seemed like a direct attack on Fecker. More virulently than I had intended at all. And then right afterwards there was this giant horrible incident in S@nta Barbara where some people in our community got arrested and Dregon went to jail and it was pretty terrible. So I think Fecker and Calla were freaking that if Minnie and I hated them we could mess up their lives very severely just by calling the cops on them.

well that was a complicated explanation. But When I say that Fecker and Calla were pissed at me and I didn't feel welcome in the community anymore, that's why! And I think that anyone associated strongly with them heard something about it, from their point of view, and probably without reading the article, so that gossip was likely "Badger wrote a horrible hateful thing and published it and she is totally insincere." Ugh. As if then I would go off and write an exposé of the summer gatherings in the woods. I do really respect so many of the people and had very nice relations with them. I called Feckerr and Calla some years ago and made long detailed apologies which were accepted but they didn't want me coming to their house or anything and I can understand that...

And indeed I did feel some awkwardness last night.

BUT on the whole, my teflon soul was able to shed that awkwardness very quickly.

And I had a great time! And everyone was lovely and sleazy and wearing antique rabbit fur coats and beaded dresses and leather and hats with veils and the old-school butches in their chaps were rather darling showing off their new hormone muscles as many of them seem to be in some stage of FTM transition or intersexualness. And Doxie was lovely. And Rook was my cute boy toy. And I felt that I missed everyone and was welcome back. And my outfit was admired and I was not the youngest one and there was much flirting and grabbing and sleazing. The birthday cake had a giant very artistic picture in icing of Doxie with cane marks on her bare ass. I had fun talking with some of the 70s s3x radicals who work on a history project and archive. Dr. Bother, fellow sullier of lesbian purity, mom of toddler and SF nerd, showed up and so Rook had someone to talk with and did not shadow me uncomfortably the whole party. She and I then got a box of gloves and shyly plotted our assault on the helpless tied up and beaten Doxie but then it was time for cake and time to untie her so, alas, we did.

I especially admired the amazing scientific and technical skillz of Saro. Her glasses slip down and she looks like a mad scientist as she taps away with her evil homemade tools and oddly she also looks like a small shy brown shorebird. anyway she is cool on all levels and never boring. I believe she plays a mean game of scrabble, as does Doxie.

I do get mildly uncomfortable or uptight at these things when I realize that while people are good hearted and competent, they are less competent or responsible than you would expect sometimes because half of them are stoned out of their minds or something. I am okay with being stoned out of one's mind but someone has to be a sort of designated driver and be aware that for example, the front door out onto mission street is locked, which almost every time I looked, it was not. dorks. And if I were bottomming, (rare anyway, top on the streets, bottom between the sheets as they say) I would not trust someone stoned or on X to top me and know what they are doing and be aware of what's going on with me, much less to do anything really extreme. Anyway! A minor quibble compared to all the excellent wonderfulness of all those people and the party and Doxie herself.

And how did I get so lucky as to have a fabulous husband, live here where I wanted to live, have a nice kid, and he does not mind when I am all up in the coochie of my 60 year old ex girlfriend or making out with random half naked women in tallulah bankhead hats and fur coats? not only does not mind but beams upon it benevolently? what a fairy tale.

luck

First of all with great hoo-ha we got ready to go out and realized that all our shoes and fancy high boots are still at the old house.

I drank a bunch of Robitussin and coffee and took extra asthma med to deal with my cough.

And at the old house I had cleverly turned off the electricity a few days early... Rook had a flashlight in his car, clever! And I realized that all these things were missing! Boots - missing! Tubs - overturned! Wait, the old computer is scattered across the hallway in several pieces! Where is my huge framed painting of the chinese emperor on the pinto pony, and the crappy 25 cent huge framed poster of picasso's don quixote, and in fact all our other huge framed pictures that I left in a stack in the living room?

Now keep in mind our crappy landlord calledl me a few days ago and wanted to bring his uncle's painting crew in to move our few remaining things into the garage so they could paint. But I said no because I would rather do it myself, because of the COMPUTER AND MY LARGE FRAMED PAINTINGS that I am especially fond of, but I can't do it for the next couple of days. And he was pissed.

Did my landlord go in there and vandalize the computer and do god knows what with the giant paintings as vengeance? What about the knee high leather boots, and the wooden cd racks with the change bowl and gift cards in it?

A sucky thing. There were credit cards in there I think. A credit card was on the floor next to the computer, and a couple of gift cards from xmas. (Why would our Thieves take the things they took? Why? And leave the things they left?) And I think in the wooden cd racks (empty of cds) there was a small box with my ENTIRE last four years' collection of other people's business cards in there. That I had meticulously collected from EVERYWHERE over the last two months and put in this box so that I could make a list of everyone's contact info. Including all my contact info for people from the translation conference. goddamn it!!!!!!!

I think this morning I will have to call the police and file a report. maybe they can fingerprint the computer as I didn't touch it.

The giant framed poster of Xena from the library was hidden behind a cruddy looking whiteboard. So it is still there.

Why? why? Why? If it were just the change bowl, the cd racks and the boots I would think it was teenagers. But why would teenagers take heavy glass fronted paintings almost as tall as me? and obviously not valuable?

a brilliant invention

Based on my blinding insight of yesterday about wiping one's hands on one's socks, I have come up with a new invention. I woke up from my nap this afternoon laughing so hard I choked.

Yes, it's the SOCKERCHIEF. For all those times when you are caught without a handkerchief. The Sockerchief! Made of special soft to the nose fabric, yet still sock-like! There you are camping and your nose starts running. Wait! Don't wipe your nose on your sleeve! Just stop and take off your hiking boots and VOILA. Whisk off your Sockerchief and blow!

I am going to make one million dollars with this invention!

Swarm no. 1

Idea no. 1 was "Screw it with whole publishing thing." Either branch out T0llbooth Press or start new press with new name and publish through Xlibris squid's tr0ll story and Jo's book about moving and also Tr@ce and the Clocks. Squid to illustrate more. I will ask my friend N0ra who translates to translate them into Spanish and we could publish them facing-pages bilingual. And my little "what little birds do" book which is tiny but amusing with my illustrations. Ep possibly to make nice web site, help figure out intricacies of Xlibris, how to make actual small biz or else a non profit, and kick all our asses.

The twin goals being AUTHORS and LEGITIMACY and NOT GOING BEGGING and also making cool books that will be affordable and available that are bilingual span/eng. VECINAS, MAMACITAS, COMPAñERAS, HIVEMIND, COMADRES GRINGAñOLICAS UNIDAS.

Goddamn it! Yeah! Build it and they will come. My office will be clear of boxes soon and with a white board on the wall and we will have a MEETING.

