Ding dong

I will admit it: I do at times resent, just the tiniest bit, the behavior of some of the rich (they must be filthy rich) folks on our road who live here only on weekends or holidays – the ones who think that keeping a nice little $1.5 million cottage on acreage in the Wine Country is the perfect way to give the kids a place to play where they can make as much noise as they want for a change, without disturbing the neighbors trying to sleep just eight feet above and below them (not to mention the ones on each side).

"Y'know," I sometimes daydream about saying, "I know it must seem very private and remote to you out here, compared with your place in the city, but in fact you are actually not the only people around. We can hear you! Keep it down!"

I guess there might be two varieties of people who go to live in the country – those who want to surround themselves with peace and quiet, and those who want to be able to make lots of noise without risking a citation. I have to say, I've had one foot on each side of that fence at different times, and I do love being able to turn up the speakers in the back yard sometimes when I'm out there – not super loud, but louder than I'd dare to have them in town. But in general (prepare yourself for the shock) I think I mostly belong in the first category – the ones who like it quiet.

I've come to really love the quiet over the last ten years or so – really, I remember first starting to love it in 1995, when I first moved here and was living way out in the redwoods with neighbors even farther away than the ones I have here. I could get KPFA out there, but we couldn't get any television – which was fine, since I wasn't in the habit of watching it – and any trip into town took a minimum of an hour ... and the guy I was married to started drinking heavily almost as soon as we'd moved in, and sometimes disappeared for several days at a time without calling, and I was still temping and had not a single friend within almost a thousand miles ... yow! I haven't gone there for awhile. That was a really painful time.

Anyway, my point in bringing it up was just to say that living way out there in that house all alone so much of the time really taught me about the power of silence to heal. Or I don't know if it was the silence exactly, but maybe just the way the lack of other distracting sounds helped me calm down and start to notice everything else that was going on around me – the whole world was just humming along in perfect order, with no help from me, and my sadness or happiness didn't really change anything for anyone except me. In other words, there wasn't any pressure anymore to try to pretend everything was okay – because nobody cared.* The redwoods didn't care. The birds didn't. The apple orchard didn't. They didn't care; they just witnessed it. And I learned to witness it. Without judging. Because there's a big difference between "I'm a terrible person who deserves to suffer because I did something stupid by marrying this person, and now I need to stay forever no matter how awful it gets, or risk exposing myself as an impulsive, shallow person who doesn't want to honor the vows she made in marriage – which she should honor," and "Wow, I'm so heartsick I feel I might actually die." The first statement is all opinion and judgment. The second one just describes what's happening. It's not an emotional statement, it isn't loaded. It doesn't demand to be argued with; it demands to be acknowledged.

* Of course I always knew that my loved ones cared – I just mean there was no person actually sitting with me on that porch who did.

Living in that silence I started learning to really listen to myself. It was also the beginning of my involvement with mindfulness meditation, and that was the other really exciting thing that happened to me during that time. Even with all the heartbreak I was feeling, I always knew that sitting in the shadow of the giant redwood in the front yard and watching big fat orange dragonflies hunting insects over the spring tank in the last shaft of sunlight ... would make me feel better. Sometimes I would hike out to the point at the end of this long, tall spine of rock that fell over a hundred feet from the top of the ridge to the bottom of the creek bed below. You could climb (carefully!) about six feet down the face of the cliff and there was a little ledge to sit on, from which you could see the whole little canyon stretching out toward the big valley floor, and the mountains rising up on both sides covered with lush, beautiful trees, and if you leaned forward enough to look down, you could see the back of what looked like hundreds of tiny jewel-green backed swallows swooping and soaring through the air above the treetops way down below, like minnows darting around in the bottom of a deep, clear pool of water. I'd love to go there again someday.

So yeah. Bleah. Earlier they were playing a game that I actually sort of enjoyed (the neighbors, remember?). No idea what they were doing, but I was out deadheading roses as the sun went down and I heard them – some sort of talking for a minute or two, and then the clanging of a bell, like an old-fashioned hand-held school bell. It was a haunting sound in the falling light ... Voices saying something unintelligible, crickets and the occasional frog or screech owl making evening noises, a warm breeze, the smell of dry roses, and then ... this bell ... dogs barking in the distance ....

