Finish putting up the fence for the dogs.

I am imagining a group of amnesiacs here...I've never been able to watch soap operas but have known others who do and I used to be at a client's house while her mom was watching "Victor" who is apparently a character on one of these and what I noticed is that on soaps amnesia is much more prevalent than I would have ever thought - as are evil identical twins. (Siona - I've failed and had to resort to a period there. Sorry. I'll work on it. I'm still up for the challenge but now notice I'm using more periods than ever - I think it must be kind of like when you say "I'll give up chocolate for a month" and then all you can think about is chocolate. Not that I would give up chocolate.)

For a couple of months my cell phone has functioned as landline on a very short cord...it got wet and I needed to wait until it could be replaced as an upgrade. I really didn't mind but now that I have this phone with a tiny little keyboard and unlimited texting and internet and a decent phone - oh my. This changes everything and I take back all the things I ever said about "Oh, I'm not really a phone person..." because I am so in love with the intartubes and with my little camera and oh my. So I didn't even know Krissy was doing this yesterday and then I tried to use my phone and it wasn't working and then I checked my email and there was an email from Krissy saying she was coming home with something and it is the nicest sweetest little gift of a phone ever. Our phones and a friend's phone are all on Krissy's family plan so conjuring up this nifty little phone had to come from her. I love it!

I rarely end up asking Krissy for anything because she does as many nice things as she can think of without being asked.  She is the kindest and most generous person ever. And I don't ask other people for many things because I think it's up to me to manage what I need. But sometimes I ask for the little things - like please separate the recycling when you put it out and remember to turn off the water faucet that wants to drip in the kitchen and please pull up far enough that I can park my car too...or things like "I'd like more salsa with that please" or "can we have sushi tonight?".

I don't mind what other people ask for and I also don't mind saying no. I find it difficult to be in the position of saying no to people who haven't asked...had one friend a while back who just appeared in my house around 3am stumbling about with a bottle of wine and looking for a social gathering and at 3am I tend to be unavailable. Same friend sometimes IM's me late at night saying "I think I'll swing by" and when I say no we have to continue to talk about it with me continuing to say no. Which just seems awkward. Two different people have appeared in my living room at 5am-ish and one of them came in after knocking when we refused to answer. I've had visitors who say things like "I'm hungry and I think I'll just make some of your food now" and this is bothersome for me. And it isn't about the food or the friends so much as the assumption and rudeness of it.

I'm back on the shoulds again here. I think clearly other people should ask if they want to do something of their choosing with your life and if that answer is no then they're done.  Not asking at all and assuming the other person will be too uncomfortable to speak up and sound like the bad guy is just rude and a little crazy. But I suppose on my side I should be less concerned with confronting people and hurting their feelings than I am and more willing to say "that doesn't work for me" and "I already said no - we're done here." What's odd is that on jobs I'm very good at that, and at finding ways to say things nicely and at getting people I've had to fire to thank me and shake my hand. Somehow in my private life that changes. I don't approach friends in the same way as people I'm paid to supervise - it's a much less clearcut situation. And I don't want to have to constantly be on guard and defend myself against friends.

One of Krissy's sisters is lovely about these things. If she wants a favor or to borrow something or asks for babysitting she asks so nicely and clearly gives you the option to say no without guilt. Then later she'll leave a little thank you note for even the tiniest thing and it makes every interaction with her go so smoothly. Two of her other sisters are quite the opposite so it must not be genetic - maybe nurture vs nature since of course no two kids grow up in the same home. I have a child who is so conscientious about being generous and fair and hasn't asked me for anything at all since he moved out on his own. He's had friends over the years who would eat us out of house and home, leave their mess behind for someone else to handle and whine constantly while they were around. I don't think it's an age-related behavior then. But they would rarely ask for what they wanted - much more likely I think to get what you want if you just plunge ahead and take it.

So I think it's fine to ask for what you want or need. And it also has to be fine if the answer is no. But I think it's best of all not to be in the position of needing to ask. As happy as I am to help someone who asks nicely for something I can reasonably do, I'm even happier to have friends who are responsible for themselves and who, when you do something for them, receive it as a gift and an extra.

I didn't know I had so many thoughts stewing about this one.
But the key thing is - this phone totally rules.

I kind of have to hope I haven't done it yet. And on the other hand that I never do or that maybe I've recovered.

This morning we had a tornado warning that lasted a couple of hours and I just couldn't envision taking all of our animals and sitting down in our cellar which has a dirt floor covered with gravel and a ceiling low enough that I hit my head at least once every time I go down there and then sitting there in the corner for a couple of hours. So I hung out and made the animal food and washed dishes and thought maybe I'd get some kind of Wizard of Oz adventure out of it but all I got was, well, animal food and clean dishes. And it rained.

A couple of days ago I couldn't figure out where my cell phone was so I used this site to page my phone from my computer. When I still couldn't find it (because it was of course out in the car and by the time I got to the car it had stopped ringing), I asked Krissy to help. She ended up being the one who found the phone. Of course. Anyway it's a very handy site for locating your cell phone.

Since today is Friday, it's green.

I love our house. It's sort of falling down and filled with furniture we mostly found by the side of the road or were given. We don't own a sofa, or any upholstered furniture. Our kitchen is the worst configuration for a kitchen I've ever lived with. There's a hallway that has no purpose other than to make an already tiny house have less usable space. Half of the bathroom is a narrow passagway which leads to the other half which is the part where all the useful bits are crammed into a space which would be about right for an RV or a boat. The house was apparently designed by a blind architect on drugs who had run out of lead for his mechanical pencil and had to use crayon. Nothing is straight or level or square.  And I love love love our house. 