This, I think from being charged up with feminist glory from my meeting on wittig with Professor Steed.

swarm!

I am swarming with ideas! Meetings with advisors good. I have many many, many, hrair, ideas about many things.

I forgot how many ideas I get and how excited I get by not just the school but the driving on 280 alone in my truck. SWARMS ARE COMING.

just what I needed!

A bit of a cough last night and t his morning I woke up with the fastest bronchitis in the west. The allergist will kill me. I am coughing up orange, bloody stuff -- too much, really to wipe on my socks.

But after pissing off both my advisors by not having my forms signed correctly on time, I can't miss my big day of meetings with them... when we are a month into the semester and I haven't met with either one... I must haul myself and my giant backpack full of project binders up to campus.

I will skip the night class and the reading group - I had planned a marathon day of school 10am - 9:30pm. Nope. just the 2 meetings and then home to bed, soup, steam.

Moomin woke up saying that his legs hurt and demanding to be carried. Has he noticed that I am always whining about some health problem? What is up? I can't tell but he is walking really funny. 2 days ago he scraped his arm a little falling down on the sidewalk and demanded ice, holding it awkwardly as if in an imaginary sling. I administered kisses and gave him a little ice pack and then ignored it as it did not seem broken. But he carried around like a baby bird for around 4 hours. At times I tried to play with him figuring I'd distract him from this entertaining new game but he didn't use the arm at all, doing puzzles with his left hand and occasionally turning a pathetic, wan gaze up to me as if in reproach for my cruelty. Around dinnertime he finally did start using it and forgot. But it was an amazingly long time. Now this with the legs? World's youngest hypochondriac? I would not carry him around the house this morning and suggested that he is not a baby. He double-leg limped over to the table where he is now reading the Froot Loops box. "This says, 'Froot Loops'. and here it says 'Froot Loops' again."

Later, when we realize he has some rare form of bone cancer or something I will regret doubting his hurting legs.

thunder!

That was just the loudest and longest thundering ever!

It's california and I haven't seen lightning here but... oh.. maybe twice in 5 years.

Yay, that was cool. I'm going to look for matches and candles now.

time's a wastin'!

I must be the last person on the planet to see this but just in case I'm not -
Zefrank I just watched 2 of them, "How To Dance Properly" and "How to Impress Your Date" and I laughed so hard that I am having an asthma attack and must go find my inhaler.

facial

After I did my homework I went and cashed in on that day spa gift certificate.

- giant fuzzy bathrobe (keep boxers on? I opted for yes)
- bubble wrap looking sandals
- locker with weird phone-cord bracelet for its key
- poncy music, dim lights, candles, forced to sit alone in room with fluffy chair
- feet plunged into basin (don't ask me why, but it was for sure a basin) of what seemed like hot mulled wine with cloves and fresh rose petals
- hot pillow yoke thing draped over neck and shoulders
-> Ahhhh. How strange. Now what? 10 minutes later...
- arranged face up on bendy table with feet up in strangely perfectly comfortable position, never achieved at home under any circumstances (why?)
- hot pillows placed under feet, in armpits and under elbows (strangely good)
- warmed up cross between sheet and towel draped over me

- elderly day spa lady put so many kinds of lotion on my face and neck, I lost count. No really. I had a facial a couple of other times and it was ... maybe a 3 or 4 step process. This one, I could not keep track. Once we got past the cooling cucumber seaweed whatchamacallit yadda yadda I just shut up and stopped asking what it was. There was much brutal face massaging. Oh lord, day spa ladies, I just want the massage, quit trying to pop my zits with that diabolical blackhead remover thing and quit lecturing me about skin care and rosacea and do that thing to the back of my neck again.

- feet encased in hot paraffin and wrapped in some sort of booties and re-hot-pillowed and gently covered with sheet

- day spa lady suddenly began to spaz and call me honey about 20 million times and tell me I'm so pretty. Mildly creepy? Periodically she erupts into the speech while staring at me meaningfully and holding my feet or lightly caressing my collarbones. Is the the "full service" day spa? Am glad I opted to keep boxers on. "Oh honey! Oh honey! Oh HONEY! You have so pretty skin! do you know how pretty you are!" (I totally don't have nice skin, at least not on my face. Possibly she was looking elsewhere? It seems smart for day spa lady to give compliments to get return customers but... Oh HONEY! (semi-groaned) )

- I drift off into fantasy of my ideal day spa which would be called "The Bong Hit". It would be all retro hippie stuff and they would get you high as a kite and THEN give you the facial, foot massage, and etc. and along with poncy velvet bathrobe you would get a "tasteful" nitrous inhaling mask made of like, beaded velvet macrame.

- This whole day spa thing is like whorehouses for women, except without the sex part. what's up witih that? Are there good whorehouses where it's all nice and you get a cucumber face massage with wine and cloves AND a blow job? or in my case a vibrator? It being just as freaky to desire some total stranger to pleasure me "non-sexually" yet decadently for an hour and a half in dim light alone in a little pseudo-medical exam table in a tiny room full of mysterious implements. I go with that thought for a while, imagining that I am that chinese empress listed in the book of lists who had a specially constructed bed so that 30 people could all comb her hair at once or something like that.

- I struggle with wondering if it could ever really be justified to pay people for one's own decadent pleasure. Like when I make a zillion dollars and have a personal servant who will do everything boring and will massage my feet everyday with hot towels. Perhaps wth really good benefits and pay and only working 5 hours a day so they could have time for self-actualization? No, still not. I concluded that one would need a decadence co-op. Then I shut up my mind for a bit and tried to drift off to sleep during the mint seaweed mask.

My skin feels the same as ever - for about 3 hours it was all smooth and perfect and then it got simultaneously itchy, dry, and oily all at the same time. Who cares about that part... it was possibly the best massage I have ever had since I was not face-down... next massage I get I will just tell them "skip the back and just do the rest of me" .

It was so nice to have an interlude of perfect freedom from pain, cold feet, vague uncomfortable itchiness that always seems to haunt me...

Wisdom of the Ages, passed on

Here is a crucial bit of wisdom I feel should be preserved for all the world forevermore.

When you have to wipe your hands somewhere because they are all garlicky or you just hawked up something or have been picking your nose, don't wipe your hands on your pants. Instead, use your socks. That way you can wear the pants again without telltale slime trails and stale garlic scent. Wear new socks everyday. Whoop! Problem solved!

Okay. Or, go wash your hands, you nasty beast.

look, i'm a pirate!

You're Ulysses!

by James Joyce

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

hey!