Anyway. Feeling kind of nostalgic, I guess. It's September first, which to me always feels like the first day of fall even though I know it doesn't officially begin for three more weeks. Usually I buy a box of new pencils around this time of year, and sharpen them all and give them away, just because the smell of newly-sharpened yellow pencils always reminds me of going back to school, which I always loved.

In other news, I started decorating my bike today – took off the bottle cage, which is a cool turquoise blue one given to me by Mr. A as a special present, because it's a very nice one and he's had it for a long time – so I took it off and painted it with purple stripes all the way around, so now it's turquoise and purple, and on my beautiful shiny black bike it looks just so handmade and subtle, but then it's actually really well-done and intriguing, so somehow it really holds my attention, even though I know it's only a bottle cage – because the design is unusual and it somehow forces me to keep looking at it, the way you would keep looking at a dog with two tails – you recognize it as a dog, and a dog is not an uncommon thing to see, but there's just something different about this one that your brain takes a minute to register.

Well, maybe it isn't a freaky as a dog with two tails. It's still kinda cool though.

Also, I've been reading some of the new memoirs this summer (I have a friend who brings them to work for me after she finishes them) and have been struck by how much at least two or three of them read like blogs. Exactly the same kind of self-conscious blathering that I do here, and the writing really isn't any better – though their lives are certainly more interesting to write about (and presumably to read about). Still, it kind of shocks me to think of the book deals these people must be getting – two of them have been on the bestseller lists!

Another dream about flying

Tonight on my way home I saw a hawk stretching out its legs in front of its body as it came in to land on a telephone wire, and then grabbing the wire with its claws and coming to rest so gracefully and apparently effortlessly that I couldn't help thinking, "I bet it feels so great to be a hawk!"

I always thought it would be wonderful to be able to fly. I love to swim, too. I do a lot of flying and swimming in dreams; in my waking life, I swim as often as I can, which is not nearly as often as I would like. Something to figure out ... currently there is no public pool in the whole valley – though the city did spend upwards of one million dollars earlier this year on a redesigned duck pond in the middle of the plaza. Yeah, the priorities of the rich. They all have their own pools, I guess.

Speaking of swimming, I had another new version of my "missing the plane/lost in the world" dream the other night – the best one yet. This time I was on the beach with my family. I was walking at the edge of the water and saw a rope floating along with one end above the surface, the way a snake holds its head up when it swims. "That's interesting," I thought, and looked closer, and saw that the rope was attached to a little white canoe that was cruising along just under the surface of the water. That was even more interesting, so I took hold of the rope and started pulling myself out to sea, hand over hand, to see if I could see where it was going.

As I went along there were so many beautiful things to look at – sparkling underwater cities, and trees along the bank (it was more like a river now), and people doing interesting things, and flowers and animals ... I was sort of worrying, in the back of my mind, that I was getting kind of far away from the beach, and was not completely sure I knew how to get back. But then I noticed that I didn't even have to pull myself by climbing the rope anymore – all I had to do was hold on, and it would carry me along with no effort at all. Beautiful!

I was still anxious about how I would get back, but ended up being more curious than afraid and figured when it was time to go, I would figure out a way.

To cut to the chase, eventually I realized I was WAY out to sea, at which point I rose up several hundred feet above the water (still holding onto the rope) and looked back as far as I could see, all the way to the curve of the earth, realizing finally that I'd gone so far I could no longer see anything of what I'd left behind. I was lost.

Well! I set myself down on the riverbank (with a motion not unlike that hawk I saw tonight, come to think of it) and sat on a log to think as the sun went down. How was I going to get back? Was there a way to call someone, or at least let my family know where I was? I wasn't exactly afraid, because I knew I was in a beautiful, safe place and I knew everything would work out some way ... I just didn't have any idea how. And the idea of backtracking all that distance was pretty daunting. If it had been that easy to just float away, wouldn't it be all that much harder to pull myself back?

As I sat there mulling it all over, suddenly I heard footsteps crunching on the pebbled beach behind me, and a voice asking, "Hey, are you coming back in soon?"

