dodge

As much as the dream of leaving here tempts me, there are days when there is no place more perfect in which to live. Slept in. Picked up, kate, went to riis. Funny, this IS an actual picture of the beach, but it looks way cleaner than in person, riiiiight?

Then, after, calm black ocean went to my FAVORITE bar in NY and played scrabble for a few hours. A perfect day.

waste

I am so-o-o not into keeping up with...um, anything. But, I am a bit ashamed of my lack of movie viewing. When Oscars roll around....um yeah, I WANTED to see it. Yeah, it looked ok. Movies in NY are like an impromptu camping trip. Too much fucking planning. (Albeit I am an incredible planner)

So, my mom was here last night. I act like I go to bed at 9 , like I do every night, riiight? Pumped to play like 3 hours of scrabulous uninterrupted, as I had like 15 active games. Godamnt lawsuit!!!!! Keep getting bumped outta my awesomely, challenging mostfun games. Quinces for 9 million points? Bumped. At for 2? Bumped. This morning , find out that there is a lawsuit and my scrabbled mind will get a bit of a stay. Fuck.

What does a sober person do in bed alone at 9:30 pm? Turn on tv. Click-clickety-click. "Knocked up". Heard it was funny. Waiting for funny, wanting a laugh. Watching stupid. Segue in my head, "you like stupid".

I do like stupid. Most, (almost every single thing) of my favorite things are in the stupid zone. But I gotta say, maybe new stupid is stupider than old stupid? If so, it might be that maybe that new rock-n-roll stuff is a bit too loud.

snitches get stitches

Another one of my former students was shot in the head and killed last week. He was 17, smart-ish and from a nice Haitian family. His family could not control him, as they only spoke Creole and worked 24-7. He was a tad too smart, and a tad too stupid to get too far away from trouble. But B had just managed to complete his GED and was about to start community college in the fall. Not an easy feat for someone who has been a banger since age 10.

The funeral was held yesterday, with more cops on detail than after 9-11. During the service, one of my staff members started talking to a few of B's "friends" aka gang members. All 30 of whom rolled out of two hum-v limos wearing t-shirts with B's picture on them. Two of them, also former "alumni", told this man, (who was always a major confidante to our kids) that they knew exactly who had murdered J but that they weren't bothering to tell the cops, because they were going "to take care of it".

'Man' tells me today, shaking in his boots. Gives me names of the supposed doers (one of them another alum). I implore him to share info with cops. He is too afraid, fucked up from whole scene.

I call cops, give my name, names of perps. Detectives had already had two of the 3 names. Thanked me for info, and said they were on their way to find #3. Asked me to call back when I got more info.

Shake head.

Doing my duty?

Dream #3

Tosssing and turning but on the brink. Begin to release. Blue haze. Small fish and aquatic life in my close range of vision, but blurry. Sounds of something metal touching the back of my head and voices and laughter above. I am scared but am comforted by the small darting animals, too close to focus upon. Then I am in horror to realize that someone was repeatedly dropping a fishing line into the transformed fishbowl of my open skull.

rainmen

I work in a school with classes of children on the autistic spectrum. I have never directly supervised this population, but will be doing so next autumn. New learning for me.

After my nightmare in ct on saturday, my brother called me on sunday and invited me up. Again to hang by the pool. I go, with Gilly.

To make a long story short.....i truly believe that my brother may have undiagnosed aspergers syndrome. And then it makes me think my dad might also have a touch.

They act as if they are listening, but never recall a thing i say, even two minutes later. Their reason for speaking (which is minimal-they do not talk much, aka, at all) is only to be heard.
Attention span: only on the one thing they are doing, for one minute increments. Also, way too easily overly-irritated by their environment.

just a day

As of this date, Will and I have officially been married for twelve years. whew, that's a number. And a really lovely one. Nothing but big old hearts dancing in my eyes.

My father came down yesterday morning from ct and we were trying to decide what to do for the day. Hmm. beach, no. Gilly is tough work at the beach. Museum, ugh, maybe. Park, playground, zoo, no, eh, maybe.

Me: i wish we could just spend the day lounging around a pool.
Dad: too bad you just didn't come up to our house to spend the day at our pool
Me: Let's go.

so we trek it up to ct, a trip that usually takes 1.5 hrs takes 2.5. as soon as we get to the pool, thunder rumbles in the near distance. outta pool and into loony bin of ensuing divorce.
my skin is creeping, every spoken thought pierces me. i am 16 and want to jump into the car of any, many bad boys who will attempt to, and occasionally will turn my anger into a more tangible, less palatable form. i keep looking out of the window. why?

I return to pool. I sit in slight drizzle. reading e. hardwick. the sentences, so beautiful they border on pretentious. rain, sogging pages. i am alternately angry and awed. i look to the woods. i am calm. calm, is a small small time.

return. dad wants to take will and i out to dinner. we go to this all-you-can-eat-sushi-place. stop there. i know that in itself it sounds like a horror show. but strangely enough, it was actually decent. it was a little hidden hole in the wall yalie gem. it was cheap and good. i was shocked.

Drove home with the boys asleep around me. Calm again.

horton hears a holocaust

We have tons'a flies in our backyard. Even when scrupulous about cleaning up the dogshit, food and juice that is often dropped. So I do some research and find these flytrap bags that you fill with water and the flies are lured in and cannot get out. I get psyched, as the numbers begin to decrease.

