Not Calm (dot com)

love thursday, a yoyo

What? You don't know about Love Thursday?

Willow really wanted to ride her scooter to school today.  I work from home on Thursdays, and so instead of going to day care, she sleeps in and plays with her dolls and animals for a spell before school.  I promised her that she could ride to school, but I got wrapped up in work stuff and by the time we were ready to go, school had already started. 

But, you know, I'd promised.  I wish I could say that I always keep my promises.  I don't.  Stuff happens and I often don't think things through before talking.  I buckled her into her car seat, telling her we were late, that the other kids were on the carpet already, singing the Good Morning Song.  That we'd scooter to school another day.  I think maybe I told her that last Thursday, too.  She sighed and shivered and crossed her little arms.  Want a jacket? I asked her.  She nodded.  When I came back with her sweater, I unbuckled her.  Hop out and get your helmet on, I told her, I will carry your backpack.

It was worth being a half hour late just to get to walk behind her for that half mile.  I swear her little feet were smiling as she rode the scooter down the sidewalk.  We got to school and she had a cute substitute teacher from Kentucky.  Willow! he read from her late slip, We just were talking about your beautiful name a few minutes ago.  I'm so glad you are here.

I snuck out the back door, stashed her scooter and helmet near the class, and walked back home.  It was a pretty, pretty day. 

I hopped on a quick call for work while I walked, and then I went to have lunch with the awesome woman behind this film:

And this website.

We sat in the restaurant and talked like old friends and I cannot *wait* to see her film.  Thea lives in Scotland, and it's funny that today was the first time we met, because we went to the same high school.  SG remembers hanging out with her when they both were at the same junior college (the one I was at, too, though I didn't meet either of them there).  We lived within a few miles of each other for years and years, but I was recently introduced to her via email by a guy in England who I was introduced to via email by my friend and former coworker, Kristy.   Sometimes the world taps you on the shoulder and reminds you that it's small. 

Later on near the end of the day, Nathan got out his yoyo.  SG picked it up and put the loop around his finger, winding the string like he'd done it before.  Sure enough, within seconds the yoyo was spinning at the end of the string near the floor until he flicked his wrist and brought it back up to his palm.  Nate watched him, mouth open in astonishment even though he was grinning.  SG did a few other tricks and then said that he hadn't picked up a yoyo since he was Nate's age.  I stood there watching, grinning myself, because yoyo tricks were making me fall more in love. 

Never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea

I watched SG get into his scuba gear on Saturday morning.  We were in a parking lot in Monterey, right at the end of Cannery Row.  He reminded me of an astronaut with his dry suit and tank, which isn't so far off the mark, really, since he was going to go float around in a place with no oxygen.

I sat in the sun on a beach chair on the grass, reading You Suck and listening to the ocean and the conversations around me while I waited for him to come back.  Finally I saw him, walking up the hill, carrying his fins.   The fact that he was walking up that hill to me, making me feel so very good and more than a little weak in the knees.

I've never dived. (dove? doven?)  My brother used to, but I never even thought about it because my inner ears are all wrong.  I can hear fine, but my Eustachian tubes are infant-sized and diving would probably hurt beyond belief since it's really hard for me to pressurize my ears. 

I did want to get into the water, though, so I went and changed into my bikini (yes, really) and came back to put on my wetsuit.  I started to whine because the suit felt funny around my knees, and as I zipped it up the front, SG started laughing (at me) and told me that it felt funny around my knees because I had it on backwards.  Mind you, we are at this point surrounded by a parking lot full of divers, at their cars to change or take a break or whatever.  Many of them are Serious About Diving, and SG is both a dive master and a rescue diver (um, sexy much?) so having a girlfriend who, even though she's worn it before, puts on her wetsuit backwards might be a little embarrassing.  If he really cared (and I don't think he did) he didn't let it show.  

He had fins for me, and booties; gloves, a mask, his snorkel, and a hood to keep my head warm.  He carried the boogie board down to the water for me, and we walked from the sand into the water, stopping when it was two or three feet deep to wobbily put fins on my feet.  I tried to walk on the ocean floor and nearly fell before I realized that I was still bracing for the cold, but I was plenty warm.  I relaxed and followed SG away from shore, hanging onto the board.  