It was my brother! And when I turned around to look, happy and relieved and wondering how he'd ever managed to find me, I saw the familiar grassy dunes and the long wooden steps and the little shingled house in the distance with warm yellow lights coming on for dinner, and I realized I'd actually swum and flown all the way around the world and landed right back on the very same beach I'd started on.

I woke up with a happy heart, thinking, "Wow – I can't wait to tell them everything I've seen!"

Moonlight ride

Just checking in to report that I've had a very satisfying week or so since I last wrote. At the moment, what I've been enjoying most of all has been riding my bike. I've gotten into a really nice routine with it, to the point where I don't even have to think about it anymore – it finally feels just as natural as walking (or driving, depending on what you're used to), and so I'm really free to notice lots of other things as I ride along, besides just looking for new potholes or other road hazards to watch out for.

Lately I've been paying special attention to certain smells – trying to identify a flower I've been passing that smells strongly of vanilla, breathing in the clean resin-y smell of eucalyptus in the fog, enjoying whiffs of damp hay, fresh water creek, feed lot (maybe it's perverse to like this but it reminds me of my childhood), pine wood, fig trees warming in the sun, freshly-plowed field, traces of last week's skunk ... and then as I get into town, cut grass, rose garden, clean dust rising off someone's wet asphalt driveway, hot tortillas from the tamale shop just past the bridge, warm bread and cinnamon rolls from the bakery that used to be my favorite back when I was still able to eat such things. I'm developing a whole catalog in my head of smells that belong to this place. I love them all.

I'm having a good summer. Tonight I worked late, and then as I was standing on the sidewalk outside my building putting on my helmet a friend walked by whom I hadn't seen in awhile, and as we were standing there catching up another friend drove up and parked (it was farmer's market night), and since she was feeling a little blue I convinced her to join us for a drink, so we walked a couple of blocks and as we were settling into our table another friend came walking by and we snagged her, and then she called her husband, and what started out as an evening on which I'd been hoping to get home at a reasonable time for once and hop into a cool tub with my book and a little bowl of leftover stir-fry turned into a full-scale Summer Scene of sorts – a sweet little sidewalk table in the setting sun with four friends, a large tray of mojitos, and several appetizers and entrees, including – for me – a beautiful quail, avocado and mango salad with baby greens and an unusual tropical vinaigrette that I am totally going to be ordering again.

The only thing that was missing was Mr. A, who is working away from home again for the next two weeks in a town I've heard lots of people refer to as the armpit of California ... the hot-as-hell, sweaty, dusty, boring armpit that nobody wants to go to, especially during the hottest part of the year. I miss him.

My ride home was maybe the nicest ride I've had so far this summer. I had meant to go out and look at the moon last night, and I was even going to set an alarm to wake myself up for the eclipse, but then I got all involved in a phone conversation with a friend and by the time we hung up I'd forgotten all about the moon ... So luckily it was still there tonight, and just as gorgeous as I'm sure it was last night.

Sometimes riding home at night isn't all that great, for example when it's raining and cold and blowing like a hurricane, and it's completely dark and I suddenly remember that there are hardly any street lights or outdoor lighting of any kind out where we live ... But on a night like tonight I was glad it's good and dark out here, because that made it even more lovely to ride along bathed in moonlight (as they say) under the stars with crickets and frogs and mockingbirds singing all around me, and the smell of somebody's jasmine, and somebody else's little striped cat crouched in the tall silent grass at the side of the road watching me pedal by.

I rode the extra half-mile uphill to the end of our road just for the pleasure of coasting back down to the house, and now I'm here and feeling well fed, well exercised, safe, happy, warm and comfortable, and just relaxed enough that I think I'm going to sleep really, really well tonight.

I was reflecting earlier that in a lot of ways, I feel like this is my favorite year so far of all the years I've lived. Not that much seems to have changed on the surface, and certainly finding out I have an incurable, chronic, degenerative and potentially life-threatening disease (yow!) was not exactly a high point ... but for some reason I still feel happier, more relaxed, more open, and just generally more content and satisfied with everything than I remember feeling at any other time in my life.