Hey Melanie from Bermuda the Bahamas - are you still reading ? Because I lost your blog address but I wanted to link to you....

how it happens

Just now I was thinking so hard about this Wittig project that I microwaved my toast instead of toasting it.

I had been thinking "hmm, must eat breakfast" for the last couple of hours. Got up finally just now - got bread - checked for mold - good to go. Put it in to cook and turned on the oven. Stood there for a few seconds, feeling a vague sense of unease, and not sure why.

Doh! 2 slices of limp, soggy, weirdly warm bread later, I realize what was wrong. the toaster. Put. The. Bread. In. The. Toaster. Stop. Thinking. About. Whether in French the name "Orphée" is masculine or feminine or just oddly neither and how exactly to arrange the database tables.

It's great to be back to normal!

new poet loves

I have some new crushes too, on Alurista and on Viviana Aparicio Chamberlain - only a couple of poems of hers that I have found but they were great and I was cheering for her. But anyway Alurista - what to say. Flor Y Canto, if only I hadn't been still sucking my thumb and learning to tie my shoes, but it's the best poetry mag I've ever seen for general coolness. I like things like BLAST full of Vorticist manifestos and I love cid corman and the way bly made all those little mags and of course my mythologizing soul-homie Wittig but wow, the floricanto poets! And the non-pretentious introductions by alurista! Who is obviously a god of organizing and creating events and magazines suitable for putting up on my imaginary shrine. Yes! I will be talking about this stuff in my usual waffly way on the bilingual poetry project blog. I just want to propagate some of this stuff on wikipedia and elsewhere on the net - my main rationale for doing the project other than just liking poetry with multiple languages - it's far over my head but I think I could write at least one interesting theory paper that no one else has written. I mean. I hate the thought of just tooling about "applying so and so's theory to such and such" or "doing a close reading of such and such". Give me crazed theories, diagrams, wild assertions, irritating generalities, multiple ways of looking at the same thing. Or don't give them to me. I will generate them spastically and with great joy.

I am all energized for my projects again - can you tell? It helped to take the books out of the boxes marked "very important" that were buried 4 deep in the center of the new living room. I put them on the shelf visible from my bed so that they will beam thoughts into my head as I sleep.

meanwhile in the world

I do love Riverbend and haven't mentioned that lately. Today's post has a great snarky bit where she teaches the dumb amerikans who Voltaire is. Hilarious. If you keep reading of course there are many not so hilarious moments. Read her, read her!

she is also part of a new project called The Iraqi Agora - a group blog though really at this point mainly the ranting of Liminal.

I'll keep an eye out for ya

Apparently my eye is sort of, almost, maybe, probably okay. Said the mildly puzzled eye doctor after squirting some anesthetic in there and poking around. He did not know what the lumps were but had a theory about lymph glands or something (on the surface of the eyeball? there are lymph glands?) He said I should come back tomorrow and in one week. No medicine-taking advised. He also asked me if I ever chain-sneezed. (yes, quite a lot lately in the dust) Did you know that chain sneezing can make blood vessels in your eye burst open? Ew.

"You shouldn't be feeling any pain. And you shouldn't feel any sort of sensation that there is a lump under your eyelid."

"But it hurts. And I can not just see the lumps, I have that feeling like something is in my eye, and it is the lumps."

"Well probably the lumps were already there and are perfectly normal. And the blood in there just made them noticable."

"But I didn't feel like there was anything in my eye, before."

"Well come and see me again tomorrow, I won't charge you anything. It should resolve by itself in a week."

This was both reassuring and not reassuring.

course correction

Things seem better today. Rook will chip in more with the moving. I shall have extra school hours for Moomin this week so I can catch up on school. I need not worry to get us out of the old house and have it clean by Wednesday (near impossibility if I am to do anything else). Rook points out that we have been in the new house 2 days and yet so much is done it's amazing.

True... it's not like I've been idle... just not focused on school and it seems like I can't do enough and so much needs doing.

So I am unpacking just enough to find the books and binders I need for my classes... I will go out and eat an omelette and take notes and then go to K1nko's to have a nice fast net connection and printer and I'll print out everything and make a project binder. I have to do an annotated bibliography really really quick.

Okay everybody I am sorry for freaking out!

floppy hat

As I think of all the disturbingly wall eyed people I have known in life and the discomfort of not knowing what eye to be looking at, I vow that if I have to have a glass eye, I shall wear dark sunglasses and large hats with floppy brims that droop over the glass eye. Which would be oddly hideous in some funny way so that when you finally got to see it it would be kind of hilarious. If I go totally blind, I am hoping that someone who does not clear his throat all the time will finish reading Proust to me in a soothing monotone without any vile "audio book" flourishes.

stress

you know the last 2 months have been pretty stressful and i am just breaking. Thank you everybody who has been nice about it.

i dont know if I can handle school. I am very near giving up in despair. I can't take this

arrrrgh

what is wrong with me? i feel hellishly bad. My eye has more lumps in it. My head hurts. I feel ready to scream at everyone. Unbelievably foul tempered.

Dr. says it is not pinkeye but she doesn't know what it is and I must go to an opthamologist. This morning there were 2 weird lumps on my eyeball. Now there are more. It is disturbing and hurts... They are spreading... Is it ocular herpes and it is going to like eat my brain? Or just my eyeball and I will have to have a horrid glass eye and be half blind?

i keep thinking of my parents yelling at me and making me use a different bathroom because "I probably had VD or something." thanks parents. you were right. I am diseased and filthy and corrupt all that I touch. am afraid to touch moomin. paranoia increasing.

am I PMS-ing? Do I have some sort of eyeball syphillis and am going crazy?
does this have any relation to all the weird vertigo and headaches?

riots????

What riots? What dead people? What civil unrest? A dozen or so religious wackos with protest signs are now a "riot"? What the hell?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned up the rhetoric against San Francisco's move to allow same-sex marriages, saying on national TV Sunday that he fears outbreaks of serious civil unrest if the ceremonies continue at City Hall.

Schwarzenegger said on NBC's "Meet the Press'' that he fears worsening protests about the divisive issue and worries the situation could get out of hand if courts don't quickly stop the marriages, which are being performed in defiance of existing state law.

"All of a sudden, we see riots, we see protests, we see people clashing. The next thing we know, there is injured or there is dead people. We don't want it to get to that extent,'' the Republican said in his first appearance as governor on a Sunday talk show.

It's like he is suggesting that he wants to see some serious riots and dead people so that he will have an excuse to "crack down" whatever that means.

I hope that other cities will follow suit. Come on, Chicago! Get your head out of your ass! New York, what are you doing?