I've always loved going to the beach, ever since the first time I saw the Pacific when I was ten and thought I was going to freeze to death.  So, it's kind of odd that not only have I never scuba dived, I've never gone snorkeling.  It took me a little bit to be okay with the mask on my face.  I'm claustrophobic.  I try to push through the things that scare me, but sometimes my body won't comply.  When I had the mask on, SG said, Okay, now try putting your face in the water.  So, I went to put my face in the water, but my head wouldn't move even though my brain was sending it the right signals, and I said, I can't. 

After a few minutes, and minus the snorkel in my mouth, I was able to put my face in.  It wasn't bad at all.  In fact, I could see a bunch of kelp, reaching up to the light and swaying back and forth as the water rushed past.  And it was pretty.  And that? was nothing, really, because once I got the hang of it, I hooked my arms over the end of the board and put my face in the water, holding my breath and looking down at a very small piece of this whole beautiful world.  From shore, the bay was a sparkly amazing dark blue, bluer than it usually looks.  But underwater I saw bright orange and yellows, iridescent shimmers like big dragonfly wings,  and the minuscule shining silver pinpoints on the kelp, looking for all the world like small stars in the sky.  There were starfish on rocks, and patterns in the sand that looked like pictures I've seen of the desert.  I think having a hood on and my ears under water made it even more separate feeling.  There really is nothing of the everyday world under the water, including the noise.

Every once in awhile I'd stop to look around till I saw SG, floating on his back and swimming like an otter.   Even with all that space between us, I could feel how content and relaxed he was.

I've watched all sorts of underwater documentaries on swank flat screen televisions; I've seen stunning underwater photos; I've stood for a long time in front of the open ocean tank and the jellyfish tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  Still, though, I was moved to tears by simple quiet beauty of the very few things I saw.  And I've never thought that divers were going to more trouble than it's worth or anything, but as I looked down into the water I started to get it.  I felt like an astronaut looking back at the earth from the moon, and I wasn't even down there, up close.  I saw not even enough to be called a fraction of what all there is to see, and it's not an understatement to say that it changed how I look at the rest of the world.    

I don't know if I'll ever be able to dive, and that's okay.  I'm definitely more in love with the ocean now, though, and with the man who is teaching me how to see it.

Happy spring

Stars when you shine you know how I feel

Hello.

I am having what I guess you'd call a midlife crisis, though I've been told that it's totally justified.  I'm not going to whine all the details out here, but I will say that my kids are fine, work is great, and my love life is awesome, but I'm still feeling really sad and lost and even lonely, in a way. 

My commute to work three days a week is this thing I embrace and dread.  It takes forfuckingevah to go those 35 miles, but I get to listen to whatever I want if there aren't any conference calls planned, and I do drive on what has to be the most beautiful freeway in the world.  I have my iPod full of This American Life and The Moth and The Sound of Young America, plus all my favorite music.  Today I was especially teary, so I put on Nina Simone and sang along, Theatrical Style, not caring that 9 out of 10 drivers thought I was a total dork, because I saw one other driver smile at me in the rearview mirror of his Caddy and start snapping to what must have been Sammy Davis, Jr. based on the beat he was keeping.  And I blasted Nirvana, and Elton John, and Sia, and sang along with all of them, loud and off key and with passion.  It was fun.  It's especially fun to be driving a minivan and have the dashboard buzzing because the music is cranked up way too high.

The person who expanded daylight saving time can stick it where the sun don't shine*

*another place where the sun don't shine would be my house at 7 a.m., when I'm trying to get my kids up for school and they're all STEP OFF, LADY, IT'S STILL NIGHTTIME!

(And that person?  George W. Bush.)

When I did finally get the girls to the van (Nate just walked to school earlier, totally disgusted that we were late again), it was covered in ice.  I took that as another in the long string of omens that we were not supposed to be out there yet.  But, haha, my neighbor (I am holding a grudge about something.  A totally warranted grudge.) was out there in the harsh conditions with her ice scraper, upping her visibility, while I just turned on the heater and defroster and windshield wipers because I don't have an ice scraper AND I WON.  She wasn't even back in her car when we drove away.  That was a sweet victory, and I decided to celebrate it again an hour later (at the real 8:13 a.m.) but by then I was on the freeway and I forgot because I am so damn tired from getting up too early.

After I got off the freeway, a police car passed me in the lane on my left.  And the license plate frame on his black and white cruiser said F O L S O M across the top.  And something else about Folsom at the bottom, so I flipped the iPod to Johnny Cash. 