It seems important to record these feelings when they come up. I feel like I've spent so much time over the years chronicling my angst, anxiety and ennui ... all of which are still there, too, I suppose. It's just that somehow I'm not very interested in them anymore. These days what interests me is what feels good and right and whole. And I guess I'm just saying, I know I'm lucky that I have a lot of those things in my life right now. So I'm taking note.

Score!

Just as I was beginning to truly lament what I would ever do for pants until I'm as sleek and skinny as a teenager again, I remembered the box of stained, frayed, faded, paint-spattered and otherwise unwearable-to-work jeans and khakis Mr. A gave me last year to wear while working in the yard. They fit low and baggy, and they've all been washed so many times they're softer than an old t-shirt. And there are thirteen pairs of them! So hooray! The bottom half of my new slouching around the house uniform is ready to roll, and I didn't have to spend a penny. I also scored a fabulous weird asymmetrical wrap-around green wool cable-knit cardigan from the free box in Bolinas, which is my new favorite thing in the world to wear in the mornings when it's foggy. With a giant antique shell button brooch at the shoulder, to hold it closed.

I can't wait for fall. Somehow it already kind of feels like it, maybe because it's been so much cooler than usual this summer – usually it isn't this cool during the day until well into September or even October. I wilt in the heat, so I've been enjoying the change. And I'm excited for rain again! Maybe that will come early this year, too.

Before summer's over, I still plan to read the requisite Faulkner novel (I try to read one per summer). This year I'm actually on schedule – I bought a used copy of If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (formerly The Wild Palms) at my local independent bookstore on Thursday and am about halfway through it. I don't like this one as much as some of the others I've read; it seems to get kind of moralistic at times, a little heavy-handed in its pronouncements .... But it's a fast read. Someday I will also finish Ulysses – the one I started in June and aimed to have done by Bloomsday. That one is not a fast read. It's a decidedly UN-fast read. But I've got until next year now to get through it – almost ten months.

I never seem to say much about these family trips I keep taking ... I don't like to write a lot about anyone but myself here because it seems like if others want their stories told or interpreted online, they ought to be allowed to do so themselves. But one thing I will mention about my Idaho trip last week was that I had a really beautiful time swimming with my sister and my parents. I had been feeling self-conscious about getting out there in front of anyone in a bathing suit and I think my sister was feeling the same way, so I finally convinced her that if she would paddle out with me in the raft, we would wait until we were out of the line of sight before stripping down to our suits, and dive in from the boat. It was a good plan ... until I fell out of the raft still wearing my dress. It was good, though, because once it was wet I had to take it off, and once I took it off, I realized – we're here to enjoy spending time together, and we both love to swim, so why inhibit ourselves by our self-consciousnesss? The water was so beautiful! It's this huge turquoise-and-white lake that takes a long time to get deep, and we swam around with one of my brothers-in-law, and then more family came out in the canoe, with kids, and then my parents were there (my mom showing my nieces some fancy strokes), and suddenly everyone seemed to be swimming out there together in that beautiful blue water, and it felt so good just to be there with all my most favorite and beloved people in all the world. We used to go swimming a lot as a family when I was a kid and I always loved it then too.

Besides the swimming, I think my favorite thing about that day was rubbing sunscreen on the backs and shoulders and sides of so many people in my family, including my adorable little 9-month-old nephew, my brother and both of my parents. It makes me want to weep, just thinking of it! I love them so much, and I see them so rarely ... and my family is affectionate, but not in a super touchy-feely way – but I love touching people, and I don't get to do it nearly often enough – it's one of the reasons we have dogs! – so I loved being able to (allowed to) do this for them. With my dad, especially – my mom loves having me massage her hands and feet, but my dad isn't really comfortable being touched like that, so it was a huge treat for me to have an excuse to give his back and shoulders a good rub.

It's so moving to me, somehow, to see both of my parents getting older. I kept wanting to gather them both up in my arms and just hold them on my lap forever. Not that they're feeble or frail or in need of any special care – they're still only in their 60s and healthy. But I just miss them so much sometimes ... I hate even writing about it because it always makes me cry.