Thanks Minnie for the link...

wish

Also the book "W1sh for a Pony" was possibly the most trashily indulgent kids' book ever written. Heh heh heh. Everything very obvious about how it was going to turn out at every second. So strangely enjoyable! Like some story I would have imagined to myself while going to sleep when I was 10 (except there would have been Elves in it too as most of my fantasies were Mary Sue Middle Earth porn). But anyway I loved it and the other one that went with it even as I chuckled meanly to myself and muttered things like "Not Bloody Likely" at the vile children and their vile perfect ponies and the quaint old salt with the earrings who runs the ferry and teaches them how to do everything and how they just get to do everything they want and they're good at everything.

The other one "the Wh1te Riders" was even funnier as the 2 vile pre-teen girls move to the perfect old fashioned farmhouse and run the dairy on their own and cook exotic sounding things and do all the light housework, go to school, take care of about 8 million ponies, stay up all night riding around pretending to be ghosts a-la-Scooby-Doo-episode, and lord knows what-all else. Hanging out with people who talk in some quaint british dialect and refer to "The Quality" and do all the washing. Learn to become crack snipers and drive pony carts. I was kind of surprised that they did not also provide emergency medical assistance to the cow in labor.

My mom must read at least the first book, as she is definitely "pony crazy".

I can't believe you found this book for me, Iris! It seems quite scarce and out of print! I should send you "H0use of 30 cats".

scenes from the last few days

Moomin tenderly crooning "This is my Bunk Bed. and This is My Room" with beatific smile.

Rook poncing about next to his bed unpacking and alphabetizing his rpg books. Gazing at them smugly.

We all had a nice dinner last night as by some miracle I had grocery shopped and had a bunch of food! yeah!

Like magic I am not horribly sore and my back did not go out and I don't have the cold that everyone else has. But I do have pinkeye. Maybe it is magic pinkeye, protecting me from all other evil. Take that, Tinkerbell!

Moomin in bed this morning half asleep and then yelling at the top of his lungs suddenly, "No baby kangaroo could be THAT big!" and dissolving helplessly into seizures of chortling. Then all cosy and peaceful again. 2 minutes later, "No mouse could be THAT big!" and the cascade of snorting laughter. He watched that cartoon twice yesterday - sylvester the cat and his kid cat and the "giant mouse". And I realized with a flash that here was the source of when I say "Oh, the SHAME of it!" as it's what the little cat says.

Squid brought us a large bag of dirt, and seeds! They await me. First I have to go clean the old nasty house and move about 3 more small truckloads of junk from it. Moomin is at school. Blessed school. Finally! Goddamned fake holidays and "ski weekends". Rassin' frackin' lily livered yellow bellied varmints!

i am so far behind on schoolwork. I thought when my mom was here I would get the free babysitting and I'd hare off to Stanffford library researching and writing with demonic intensity. Nope. My new plan is to do this on Wednesday. Thurs. I must turn somehting in and meet with both advisors. Eeek!

hope springs eternal!

I am totally hoping for Marcel to get it on with Saint-Loup. Will he? I want to cheat and look at some sort of summary. But I will not!!! No!

health care

spin in health care report

The original version of the report included these statements, which were dropped from the final version:

¶"We aspire to equality of opportunities for all our citizens. Persistent disparities in health care are inconsistent with our core values."

¶"Disparities come at a personal and societal price."

¶"Compared with whites, blacks experience longer waits in emergency departments and are more likely to leave without being seen."

¶When hospitalized for heart attacks, "Hispanics are less likely to receive optimal care."

The original report included a stark, prominent statement that "black children have much higher hospitalization rates for asthma than white children." The final version included the data, without comment.

just my 2 cents but other than when I get stopped by cops, I have never felt my own white privilege so strongly as when I was trying to get health care in emergency rooms without insurance. Yes the hospital workers were racist as hell and I heard horrible things from them. But not only that, because I grew up with privilege I was obnoxiously assertive and got better care because I dared do it. All the black and hispanic and vietnamese ladies in the ER waiting looking at me with silent loathing - how dare I? But I did and I got the benefit of it.

The wild thing is the bush admin. health official guy actually admitting to a mistake. After I am sure he moved heaven and earth to fuck up the report in the first place.

meanwhile

Meanwhile in the quiet or exhausted interludes I have forged ahead in the reading of "Tom Purdue" i.e. Proust. I am on book 3 "The Guermantes Way" and feel like a dog rolling around in mud. Reading it feels like the ultimate neurotic self-indulgence. Since all my other books are packed I have no choice.

I am now writing from bed. Miracle - the airport extreme in the Acrobat/Pilot closet reaches through many layers of walls to get to my bedroom and no networkng messabout was needed. We just plugged it in and boom my compu was like "Yo, your usual network isn't here, you want to join this one?" Oh, I love Apple.

overestimation

In retrospect I should have just hired movers. It would have been maybe $400 more and we would not be so exhausted. On the other hand nearly everything has gone as planned. bookshelves have felt on the bottom and I spent much of the afternoon sliding them around to see how they should go. boxes are piled up in the middle of the living room, piled higher than my head in an enormous impenetrable 6 by 6 foot cube of books.

A few things did not happen as planned -- as I meant to be at the house working hard today but Moomin spent last night screaming with ear problems after a week of coughing and a cold. Rook got the cold yesterday but like a hero spent long hours (I think) holding and comforting Moomin in the night. I was up a few times... I can't even remember what happened but I did have a realization that miraculously I knew where my heating pad was and it might help Moomin's ear. It was in a box of the stuff that used to be next to my old bed. I found this box, tore it open and left it on the couch.... I am sure the guatemalan dudes that moved boxes in this morning were amused by the collection of vibrators and leather paraphrenalia in this box...??? oops! haha.

My spanish is actually not so horrible. The jornaderos we hired actually laughed at my dumb jokes. If I can make a dumb joke in another language I am quite happy... otherwise one has no personality...

Though about 1 hour too late I remembered the words for "turn it over" and "slide it', words that were despserately needed during the Moving of the Couch through the narrow doorway. Alas!

Moomin likes his bunk b3d very much.

Whump and Cyn brought us thai food very sweetly though we were too stunned with exhaustion to be very sociable.

I love the house... more than i realized i would... I did not know that having a fancy washing machine would be so excellent. this morning I teared up as I reached into the washing machine to move the wet clothes and realized it did not hurt my hands. I was inside not in a freezing cold garage. I was not reaching down into a narrow cold bumpy place and I just moved the laundry without it hurting my hands which hurt nastily in the mornings. Anyway it was insanely great. thanks m0m for a washing machine and dryer that cost more than my next car will cost. Yeesh. I was so happy I went and ajaxed the sink, as penace.

ticked off by glurge

I am all ticked off for about the millionth time by some random m0ms club glurge forward about how to "stay safe" (sic).

for one I gave my standard "oh yeah? well you are more likely to be beat up by your husband than thrown in the trunk of some random serial killer: NOW stats on violence.

