I love to be unhappy

I love to be in pain

When it's sunny

I can't wait for it to rain.

(tap dancing here)

And even when I'm tapping

And moving to the beat

I'm gonna get thick ankles

And ugly muscles in my feet.

----Gilda Radner

We swam in a man made lake, a nude lake, a shallow lake, a lake with no fish. And there were those stupid jet skis which I'm always afraid will run me over if I swim far out without a pink cap.

We tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle which was inexplicably splattered with gold. Sheesh, it was a view of a lighthouse with crashy waves and flowers and clouds and cheesy gold all over everything.

Other than that, there was much laughing, especially the baby. Baby laughter is the best laughter of all.

Because I planted Mutant Tomatoes From Venus a few years ago, I now have volunteer tomatoes growing across the yard. They sprout in every direction and grow enormous feathery arms. The tomatoes are small yellow ones that are super sweet. However this year because we have no summer to speak of, there are no tomatoes, not a single one. Just giant tomato plants climbing all over the place. Maybe I could train them to climb vertically and I could shinny up to the giant's house like Jack and The Bean Stalk. Eventually I'd have to tell my mother I squandered the money I got for the cow I sold but she'd be entranced by my giant/tomato plant/bag o' gold story and all would be forgiven.

We all leave today for Cle Elum, surely a dream vacation spot. Tracy's baby is too little for actual camping so we're gonna go to a 'cabin', actually a nice house with a kitchen and a bathroom and a fridge and a porch. We will still play charades and Scrabble and cook great messes o' food while the kids run around in the trees. A few days away from computers, pagers, phones etc will be heavenly. I might bring Scott Turow's book, Presumed Innocent, a book I have read many times. Don't see the lame movie with Harrison Ford. Read the book. It's trashy and wonderful, in the way of dark and inappropriate desires. And the damage they do.

And I'll add Cider House Rules. For ballast. And Cadaver Dogs by Rebecca Loudon. Her book glows in the dark.

Burned out car in fancy neighborhood near me.

I walk through a fancy neighborhood near my not-so-fancy neighborhood. The houses are huge and quiet, like no one lives there except the help. All the lawns are manicured and perfect. There are no toys or dog poo or weeds in the yards.

But there was this car. Must have been spectacular burning. I wonder if anyone came out to look. Maybe no one lives in any of the houses after all. Maybe the street is a movie set. Maybe I step into another dimension when I cross onto the street. Maybe it's all done with mirrors.

Saturday is "Get out your power tools and make some noise!" day. Why is that?

I just sat up on the couch. I've been sleeping all morning, another birth last night. Very pretty birth with the older siblings watching. I went down to the kitchen for tea and I saw a bunny on the lawn. The family was happy with their girl.

I officiated at a wedding yesterday with a very pregnant woman and her man. Didn't know either of them. I get asked sometimes. It's fun and feels like birth with happy, crying people and love everywhere. However it was south of here by about an hour and a half. Even tho I thought I gave myself plenty of time, it took forever with stupid traffic. So I got into a fine mood, thinking I was an idiot for agreeing to officiate when I could be drinking iced tea and pondering the imponderables. Then I got there, grew up a little and shared in love and celebration.

What a life I have.

In a few days my family will be here and the house will be overrun with noise and food and trips to Goodwill. My children are veteran thrift shoppers. We'll go camping and play Scrabble and eat together. The annual tradition.

Right now I'm going to get up and go outside because there is a large golden ball in the sky and everything is illuminated. Most peculiar.

Tonight my writing group met and we drank wine and ate much food and cookies and fruits and cheeses (well, no cheeses for this vegan). Ad we yucked it up. As usual. We missed Josh. He had to work. I think that was a ruse. He fears the maniacally laughing women.

Good night, Pat, Kelly, Kiara and Martha. Thanks for everything.

I slept ALL NIGHT last night. I woke up and wondered why I was in bed. My pager went off but it was because it was LO BAT. Rummaging around in the fridge for triple As. At 3 in the morning.