(Speaking of all that – the Jeeps has passed another milestone in aging: the other day I found a poop in the hall. It wasn't a bad one, but it marked the beginning of something. It's getting harder and harder for him to control his back end (legs, hips, and now this!), and as I watched him the day I found the poop I realized he's also starting to have trouble using the dog door. Sometimes it's a real effort for him to get his back feet over the threshold, even though it's only about three inches high. I suppose if (when?) it really comes to a crisis we can put up some kind of non-Tater-proof barrier in the doorway and keep Jeepers in the kitchen ... Because I can't really see making him stay out in the yard – I'd rather keep him inside, safe and warm and close to us and feeling loved and included right up to the end, and just clean up whatever needs to be cleaned up. He still seems to have a happy attitude and a good appetite, and he's become a real snuggle-dog lately, which he never used to be before – but I think that's mostly because he just never had anyone around who was as willing to snuggle him and love him as I am. It seems like a million years since he bit me for getting too close to Mr. A! He seems like a totally different dog now. I kind of miss him already.)

Also during this trip I was talking with my brother and brother-in-law about real estate investments and have decided, based on those conversations, that I really need to get over my math anxiety enough to be able to at least contemplate the thought of talking to a stranger about financing, interest rates, taxes, etc. etc. without completely wetting my pants from fear. To that end, I have copied a sudoku puzzle – a single puzzle, labelled "easy" – from the inside back cover of the in flight magazine, and have been trying for several days, off and on, to solve it. I've written and erased so many numbers already that the paper started to disintegrate, and I had to copy it again ... and I still haven't solved it. How do people do these things? I think the way my mind works with numbers must be something like how a dyslexic person's mind works with letters – I can feel the wheels spinning, but I never seem to get anywhere ....

Crap. I think there's a skunk in the yard ... no mistaking that smell, and Tater's freaking out. More later.

Close call

I almost got into an accident with a car today. I was riding to work in the bike lane, moving at about 15 miles per hour, when a car came up from behind me, passed me on the left, then turned right immediately in front of me. I hit my brakes so hard I skidded a little, and came within a couple of feet of slamming into the side of her car – and she never even looked at me.

I was going to say, "She never even saw me," but how could that be true? She'd just come up from behind me and driven right past me - there's no way she could have NOT seen me! It's possible she didn't realize how fast I was going, I guess ... maybe she thought there was enough room for her to pass and turn before I caught up to her.

Whatever the reason – there's no excuse for that kind of lame-ass driving. If I hadn't been so shocked and discombobulated I would've memorized her license plate number and written her a letter about it: "Dear Dumbshit: I'm the person you almost smeared across the pavement this morning ...."

Anyway, I got over it and had a decent day at work. Yesterday was my first day back after another mini-vacation, this time in Idaho with all of my immediate family. Sitting down at my desk, it hit me again how very seriously and desperately I need to figure out something else to do for money besides sit in a chair for 40-50 hours a week. I just can't stand it anymore.

I'm sort of having fun at the moment, though. I like the art directing part of it; I like looking at pretty pictures and designing pages and writing clever little quips, and I like the other writing I've been doing lately, too. It's just hard to imagine continuing doing it for 20 to 30 more years, or however long my useful working life may turn out to be. While I was in Idaho I got a voicemail from a friend who wants me to take on a pretty nice little side gig that could be ongoing for quite awhile, several years or more; if I could put together a few jobs like that, I might be able to go back to working only part-time at my current job (assuming I can find a way to keep myself insured). I might even be able to cut back to doing publications-related work only part-time, and do something more socially significant and meaningful with the rest of my life. Something that actually does some good in the world, besides just keeping my own bills paid, which is actually pretty significant to me but doesn't do much to make anyone else's life better ...

In other news, I'm definitely shrinking. Last month I bought two more copies of my favorite skirt, skipping two sizes with each skirt, so that the final one is four sizes smaller than the original ... I didn't want to take a chance they would've stopped making that skirt by the time I'd finally lost all the weight I plan to lose. The first replacement skirt fit, but was a little tight, on my trip to Portland; I tried it on again this morning, and now it's almost starting to be too big. The crossover-top dress I wore on my Idaho trip was comfortable when I made it last year, and now it's so loose I almost embarrassed myself at the airport when the shoulder strap of my bag pulled it sideways across my soon-to-be-nonexistent chest.

