Well, the light is peeking through every once in a while at the end of the tunnel.

I got new linoleum in the kitchen and bathrooms today. Sure looks different. The condo is slowly losing it’s 70’s funk.

I’m very very close to finishing now..Soon we’ll be able to show the place. I’m looking forward to setting everything up all pretty like a model house. It will be like I don’t even live here.

I already unpacked my dresser and put it all in a suitcase. I have to make the bedroom look large and spacious, so my dresser goes into storage. CHRIS’s dresser stays because HIS dresser came from his grandparents who probably bought it somewhere expensive in Wisconson. MY dresser came from a garage sale and cost 40 bucks.

but the bedroom looks pretty good now.

Now there is most just the little things. I am dearly hoping this whole thing will be over soon…Soon SOon SOON. please…

Not much longer, I know that.

When I go out to my balcony, I tell my plants that they will soon have full free dirt to spread their roots it. They seems to look forward to it too.

Let’s just say, I don’t want to pursue a career in home painting

WOW.

I have NEVER been so consistently tired. It’s been several..How many? I don’t remember…weeks that I’ve been working on making my condo beautiful.

I’ve never had a baby, but I suspect that just after having a baby feels a lot like how I feel now…

I usually am a morning person. I usually wake up with all kinds of plans about what I will get done on that very day. Not right now. I have plans, but they are not cheerful.

It is better now that Chris is back from New York…His trip was very successful, which I am glad about. And even though he is neck deep in his preparations for his trip to Germany next monday, it is still great just to have him around.

I know that this is a good thing to do, that it will pay off, but BANG it’s tough.

Therefore, I apologize for the lack of content on my website.

Sometimes you just have to get away. This urge strikes me frequently. Though not so much lately…I’m very happy right now.

However, there have been times when I wanted so badly to get out of the country that it was dangerous to get behind the wheel of a car. I would drive and drive and not want to turn around.

I’ve been seized with the need for snow, to see cold in this unrelenting sunny california weather. I’ve been in the grip of the NEED to hear people speaking another language.

My friend Lenny, a congenital programmer, feels that need too. He has made a tool to satisfy the need.

Check it out:

FarePrice

Pretty cool, man.

boy, it’s been a very exciting few weeks.

Christ is Risen! Eastern Easter was just last Sunday and we celebrated in style with my godmother in Mountain View.

And Just before that, Chris and I realized that our dream of buying a house with a yard is possible now that my condo has increased in value so much. So we got approved for a mortgage and are preparing to sell this place.

And now I think I’m going to get a job, because I think someone wants to give me one.

It sure has been exciting.

But that means that the blog has been bare. Sorry guys!

Well, I’ll be honest. I’m sitting in a coffee shop and I am supposed to be organizing the writing I’ve done recently on my book. I am pleased, it’s going well.

But writing is not easy. I remember when I was in the middle of working LONG HARD DAYS, I would write on the bus. Or sometimes on the weekends. I couldn’t manage to do it every day, and there would be weeks at a time when I didn’t work on it at all. But I remember it as a joyous thing. Writing was my release.

Now, I guess I don’t have anything I need to be released from. So, it’s tougher. Not that I am not pleased, but it’s different.

So, my release from writing has been painting. Sounds toity, doesn’t it? But no, I just mean slapping white paint on my cabinets in my kitchen, and now my walls.

I am trying to imagine a time when I will NOT be working on covering the dark black walnut color of my kitchen cabinets with white paint. It has been more than 6 months that I’ve been working on it.

“You’re really almost done.” Chris is hopeful. Notably, Chris has not painted stroke one. To be fair, his job is the bathrooms, which are frightening all by themselves.

For variety, I bought some paint for the walls. THAT task will happen like lightning in comparison to the cabinets.

I already painted one section. I meant it to be a light yellow. It is VERY VERY light. Looks just white at the moment. But, too late. I already bought the paint, and white is not such a bad color. It is a vanilla-ey white. Maybe after I paint the whole place, it will be more obvious.

We’ll see. The point is, once the things are all done, we’re going to sell the place anyway. So, it’s not for our aesthetic enjoyment. Realistically, it’s about cash money.

Ah, the cold facts of life.

Which brings me back to the fact that I should be organizing my work. SIGH. My favorite organizing tool, the table of contents, has started to go wonky on me. It’s still there, but when I look at it on my monitor, it shows

{TOC/0 “1-3” \H\Z }

It prints the chapters, but I can’t see them on the screen. I don’t want to kill trees everytime I re-order the dang thing. Anyone have advice?

Oh, I’ll figure something out.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Well, it’s been 3 month of living at home with Chris and the cat. We are rubbing elbows (and fur) more than usual, but I am finding that I like my family very much and it’s been wonderful.

One of the thing that Skellig does for me is give me what I call I kitty massage. He’ll sit on my tummy and push his declawed paws against my chest. Sometimes he will get into my face, too. He seemed to aim for my mouth, but maybe I am mistaken.

Cat are weird you know. My greatly increased presence has given the cat an excuse to be weird. And..Well…He has decided to take his piddle to various areas that are not piddle approved.

I HATE cat pee…It’s as bad as skunk for staying power. I got some books from the library about cat behavior.

Well, look out. According to many authors of cat books, Kitty is just the most amazing smart and incredible creature to ever hit the earth. And any human who does not understand this is obviously far below the intelligence of any common cat.

That would be ‘overboard.’ I think my cat is smart, I think he has feelings and all that jazz, but come one.

These authors have all sorts of recommendation. “My cat loves being massages. Sure, at first he was skittish, but now he comes up and begs for a full-body massage.”

Massage? I thought my cat massaged _me_, not the other way around. But I thought I might give it a try. I was always scratching Skellig’s head and neck anyway.

