Alone in the Dark

Inspirational song: Don't Stop Me Now (Queen)

My Halloween traditions aren't nearly as exciting as most people's. My social anxiety and weird phobias act up around this time of year, and I hide inside as much as I can. I don't like strangers coming to my door, and completely unrelated to that, I don't like people in costumes. A lot of people are creeped out by clowns. I am creeped out by those, plus school mascots, Disney park employees, and pretty much anyone who hides their face. I can't stand it. As much as my favorite non-relative little girl was terrified of McGruff the Crime Dog when her mother and I took her trunk-or-treating when she was two, I still never look directly at the artificial faces of costume characters for a similar reason. I tried to smile and laugh when Chip walked up and high-fived me at the end of the Buffalo Stampede last week, but it is not something I would ever seek out myself. I can't point to a childhood memory or any reason for this distrust of masked faces, but it's there and it's real. So Halloween isn't as much fun to me, and I am okay when I have excuses to skip it. This year, I have such an excuse. I'm home alone, I don't have a party to go to tonight, and I have a house full of animals who are better served by not having the doorbell ring every few minutes.

Cats are terrorized by an endless stream of noises and voices coming from the front door. I usually lock them in a bedroom when I know trick-or-treaters will be coming. The dogs don't do so well, either. I'm afraid that if they were left loose, they would jump on kids or bolt through the door and run off. I don't enjoy locking up my animals, so I try to avoid doing it. I decided against buying a bunch of candy to hand out, to avoid having a surplus of corn-syrup-soaked, genetically-modified temptation bombs. I went so far to avoid Halloween as to leave the neighborhood at quarter to five, so I didn't even see anyone wandering around my street in costume. A few people at the grocery store where I stopped on the way home were dressed up, but no one was in a giant head-covering mask, so I handled it well enough.

Which brings me to my preferred Halloween traditions. I like scary movies, alone in the dark. Last night I watched the original Halloween from 1978, and I have the second one on tap for tonight. I would have watched it already, but I couldn't miss Shaun of the Dead while it was on. I performed a little ritual sacrifice on a tiny pumpkin (and made a passable soup, but not anything ground-breaking for another Annie's Test Kitchen report), and I tried to get some cute pictures with my little black cat. She would not cooperate when I tried to pose her with the pumpkin, but she did sit around like a doofus this morning, with a large tuft of her own fur hanging out of her mouth. Very smooth, Athena. Maybe it was a fake beard, for her Halloween costume. Who am I to judge?

The Germ of an Idea (ATK No. 6)

Inspirational song: Magic Chicken (The Aquabats)

I need to make some notes. I was fiddling around in the kitchen, and I appear to have created a sauce that absolutely must be made again one day soon. Since the football game on Saturday, when I wore myself out in the sun at high altitude, I have been craving chicken with a rich, salty pan sauce. Tonight was the first time in months that I missed bread, because it would have been lovely to scrape up every last drop from my plate. Instead, there is a happy little red-headed dog who agrees with me that this recipe was a keeper. If you're still clinging to 20th century thinking, that fat is the enemy, then this is not for you. If you're ready to eat food that will make you full and happy, and feed your cells, then this might just be what pulls you into my world.

I started with some of the basic moves that would have been my family's favorite chicken and broccoli with cream sauce made with canned soup, in my former life. I don't use cream of soup anymore, because of both its ingredients and its container. I don't miss it, and it was ridiculously easy to replace it with something much better. I needed to use up some cucumbers and tomatoes, so I had a Greek salad instead of cooking a vegetable to go with the chicken. I would love to get suggestions on what sounds good to go with it, either cooked in the same pan, or as a side. I feel like perhaps some sort of savory greens would be right. Maybe chard, kale, or spinach.

Here's what I did for just one person. It was pretty simple.

I put about a half tablespoon each of butter and olive oil in a small skillet, over medium heat. I browned both sides of a chicken breast, and then poured in enough chicken stock to deglaze the pan, maybe a third of a cup, or a half. I used a large soup spoon to scoop out a couple heaping spoonfuls of cottage cheese, and grated in an ounce or so each of two tangy cheeses I had, Swiss and a Spanish one I'd never had before, called Iberico. I drizzled in enough heavy cream to make it look beige. (Side note: you might be thinking, oh, heavy cream, too much fat. Trust me, you do NOT want to use anything lighter, even half and half. I have curdled milk and half and half in things like this, and it's just not as much fun to eat.) I smashed one clove of garlic and threw it in whole (minus skin), and seasoned the sauce with ground coriander, lots of marjoram, and a little salt. Covered, I let it simmer on low for not quite a half an hour. The sauce was a tiny bit runny, so I chopped up the chicken, and poured the sauce over the top. That's it. No stopping for pictures, I ate it all as quickly as I could. I was hungry, and it was that good.

So what should I do? Where does this go? It's a great start, but I feel like it is just the beginning.