Yesterday, after I had 3 hours of sleep, my neighbor fired up his belt sander. His project for the last 4 years is to paint his house that faces my kitchen window. He sands a piece, primes and paints it. It looks like a patchwork quilt. The sander is incredibly loud. His house is blue. He's a nice guy but yesterday I wanted to kill him. I thought of some ways. I won't write them because if one of them came true, I'd feel awful.

Sleep was futile so I went to breakfast with my gay boy buddies. Richard had a birthday party for himself in some of the gardens he designed. He posted poems all over and had food. We went from garden to garden. The last garden was fictional. There was a huge red cedar in the center and terraces and water features and flowering plants and daphne that blooms all year. In Wallingford. From the front of the house, you couldn't even tell there was such fabulousness in the back. Oh, there were no weeds. None. My garden has weeds. I hum along and then I notice that there is a monstrous weed right in the middle of a bed. It feels good to pull it out. Satisfying. So a weedless garden is interesting but impossible. He wants to have dinner at my house. Between what I'll cook for him and what he'll think of my garden, I'm a bit worried.

I have gay men in my life right now. I like it. They treat me with deference. I'm not sure why. Is it the breasts or because I sit down to pee?

I went to see baby Alice yesterday. She lives across the street. I attended her birth. I love her family. Brenda had a girl. I love knowing there is a brand new baby in close proximity. I'm going to get her some frilly girl clothes. Can't help it.

I don't even remember writing that last post. Uh oh.

Godawful tired. I have convinced the cats to move off the couch so I can nap. Up all night at a birth. Sometimes my work is dangerous, lunging and plunging all over the highway from fatigue. Phone/pager beside me. Still not off call.

Things That Could Be True

I saw several people with artificial legs walking at Seward Park. One lady almost fell in the ditch but then she saw her friend so she righted herself. Her friend was hugging a tree and talking to it. Then I saw two people walking their goats. In the park. In Seattle.

Then I found my glasses I lost two years ago while running.

Then my back miraculously stopped hurting the entire way home. It forgot it was supposed to hurt.

I think everyone should see goats on leashes. It seemed so normal.

I have the cure for a bulging disc and resultant leg pain. A lot of ibuprofen and a few glasses of wine. It helps if you haven't had wine in a while and you have NO TOLERANCE.

I feel perfectly fine right now.

Nothing can hurt me.

My lips are numb.

I think someone came during the night, removed my leg and screwed it back on sideways. It's very painful and I'm going to get an adjustment and a massage. This cannot be. My ankle is healed and now I can't run half a block because my leg is at right angles to my hip. Looks peculiar too.

I bought a new fan from the Mormons. I refuse to ever set foot inside a Walmart's, the richest family ON EARTH with their disgusting labor practices. Instead it's Fred Myers, owned by Mormons. Who are Mormons, what are they, what do they believe? I don't know. I've know lovely Mormon people. It's just the revelation in upstate New York (land of my people) that kinda scares me. Whenever I have revelations, I read my prescription bottle and go have a nap. And wait for it to wear off.

My new fan is fanning away, the cats are spread out to twice their size, which they mysteriously do in the heat and the sun is shining.

I feel better when the sun comes out. I love the rain and cold but when the sun is out, I think about gardening and painting and art and beauty and little animals underground and sparkly mountains and unicorns (well maybe not that last bit). Anyway, sun is a sometimes thing in the NW so we get so happy. So grateful. Because it's warm and there is fruit. All kinds.

PS-I put my fan in the window and it made a HORRIBLE NOISE so I had to turn it off. Oh oh. This might become a crisis. I can always sleep in the cellar.

A bird flew *SMAK* into the French door window, landed on the deck. Of course the cats were very interested. I shooed them away and picked up the bird. It came to, shat on my hand, realized it was in close contact with a large human person and it flew away. There's still a feather splat on the glass.

My dentist is retiring. I will never retire. How do people retire? What does it mean. Sleeping in, reading the whole paper at one sitting, spending the day eating raspberries in the garden and getting scratched, what?