As a special bonus I added something I know I have read in reputable places but didn't go looking for again just now as I am tired: Men are more likely to be attacked and victims of violent crime while they are walking around alone at night and in fact, anytime. Yet all this sort of "safety info" is targeted at women. Next time you read one, think about how it is all about limiting women's mobility and making them feel scared or paranoid while doing the most mundane of everyday activities outside or even inside the home. "fear of rape" is a great excuse for oppression of women and internalized oppression and it ticks me off royally.

poor hapless m0ms club forwarder is probably crying and cursing the day she "entered the discourse" of being on Internet. but I did delete about 3 paragraphs of sarcastic cruelty and tried to stick to a friendly "hey, and that makes me think about this issue" tone.

i just couldn't let it pass. o man.

Was there a Tick superhero called "Sarcastro" with a sort of fidel castro outfit on, and unfunny "witty comebacks" as his superpower? Or am I just making that up?

I can't get off this issue

Well-said and well-quoted, Davee! is now the right time? Yes. Now is the right time.

worthy artist

If you have empathy for mildly crazed brilliant anarchist artists who messed up stupidly and went to jail then catch me and give me a check and I will pass it on. Because dastardly dan just got out of jail and I am sending him money. I think he has basically nothing and will need help to get back on his feet!

Hooray for him being out and free, I can't even imagine what it must be like, somewhat bewildering and more great of an experience of freedom than (i hope) I will ever really feel myself.

Hooray for the best platypus and pigeon artist ever and the funniest dirty comix!

I sent this to the m0ms club

This is pretty dorky but i sent it out to the local list of moms. It kind of felt like an echoing silence on the mailing list. And I spent a lot of the weekend crying at odd times over the issue feeling glad and touched and hopeful and a bit afraid of the backlash that might follow on san fran, on politics in general. And if you do nothing else about all this hoo-ha then read the Loving vs. Virginia thing here because it is kind of cool. Frankly I don't buy the "fundamental freedoms of man" part and just think that if you let some people do something contractual then don't limit it.

The civil disobedience of the city of San Francisco has been really
amazing and I feel deeply inspired by it. And I just want to give them
three cheers! A lot of my good friends and actually a couple of ex
girlfriends have gone to get married and stayed to help other people go
through the process.


A quote from the New York Times:

"Mr. Birnbaum married his partner, Ron Elecciri-Hernandez, also from Los
Angeles, on Monday, but decided to stay in San Francisco for a few more
days to help get as many other couples married as possible.

"This is our honeymoon, and there is no way we would rather spend it," Mr.
Birnbaum said. "We will win in the long run. Any setbacks are temporary.
No civil rights movement in this county has ever failed."


I am so happy that maybe another area of prejudice and hatred will be a
little bit better. I am sure it will be a fight, as other civil rights
movements have been. But I feel hopeful that my son will grow up in a
country where homophobia is as unacceptable as (I hope) racism is.

It was only in 1967 that the Supreme Court struck down laws that
prohibited interracial marriages in the Loving vs. Virginia case.

"In 1967, the United States Supreme Court issued the latest in a stream of
landmark civil rights decisions. The unanimous ruling in Loving v.
Virginia struck down as unconstitutional laws that prohibited racial
intermarriages. Nine years before, Mildred Jeter (an African American
woman) had married Richard Loving (a white man) in the District of
Columbia and then settled in a community in Caroline County, Virginia. The
couple was soon indicted for violating the Virginia Racial Integrity Act
banning interracial marriages. Although the couple pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to a year in prison, the presiding judge suspended the sentence
on the condition that the Lovings leave the state and never return as a
couple for twenty-five years. The couple appealed the decision to the U.S.
District court in Eastern Virginia, the Supreme Court of Appeals, and
finally the United States Supreme Court. How did Virginia and fifteen
other U.S. states defend inter-marriage bans into the late 1960s? This
lesson examines the arguments behind segregation and "race-mixing." Having
congealed over centuries, ideas of race and segregation are multi-layered
and complex. Nevertheless, tracing the evolution from Biblical passages to
"scientific" research in the 1930s provides needed insight to understand
the durability and flexibility of racist attitudes."

I hope that in 20 years our children will learn in civics class about this
week's civil rights actions and that they will marvel and wonder how it
could be that in their parents' generation people were so backwards as to
make it illegal for any people who love each other to get married and have
a family. What a difference this would have made to me growing up if it
had been true for my generation.

Three cheers for Gavin Newsom and all the judges and city workers who made
this possible!

I wish that more mainstream news media would draw the connections for people between the black civil rights movement and this action.

So far have gotten only one "anti" response. I know there are more out there, but they are afraid of me after the Great Flame Wars of post-911 and iraq invasion. I suspect they have gone underground.

Personally I am still reeling from the shock to my faith in goodness when ERA didn't pass when I was like 10 years old. (No, wait, I was 12.) I could not believe it. I was horrified and ashamed.
If this legalizing attempt doesn't win, I hope that it will not suffer the fate of ERA but that it will be like the hydra and pop up all over the country.

I am also interested to hear that the vote in Georgia went republicans - no. democrats - mostly yes including all the black state congresspeople. Good because I was pretty pissed about "coalition politics" in which all the lesbians did the office work and organizing and xeroxing and shit work to promote the black student civil rights and then suddenly get told to be less lesbian-like and less visible in the media so that you don't make the black students organization look bad. Coalition supposed to go both ways or all ways.

I also used to feel more uncertain about the rightness of fighting to get married. Like "queers in the military". Yeesh. Yes, I will line up behind you anyway. But now I feel very staunchly that the marriage issue is important and what brought that home to me was a) seeing people dying from aids and their partners desperately trying to take care of them as they died and b) actually getting married myself and seeing the privilege it brings c) thinking about the issue of interracial marriage being illegal.

nearly over

actual moving is NOTHING to the torture just experienced from in-laws.

number of times door left open so cats can get out: HRAIR
number of times gas left running on gas stove: 3, that I personally caught
number of things touched that me or Rook said "don't touch: Hrarir to the hrairth

Mi suegra must have packed over 50 boxes of books. she is no slouch! and she moved many heavy things. Keep in mind she is almost 70. But strong as a horse.

But why does she scream out every word at the top of her lungs? Moomin keeps telling her "stop talking!"