Cat Lady

Inspirational song: Somewhere Over the Rainbow (The Wizard of Oz)

For the third time this year, I am leaving open a tab of a live stream of a Canadian soon-to-be mama cat. Young Dorothy is a black cat who hasn't grown into her fur yet. Her tail is just shaggy enough to proclaim her long-haired status, but she's just now getting healthy after being abandoned, pregnant and carrying parasites, and she looks a little threadbare. I'm crazy for opening myself up for getting another celebrity kitty crush. I have so much to do to put the Park away for the year, but I will be making a lot of detours to the laptop in two weeks, waiting for the Kittens of Oz to appear. I wonder whether this kitten voyeurism is enough to keep me from ever raising a litter of kittens in my own house. I sure hope so. I'm a two-time foster failure. I'd end up keeping every single one of them, and having to permanently give up on ever having a real life. I'd just invest in a rainbow of bathrobes and pajama pants, and pull myself out of the social world completely if I had that many cats. So in an effort to maintain my tenuous grasp on civilization, I will just watch Tiny Kittens online, and keep looking for a paying job and human friends.

Someone told me that today was some sort of "day of the cat," according to one picture they found on the internet. Is this a thing? Shouldn't I have already known that if it was? What kind of crazy cat lady am I, if I can't even keep up with that? It really wasn't that much of a different day around here. They still stared at me until I gave them all my attention, and I obeyed all their demands, like Rabbit insisting that the water bowl has to be cleaned twice daily, because it gets dog saliva in it. She couldn't possibly drink from the water glass I keep full on the counter, because that one is for Athena. It's not like I have better things to do. I am a cat slave.

I don't think I can do it today. I can't come up with a corresponding story to tie it all together. I really just cleaned house, cooked stew, and raked leaves. My brain was in neutral all day. I'm just going to cuddle my cats and let another day slip by. Perhaps I'll be more poetic tomorrow.

It's All Here

Inspirational song: How Do I Live (Lee Ann Rimes)

Things are starting to get back to normal around here, but in a very quiet way. I haven't heard many voices, but I have been endlessly judged. I have been the recipient of a lot of pointed stares from pouting faces, apparently because "you know what you did." Yes, I do. I went away for five days. Quelle horreur. Everyone around here seems to have the ability to make those eerie big eye faces, like the paintings from my childhood (that is now a movie? did I see a trailer for that or was it a dream?). Rabbit has been the neediest and most determined to make me pay for my absence, but this big black bear in footy pajamas is accusing me of neglect as well. The dogs didn't even bark when I picked them up from camp. They just sat quietly in the car on the way home, their silence tripling the sense of guilt that I had for making them live in a space the size of a small walk-in closet for a weekend.

I'm a little on edge from my big brother moment today. Most people try to keep at least one friend who is good at computers around to run to when we have problems. I'm just lucky enough that my friend is better at it than yours. Unfortunately, he's so good at it that he usually confuses me within the first three sentences of his instructions on how to solve my computer crises. But in conversation today, he first assured me that he could recover the pictures that my damaged SD card has hidden from me, as long as I stop using it until I let him have the card and the device to sort through. Then he told me to try the Google+ app, because it has probably been backing up my photos for as long as I had a Gmail account. So I opened the app that I never use on the phone (or just about anywhere, because I haven't found space in my life for it yet), and there they were. I don't know whether just the missing 3100 are there, or thousands more on top of that that I thought I had deleted. I'm a little afraid to look. I don't have any incriminating pictures I need to worry about (I don't take nude photos of myself or anyone else - I'm not stupid), but I sometimes take ten pictures just to get one I like. And I know I've used the camera to investigate a suspicious mole at least once. Stuff like that does NOT need to be backed up to a cloud. Ever. So I'm glad that all my photos are not lost, but the dread of loss is now replaced with the creepy feeling that I can never be anonymous, and that is much worse.

I've already felt like there are computer algorithms that can sense words being spoken by or near me, and produce content that matches. Even worse, I have lost count of the number of times I have been writing this very blog, been stuck for a moment, and the word I am seeking is spoken on the television. Tonight, as I was editing the content for tonight in my head, deciding what to repeat and what to keep to myself, I was watching Person of Interest. Part of the story line involved a damaged SIM card and the search for deleted texts. One of the lead characters (Finch) suggests to search the cloud for the missing data. He said all of our data never goes away. "We have finally achieved immortality... Even when our bodies die, our personal data lives on in cyberspace forever, whether you like it or not." I want to ruminate on that a little, but I'm thinking I come down on the "not" side of that one.

I Noticed

Inspirational song: Lights (Journey)

I made it home tonight, and I am now one blog post away from the sleep of the dead. I just had a couple observations and one agonizing scream of despair, and then I'm gonna peace out. The cats had turned on the television between the last time the mah jongg master fed them and when she dropped me off tonight, so they're all extra freaked out and ready to cuddle and sleep too. The good news is I appear to have come out on the other side of the 24 hour bug I picked up from my host family, that left me struggling with the dual problems of fever all of last night, freezing and roasting (and both made it impossible to sleep before my flight).