It's a strange feeling to shrink. For years, whenever I thought about losing weight, I would have a sort of almost panicky feeling about it – afraid to shrivel up and disappear, afraid to not be here anymore. But it isn't as scary as I thought. Mostly, it just feels kind of ... mysterious. I still feel just as much myself as I ever have. But when I try on something that was too small the last time I tried to wear it, and find it's now so baggy I still can't wear it and never will again (because I'm not one of those people who can afford to gain back any of the weight they've lost – I need to keep my feet, my kidneys, my eyesight), it's like meeting someone you thought was a stranger, only to find out you actually used to know them before, a long time ago. Julie gave me that analogy – because she's known me for years and remembers a Me who was tiny and thin, and she said not to worry, that that person is still in me, and that I would recognize her again when I saw her ... And somehow that image really penetrated my fear, and it turns out she was right. When I see myself in the mirror now it's like I'm finally seeing with my eyes the person I've been seeing in my mind all along.

Because even when I was fat (I guess I still am, for now) I never believed I was fat. I always felt like I was still young and healthy and amazing, and the fat body was only a slightly uncomfortable costume or disguise I was wearing for some reason I couldn't remember ... It was just my body; it was never really me.

Anyway. I am quietly enjoying (between moments of oh-so-subtle alarm) observing the changes. I got on the scale this morning and had lost seven more pounds since my trip to Oregon – that's about two pounds a week. My poor breasts seem to be taking it hardest right now; I guess it's time to get some smaller tops. I somehow think they'd seem less pathetic if I gave them a little more support and a place to live that wasn't three sizes too spacious. Maybe a trip to the thrift store is in order. I'm sure I could find something cute and comfortable to wear as I continue to deflate ... something with a nice neckline. Because one good thing about all this change and uncertainty is that if it's time to say "good-bye, boobs," then "hello, clavicle" can't be far behind.

Another lucky number

My main lucky number has always been 2. I like everything about it – the shape, the sound, the simplicity of it. It doesn't really "mean" anything to me, though I guess I could say I've always kind of felt like it's a very friendly number. Companionable. Cozy. Comfortable. Two. I like it.

Yesterday though I got a new lucky number that does have some meaning for me. The number is 6.6, and what it means is that all the work I've been doing to try and get my blood glucose back where it should be is working. Six-point-six is my new A1C – the number that tells you your average blood glucose level over the last three months. A healthy, non-diabetic person will have an A1C between 4 and 6%. When I was diagnosed in April, mine was 12. That's really high – scary high! And now I've got it almost back down to a non-diabetic level. My doctor was so happy to be able to tell me that number, and all the nurses gathered around me in the office smiling and telling me what a great job I'm doing. And I've gotten humble enough to admit that I found it super gratifying, satisfying and even kind of exhilirating to be given such special attention again, almost like how it used to feel when I was in school and teachers would make a fuss over how smart I was, or how talented, or whatever.

I'm using the word "humble" because normally I would be too embarrassed or proud to admit how much I crave the approval of authority figures ... it doesn't really jive with the "beat of my own drummer" part of my shaky self-image. This weekend retreat I've been doing at the Shambhala center has sort of softened me up a bit in that regard, though. The talks have emphasized how meditation practice can help you learn to shed your ego, or at least lighten up on yourself, and in listening to the presentations and talking with other people about them I've started to see something new in my desire to hide the parts of myself I don't like. I'd always thought of it before as a self-protective instinct, made necessary by what I considered my unusual sensitivity ... and that may be part of it. But there's also a component of ego – I want to hide because I want people to think well of me, and I think that if they really SEE me, then the illusion will be shattered ... or something.

Anyway, I will write more about this sometime. The point for now is just that that retreat made it even more clear to me that hiding is not doing me any good, and that if I'm sincere about wanting to live the kind of life I'm always saying I want, it would be good for me to continue looking for and practicing new ways of getting over myself and just diving into things, engaging with life and other people, and not worrying so much all the time about whether people will like me or not.