It kills me when he makes friendly advances toward her... he offered to let her wear his chicken hat, and show her a dance, and read her a book. But she did not hear him because she never shuts up. She considers his being good as a strange flaw. But... I think when we left for 2 hours today she took a nap and she said that Moomin cuddled with her and was amazingly sweet. And she talked wistfully of Rook's cousin Pall and how sweet and cuddly he used to be with her. I think she began to appreciate our odd little fish.

Rook is now taking her to the airport.

a great invention!

Why is there no line of waterproof books for bathtubs and hot tubs?

"The Waterproof Pride and Prejudice." Just think about that for a minute. How many times have you read Pride and Prejudice in the bathtub? If you are like me, you can only count it in terms of "many many" or like the rabbits in watership down, "hrair".

I could think of many other books that could be usefully waterproofed. Gentle readers, give me your suggestions.

We shall make ONE MILLION DOLLARS with this invention.

and yet

"And yet, whatever the inevitable disappointment that it must bring in its train, this movement towards what we have only half seen, what we have been free to dwell upon and imagine at our leisure, this movement is the only one that is wholesome for the senses, that whets the appetite. How dreary a monotony must pervade those people's lives who, from indolence or timidity, drive in their carriages straight to the doors of friends whom they have got to know without having first dreamed of knowing them, without ever daring, on the way, to stop and examine what arouses their desire. "

(from Within a Budding Grove)

"Moreover, if there had disappeared, provisionally at any rate, from my life, an anguish that found adequate consolation in the memory of polite manners... that memory awakened in me desire of another kind which, for all that it was placid and not at all painful, resembling rather brotherly love, might in the long run become fully as dangerous by making me feel at every moment a compelling need to kiss this new person, whose charming ways, shyness, unlooked-for accessibility, arrested the futile process of my imagination but gave birth to a sentimental gratitude."

good show

Dinner and presents for inlaws more or less successful. The food at this local restaurant improved beyond all my expectations. It was great! Also, they have perfected the art of kid-friendly super fancy restaurant. It was fancy in all the correct ways and in no snooty unfriendly ways. without any warning that there was a kid, they had us seated with crayons and paper, they asked me quietly and privately if I wanted them to instantly bring fries to the kid and warned me that they were fried in peanut oil. And gave us instant basket of bread. I thought the way they asked me privately about the fries was amazingly ideal and discreet. The idea being that the kid doesn't instantly demand the thing offered, and possibly also that my other people would not jump in with their 2 cents about it.

Sorry to rave but... that is pretty rare. Fries instantly arrived. In fancy vertical fancy-restaurant arrangement in some sort of poncy holder with a little glass bowl of ketchup. And then they brought him (early) ice cream with various other fancy glass bowls with all different kinds of sprinkles and candy. (also offered discreetly so I could have said no.)

Anyway taht part of it kicked ass, as did my perfectly done medium rare tuna steak with onions and some sort of ideal potato thing and sweet potato mousse with arugula. O yeah, thank you california! let us not mention the lemon merengue tart also completely perfect.

If I go to a fancy restaurant it is a big deal and I dont' want some waiter asking me if I am "still working on" my food and then they stick their armpit in my face and lean over me to get plates etc. You know? I just had the rare, rare thing of waiters who i never, never noticed who whisked plates around without my being aware of what was happening. and the music was not annoying. I shall write up rave review of this restaurant for the m0ms club.

Mom in law was way worse behaved than Moomin who sat quietly and only went under the table once to rest and drink his juice and enjoy being in a cave. While Mama Blunderbuss did some shrieking, and some spilling, and some loud discussing of how at the one fancy restaurant near their summer place she would always bring a ziplock bag to steal all the bread. hahaha. I do love her.

As always in the bathroom i thought of the time when the restaurant woudl close and some hapless person would be swabbing the fancy floors with a filthy mop miserably wanting to go home.

Meanwhile.

hey! it's hailing!
********

Back now. Meanwhile, peace in the form of good food and wine had come to us all. But then there was a characteristic interchange between mom and dad in law where they both accused each other rather nastily of becoming senile or having alzhe1mers. I can't even describe this because it started out seeming like a joke but it is actually dead serious and they get very upset with each other.

Oh. I almost forgot an extra weird bit. Abuelito Deathwish has a lot of sisters. And one of them lives in some kind of semi-halfway house in nyc and she is schizo and I think also retarded. But not so badly that she is locked up. She can go walk around. The only other sister who happens to live there was driving around and was a block from some accident and there was an ambulance and as she drove by she found out it was her sister who had been hit by a truck. Since the sister had no ID or anything and I don't think speaks english it was really lucky that she happened to be there. I could not help but think "yeah right, coincidence, this is some kind of murder plot? Or you threw her down the stairs or beat her up and then staged an accident." But at the dinner table it was all talk of god, coincidence, fate, luck, etc. And cell phone calls in k0rean about head injuries and thor@zine and stuff. The Blunderbuss was winking at me from across the table as if she were thinking the same thing: "Not a Coincidence".

(I also have wondered if she is not actually schizo but just retarded and the ps1cotherapist brother put her on various crazy meds. Because I know he is particularly horrified at the idea that anyone in his family might in any way be retarded. He would prefer that they be crazy. I don't know why. And he is the boss of everything in that family and medicates all of them with no oversight, as far as I can tell. But to me she seems retarded and heavily sedated. The Blunderbuss and I talked about this once and she thinks so too.)

Anyway back to our overly complicated and trivial story.

Or maybe not. Moomin just woke up coughing again.

cool!

That was just really cool. Minnie called me over AIM voice over ip. My cell phone has a bad battery and i have lost the charging cord and the reception sucks. I could not be here in bed talking on the phone but with wireless I can lounge slothfully. With headphones on. having pointless conversation with her in which we make fun of our aunt. okay... I am mildly a technophile... but it was nifty and tell me if you want me to add you to my ichat thingie. and I like typing better anyway. but. Yet another neat thing my beloved ibook can do.

no, no, no and no

No, mi suegro. You may not ride in the back of the truck perched up on the rim.

No, you may not mow the lawn with the electric mower in the rain. (He is doing it anyway.)

No I will not take your wife in the back of the truck with Moomin in the front of the truck on the highway to 1kea. No, no, no.

How has this man lived to be 71 years old? How?

No, you may not and shall not pile my beloved, beloved books in the wet driveway under a tarp in the rain.

No, mi suegra, you may not make coffee as I have now caught you leaving the gas on the stove running full blast without the burner being lit which i only noticed because from my bedroom on the other side of the house i smelled gas. I shall make the coffee. About the 20th pot. No wonder you never sleep.