One of the things I have noticed as my diet and health dramatically improve, is that my sense of smell has returned. For years, I could barely even smell live Christmas trees in my own home or all the beautiful flowers I plant every year, and it made me sad that I couldn't pick those good things out anymore. Last year, I abandoned an evergreen wreath in the garage, and it just stayed there until I started cleaning out the garage a few weeks ago. I noticed somewhere in the last few months, that I had started to smell it, this dead pine wreath, as I walked past it. I like that I can smell plants again, but there is a much less pleasant side to this. I have spent the last five days in very close proximity with thousands of humans. I was in airplanes, buses, stadium crowds, and milling about in heavily populated cities. I have learned something I forgot over the last fifteen or twenty years. Humans stink. They stink more than I had ever remembered from my youth. What do Americans eat? People, stop it! Stop eating so much garbage that when you crop-dust in an open-air stadium, people two or three rows away become nauseated. Stop making airplanes into torture devices because of the poison your gut and skin bacteria are emitting. And I promise I am not fat-shaming when I say, bodies look awful. Even people of healthy weight are shaped in ways that make them appear to be unhealthy under their clothes. We need to think about what we are doing to ourselves. And then we need to make some changes. I will stand at the front of the line, and make all those changes myself too. I will walk the walk.

Not everything on the trip home was bad. My daughter and I had plenty of time to enjoy breakfast and coffee together, before we flew off to opposite coasts. The airport in Denver was emptier than I have ever seen it, even in the middle of the night. I can't explain why. There literally was no line at security. We wound through the ropes and walked right up to a TSA agent to get checked out. The trains to the concourses were mostly empty. It was really strange and I welcomed it. The Atlanta airport was good for a real dinner, as it usually is. I skipped the food court and went for a nice sit-down place. I don't ever want to eat off of a disposable plate again, if I can avoid it. The last leg of my trip was a night flight, and it was wonderfully peaceful. As we descended, the view out the window changed from twinkling orange lights to huge glowing pools of orange and pale green, as patchy fog rolled in from the coast. It was so eerily beautiful, and it threw me at first. I thought we had circled out over the ocean in a holding pattern, until I recognized what I was seeing.

Now, for the part that is crushing my soul. I tried to take a photo of downtown Denver this morning, when I arrived to meet my daughter for breakfast, and something on the screen of the phone flashed a message about the SD card, but I didn't see it before it vanished. I let it slip from my mind as I looked for my daughter and her friend to pick me up from the bus/train station. When I landed in Atlanta, and turned my phone back on, it told me that the SD card was damaged, and was now safe to remove. So far the only thing I can tell is missing is the folder of 3000+ photos that I had been keeping on there, and I haven't backed up since June. At least a thousand of the pictures gone weren't saved anywhere but on that chip. I'm going to go to bed and hope that they exist somewhere, and maybe well-rested, I can find them tomorrow. Think happy thoughts for me. I'm worried that I've used up all my good luck for the weekend.

In the Pink

Inspirational song: Walk of Shame (Pink)

My weekend sunburn is mostly faded, but now I just feel like I'm trying to get a fever, so my cheeks are still an unhappy shade of pink. That, or I'm red in the face because I'm mad that my other device erased everything I'd struggled to write while I was tired and ready for bed. I'm sore and my body (especially my feet) hurts, and I just don't want to try to remember everything I wrote for the last half hour before I opened an email without saving first. I'm totally used up after this vacation. Other than the sunburn, and an overwhelming need to reapply Blistex every ten minutes, I do have a few souvenirs worth taking home. While we spent what felt like hours in the AT&T store, waiting to replace (and upgrade, because frankly, it was time) my girl's phone, the sales associate came out with a little consolation gift for us. They had a promotion to sell us a tablet for a pittance, to make us feel less bad about having to pay full price for upgrades, which is apparently the only way they do these things now. We paid easily thirty times more for the pretty pink case that I put the tablet in than for the tablet itself. It seems like a fun toy, other than it not auto-saving from the Blogger app. I may need to check my settings on that.

I managed to squeeze in plenty of quality visiting time today, with the family who houses me every time I come out here, and with both of my daughters. I tagged along on a toy-buying trip for the young son of my friends, and we had a pleasant chat on the way about boy toys versus girl toys. He said he generally gravitates away from the aisles of pink plastic stuff, but he does think Hello Kitty is pretty awesome, and I said I thought it was great when little girls liked superhero toys, and he agreed. He's got a good head on his tiny little shoulders. He's perceptive and fair. I am enjoying watching him grow and form opinions about the world.

The girls and I ate lunch together (and I learned that pho doesn't seem to agree with me), and poked around a couple stores. I found a magenta velvet chair that I would have loved to acquire, if I had anyplace to out it, or any need for yet another chair. It stayed in the store and I moved on. Then we all cooed and tried to gain the attention of a couple kittens up for adoption, even though none of us had any space for a beautiful little tabby (with hints of calico at the edges of her stripes) who was willing to talk back to us. 

I took one daughter out to get the lay of the land of a four-acre parcel I have been dreaming about lately. The street view from Google didn't fully convey how low in elevation that particular lot is nor how close to the creek it is. I have confidence that the entire thing was most likely underwater during last year's flood. And with it being on the down side of a hill, the views of the front range are nothing that I would want to invest in that heavily. I can't imagine what insurance company would bite on a house built there. So I have to turn my dreams to another target. I'm sure another will come along soon enough.