Had to take Lex to the doctor this afternoon, because he was trying to get something out of a tree yesterday (awwww, I just remembered when he was little and said, "lasterday") and instead he got something in his eye.  We flushed it out last night with saline, but when he woke up today he was all, I am in no condition to go to school.  And, that was 100% true, but I sent him anyway.  His appointment was at 3:15, they saw him at 4, and by 4:15, the doctor had removed the little tree thing (it looked like a sesame seed husk, if they even have one) from the inside of his upper eyelid and had put some orange numbing stain stuff in his eye and we were checking it out with the UV bulb.  It was super creepy, to tell the truth, but thank maude he didn't get a scratched cornea.  I think he's fine; he came home and watched videos on Hulu for a looooong time.  To be fair, I should disclose that he also rode his bike and did homework.

After supper, the girls and one of their friends and I walked over to the store.  It's the store that we get to by taking a short cut.  The short cut goes behind the store, and there is some ventilation pipe thing that is way down low near the ground that the kids have been yelling into for the past seven years.  Today Sophie bent down, put her mouth up to the pipe, and yelled,  Have you seen [damnit, I forgot what she said] No!  You have NOT!  Because he's all in the ninteenth century these days! Ha ha ha, whoooooooo.  I had to laugh.  She's so weird.  I love that about her.

I better get to bed, because thanks to George W Bush, 5:30 comes way fucking early these days.  Whooooooo. 

The plum tree is blooming

Bright

We need the rain, so I haven't minded it showing up for most of the last little while even though it makes my commute to work nearly twice as long (time-wise) and ten times more stressful.  Yesterday was sunny, though, and when I was driving home, the sun was starting to set and it was shining through the right half of the windshield.  It felt so good and warm on my face.  I could feel the sunshine on my eyelashes; I swear it had weight to it. 

And, this is silly to admit, but I started thinking about the sun, and how it's actually a star, and since it was the only star in the sky I could see, I made a wish on it.  I think it will come true.  I hope so.

4 in the morning

A day late and a dollar short

That's me: just not-quite making it.  Sometimes I'm close, but like my dad always says, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.  You know those carnival fun houses, with the moving floors?  Those are my days lately; the things I think are solid are suddenly moving and I end up getting knocked on my ass.  I guess I can admire the fact that I get up and keep going, even when I'd like to hide under my bed and never come out, which is a fairly dire statement coming from someone so claustrophobic she has a mini panic attack just reaching under the bed for a stuffed animal or lego piece.   Maybe schools shouldn't give an E for Effort, because the real world sure as hell doesn't.  I could really use my E right now.  And, um, also a hug.  </whining>

We have (had) these two giant pine trees in the back yard, one in each corner.  The apartment building behind my house is two storeys tall, and both trees easily double its height.  They were much taller before the tree trimmers hacked them up a few years back.  One of the trees died all of a sudden, maybe a couple of months ago.  (The same one that the kids and I, when Willow was still a newborn, watched a massive raccoon climb up one morning and then nap all day on a wide limb while the crows freaked right out about their nests.)  The needles all went brown and it started to list toward the apartments.  Not too far from it was a yucca tree that died awhile ago and had holes all over it, which Nate says were from Carpenter Bees.   The woodpecker family that always nests in our yard loved that tree.  Another yucca tree, also looking a little sickly, was by the front gate, and it blocked the view of my bedroom window from the street, which was great as I tend to leave all the curtains open all the time.  I like to see out.

When the pine tree started dying, the tree trimmers came.  Dozens of them, leaving cards in my mailbox, knocking on the door and giving me fliers, approaching me as I left to take the kids to school.  The landlord finally hired someone to take all three trees out, and I'd tell the men who knocked on my door that the job was already assigned.  They'd hand me a card anyway, asking me to ask the landlord to call them so they could give him a better price. 

They showed up today, with trucks and a wood chipper and chain saws and rope.  They cut all the branches off the tree, carried them to the front yard, and then started with the trunk, sawing off huge chunks that shook the ground when they landed.  I worked from home today, and Willow was here this morning, watching out the window, fascinated.  It made me sad, though.  I don't think the tree was actually dead yet, and I felt bad for it, silly as that may sound.  Then I wondered if the other tree, still tall and green in its corner, would miss it.  I think the two of them must've been sharing that space for a long, long time.  Who's to say that trees don't have a mind of their own?  I mean, just like our dazzling intelligence is lost on, say, a lobster, it could be that we aren't yet to the point of our evolving where we can appreciate a tree's wisdom.  Or not.  Maybe people say "dumb as a stump" for a good reason.