Mi suegra keeps saying "Okay now let's go to drive this load of stuff" or "okay now you will take me to the store to buy X," completely forgetting the existence of Moomin. I can't leave him with Mr. Deathwish, who would probably send him up the ladder to clean leaves out of the gutter. We can't bring him as the truck does not have room. But she keeps suggesting that it happen... how?

Moomin patient and sweet with his 102 degree fever and cough. I will not budge from here and he can eat all the popsicles and juice that he wants. Both suegros visibly exasperated with me for "not working hard" and "nothing is getting done".

I have magically from the corner antique store obtained perfectly adequate expenseive presents - cufflinks with sailing ships in antique lacquer and mother of pearl snuffbox for Abuelito Deathwish, and dangly earrings of a color i know she likes in a cloisonne antique elephant music box, for Abuelita Blunderbuss.

I have made birthday reservations and shall bribe Moomin into writing something cute on a card.

Pollyanna shall prevail. She shall do her duty like a Roman and a man. Duty, and reason, above all, etc.

exes

2 of my ex girlfriends who are already married with ceremonies etc. this weekend went and got marriage certificates from San Francisco. Nadia flew up from lousisiana with her wife and their son - her mom in law stood in line for them and held a place! Mitch and Quilty did it on Fri. the 13th with great glee and then helped in the process for many other people.

Huzzah!

please no more!

I do not ask WHO left the large, horrifying shit-stain fingerprints on the side of the roll of toilet paper. I merely pray to the gods above that it not happen again. And then I throw away the roll. I also scrub the toilet.

ew!

wheezing

Moomin up in night definitely having asthma. It has happened before but a little harder to tell what was happening. This time wheezing. hideous coughing and nasty ropy mucus. Him saying it hurts in his chest and being kind of panicked. I fed him antihistamines and explained things to him which seemed to help. ie "I really want to help you and i know you feel so yukky, so miserable, I will pat you (percussive dislodging of mucus) and give you juice and medicine. " also I told him that this happens to me too, and it's really hard. That crying makes it worse. And that it helps to try to distract yourself and think of something else. I actually think he understands this part. Anyway I read him little books until he was calm enough to drink the juice with the medicine.

Well, one thing having asthma is good for, i know it is actually hurting him and I can be properly sympathetic.

I have been making him watch me take my allergy shots so he can see how it hurts but I am brave anyway. poor Moomin. a year and a half of grimly hopeful breastfeeding has not spared him my allergenic fate. I feared it was so.

what i need now is some albuterol syrup. or singulair or whatever they give tiny people with asthma.

slave drivers

mis suegros are slave drivers. Wow. at least my mom CAN give one a moment's peace while she smokes her forbidden cigs.

I had from 4pm to now with them and it was worse than a whole playgroup full of toddlers. They need something every minute... constantly chivvying me to work or give them work to do or find their watch, glasses, plane tickets, phone, hat, etc.

i have packed boxes. I have washed their sheets. I have done their laundry... i did the hard, hard labor of ordering their takeout food... They both work work work very hard hard hard. Yeesh! I can't keep up with them. Fix the chairs! Do the dishes to relax while you're thinking of what real work to do next! I asked, "do you want to spend tomorrow with me and Moomin, maybe going to the zoo or doing something fun? or, do you want to pack our books? because i am in no rush to be done packing." Of course they want to work. I appreciate the help. Sort of. Even though I would about a million, million times rather pay some random guys $10 an hour to help me. Yes, the capitalist non-villager in me, i just want my peaceful privacy bought by exploiting other people. dammit.

I fielded questions about my parents. Actually that part was funny.

"YOUR MOM is SO AMAZING. She can LEAP into YOGA POSITIONS. because H0R$EBACK R1DING is GREAT for YOGA. Now I know something NEW. "

"Yeah it's great, she is really into r1ding..."

"ANNNNNND... she can LEAP into YOGA POSITIONS in front of the MIRROR and WHISK on her makeup. SOME peopleses would just think we are going to breakfast to the cafe and do NOT NEED MAKEUPSES. OTHER people can LEAP in front of the MIRROR and put on MAKEUP. and with the BLOW DRYERS and only 110 POUNDS but that is considered FAT" (continue in this vein ad infinitum - all said very cheerfully but with increasing freaked out shrieky loudness)

"Yeah I think she looks very nice. Her hair is nice that way." (somewhat defensively.)

"OTHER people might weigh FAR TOO MUCH because they like ICE CREAM and they are NOT GOOD at yoga though they have been doing it for FORTY YEARS. and APPARENTLY other people sweat a lot and have to put on their MAKEUP so many times a DAY that they just get so good at it LIKE YOGA."

Can it be that mi suegra is both deriding my mom and feeling a tad inferior to her mad femmy skillz? I consider her ancient goodwill t-shirts, tattered goodwill stretch pants, hacked off hair. (Mental note to self considering the other morning: get new underwear without giant gaping holes in them for mi suegra for a present. Poss. she is too punk to buy underwear. This visit, at least she has underwear on under her tshirt in the morning. last few times, NOT.)

"SOME PEOPLE don't even own a HAIRDRYER. OR MAKEUP. "

"Well when she was a teenager she had really bad acne and it scarred up her face with pits like smallpox. So she wears makeup so that isn't apparent. And her hair frizzes up and H0uston is damp which makes it frizz more. So she dries it to look like that. Your hair is naturally straight but hers is wavy and frizzy. I don't wear makeup all the time much less every day but I HAVE SOME."

"SOME PEOPLESES stay home with their HUSBANDS even when they want to go out because the husband won't exercise if she is not also exercising. Because they are SWEET. SOME PEOPLE's husbandses would not do it even if one DID. OTHER PEOPLE are LITTLE and CUTE and SWEET. SOME PEOPLE are NOT. Maybe if one WAS little and CUTE and wore MAKEUP one's husband MIGHT."

"Hmm so how is your work going mi suegra? Why don't you tell me about the administrator that ticks you off and won't let you do all the things with your department that you want to do."

(successful diversionary tactic! I listen peacefully to the tales of the department as we unload boxes in the dark, in the rain.)

I felt funny like I was leaping to my mom's defense. Yes she torments me but she is perfectly nice and anyone who criticizes her hapless insecurities and femminess can blow me. I reserve the right to bitch at her to myself. Ugh. I'm a jerk!

migraine, babysitter.

I dont' know what happened to me last night but while we were playing our rpg I got this weird ominious feeling of doom. And started to sort of hallucinate lights and the light in the kitchen shining at me was hurting my eyes. I kept thinking my head hurt and oh no, I can't be getting one of those headaches? Can I ? I refuse to have one? If I just try hard enough not to be neurotic and think good thoughts.