Black and Blue

Inspirational song: We Are Young (Fun)

The Show Must Go On failed me! I can't believe it! The performance instinct that saw me through every obstacle in my youth and young adulthood, like fatigue, illness, hangovers, or nerves, didn't get me on the field today. It wasn't a stronger motivator than the sunburn, altitude sickness, and stress. The first quarter of the game wasn't over and I already knew my body had been used up. When I was nineteen and used to this altitude, I would have been on the field without fail. Now, no matter what kind strangers may say when they learn my age, I can't keep up with the kids. After the stampede last night, the parade this morning, and the freakout when my daughter was a no-show at practice, all I could do was sit in the stands and watch. It worked out just fine, as the spot I left vacant in the alumni block was a perfect fit for my daughter once she did make it into the stadium, and there was no visible gap in the formation. I barely played even through the third quarter. It wasn't until the Buffs came roaring back, to tie the game in the fourth quarter and force a double overtime that I got a second wind, and I played Glory every time it came up. It ended up a heartbreaking loss, 40-37 when it was all over, but coming back to the alumni band was the right decision to make. I am going to be trying this craziness again. I just won't be wearing a black t-shirt on a day of record heat and unrelenting sun.

It was so peaceful when I drove in this morning just before dawn. I had no idea what was in store. The mountains were a hazy blue as I crested Dillon Road, where I can see for miles up and down the Front Range. The sky was barely pink by the time I arrived on campus. I drove past a couple lots that had attendants waiting to collect $25 to park there. I figured if I parked in the garage across from the music building, I could use my debit card on the way out, and save my cash. When I drove in, there was no one standing by the entrance, the gates were up, and there was no place to grab a stamped ticket. I parked facing the music building, and walked up to an attendant who was blocking a minor road through campus, and asked about it, and he predicted I would end up parking for free, if there was no one blocking the way in. Sure enough, he was right. Nine hours later, we just drove out without so much as a pause. We weren't celebrating, though. We were off to discover what had become of my daughter's wallet and phone, which was the reason she missed practice and had to show up later and use the tickets on my phone to enter the stadium. She had a wee bit too many welcome-back beverages with her friends, and she dropped her wallet with the phone inside in the creek. By the time she woke this morning, she had trouble remembering exactly why she didn't have it. But remember last night when she said that Boulder is Pleasantville, and things just don't go wrong here? After the game, we parked by the library and walked over to the creek. We looked where she remembered (eventually) dropping it, and didn't see anything in the water. We walked downstream just a little, to where a young person was fly fishing. He overheard us talking, and said, "you're the one who lost a wallet?" He had found it not two hours earlier, and it was in his father's truck, completely intact. The cash and everything was still there, just sopping wet. We were greatly relieved that we didn't have to file a police report or delay her flight because she had no ID to get on a plane. That money I saved on parking went into that kid's hand as a reward, and he was such a sweet young man, he tried to refuse. 

After everything that happened today, after the long game day and stress and over an hour replacing my daughter's phone before we could finally go to dinner, one not so pleasant detail is still standing out in my mind. While I waited for my daughter to get tickets printed and come inside the gates of the stadium, I watched the security process. I noticed how many people "assume the position" when they get wanded with the metal detectors, and that had me on edge. But when a black teenaged boy came in, wearing only an athletic shirt and basketball shorts, he turned back to his mother and said, "they asked me if I had any weapons on me." Her expression mirrored mine. I was offended on his behalf, because I know had I come through wearing equally skimpy, pocketless attire, they would never in a million years have asked a forty-ish white woman the same question. Pleasantville still has some attitudes that should have been left behind long, long ago.

I am sore everywhere. My feet are throbbing. My arms and face are radiating heat. My back and backside feel bruised. My ears are still ringing. And my mouth is bright red, between the sunburn and the blown chops. What a hell of a day.

Yellows

Inspirational song: Pleasant Valley Sunday (the Monkees)

I finally made it up to Boulder today, to meet with my kids and to attempt to conduct business before generally making a fool of myself and having a great time doing it. The drive into town, across the wide open spaces in the eastern half of the county, is something I cherish every time I come here for football. Between the vivid yellows of the aspens and birches, the luscious oranges of the maples, and the shocking pops of red of the sumacs, all against still green grass and the purest blue sky, creates the most beautiful vistas I can imagine. I usually run late, everywhere I go when I'm here, so I never have time to pull over on the country roads to take pictures. Those views are burned into my brain, to be taken out and mulled over, whenever I need a pick-me-up. The weather down south just doesn't seem right to create those quintessential fall colors that I love so much. Maybe the nights just aren't cool enough before the days get short, because the leaves just mostly seem to race through colors in November to end up at brown and on the ground sometime around Thanksgiving.

I waited most of the day to meet with the current (third) company to work on our condo restoration, but right as I arrived at the complex, the manager was leaving, never to return for the rest of the day. Not that he told us he wouldn't be back, until I had long since given up and gone downtown for the Buffalo Stampede. I did wander around a little bit while I waited, enjoying the leaves that I could reach, not those racing past a car window. I very nearly missed the fall show, waiting later than usual to come to town for football. Lots of the trees were already bare.

