The Knot, Part One

I'm going to take this in parts.  It's easier to unravel one thread at a time.

Things you should know about my current mood:

• Not the product of hormonal cycles.  I have two weeks until that.
• Not due to the weather.  Sun's out.
• Not due to money issues.  Yet.
• Not due to current events.

I have spent the weekend, and will probably continue to spend the coming week, trying to determine what causes it.  I do know this much:

• Whenever I walk away from the internet for entire days, the feeling abates.

And what is that feeling, you ask?

• Loneliness
• Hopelessness
• Uselessness
• Lack of ambition (on my part)
• Lack of creativity (on my part)

Why do I pick on the internet?  Because:

• My relationship with the Internet/Social Network feels like I'm married to a Yankee shortstop
• Said Spouse treats everyone else so well, and supports the kids (the "kids" here being my blogs) for free
• Everyone else loves the Spouse for the money they make, the sexy look they have, and the way they can do EVERYTHING
• Well, everything but create fulfillment.  

Why doesn't the Internet/Social Network bring me happiness?  After all, I explore all of the recommendations I get, I try all of the latest Network options, I follow all of the advice and check in at every interval possible.  I worship and completely support the Internet/Social Network.  Why do I feel like I'm one giant nervous tic, expecting my Virtual Spouse to fix "it?"  I don't even know what "it" is.

And why, when I walk away and think for a whole weekend, do I feel like I might be normal again?

Someone needs to get an amicable divorce.  I don't think counseling will work here.

Write on...while I call my lawyer. 

A Lake House

I'm not quite sure who exactly still reads this blog, which probably makes it the safest thing on the planet to write in. I sit here looking at my dashboard with Blogger, and I realize that since I haven't been here since January it's probably a great place to play with writing, experiment, write with the truest voice I can without trying to impress, and then take that practice and write "better" with the blogs that may be more promoted.

Since I have been writing in other blogs for some time now, I don't feel guilty for neglecting this one. This one is like what relatives of mine used to own in lake houses--those summer places that you button up in the fall with boards and dropcloths and other protective measures and that you open up, usually just before or on the first big three-day holiday weekend of the spring, like Memorial Day. I wander into this one now, take the boards off the windows, shake out and fold up the dropcloths, and head, as E.B. White would write, "once more to the lake."

It's been a strange day, which it normally is when I am hormonal. I tend to have strange sleeping schedules, I tend to eat the strangest things, I'm wired for sound but too exhausted to execute, and I tend to panic easily. All I had planned for today were two things: read 100 pages of David Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," and visit Hayes Valley to taste ice cream. I never got to Hayes Valley, and I kept falling asleep during the novel. The sun wouldn't stay out, the Giants were offering up Jonathan Sanchez, and my downstairs neighbors were noisy. There were a million excuses not to do what I planned. At 3:30 I finally gave up, broke out all of the tools I should have for the reading, forgave myself for not getting down to Hayes Valley, and made my reading goal with the help of coffee and reading glasses. I turned on the fan in the living room for white noise. There's still time for Hayes Valley, another day.

When I finished the reading goal, I wandered the apartment, restless. What to do now? Pick up the pen and try to write something? The journal didn't yield much--about five ruled lines. I wandered, paced, again. I reached for a well-read, well-worn copy of a book that was written by a teacher of mine, even though we have only met once: "Long Quiet Highway" by Natalie Goldberg. Everything spinning in me settled in a series of ever-slowing circles until I was still. I could think. I had to find it in another voice, but find it I did. The sunset filled the lake house windows and I put on a jacket and went to find food to prepare for dinner. Pasta, sauce, and wine later, I am still calm, the lake house ready for me to spend a summer here, and write anything I damn well want to, without fear of repercussion or judgment.

And now, for a swim. Write on, dear writer.

Gift Horse Oral Analysis

I have been in a good funk for nearly two weeks now. What gives?

Best not to look too closely. :)

But it may have something to do with the fact that I haven't broken any resolutions yet...and have no plans to.

Read on, dear reader.

Men

Today, of course, was Father's Day. Since my relationship with my father is far from great and I am currently in the process of getting over yet another unhealthy relationship, I spent much of today thinking and writing about men.