Suddenly I realized i was lying down on the couch and it hurt to keep my eyes open and I had been rubbing my head for kind of a while in desperation. I realized that pronto I must go lie down in the dark and be away from all noises. And I made it so. The hallucinating feeling came on very strong. I felt worried that I was going crazy and I felt like I was falling. Um. Very weird! Took 1 meclazine and half a vicodin and fell asleep at 10:30 which for me is an incredibly unheard of impossibly early bedtime.

I guess this is migraines. I woke up feeling sort of hollow and fragile and tenative about life. My head is not killing me. The odd ominous feeling persists.

I took Moomin to a new babysitter. He was amazingly chirpy about it and after I did some explaining - "Here is my plan, first, we go to Carid@d's house, she is a new babysitter and I will play with baby Osmar and his daddy and mommy today. Babies are so funny because they poop in their diapers. Ew! Then, Mommy goes to pack and work hard, then, you pick me up and we wait for Gma and Gpa to come visit." Good boy! He is remarkably accepting of change sometimes and I left him happy on the carpet with the baby playing with a wad of new toys.

The mom who recommended Cari to me managed to totally not impress me. "She's CLEAN. I have seen her house and it is CLEAN." Somehow manageing to convey that spanish speaking people might not usually be clean. As if I am clean? I can't imagine what is going through this mom's mind. whisper: "And they are VERY POOR. I saw their house and they are so poor. I gave them TOYS and clothes for their baby. I think she is desperate for work. But don't worry because she's VERY CLEAN." Eastern europeans can be really freaking racist. <--- my own racist observation.

Dude. Cari and husband obviously super nice and her english about 1 million times better than my spanish. She showed me around her house as if to prove it was CLEAN.

What is cool is that she lives right around the corner from Moomin's school. i wonder if she could pick him up some days.

I realize we did not negotiate payment! oops! Bulgarian mom (okay she is not bulgarian but let's just pretend) told me that "she is so cheap, 7 dollars an hour." okay that is fucking sad. I refuse to be chintzy about that and will pay her the going rate. Likely this will screw some other moms out of a dirt cheap babysitter but tough shit. I recall my ex-friend, Wandy, who wanted to pay her faithful nanny and house cleaner a way lower rate once she had her baby "because then it's like less good babysitting because she has an extra kid. and if I were sharing a nanny with someone else it would be only 7 an hour each. So, i shoudl pay her only 7 an hour now instead of 12." Um! good god! now that's feminism for you! This was only one of the things that made me un-friend Wandy, who liked to think of herself as generous patron to the masses.

Last night as I drooled off to sleep I remember saying to Rook, "I will sleep. I will sleep all night and i will wake up completely better." Like magic, this happened.

I am now going to pack boxes with books, load them into the garage, and maybe also pack the kitchen stuff. I could also go buy more sticky felt and felt up the bottoms of the bookshelves.

If it stops raining I will haul kitchen stuff over.

valentines

I just realized no secret admirers have sent me valentines or whisked me off to a Costa Rican beach for a romantic getaway. Dammit! Not again!

However I did get unexpected chocolate from squid which I will count as a valentine. And Rook made me dinner especially which also counts. I picked him a flower.

And I had asked a certain other person for space on her dance card and then thought 5 minutes later "uh-oh what if that was bad after years of not playing and she has everything arranged for this birthday party and has a million dates? Am I presumptious?" and felt a little silly. But lo and behold she wrote me back in happy anticipation. Good!

shooting my mouth off once again

Well... another long rant sent off to the Non Profit about using money, gr@nts, meetings, and Mult1culturalism that is so token it makes my stomach turn. If that one didn't manage to offend everyone, I don't know what I did wrong. What will come of this? Why do I do it? I can feel everyone thinking these things so hard like invisible poison. They are all thinking hatey thoughts at each other about mismanagement of money and people not communicating during every meeting. I can't get a grasp on what is going on. But i see the poison. In theory I am sucking out the poison and spitting it out on the ground. However I might die in the process or be blamed when the patient does not recover and my ritual exorcism accidentally calls up demons who blast us all into hell.

Seriously I hope that my shooting my mouth off is useful even if it just gets them all in Stage 1 of defensiveness.

I didn't even go near the "web page that sucks ass so bad I'm embarrassed by it" problem.

But I did blast the head of the Non Profit for calling a sudden emergency unexpected meeting to decide a major issue and spend a giant amount of money and calling this meeting 2 hours in advance of it, and then, when by me moving heaven and earth to get there to the meeting, I realized that me just being there meant that I was co-opted into his project and he was then saying "well Badger was there at the meeting" on the mailing list! Noooo thank you! I said he hijacked procedure and it was wrong.

If this one gets me more "thank you mistress may I have another" replies I will wonder what then to do. I was thinking of xeroxing a few articles and bringing them in to pass out to the next meeting. maybe that would do some good? My prediction is that even the worst offenders are going to beg me for another lecture on what they are doing wrong. I don't want to always be obnoxiously going "and here is what you are doing wrong." I must suggest something to do that is right and persuade them to do it or better yet, do it myself as a demonstration.

never mind that the main thing I tried to do was to research and suggest various possible p0ets from various non-anglo traditions. The fuckers just called meetings to decide which p0ets to invite on the nights that they knew I had class. I have no clue whether this was on purpose, but the on purpose part is that they also aren't cc-ing me on emails. How did I get to be gringa diplomat to the brown universe? I am not any less racist or clueful than these people. just enough to know they are wrong. But not enough know what to do about it. I strongly, strongly suspect that what they did was to think through all the people they already know, and figure out which of them are somehow multiculti, and then invite them. That doesn't fix anything! That to mind is tokenism! It just means a practically 100% guarantee that your non-anglo poets will suck because it's just some random person you met at a p0etry reading who happened to be the 1 non white person who came into El Scene de los Honkys. That just convinces more people that reverse racism is in effect i.e. the obvious non-excitingness of the non white poet "proves" something bad about, I don't know, affirmative action and then everyone makes snarky comments about F. X. A1@rc0n being a candidate for p0et laureate undeservedly which in itself is not fair and they mutter against multiculti-ism. It makes me want to scream! The one board member who quit, I think it might have been partly over this issue because her husband is black and I believe (though this was just before i came into it) that the board was all like "gosh, we need a black person, let's ask X's husband though he has nothing to do with us and isn't a p0et!" Illin'.

I repeat that step one is to actually try to make an effort to be educated in what non snootypants white people writer communities and traditions and books and magazines are out there. Then you have some basis to judge the goodness of the writing. And you might have a clue on who might want to hear it or come to the events.