He has a pretty big knot on the side of his neck. Who would have thought? I guess sleeping with his head curled around really can give him a stiff neck.

He loved the massage, though. He gets all half-lidded and purry.

Learn somthing new every day.

So I celebrated my parents 40th year anniversary last sunday at an open house. They were very happy to have all their friends and relative come around. It was the first time that Chris had met a lot of the cousins, and we had fun.

Since we were up north anyway, we had planned to take a trip up to Yosemite. It’s so nice to have time to enjoy life.

Now, Chris does not understand things like camping. He has a philosphy of life that includes private bathrooms and daily showers. So we got a motel inside the park.

It’s not such a bad thing, to have a hotel room inside the national park. One of the amenities is TV, which you’re not really supposed to have when roughing it. But they actually have two Yosemite channels.

Back in the 50s, they used to send down a shower of coals down along the waterfalls. Amazing! Everyone would stop and sing the Indian Love Call while they did it.

Apparently the workers at the restaurant and the camps were very social. A lot of people fell in love. I can believe it.

It’s a great place.

When I was about 14, I fell in love with satin pajamas. Actually, I fell in love with the idea of satin pajamas.

I didn’t see them anywhere, I just thought about how pretty and nice they would be.

Buying them was not within my reach. You have to understand, we did not place the purchasing of new clothing from stores within our grasp. It was part of how we dealt with being poorl; just don’t even entertain the idea of wanting something you can’t have. Buying new clothes was outside of what we could do, so why think about it?

This was before I was able to make my own money, so I didn’t even think about finding out what it would cost new. If we wanted clothing that didn’t appear in the hand-me-down closet that our church kept, we would have to make it.

I found the satin on sale, a beautiful champagne color, and then I found the pattern. I worked hard on it. I’d never made a shirt with a yoke, and many other things.

It took a long time, but time was the only thing I had too much of. In the middle of it, I was talking to an excellent seamstress from our church about the double french seams I was trying to do.

“Don’t you think that satin is a very difficult fabric to work with?”

The idea had never once passed through my mind. Difficult? This was the only way to get the pretty pajamas that I wanted. It was not a matter of difficult. It was a matter of possible.

I am very binary that way. Can it be done? Yes or No? Difficult is not on the map. Not for me. And not for most of my family, come to think of it.

Consequently, I tend to bite off a lot. Then drive myself into the ground trying to do it.

Then again, I also manage to do some amazing things.

I am staggering right now under the difficulty of writing the book that I am trying to write. Sure, when I first thought of it, I just thought of the whole. I thought of the finished product, some vague notion of this story.

Now, I am in the details of it. I am staggered with the enormity of the subject. I tell everyone “It’s a book contrasting the religious tyranny in America with the political tyranny of Russia, and it tracks how the main character comes away from her tyrannical religious upbringing at the same time that Russia is trying to come out from it’s political tyranny.”

Honestly, I think even Shakespeare would have been a bit staggered with that subject matter. YES, it’s true. It really happened. No way could I write this if I hadn’t lived it. It is too big to make up. I believe that it would be a very good book to have in the world, to show up how that kind of thing happens, and that it happens to all of us.

But wow. This is a huge project. And ME, I have to make it the first book I write. No baby steps for me. I have to start with Mt. Everest.

Man on man.

Well, some day, somehow, it will be done. I kind of feel like I am halfway up this mountain, and it’s too late to turn back now. But I just realized how hard it is, and that I might not be up to the task.

But someway or another it will have to get done.

HOOO boy

So, I am on a trip. I decided take a trip down the road UP north.

I always say “Go down to see you” from whatever place I am. People will correct me. “You’re coming up to see me”

Whatever. I always call it down.

Anyway, I came out here to hit up an old professor about book writing/publishing ideas. She was awesome. Gave me a big chunk of time and really talked with me. She didn’t know any agents to sign me (one can hope…oh well), but she gave me some great ideas and feedback. Plus she had a very cute cat.

It’s so great to go on a trip for ME, not for the stupid law firm. GEEZ, those trips…they took so much.

I’m glad to be able to see who I need to see and think lots of thoughts about what I am trying to accomplish with myself.

I am finding that corporations offer a lot of infrastructure that individual persons don’t get, though. The B.ig F.at L.aw F.irm (BFLF) offered me a hotel, usually a fancy one, when I would travel. They would also give me an internet connection.

Don’t really miss the hotel. I am honored to discover that I have lots of friends who love me and are excited for me to sleep on the guest bed/couch.

They love me! 🙂

But DAMN! internet is vital. I am at the library right now. In my own town I know where to get jacked in. Here, I can’t find a spare wireless connection to save me…I know they are here, but if I don’t have a connection, how do I look them up to find them?

Anyway, it’s been a great trip, now that I renewed my library card (act casual and pretend it’s no big deal that you don’t actually LIVE in Mountain View when you renew) and paid my overdue fees ($5.60 all told).

It’s interesting. The Mt. View library card had a smartchip in it. I remember those being introduced back when I worked at Visa International (up the road..San Mateo). NOW they are in the library card. Yay for technology!

They let you be online for 90 minutes, but you can also load the thing up with money to buy copies or print pages off the ‘net while surfing.

Good handy little thing, that smart card.

Well, I am sure this is of very marginal interest to you, my readers, BUT I just spent the last hour clearing off 1500 spam comments
from my webpage here. I felt like posting something, and it’s my page so there.

I wish the spammenters would leave me alone. SIGH But it’s the price I pay for leaving the door open for comments on this space.

I appreciate comments from readers very much, so it’s worth it.

Have a great weekend, folks, and let me see if I can cook up the next episode of Miriam for you by monday.