You would think that with my overall experience with men (with the exception of a few good male friends) that I would be one of those ball-busting men-haters by now, but that's far from it. I am beginning to think that it's men (on average) who hate me. I wish I knew why. I can tell you why I bored the shit out of my father, and how that may of contributed, but that doesn't clear up the picture completely. And I grow tired of blaming parents for my relationships now--God knows I have no room to talk since God won't trust me with a family, and they didn't really have a chance to learn how to do it better (I think they were just struggling to be as good as their parents. In the case of my mother she was a vast improvement, and in the case of my father I have to give him a gold star just for staying alive past my twenties).

Still, I struggle with men. It probably won't get easier the older I get, but I'm determined to stop making it so hard on me.

Tonight I heard from a friend that I haven't talked to on the phone in nearly five years, and his gift was such that I felt valued without feeling used. He's not married (yeah, I know--hard for me to imagine too), and we talked so easily and freely about books and movies and--wait for it--agriculture. I started out the morning childishly angry that I had to celebrate my father and ended it with a renewed appreciation for why I love men--their strength, their humor, the funny, awkward way that they love you. I remembered their gifts.

And maybe, just maybe, dear reader, they don't hate me after all.

Coming Clean

Today is another Shut Up and Write Marathon...I haven't attended one of these in a while, and I can tell that my body feels strange to be back. My mind doesn't know what to do with all that paper, for starters--"what? You want to focus on yourself for a bit? How the hell does that work?"--and then there is the need to write the first draft long-hand, which means that the hand gets tired. The sun is out but it's freezing cold out there--my mother's voice is at the back of my head demanding to know why I don't go outside and play anyway, because if you want cold Lord knows there are days in the Midwest where you spit and it sounds like you dropped your car keys.

So get out there.

F, no.

I'm too old for a lecture, Mom.

And yet I'm not. Over the last year I have made three monumental mistakes because I thought I deserved to make them in order to "feel good," which is sort of roughly on par with justifying smoking by saying you're stressed out by your mother's cancer. It doesn't make sense and makes perfect sense. The other night I came clean to a friend, ready, braced, for the lecture. Her response, "You aren't evil." YES, I AM. "Nope." As though what I had done was, well, human. (And I would repeat it here, but I'm still not sold on the part that I'm not evil. So saying it makes me a bit nauseous. I am my own crazy aunt at the family gathering.)

The lecture I got wasn't to stop, by the way--telling me to stop any kind of behavior is probably the least effective mode of getting me to stop. The lecture I got was to start worshipping myself, which is completely opposite from my normal behavior. About a month ago my boss gave me the assignment to complete a self-evaluation and then warned me not to get my feelings hurt when he got a hold of it and gave it back to me for not being harsh enough. I gave him an even, steady look and said, "Believe me, I'll make your idea of harsh look like a tea party." He shrank back a little in his chair. "You wouldn't stun me by sending it back," I continued. "What would stun me is if you kept it, liked it, or was kind to it. THAT would throw me off my game." And with that head's up he followed my advice and accepted it, which meant that I was back off balance.

Kindness usually puts me off. I don't know what to do with it, or how to thank those who bestow it. Sadly, since moving here, my thought process is that if you grant me kindness you must be ready to ask for something--and if you're a man the motives that cross my mind are twice as sinister. So the lecture of kindness that my friend gave me was on par with putting me in a blindfold and spinning me about 40 times and then telling me to find the door. She put the extra confusion in the mix by adding this to the lecture:

You have to be nice to yourself too. Kind to yourself. Worship yourself. Or you'll keep making this decision.

Oh shit. How the hell do I do that? Be nice? Worship? To THIS?

YEAH, TO THIS, JO. But how...

I'm about to find out. Be nice, dear reader.

My Significant Other

There's a scene in the movie "Jerry Maguire" where Renee Zellweger's character explains her reasoning for dating Jerry Maguire to Bonnie Hunt's character. She states that most men she has been with can be beat with a "good book and a warm bath."

I'm there.

And I'm not a man-hater or man-eater. I don't hate men. And while I don't believe that men hate me, I just believe that they have never looked at me. Or want to. They want to use me for something, but they don't want to look at me.

So a friend of mine had a great idea that I'm finally trying. I'm not available. I'm dating me. If a guy asks me out, I'm seeing someone. Me.

I picked me because I'm tired of looking outside of myself for validation that I won't get.

Love on, dear reader.

Too Crowded In There

So I was "lean"-ing up my bedroom/office this morning (to use Toyota-speak), and listening to podcasts, particularly to yesterday's reprise of an earlier "Fresh Air" broadcast. Terry was speaking with author Jonah Lehrer about his book "How We Decide," which is a book about why it is so difficult for many of us to make any decision, simple or complex as it may be.