Still, I love it that my doctor likes me, and that his nurses like me! I can't help it. I like them, too. And I'm glad I'm doing well, and hoping that he'll turn out to be right in his prediction that when I go back again in three months, my next A1C will be all the way back to normal.

Getting back to the idea of meditation – I just got this in an email:

Meditation Makes You Happier
"Scientists have evidence that Buddhists really are happier and calmer than other people. Tests on their brains show that the parts associated with good moods and positive feelings are more active, because of all the meditation they do. Researchers say that the type of meditation done by Buddhists can change the amygdala, an area of the brain which controls fear memory, which is why Buddhists are less likely to be as shocked, surprised or angry as other people. Reseacher Paul Ekman says, "The most reasonable hypothesis is that there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek."

I have no doubt this is true – I've experienced it. I just never knew that it was because of physical changes in the brain. Interesting!

In other news, and speaking of humbling experiences, I've been realizing lately that I really was blogging too much at work, just like my boss said. And the reason I've realized it is because every time I think of things I want to write about here, I end up stopping myself mid-thought and deciding not to bother, because our superslow dialup connection at home makes it just too frustrating – so frustrating I can't even tell you – to try to do anything online that isn't really absolutely necessary to my actual survival. We did finally get Comcast to install a line out to our pole, but then I realized it wouldn't make sense to pay for installation of the modem on my cracked and chipped up old laptop, so now I need to buy a new computer, too, and I'm trying to decide whether my need to blog is worth spending a few thousand for a really top of the line system I can use for work as well – which I kind of don't want to do, because then I think I'll feel like I have to start picking up more freelance work, to justify the expense, and I don't really want to work at a computer any more than the 40+ hours a week I'm already working – or if maybe I should just keep using the laptop, at least until after Christmas – my friend who's a Mac guru says they always come out with new and exciting things during the first quarter of each year.

All this simply by way of explaining why I haven't been writing much lately. It isn't that I don't have lots to say, as always, or that I don't care about my readers – all three of you! Because I do, and I do. Probably as soon as summer is over and I start spending more time indoors again I'll take the time to figure all this out, and update myself to the point where I can rejoin the blog-o-sphere, at least more often than I've been around this summer. Until then, I'm writing in paper journals again and that's been fun too, though it isn't as easy to share. But it is easier to draw pictures, and I've been enjoying that, too.

On Thursday I'm leaving for a quick trip to Utah for a family thing at my brother-in-law's family's lake cabin up in Idaho. Everyone in my immediate family will be there, including all 15 (plus two in progress) of my nieces and nephews, and (I think) my youngest sister's sweetie – I guy I haven't met yet, who she seems to think is pretty much It for her.

When I get back it will be mid-August. It feels like fall already, but I expect it will get hot again before it cools off for winter, for real.

My little brother is coming out for a visit in September, with his wife and three kids. I can't wait to play on the beach with them and show them around. I don't think any of them have ever been to the Sonoma coast before.

I wrote a feature for the fall issue of the magazine, and I'm mostly pretty happy with it. The editors liked it too, enough to ask me to plan on being a regular contributor. I'm writing on my own time and billing at a normal rate – finally, something I can get paid a standard rate for! – so if I do a couple more pieces I should just about be able to pay for the big computer without dipping into my own money.

Yawn. Now that I'm finally dialed up, logged in and writing, I almost don't want to stop – knowing it may be awhile before I can muster up the motivation to drag myself through the whole laborious process again. But I've gotta go to bed. Did I mention that book I've been reading, about how humans are designed to sleep when it's dark, and not stay up all night under artificial lights? I think I did; I know I've been talking about it a lot lately....

Urgh! Somehow I don't seem to be able to stop writing, even though I'm falling asleep at the keyboard and struggling to think of anything to say ... vaguely irritated with myself for stubbornly keeping on going far past the point of anything even remotely worth saying, quite possibly alienating and pissing off my few remaining regular readers ....

I just have to stop now. Like, Now!

Okay. Now. For real!