I think Bridget had such a great answer to this one that there is no point in me even answering. No point except that I told Tara that I would do a month of QaR's so now I'll have to mumble quietly to myself while staring at the calendar intensely focused on this coming Friday. 

I think it's more wandering about than running....

I had started to post this response which was way too long and my cat wisely shut my computer off.

I want to be Glinda the Good Witch. There's child enough in all of us to be thrilled with the
settings and the feeling 
of this picture. 
  It has terrified me a little 
to think of living up to 
the children's idea of 
what a Good Fairy must be.
But I can only hope 
with all my heart 
that I won't disappoint them."

I'm feeling a little slighted that this QaR never appeared in my email. I double checked and did a search and nope, not there. I got Tara's response and went and found the question. Hmmm. I'll try not to take it personally. But I am feeling a bit sensitive about it.

Yes, well I have a problem with wanting to delve deeply into approximately a bazillion things and of course that kind of thinking will have you waking up at 4am not able to sleep, like now for instance. And internet, you are no help at all with this affliction. But everything is so interesting, and I think there are supposed to be some people who know a little bit about a lot of things. We're the ones you want on your team for trivial pursuits - the game, I mean, but also probably real life trivial pursuits. In fact, that could be the title for my life, trivial pursuits. 

I'm an only child of a reluctant mother and a father who was generally absent, either because he was at work or else absent when present. My mother was not very forthcoming (I was in high school before I found out she had been married before she married my father. And her husband had died in bed with her.) so it took me quite a while to figure some things out. This was complicated by my having a prolonged illness as a child that left me somewhat isolated with crazy mom, during which time I formulated the theory that this was normal, all mothers are like this, these were just the rules for life. I've mostly gotten over that but every single day I still do things that I know come from my very eccentric mother.

Oh my, no. I don't mind the challenge of having to be tactful about it, but most of the time what goes through my head comes right out my mouth - some kind of thought bulimia. Surprisingly, this hardly ever gets me into trouble. 

Well, nothing. If I wanted to surrender it I'd do it but I'm clinging to my shreds and illusions out of sheer love. Aren't you?

I'll have the strawberries, and some sliced bananas. 

What was your happiest moment of this day?

I love all of my minutes, and I especially do love waking up, cozy under quilts, dogs tucked in and cats piled on top, hearing the first birds outside our window, the early birds out getting their worms, and looking over at Krissy who is always still asleep at this  point, all sweet and warm. Sometimes I prod her a little bit to get her to start sleep-talking and sleep-singing, which she does every time even though she doesn't believe me when I tell her about it later. She sings these little mumbly hard to identify melodies in her sleep-voice and keeps right on sleeping. She is a very good sleeper. I am a very good waker and I love those first morning moments a lot.

Recently I've been procrastinating about pretty much everything in my life except making this door that's going in our kitchen. I didn't want it to look ordinary and it needs to have a cat door in the bottom and it started as a wooden screen door so I cut pieces of wood to frame out the cat door (which is lockable so the cats can be banned from the kitchen while I'm cooking, which is one of the reasons for the door) and I had this ornate metal grate that I found at architectural salvage place a long time ago. I'm going to suspend it in the top screen with copper wire. But before that, there's been the painting. Primer, mottled black acrylic, two washes of burnt umber the second one streaked with a little black while wet, a transparent bronze glaze, then the torn pieces of handmade banana leaf paper then a thin wash of umber again to age the paper then the sealer. Then the same thing on the other side. Paint the hinges and the mending plates I decided to use for the wood frame around the kitty door - now they're old looking, copper and brown and they got just as many coats of paint as the door and then sealer. Drying time for each step. Paint the kitty door black because everyone knows that makes things invisible (?).  Wood everywhere, sawdust, the dining room table covered with paper and hinges and metal plates for days now, the living room table used as a work surface for the door. The kitchen piling up with dishes, nothing else getting done except going to work for half of each day with Little Bit and doing my notes. Monday night I took time away and played cards with Krissy and Albert. I felt a little guilty but I've gotten over it. Last night we went out for dinner at our favorite dive and played pool. Night before last I only slept about an hour. It's gone from "let's put a door on the kitchen" to this insane art project obsession now.

Wherever I am. Not meant flippantly, but in each moment, wherever I am is exactly where I belong. Sometimes I tell myself that I don't belong here or there, I don't belong in line at the DMV, I don't belong in the sad low-life grocery store just down the road here, I'm better than all that. And then I have to remind myself all over again to stop being a snob and stop being semi-conscious and to really be in the moment I'm in, in the place where I am, with the people around me. And what I find kind of amazing and magical is that once that transition happens I get my magical powers back. I can make the grumpy and unhelpful person working at the DMV smile and have a much better day, I can transform the weird old lady at the store into a charmingly eccentric person, I can transform the world into what it's been all along, which is actually quite an advanced magical power. But available to everyone, because all of us are exactly where we belong, all the time.

I'm never sure. I suppose I should know, maybe get a map or make a plan. But I think that kind of thing is a little bit of an illusion - I can pretend that I know where I'm going but where I actually end up is very often unrelated to those plans. I've made friends with being an explorer in the world rather than relying on plans and maps. I respect the usefulness of intentions and maps are darn handy but I find that they are often, for me, just a guideline for what I should deviate from. 

That's what I said. Those big brown eyes and this look that's weirdly like a house elf. Which is why we started calling him Dobby. I had no idea what I was doing.