While I was having fun reminiscing about the past, as we walked through Boulder, one of my daughters was reaffirming how glad she was that she moved away. She hasn't been gone long enough for it to seem quaint to her in a good way. She's still a little down on it. (I went through a few years of that myself, but I am mostly past that now.) When I asked whether it would be safe to leave our instruments in my borrowed Jeep, she said, "Dude, Boulder is Pleasantville, before the color came to it. It's so perfect here you could throw a basketball the wrong way and still make the shot." I took that to mean that it was okay to leave our things in the car, and it was. 

I showed up to march in the stampede (the parade down Pearl St the night before home games, a tradition that started after I left), and I was the only piccolo player from my era present. There was one other alum who played piccolo, but she was much closer to my daughter in age, so she remembered all the songs still and knew all the chants and taunts. I eventually picked up a lot of them, but no matter how hard I paid attention, I never spun around in a circle on time. I did jump and kick and do all the other moves, slightly behind all the girls around me. I learned something very important about myself: I am no longer twenty years old, nor am I acclimated to mile high plus altitude. I made it up and down and back up Pearl Street several times, but I'm paying for it now. I'm tired, my mouth feels blistered, I have an altitude headache, and my feet are killing me. But I'm so glad I didn't let my yellow streak win. I didn't chicken out. I acted like a goofball full of school spirit in front of hundreds of people all along the route, and I loved it. Go Buffs!

Greens

Inspirational song: Little Boxes (Malvena Reynolds)

The approach into Atlanta seemed to take forever at an unusually low altitude. I don't know whether it was because we never got very high on the short hop to get there, or whether I just felt like time was slowed down as I rested my temple against the little plastic window and watched the ground go by. I couldn't help but compare the newer houses in freshly cleared developments to the older homes where the miles and miles of forest had begun to reclaim its hold on the land. There are an awful lot of great big houses on great big lots with flat, green grass and tiny or no trees, northeast of Atlanta. It's possible that because I was so high up, I couldn't distinguish very young trees, but it really looked like these developments were all about showing off how much land comes with a house that big. I can't say that I liked it all that much. I'm not anti-big house, in any real sense, and I don't have anything against lawns. I think healthy, green grass is quite lovely. But I can't stand empty yards with no trees, no flower beds, nothing to break them up and give the eye somewhere to land. I knew I didn't like it from ground level, house-hunting in neighborhoods with no life, no character, just cookie cutter boxes. Now I know it bothers me from the air as well. 

Coming in from the east into Denver, there aren't as many neighborhoods to fly over. The heavy population centers are visible on the approach, but there is very little directly under the plane. I had hoped for a chance to compare with what I'd seen a few hours before, but it wasn't to be. I did get a sense of familiarity as we came up on the peculiar brown and deepest green that I associate with this part of the world. Ten years ago, after a long, white winter in North Dakota, I recognized how startling and hypnotic green can be, as I drove down to Oklahoma one March weekend. Years later, I visually feasted on greens, every time I left my miserably dry California home. Now I've gorged on it, spending three years in the verdant low country, and now sated, I am finally able to greet that brown landscape as an old friend. It got itself gussied up for my visit and everything, with bright yellow river birches running down every contour in the land, carved by rivulets heading downhill since long before anyone divided up the land into building sites.

My BFF picked me up from the airport, and took me to her home via her latest project. She is acquiring an apartment complex, built of brick in the 1960s, that has seen better days. But the buildings are solid, and the land is perched on an area primed for gentrification. We walked around the complex, and she pointed out some of the upgrades she plans to make right away, and some that will be coming in the years to come. Along with a new, more secure fence, code-compliant railings, and fresh asphalt in the parking lot, she has plans of transforming some empty, mulch-covered wasted space into a community garden. I can't think of any improvement that would have a bigger payoff for the heart of that complex. No home should be surrounded by flat, barren ground. Homes are defined by who and what lives there, and the greenery is a part of that equation. I'm so glad she recognizes that too.

Late, As Usual

Inspirational song: It Won't Be Long (v. Evan Rachel Wood)

I'm sure it will come as a huge surprise when I say I was that kid who always, always, always waited until the night before to write essays for school. If I ever completed one before three in the morning, I bragged about it to all my friends, because it was so out of character. It didn't happen often. Lucky for me, I can compose on the fly particularly well. I scored well on those hastily written papers nine out of ten times, at the very least. I obviously still wait until the last minute to write, churning out a few paragraphs before bed, and I push that bedtime later and later, even when I promised myself I'd learn to turn in early.

I procrastinate everything. As sweeping generalities go, that is a true and accurate statement, not hyperbole. I should be in bed right now, and instead I have clothes in the dryer, a suitcase pulled out but not filled, an unwritten blog, and a daughter who is successfully distracting me with a chat window. And said daughter is just like her mother. She waited until just now to send me links to the songs to play in the stands, other than the four bits of sheet music available on the alumni page. I can't print them currently, and it is way too late to rehearse now. I will worry about it tomorrow night. I'll have a whole new dog to disturb with that little silver instrument of torture.

Rather than take pictures to illustrate the blog tonight, I spent an hour deleting a few hundred pictures off of my SD card, so I have space for new ones. I promise to make up for it over the weekend, but for now, I need to pack and pretend to sleep. 

Go! Fight! March!