During one point in the interview Lehrer talked about a study that had been done regarding how our stress load or daily build-up of decision making can affect our ability to make a healthier decision later in the day. I listen to these podcasts as a passive listener most of the time, but at this point in the interview I started to pay closer attention. I've often said that I make incredibly dumb decisions in my personal life because I'm burnt out from mental exertion at an incredible pace at work. The study that Lehrer spoke of seemed to confirm this. Two groups of people were involved in this study--one group of people was given a two-digit number to memorize, and the other group of people was given a seven-digit number to memorize. After having memorized their numbers, both groups were taken to a cafeteria to have a snack--their choice of a slice of frosted devil's food cake, or a dish of fresh, mixed fruit. The subjects who were asked to memorize the two-digit number chose more fruit than the subjects who were asked to memorize the seven-digit number. Lehrer explains that this happens because the part of your brain that makes a decisions is also the same part of the brain that is used for problem-solving.

So, he says, if you have a hard day at work or you spend the morning doing a difficult crossword puzzle, you should be aware of this when you make a decision later in the day.

In other words--not to dismiss your actions because of this, but--GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK.

No wonder my personal life decisions have sucked for so long.

Give yourself a break, dear reader.

Don't F With My Happy

My warehouse guy, one of the employees who now hates me because my tolerance for stupidity is gone (and it's absence embraced by my new boss), has a phrase he likes to say, thus:

"No one gets to f with my happy."

Never mind that I'm f-ing with his happy because I'm asking him to work. Let's focus on this--every day of my job is a conscience effort on my part to not necessarily be giddy, but happy. Happy in that hour.

This post helped.

My employees haven't shown me that they like me any more with it, but I like myself a lot more for it.

I also wanted to thank someone in print for helping me today and continuing to patiently help me when I teeter on the cusp of jumping off the racking at work...thanks, Tina. Thanks for being available and thanks for the opportunity to keep each other in check. I hope I help, too.

There may be no I in TEAM, but there is a reason to focus on I for awhile.

Thanks, Gretchen and Tina. Thanks to my roommate for dinner. And thanks to Trish for well wishes. Now, back to an after-work cocktail.

Stay thirsty, dear reader. ;)

Rubbing Elbows

So a couple of weeks back I wrote in here about my New Year's Resolution and the blog that helped me set up my resolutions this year...and today the author of that blog has a book that is #2 on the New York Times bestseller list! The fact that she has commented on my blog makes me feel important just knowing that she reads my stuff, and, as a fellow writer, I'm so excited that the author that I follow on my home page (er, the first site that pops up when I log on the internet, if that is a better explanation) is so successful.

I have to say that I completely admire Gretchen's style--her humility and curiousity about her subject matter make her observations real to me. As I mentioned when I talked about the devotionals a little while back, I can add her to the soup, too, and did tonight when I added her book to the Kindle.

Her site, my friends...and her book. Congratulations, fellow writer, and take a peek, dear readers...

WOULD-n't It Be Loverly?

I have the blog "The Happiness Project" on my home page for my home internet, and this week I was particularly drawn to a post about resolution-making for the New Year. Given the list, here are my updated resolutions that I have posted to my vision board in my room:

To Look In the Mirror
· Physical balance
· Work/Life balance
· Nutrition

To Look to Others
· Church
· Meetups
· Travel (Obtain passport)
· Volunteering

The One
· Shuts his cell phone off when we’re together and doesn’t make me feel guilty about the communication he missed
· Doesn’t get tired of my mind or my body
· Spends the night
· Is curious
· Makes me laugh
· Lets me—no, asks me—to tell him what turns me on

To Look to Life
· 3 pages per day of writing
· 12 books read this year
· Work/Life balance
· A job that I define
· Read The New Yorker weekly—and write on it

You'll see that work/life balance is on there twice. It's twice as important.

And if I can keep more than one resolution this year, then you'll see a lot more of me on here, writing about what I read in The New Yorker. Or, three handwritten pages worth of nothing in particular.

Have a wonderful holiday season, dear reader.

Baby Love

A long time ago in a land far away a forty-year-old housewife decided to take her life in her own hands and open a business out of her little farmhouse. From the cramped, green house she toted a small floral tin out every morning to the greenhouse close by. That greenhouse was made from old picture and storm windows, and sat on wood runners. It was filled with tables, covered in flats of bedding plants that the housewife called babies. She started the babies in the basement of the green house, under flourescent lighting, and then moved the babies to the greenhouse when they were bold enough to keep their heads up. She talked to them, and strung a power line out to the greenhouse to play music for them when she couldn't be with them, and they thrived. Her mere touch made them strong and sure of their climb in height.