I begin to examine (ok, become obsessed with this apparatus) and see the horror that is going on inside. The flies fly in and are unable to get out. They continue to fly around until too exhausted to fly anymore. They then fall into the water and drown. They are surrounded by 100's of other victims. Despite the rampant genocide, they still manage to breed and maggots swim furtively in the soup of musca domestica. They swim, beside the dead bodies of parents, cousins and inbred siblings.

I become interested, as another phenomenon begins to occur. I observe a partial food chain in action as jumping spiders, with their excellent vision, begin to congregate at the top of the bag. Flies who manage to escape the feeding predators at the top, find their way into a more prolonged path to death.

At first I watch. I then begin to feel horror. I then try to convince myself that it is better than having them biting us and landing on our food/etc. I then feel guilt. I am back to watching. With guilt and horror.

etiquette

Parents nowadays, mostly suck. So fucking uptight and square and uber-protective. I think I should have been a parent in the 50's-70's.

ahhhh...

my first moonflower from seed.....

giglio time....

baby names

The two dumbest ever:
Boy: Blaine
Girl: Sloane

family portraits

When I was growing up (poor) we never had family portraits taken, in fact there are few family photos of all of us at all. Ergo, my brother and I thought it was important that we had one of us together.

peddywreck

I do not pamper myself. I like to, but it is way low on the to-do list. I decide to run in for a quick pedicure on way home for work the other day. To my surprise, the place I usually go to, has installed flat-screened tv's all around. Showing a Jackie Chan movie, no english subtitles, but I was enjoying it. I slowly notice that every single employee is looking at the tv's and not so hard at my feet.



As a result, my feet look like this...






but if you have the need to feel just a little unsettled, go here

mike

my uncle mike is a very large alcoholic man. He is a very right-wing-ed-opinionated-man. I don't hate him, but if we did not share dna, i doubt we'd have much in common.

he lived next door to us for a spell while i was growing up. i would regularly hear the screen door slamming around 8-8:30 each night ( i was in bed, but never sleeping, and it was still light out). I would run to my parents bedroom window and watch him chuck his keys into the woods. I didn't really know (until I'd eavesdropped) what he was throwing, just that there was some fanfare about it. Regularly, about an hour or two later, I'd be awakened by the door slam again. I would run again to the window and see him lumbering around with a flashlight, looking for his keys in the woods. Kind of like a really more fucked up blair witch vid. Few minutes later the trans-am was on the road.

Holidays with mike: Some holidays were at home, some were claimed. My moms parents owned Christmas Eve. Mike would always arrive earlier than everyone, and would bring his "laundry". As the night rolled on, mike would get more and more intensively republican, and increasingly louder and slurrier. Meanwhilst, my strongly democratic parents would try to pronounce that "it's christmas for fux sake". WE all tried to drop the subject, but every single trip to the laundry room made shit worse. End of sacred night? Mike, passed out in basement with bottle of jack, or whatever in hand. Nobody ever tried to carry him up, not once.

back to the future

This is when I (lived/will live) with andtheend

skip straight to time 6:10. Or just enjoy being voyeurs of our lives.

a small breeze

Summer school has begun. The super-high stress level preceding it, significantly down. Number of vacation days I have ahead of me, 17 officially ( but # upped by as many as go unnoticed by loser payroll secretary). Fuckin' white bitch is officially outta the bighouse as often as she can get away with it. Hello, son. Hello, sun. Hot sweet summer is a sad short spurt around these parts, but it's all i got. And I savor every second of smell of it.

fourtha

Attended quite a number of bbq's/parties et al this weekend. Most memorable statement from someone I did not know, " I've lived in NY for almost 4 years and have never gotten a mosquito bite in that whole time". He was getting bitten as we spoke and he was as astounded as I might be if I actually saw a lion on a safari. Needless to say, he lives in manhattan.

sleepness nights

i have always been a lousy sleeper. as a kid, i would frequently wake up in strange places in the morning, i'd find myself in the bathtub, behind the water heater in the basement, and sometimes even in the yard.

now, i just cannot get to sleep. i lie there, and lie there and every worry passes through, preventing comfort.

sometimes, it's not even worry, it's memories of things i want to remember, and fear i'll forget. sometimes it's weird little things i am inventing (but i usually do forget those)

sometimes it's re-living current events, and feeling that my life is so full that i really should be exempt from the sleep clause.

on the rare occasion that i can, my dreams are so scary, that they wake me up, and i usually opt for tired over fear.

if i drink, i fall asleep easily, aka, pass out, but i wake still tired.

If i take an ambien, or any kind of sleep inducer, i fall hard, and then i am up, like clockwork between 3:30-4:30 and can never fall back asleep.

I have lost the ability to lie down and naturally fall and stay.

This is beginning to scare me. I have no handle on it, and I am always so tired, and look and feel like shit.

Last fall, I took a trip with my mother and Gilly up to NH. I was driving on all these mountain roads and starting falling asleep at the wheel. Drove into the other lane. My mothers answer? "You should smoke or have some diet cokes, that was scary". Me, "why can't you drive and let me sleep?" Her: "Oh no, I could never drive here, I don't know the area, you'll be fine"

i have so many exhaustion contributors in my life.