Inspirational song: On Broadway (George Benson)

I'm starting to get really nervous about revisiting my marching band past. I should have been practicing this rental piccolo every day, not just the five or six times I'd picked it up over the last couple weeks. I'm still spitting and buzzing my lips when I over-tighten my embouchure. I am finding certain notes absolutely impossible to hit, and unfortunately, some of them are absolutely critical to make sense of the fight songs. I need to spend the next 48 hours doing nothing but practicing, and I have more things to do than that. I shouldn't get too worked up about it, knowing that the point isn't to perform a solo in an acoustically balanced concert hall, but to have fun in the stands with old farts like myself and the kids who are at the top of their game right now. The important thing is the march down memory lane. There will be at least two people from my era that I know will show up, including the one woman who was in my squad (group of four) the entire time I marched in college. I haven't seen her since senior year. This is what it's about.

I got home from bunco tonight (where I chatted with a woman wearing a shirt that said "Go, Fight, Cure," technically naming two of the songs I was rehearsing before I went out), and I played the recording of the Voice from earlier this evening. The show opened with a performance of On Broadway, and it just played into the band memories that have been pouring in for me, in a welcome cascade. I don't remember whether that song came out during my high school years, or just before them. We definitely played it, once in a show, and then for a year or two afterward in the stands and maybe one parade? It was a dead-on arrangement, and it used to make me really groove to hear the bass line played by tubas and baritones. There are a few songs that live forever in my heart as marching band arrangements. I still feel like Mr Roboto belongs to me, somehow, from the arrangement our high school director's buddy made specifically for our band, and I feel like I ought to be standing shoulder to shoulder with a couple trombone players on either side of me, in a hundred-person line, if I ever hear the opening notes of Goldfinger, the first show I ever marched.

I've been tied in a few knots about the marching part of all of this too. The old guys only have to shamble onto the field in a block, but it has been so long, I am feeling the slightest twinge of stage fright. That's unusual for me, as I have never shied away from performing, ever. I thrive on being in front of a crowd, as long as I have a script to read from or a piece of music memorized. I am pretty sure "the show must go on" was invented for me. I once marched in the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland, five minutes after fainting with appendicitis pain, and I didn't feel a thing. (Song played? I Go to Rio. Some things you never forget, I swear.) But somewhere in the last twenty-plus years, I seem to have found a tiny case of the jitters, over walking down Pearl Street in the Stampede, or being on ground level in Folsom Field. Well, let's be honest. The biggest panic is over sitting next to twenty year old piccolo players who don't spit and squeak and buzz their way through Fight. I bet all of THOSE girls can hit a high B flat. Me, not so much.

Shine a Little Light

Inspirational song: Money for Nothing (Dire Straits)

I reported for duty, exactly as ordered. I and a couple dozen of my neighbors appeared in the courtroom, in drips and drabs. I was one of the early ones, and I sat in mind-numbing silence for about half an hour, watching the other people file in. We checked in at the front of the courtroom, and sat several feet apart from each other, with nothing to read, no phones to check, and an overwhelming shyness keeping us from being chatty. Five minutes past our scheduled show time, a man in a black robe entered the room, and told us that our services would not be required. He said that by simply gathering, evidencing our willingness to form a jury, the parties involved settled their case before we ever found out any details of who or what or when. For our troubles, we would all get twenty dollars, and we were all released to go about our day. Naturally, I was entirely spun up yesterday, worried that this would turn into a long trial, and I feared that I would not be able to make my scheduled travel plans. I always worry for nothing. It's my modus operandi.

I'm trying to find a way to keep more of my container plants alive as it gets closer to the time when they all must be inside. I only have one window that faces mostly south, and I have as many plants on it as I can fit without adding shelving. I stopped by the big box store on my way home from the jury duty that wasn't, looking to see what was available in the way of grow lights. I found a couple incandescent bulbs that said they were grow lights, but I'm not sure I want to burn that much electricity all winter long. I ended up with an aquarium/plant bulb in a cheap fluorescent fixture. I don't know whether it will improve the health of my plants at all. I adhered it to the window next to the herbs that came in two weeks ago, that have all started to look pale and sickly. The marjoram is barely alive (if it really is at all). For the first several hours the lamp was on, the bulb had this bizarre swirling pattern, like the filament inside was being spun in circles from one end, and it was whiptailing down the length of the bulb. By full dark outside, it eventually stopped flickering. I hope it's over whatever stressed it out. It was annoying, and I don't think I would want to watch it every day, even if it is good for the plants. I should know in a few days whether this was worth the money.

Odds and Ends

Inspirational song: Stardust (Willie Nelson)

I am at a loss for coherent stories for tonight. I'm just listening to mellow music, waiting for it to be bedtime. I have to show up for the jury duty summons in the morning, and the odd mixture of dread and schadenfreude-laced curiosity is blotting out all my creativity. I don't want to get wrapped up in something that could take days, but I also am afraid of speaking up about my obligations later this week, and missing out on eavesdropping on someone else's great life struggle. Do I want to know what happens in other people's darkest hours? I really don't know. I don't like watching movies when something horrible happens to advance the plot (or twist it). But for all of my life, I have been a student of human nature. I'm not sure I could look away if my life depended on it.