The housewife began this adventure when her children were leaving the baby stage and were deep in their own roots, exploring the air around them. She began raising new babies specifically for that reason--the old ones would be wandering away shortly. And she loved to nurture, to feed, to give to something that would go out and nurture again.

Not so long ago, in a land closer to here, a thirty-one-year-old spinster decided to take her life in her own hands and move to a magical land of silicon, surf and fog. She moved from apartment to apartment, ever closer to the biggest body of water she had ever seen, asking her muses for inspiration just from the wonders around her. She read from great muses as well, but everything she touched did not thrive--it escaped. All the tales and wonders faded with the wind from her fingertips, and the spinster began to doubt that they ever truly existed. She flew too close to the sun from the mountains, and the sun's rays burnt her tender, easily bruised to the touch. Everyone wanted to touch her, to feed from her, to drink the last of her wonder. Her love of words faded to gray newsprint over the years, and increasingly she lived to work for the betterment of things that didn't bring her wonder.

I wonder how the fairy tale ends.

Sweet dreams, dear reader.

In Defense of Sex

Yep. This post is going to be about what you think it's going to be about. No use sugar-coating it.

Unless you're of a kinky inclination.

Last night I was at my Tuesday night short-story writin', darn tootin' Meetup and I got to a point where sex comes into the plot. What's funny is that seven years ago, the last time I was writing regularly, I was a virgin. I thought that I would still be able to write about sex, but more like from the viewpoint of a virgin.

Which is sort of like writing about the Sistine Chapel from the point of view of an aetheist.

There's a portion of my favorite book of all time, "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn," by Betty Smith, where the protagonist, Francie, submits a series of stories about her life to her middle school teacher. The teacher seems miffed by the stories--they are base and mean in her opinion. "Why can't you write about something pretty and blooming?" seems to be the general sentiment, and Francie is hurt because this writing is beautiful. She's in love with the story of her family. But her teacher wants beauty we ALL think is beauty. So Francie sits down to write a story of a girl who can order any food that she wants...and actually drools on the page because she described the food so beautifully and because she is too poor to afford this kind of food. The same thing went for me with writing about sex when I was a virgin. I made myself hungry and awkward on paper. I forgot the emotions and got hung up on the physics.

Now, after having had sex with a whole two men (which doesn't make me an expert, but lends me some perspective), I find that I can skip the physics some and write the emotion. Neither man loved me, but I loved both of them at the time, so I can give an accurate rendition of what we would have experienced if we were both on the same page, or nearly. Since when are men and women on the same page, sexually? DK had a great observation he shared with me once in an e-mail--"Men use love to get sex, and women use sex to get love." But somewhere in the middle in good stories of love there's a jagged meeting of the puzzle pieces, or, more to the point, a forcing of the two nearly-matched pieces together.

There is another force of habit that kept me from writing sex into short stories in the past--intimidation due to lack of experience. Here, in 2009, I've had a crash course. I imagine that here in this place where I finally gained the experience there will be more men who think that they can "teach" me or use my lack of experience to inform me of "how things work" in terms of manners and such, but I ignore that now. The man would have to draw me in, to woo me.

Another literary character comes to mind--Celie from "The Color Purple." "Why, Miz Celie, you're still a virgin. You ain't never been loved," says Sug, and every man who meets her calls her poor and ugly. "But dear God, I'm here!" she declares, and she finds fulfillment in the children she gave up. I don't have children in Africa, but dear God, I'm here. I'm a sensual woman who knows exactly what she wants after the loveless experience of two completely different fellas in Shrek suits, and if another fella comes along he is going to have to do some old-fashioned courting. In the same venue, he's experience. Would I write about him? Probably not directly. I have worked some of G and FG into my paintings, but not enough so's they'd notice. (Neither of them read anyway.) And they gave me a great ballast--er, what I mean to say is they gave me a leverage point from which to write about something other than the physics. I'm sorry I gave it up to them. But I'm not sorry that I gave it up, and I can imagine, having loved without sex, the beautiful and rich rest.

That, and I'm a sensual woman in her sexual prime. My imagination hatch-eth and spring-eth stronger than ever it did in the younger years.

Get ready for my fiction. :)

Vicious

I don't know how to say this.