They piled up the tree parts in my front yard, totally taking out my lavender plant (I REALLY hope it recovers) and squashing all the bulbs that came up but hadn't bloomed yet.  My yard is so ugly.  So, so SO ugly.  I'm pissy about the flowers. 

I'm sure the tree guys thought I was weird, out there with my camera, snapping photos of the thick section of trunk with three stumps of branches coming off it.  It's okay; I AM weird.   I just thought it was pretty, and sad.  It felt like looking at someone's bones. 

Tomorrow they'll be back to finish taking out the roots and to level the ground.  I'm thinking I'll put a yard in now.  Because of the pine trees, we've always had just dirt; it would be nice in the summertime to go out and lay on the grass and look up at the branches of the tree that is still there.  I could send the girls outside for their tea parties, and we could turn on the sprinkler and run through the water when it gets too hot.  Maybe we'll head over to Morgan Hill this spring, to the Grass Farm.   I'm allergic to Kentucky Bluegrass, but I never let pesky things like that stand in my way.

You'll know me by the dark circles under my eyes

It happened again this morning at 4.  I sat up in bed as soon as I heard it; a rapid fire sort of mini honking - maybe even cheerful  ::honkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonk::  followed by the atrocious honking car alarm.  I got out of bed, cursing, and went to the bulletin board by the front door to grab my keys off the hook.  They weren't there so I felt around in the dark for my purse ::HONKHONKHONKHONKHONK::  By the time I put my fingers on my keys, the alarm had stopped, so I got back in bed, back in my bed between the girls, and tried to sleep even though I knew that soon enough the alarm would go off again.

This happened at the crack of crack a week or so ago, too.  My house is not like most; the front door doesn't face the street, it faces the house next door to us.  To get to my driveway, I have to take a left out the door, head down the walkway, take another left and go through a gate to even really see my van.  Last time it happened, I went outside to the driveway, pushing the unlock button on the remote thing the whole way.  It was so loud, and as I turned the corner and saw my driveway, I saw that my van was all flashing and alive looking.  The alarm finally stopped, I made sure it was unlocked and went back inside.  I don't want to drag this story out, so I'll just say that I ended up going back out three or four more times.  The last time, though, it was my neighbor's car that was going off.  I walked back to my house, saw the front door I'd left openand wondered if someone was out there setting the alarms off on purpose.  You know, to lure people out of their houses so they could sneak in. 

It was a little scary.  And, actually, a pretty stupid idea.  But I was half asleep and it seemed reasonable at the time.

This morning, after I got back in bed and just as I was starting to have those disjointed thoughts that pop up before you fall asleep but when you're still lucid enough to realize that you are about to fall asleep, but then, if you think about it for a beat too long, totally awake again, the honking started.  Again.  This time I grabbed my robe and pulled it on as I went down the hall.  Like Miss Clavel - I ran fast and faster, got the keys and opened my front door to the rain. 

I was more cautious this time.  I shut the door behind me, and walked out into the cold rain.  This time it was the neighbor's car, not mine.   It went off a couple more times, but I stayed in bed and eventually fell back to sleep. 

Did I have a point?  I guess not.  I'm so tired, but I can't sleep.   There's a lot of room for improvement in my life right now. Especially tonight.   Instead of sleeping, I'm beating myself up and doing a really good job of it.  Thinking things like, All my life I've been fighting with this stupid low self esteem and when I finally, finally believe that I'm good enough, I'm hit with the fact that I am not.  It was stupid of me to think I was.  I know better.

I didn't write that looking for a pat on the head.  I wrote it because I knew that writing it would make me read it and think, Whatever, drama queen.  Get over yourself.  I mean, when I'm thinking thoughts like that they have such power over me, but all typed out you can see how thin and weak that kind of thinking is.  Taking it out of my brain sucks the life out of it.  Mostly, anyway.   Nothing is really better, and I'm truly worried about some things that are scaring me very badly.  Real things, not some fictional masked car alarm setter offer.   But I feel better anyway.  Maybe I can sleep now.  It also would do me good to get back on the Grace In Small Things bandwagon. 

1.pretty cupcakes, even if I can only appreciate and not eat them
2.the best sister-in-law ever
3.wine
4.kid art. that one is an old favorite

and 5.my hair has grown a little and I don't suffer from full body cringe (as much) whenever I have to leave the house