I have a few random photos from the last two or three days to share tonight, some of the minor crimes that have happened around here. Friday, I dumped out several of the spent container pots, pouring the used potting soil into the largest hole in the back yard. I had it to within about three inches of the top, lightly tamped down. By the end of the day, when I went out on my last pass, a horrid little red headed dog had fluffed the packed soil back up for me. When I asked who had done it, he hung his head and walked inside the house. He knew I didn't appreciate his help.

I don't always use my dishwasher, since it's just me living here. I usually do the dishes in the sink. But in my misery I let a few things pile up, and I ran a load of dishes through the washer last night. This morning I opened the dishwasher to get my favorite giant coffee cup, and before I had the top rack out the width of my palm, I heard a crack and a tinkle. That giant serving of wine from my birthday was in a souvenir glass from the days when we used to go to the wineries in the central California coast, and the glass was very thin and fragile. I can't even tell what it caught on as I pulled out the rack. I can't stand not having matched pairs of wine glasses. I guess now I have to go back down Foxen Canyon Road, and revisit my favorites. Oddly, just before I told my mother we should return, she was thinking she would ask me when we were going back. I don't know whether this is a 2015 goal, or one for 2016. Whenever it is, our honorary family out there, the ones who know we would have chosen them for sisters and aunties if we had been given the chance, will be encouraged to join us. We promise to plan around their schedules and everything. But I doubt we will promise to behave.

Smoke Follows Beauty

Inspirational song: Up In Smoke (Cheech & Chong)

Every time I come home from Bonfire, I am subject to extensive and very personal inspections. Everyone with a fur coat must smell my skin and my clothes, before accusing me of being kissed by other dogs and of hugging and kissing my handsome boyfriend cat. They act like they can tell the pH of the water I soaked in and the species of woodsmoke in my hair. And then they judge me. Harshly. Don't worry, B&E, those other dogs never get fed from my plate, nor do they split my apple cores (like you just did before I started writing). Don't worry, Minions. That giant Maine coon cat is just a flirtation. He doesn't have a standing invitation to sleep in my bed like you do (although it would be nice, Rabbit, if you would stop walking on my hair). I just go out to Bonfire when I need a mental re-alignment, and I got exactly that tonight. I'm more relaxed than I've been in weeks.

We had a long talk about what makes the Bonfire gardens so much more calming than my unwieldy Park. It's not just that they have multiple people who tend the property (generally each season there are four different adults who put in time out there) and I have been on my own here for two summers. It's also that the lot is level, and the big trees are confined to the back edge of the property. The lawns are treated with weed & feed (which I rarely do -- I'm not even sure we still own a spreader), and the perimeter edge gets a long-acting mosquito killer two or three times a season. The banana spiders get flipped over the back fence, and with the bug repellent barrier, they stay there. I have been admonished for even dreaming of pesticides, and there is no way you're going to catch me getting close enough to a banana spider to move her. I got up close to them with my camera on multiple occasions, but I know better than to touch a web. I have too many weeds, and too many bugs for one person to contain without chemicals. I wish I could have created a bug- and weed-free sanctuary like Bonfire, but it was too much. I think I need to start trimming back some of the shade garden and the thicket, to restore a more favorable human-to-insect balance for next season.

I think the coup-de-grace of why Bonfire is so much better is the damned fire itself. Yesterday while I was out clearing leaves and sycamore pods, I tried to make a small fire in the pit with a few of the dropped branches that I thought had been down long enough to dry out. I essentially was attempting to make an all-kindling fire, and no matter what I did, I couldn't get any of it to catch. I felt like such a failure at life (that was pretty much the story of the day yesterday anyway, but still). I stood over the Bonfire leader while she got the fire going like it was nothing, and my heart filled with jealousy. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. I can't be this bad at it, really, can I?

Not What I Needed

Inspirational song: What Is Love? (Howard Jones)

Today was not how I expected to spend my birthday. My horrid mood is back, and I spent the day trying to exhaust myself in the back yard. I made some progress on clearing up bits and pieces of the deck and immediate surroundings, but I still have hours of work to do. I tried to find comfort in the outpouring of texts, calls, Facebook greetings, and face-to-face conversations today, but there was none to be had. What I needed to hear, I never did, and I never will. I'm headed down a road of unpleasant conclusions, and I don't think there is any way to turn around. I've made peace with that.

Many years ago, I had a friend I spoke with almost every day. We talked about all sorts of things, and I thought I could trust him. As the years went by, however, he changed, and all conversations became increasingly unbearably irritating. One day, I had had enough, and whatever he said was the last straw. I found myself about to excoriate him publicly, with all the pent-up anger and frustration ready to bubble to the top. I was getting well and truly spun up, when suddenly I stopped myself, walked away, and did yardwork, just like today. Once I created distance between me and the conversation that angered me so violently, I decided a little more time and space would be better. And then a little more. And it went on so long, that I decided never to go back and talk to him at all. I felt bad about disappearing, without offering an explanation, but in the long run, the clean cut was what I needed. Not long after that, I saw something he said, "They say that silence is golden. Sometime it just feels like golden showers." I know that was about me, but I still didn't speak up. As horrible as it feels to be on the receiving end, as I am right now, I still think that it was the right thing to do in that situation.