I am successful and a failure, simoultaneously. (Think I used a French spelling or something there...yikes. This is where it will be good to get back to a weekly post instead of flying by the seat of my pants nightly about 6 minutes before bed.) If I were to look at my time outside of work (what little there is), then at the moment I would consider my life to be successful. I'm constantly exploring the City, writing and meeting people.

If I were to look at my life at work, I would say I am a failure.

The job that I do that pays the bills consists of two activities--directing construction and maintenance guys on which pump or nail or sawzall or FUBAR to buy (that FUBAR thing is fun stuff--see my earlier post on demolition), and staging product for people to pick up. I don't mind talking to the guys--very few of them are husband material, but occasionally one of them is respectful and enjoys a good laugh with me. "That's a LOT of tape. Who are you tying up?" The interaction aspect is good for the soul.

Okay, it's better when they speak English, but you can't win them all.

Where the failure comes into play is the fact that my job as a MANAGER utilizes none of the following skills that I possess:

• I can write the pants off 99% of the people who manage in the district.
• I got phone skillz.
• I got quality assurance skillz.
• I taught adults for 7 years, so there's an intense amount of training skillz there as well.

I'm working on getting out. Walking through Oakland in the dark at 6:30 every morning made THAT abundantly clear.

Meantime, I'm looking at the miniature class reunion happening right now on Facebook and my glaring failure is ugly--

But, at least I've got something to look forward to in not being at work from time to time. Even alone, I get the chance to kind of heal up at night and on weekends.

Sea breeze. Springsteen. Garcia Marquez. PHILZ, God Bless Him. Fog. Foghorns.

And my beauty, ze GG Bridge.

Sleep well dear reader. Dream of success.

On the Eve

A little something I listen to every year on 11th of September, at least once...

You've been saying for the longest time that the time has come
You've been talking like you're of a mind to get some changing done
Maybe move out of the city, find some quiet little town
Where you can sit out on your back porch step
And watch the sun go down

No one knows where they belong
The search just goes on and on and on
For every choice that ends up wrong
Another one's right
A change of scene would sure be great
The thought is nice to contemplate
But the question begs why would you wait
And be late for your life

Now you might never find that perfect town
But the sun still sets on a rooftop where the city
Sounds like a Gershwin clarinet
And you might still be searching every face for one you can't forget
Love is out there in a stranger's clothes
You just haven't met him yet

No one knows where they belong
The search just goes on and on and on
For every day that ends up wrong
Another one's right
Call it chance or call it fate
Either one is cause to celebrate
Still the question begs why would you wait
And be late for your life

Call it chance baby, call it fate
Either one is cause to celebrate
And the question now is why would you wait
Don't be late for your life.

-MC Carpenter

Fair

So I worked on this and that last night until about 1:30 am, woke up at 6:30 am, got my stuff around and made the trip to Fremont, met a friend there and drank Pinot Grigio in the sun (probably won't do that again for a long time) and then came back home and slept for a couple of hours before getting up and reading this month's installment from "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle."

This post isn't really "green", so I had good reason to keep it out of Paved Paradise. The chapter that I read on August in the farming cycle was half crop statements and harvest story and the other half a note on blue and red states, urban and rural places. Like Kingsolver, I was raised in a community that distinguished between country and town folk, and, like Kingsolver, I was raised in a community where the "town" had a number of flashing red lights that you could count on one hand and still have fingers left over. There was a hierarchy to this distinction--town was supposed to be better. Kingsolver points out that philosophy carries over to the country as a whole, when it comes to blue states versus red:

"(T)hat color map comes to us with the suggestion that both coasts are populated by educated civil libertarians, while the vast middle and south are criss-crossed with the studded tracks of ATVs leaving a trail of flying beer cans and rebel yells....I...sense a bit of that when urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, 'so far from everything?'...When I hear this question...I'm usually looking out...at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything."

She goes on to talk about how the coasts look at everything in the middle as the same--comparing cities like Minneapolis to be the same apple and not orange as Atlanta. I get that a lot after I tell people where I am from, this time, here in California. The follow-up relationship is the same confusion as Lt Dan portrayed in the movie "Forrest Gump"--"Minnesota, right?" "No, Missouri." "Ah, what's the difference?"