The second of the trilogy is opening this Friday, the Norwegian version. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Hollywood is talking about a remake with Angelina Jolie. Bletch.

My downstairs tenant has a new BF so I get to listen to them, ahem, having it off. And then there's the fireworks. Gawd. And no one had a baby today. I have delivered several July 4th babies. It's kinda like driving through a war zone on an urgent mission. And after the birth, driving back under cover of darkness to the safety of my home. All the while, bombs explode overhead. Kapow! Kablam!

Last night I made peach blueberry cobbler for a friend. When I came home tonight, there it was, sitting on the counter waiting for me. Last night it was warm. Tonight it was cold. I forget every year about seasonal fruit. Every year I scheme ways to mix blueberries with apples/peaches/nectarines/mango etc. because blueberries remind me of childhood when we picked them and the adults made pancakes with them. Bears love blueberries and huckleberries. You see purple scat on the hiking trails. Blueberries are modest and unassuming. And you can eat a whole pint on the way home from the store.

Then there are raspberries and salmonberries...

Tomorrow is the horrid 4th of July. The cats hide under the couch. The only good part is for several years, a baby is born on the 4th so I end up at a birth. I think the babies are curious about the noise and the 'ahhhh' sounds coming from their parents so they come out to see.

In my attempt to not write my syllabus, I went for a truly pathetic run in my neighborhood. I paused on the hills. I took shortcuts. I was a running slacker. And I think I'm going to run the half-marathon in Portland this fall. Gawd. I need a trainer, some vitamins and a younger body.

Then I came home, still determined not to write any blankety-blank syllabus and weeded a bit, actually large frightening plants that had mysteriously appeared all over my yard. Like a poppy higher than my head. And those fricken ivy plants that go viral everywhere. I pulled them off my raspberries ferociously until I realized I had RIPE RASPBERRIES just waiting for me to eat them. So I did. And I ate one little strawberry I planted this year and it was so good I began to cry. It was the essence of strawberry before the beginning of the world when g-d was thinking about making shit and g-d the great voidness said, "I'll create a berry that grows on the ground so the creatures will have to bend over (knees hadn't been invented yet) and pluck the soft red berry covered with wee seeds. And the taste will be a combination of sweet and perfume and delight and great sex. Then the creatures will swoon and praise existence and peace will reign and someone will bake little cakes and someone else will figure out the whipped cream thing and all will be right on the planet."

However, I didn't need shortcake or whipped cream. My little strawberry, my symphony.

I have to write a syllabus and I don't want to. I want to sit on my deck and eat raspberries and read the NYT. That's the trouble with being a putative adult. You agree to a) go to work on time or b) keep the neighbors from knowing you are a hoarder by at least clearing a path on the front porch or c) let your children know that you're living in the cellar again because the house is haunted and talking to you incessantly. You just want the mail to stop coming. You avoid answering the phone. And when you agree to teach a class, you have to produce a syllabus and a reading list and you have to think about the structure of the classes (sigh) even though you've taught the class for a hundred years and basically, nothing is different. Oh, and you have to not swear in class because an occasional student is offended by swearing. Sheesh, swearing is good, is necessary. In my house growing up, you never swore. Never. As soon as I could, I took up the habit. I mean, I don't smoke, do drugs, or drink (well, sometimes, but not much). I'm a vegan, for cripes sakes.

"...your head is full of liquor and perfume." Chris Pureka. She swears in her songs. And she's mournful. I love her. If she weren't half my age, I 'd attempt to have sex with her. I mean, after dinner and tea and finding out what her sign was.

My writing group is meeting this week. EEEEEEEEE!!!!! Whatever will I bring? Maybe if I bring some chocolate dipped strawberries, they won't notice that I've brought a poem from 1998. Plus I got a rejection from Arsenic Lobster. Nope, but send more. Just publish a poem, dammit. How hard could it be?

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. This is an eternal law.