I cheaped out on my birthday dinner tonight. I had some inexpensive veggies and the last bratwurst in a package, and a half a bottle of wine that has been sitting in the fridge for over a week. I've had far more extravagant birthday meals, but I just wasn't up for one tonight. As it was, I mostly ate to soak up the effects of all that wine. Maybe this weekend I will feel more like celebrating. For now, I just want to smell the eucalyptus that came from the Bonfire leader's garden, and then head to bed.

I Found a Food

Inspirational song: Love Means Never Having to Say You're Hungry (Charlie Robison)

One good thing about my radical dietary changes is that I have completely lost the blood sugar roller coaster effect. I used to have more dramatic ups and downs than an AM radio signal. I could never find the right kind and amount of food for a steady, normal head or heart. And when I crashed, I took bystanders down with me. These days, not so much. When I got home at four this afternoon, I realized I had gone the entire day on a cup of coffee and a carrot. I was understandably hungry, but I wasn't panicking. I had a little snack while I started a pot of chili, and was feeling just fine until it was done a couple hours later. Now, I admit I have been craving sweet things today, and it's rough knowing there's still a half a carton of ice cream in my freezer that has been taunting me for days. I have to remind myself how severe and immediate was my upset stomach the last time I caved in and had a few bites of it. Maybe it was a bad idea not to buy any fruit the last time I went shopping. Poor planning on my part. Still, I think I'm miles ahead of where I was a year or two ago. My attitude is even so good that I can belly laugh at jokes at the gluten-free crowd's expense. I know how most people eating this way sound pretentious or ill-informed. I can't imagine how stepped up the taunting would be if I tried to explain that going completely grain-free is even better. Maybe moving back to Boulder where I could blend into the crowd isn't such a bad idea after all.

There are two spoiled doggies who are taking advantage of my whole food epiphany. For a few cycles, I was feeling tight on cash, and put them back on grocery store dog food. That was unwise. They acted like they didn't feel very well, and both of them developed very annoying compulsive paw-licking habits. So first we went back to the high-end dry dog food, and as of today, we are cutting it with some "stew" I made just for them, with things like chicken, sweet potatoes, and carrots. I even garnished it this morning with a dollop of cottage cheese. I have never seen such well-behaved pups as the two who sat instantly and were absolutely silent, waiting for those bowls to drop. They usually eat at six in the evenings, and at five forty-five, they were side by side on the rug, trying to out-cute each other, dancing every time I so much as twitched. It's all too new to tell whether their paw-licking will stop, or whether I'll see improvements in their coats or breath or other scents. But already, the change in attitude is entertaining.

Mothers and Daughters

Inspirational song: Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)

My mother has taken to trying to one-up me with stories lately. When she brings up something that she remembers and I don't, she crows in triumph. Most of the old stories I write about here are fairly personal, things I wouldn't consider pivotal moments in other people's lives necessarily, so I'm really not offended when I remember a conversation between my mother and me that she doesn't remember at all. I think she's taking it a little hard, though, that I have memories of interactions between us that she can't recall. So a couple times she has given me a little schoolyard teasing when I am at a loss. That makes my head swell a little, to be honest. One of the reasons I started telling my old stories is because I feared they might be lost forever. I was foggy-brained for a few years, while I was struggling with a crappy diet and the poor health that results from those. I felt that I still had something to offer, if I could pry my memories loose, and store them in my mundane version of a pensieve. If she's feeling like she has to compete, then that means I'm succeeding as I chronicle my life. I've been practicing this for a year and a half now. Perhaps if my mom seriously wants to play this game, she can start writing her own history down. She's got a lot of skills keeping dream journals. This can't be much different. I'm up for the challenge if she really wants to thrown down here.

I've had a bit of a breakthrough today. Whatever was holding me down the last week is clearing, and I have picked up a couple things I had on hold. I made the first pass at cleaning the garage, filling my tiny car with the broken down cardboard boxes that held all these rugs as they arrived at the house. The trash can is nearly full, but I've only just begun there. I've been told to prepare the garage for the arrival of a special needs dog who can't sleep in the house (he has no control over his back 40, either to walk or refrain from making messes, from what I've been told). I'm a little nervous over this one, but I'm hopeful that we can find a vet who is able to make him healthy again. Maybe.

I also pulled out one of my paintings that I left undone, the one that has been staring at me for months. I surrounded myself with paints and tools, and I was going to devote a good hour or two of work to it. And within fifteen seconds of putting it next to me, the image was entirely covered with a big black puddle of cat. She finally left when I picked up the computer, but it's too late to start painting now.

One of my daughters is having a life altering moment as I write. She told me she was composing a letter to one of her anthropology contacts, and stumbled on the research topic she wants to spend the next several years of her life on. (She said the music she was listening to at the time was a little eerie, making it feel like a key moment in a Tim Burton film, and that was how she knew it was a pivotal revelation.) Her topic is ambitious and terribly interesting, and it's making me a feel a little less of a big-shot writer. I suppose the daughters will always out-do the mothers. It's what pushes the world along.