Other than geography, climate, cuisine, ancestorial background, terrain, and speech patterns, not much, apparently. Shockingly, the native Californian or New Yorker still looks good and superior after this exchange, because they were born and raised in California or New York. They weren't dumb enough to be born and/or raised in the Interior (as some of Kingsolver's friends refer to it) and then aspiring to be Californian or New Yorker. The "friends" that I made upon first arriving called me their "Amish" friend (a rather hilarious distinction since even in my limited technological state I knew more about computers than they did), and Gary always stated that I would never fit in in the City. This used to disappoint me, and now gives me hope. Kingsolver, too, felt this sense of superiority when she enjoyed homemade chutney from her garden or experienced true silence. This superiority, though, quickly floated back to center. Kingsolver, like me, embraces both halves: the exoticness of the coasts and the meditation of the land between.

******

Last week or the week before (please pardon me as I work so hard I don't know what day it is until someone taps me on the shoulder and tells me it's Friday) DK posted a Twitter entry to read like this, and I quote, if I may:

"between fellow Christians who seem to me they'd rather be Muslim with all their denunciations and seculars who denounce the other way:lonely"

Seems as though Kingsolver and I aren't the only ones awkward in the middle, regardless of topic.

Stay strong, be you, for, as always there are "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right."

And here we are, stuck in the middle, and trying to stick fast.

PinPoint

The one nice thing about legitimate drama in one's life...

It makes the rest of the drama nearly non-existent.

Been thinkin' all day about Serena, working through the 10 hours of lifting thinking of her and her mom, and FG makes an angry reprisal.

Fuck him.

And no, I don't want to do it myself.

I'm just saying that as I watch the gold bands of sun on the living room wall tonight what is important to me just GLARES. My family in San Diego, whom I miss terribly. The life outside. My words in great quantities in the bedroom. My ink pens. What matters to me.

God bless the only living girl in SF.

Pale Blue

Summer morning, San Francisco. I listen to the NPR weekly program "Selected Shorts" (famous people reading great short literature) on my podcasts while the neighbor with the Japanese Zen garden plays and prunes among the rocks and fountains of his "yard." If I sit very still I am comfortable. At 9:30 in the morning it is already in the 80's in a city that by all rights shouldn't break 80 at 2 pm.

I was working through my usual visiting places this morning on the web and came upon a New York Times obit of Tasha Tudor's. I didn't quite know what was more incredible--that Tasha Tudor died or that she was only 92. When I turned the large and crafted pages of her books as a child twenty-five years ago she was already colonial to me, antiquated and loved for it, her and her holiday observances and her corgis. I spent my whole life wanting a corgi because of Tasha Tudor.

More stunning than reading of a childhood friend's death in the Times was that I was so blown into my past in a matter of minutes that I did what I used to do when I read a story like that--I set it aside like a slice of pie as a gift...set it aside to tell Mom about the next time I talked to her. As though, even after years of disuse, that phone time is still etched in my schedule, Saturday nights after A Prairie Home Companion. "Mom, this is your eldest..." A phrase that she always used with her parents when she called them, and then I stole it and kept it for calling her.

I keep forgetting that now she knows when I do, probably faster.

Neighbors do renovation work outside the kitchen window, a Saturday set of hammer strikes. I have listened to them for a year. I would have thought that they would have been done by now.

A lot of things should be done by now, I guess. But no rush.

Gentle breeze through the living room window sways the vertical blinds, but only on one side--we can't open the other window. My trashed bedroom begs for a little attention before I venture off into the baked and still baking hills for a gay wedding reception.

I'll be back, dear reader.

Points of Recovery, Part 3

You take a brief but restful nap.

You have some weak moments and argue with the rediculous person in your head.

You clean the apartment bathroom and pick up your laundry.

You re-hem some work pants.

You look up links to places in the City that will help you rent a kayak as one of your hobbies.

The sun comes out a little.

Points of Recovery, Part 1

First, arrange flowers in a vase. Then, make tea in a mug.

If the vase and the mug happen to compliment each other, serenity is even easier. :)

Third, look out your window in the Inner Sunset on an overcast day and watch a young man playing guitar and singing on a deck off of the house behind yours.

Hard to Say

Was told last night by someone that I missed that I need to "get other friends or a hobby."

You're right.

Because the person that I missed wasn't, isn't a friend if they say that. And I set my "hobby" of writing aside too much in the effort of wanting to spend time with my friends.

Hobbies I want to pursue since I was set loose by this person:

• WRITING
• Sea kayaking
• Running
• Cooking
• Singing
• Meeting people
• My DeYoung and my Legion

And that's just a warm-up.

Don't worry. I won't pester you again.

California. A reminder that I am in the land of the physically but not emotionally adventurous.

And it's probably the best place to learn how to leave people alone.