Love & a Steady Hand

I am too tired to blog

Hello all and sundry,

I apologize for the long time away from the blog, and I wish I was going to remedy the vacancy tonight, but I have to tell you all that I am just too tired.

I realize I haven't really blogged since I got back from my whirlwind tour of the northeast, and I really do have lots to tell you -- like the wedding (amazing, just amazing! Possibly the most amazing reception of all time -- certainly the most amazing reception I've ever been to!), Meg's and my tour of West Point (during which we discovered many more reasons why our dad is who he is), our terrific talks on the drive to and from the wedding, my adventures with planes, trains and automobuses... the fabulous tea bar I didn't discover until my last day in Boston...

And then there's the stuff at home -- like the new bookshelf I built this weekend for school resources in the dining room, and how much I hate all the sock patterns in Socks*Socks*Socks (with thanks to Jodi for re-recommending the Twisted Sisters book, which may save me from abandoning socks altogether), my apparent inability to re-structure my mornings...

And stuff like that.

So don't go away, I'll try to be back by this weekend at least. I'm going to poetry with Kym tomorrow night and hope to find inspiration there... But now I gotta go to bed. We have library story hour in the a.m. and if I don't go snooze now, we're never going to make it downtown by 11...

Nighters!

Aaaack

Where did everything go??? I'll work on it and see what's up. In the meantime, don't give up on the blog. I'm not sure what's happening, but I'll fix it!

Yo from Boston Already

Hey ya'll! Well, I made it. As I wrote in an email to the kids a few minutes ago, today I've ridden in a car, two planes, two busses and two trains -- and walked a zillion miles!

Things I have learned today:

Two Is a Killer

I am tired of talking about politics, so I will now change the subject and tell you a little about my son.

Matthew is two -- actually he's almost two and a half, but not 'til Mara's birthday.

Unlike his sister, who really just started being cranky and unmanagable at about 18 months, Matthew has always been a little more of a challenge.

Please note: at this point I will be extremely pissed off (and may stop speaking to you) if you tell me that this is because he is a boy. In point of actual fact, Matthew is much more tempermentally similar to his mama, while Mara gets her sweet side from her dad, and I can make you a long list of completely unmanagable small people I know personally who don't have penises. It's not about being a boy, it's just about WHO he is. Sorry to scream at you if you were in fact, not planning to say anything about gender. I've just heard it a lot over the past two years and I'm tired of it.

He's not a bad kid. He's not any more mischevious or prone to misbehavior than Mara, but Matthew is definitely more curious and more relentless and above all more fearless than she is.

So he's always been a climber, a leaper, a dragger of things down from the putatively safe place where we had put them away from him. He has no idea, as yet, that he can get hurt -- which is aided, perhaps unfortunately, by a remarkably high threshold for pain (which he also got from me). So when he runs into a wall, full-speed, with his head down like a bull, the thump is much louder than the cry that follows. "Oh no, Bonk a head me!" is the usual response, followed by another charge toward the wall.

He has yet to be seriously hurt, which is an absolute miracle. But he is also much more physically coordinated than Mara (I have no idea at all where that came from), so he can already jump on two feet -- a three year old skill that he's been doing with glee for about 9 months. He runs almost as fast as Mara and certainly with much more grace, having a lower center of gravity. So in some ways, he's probably safer than she is...

But significantly, right now he's suddenly a terrible two. All the behaviors he had been exhibiting before are starting to magnify. He's testing, he's looking for where the limits are, and above all, he just isn't listening. And it's driving me crazy, because now he's old enough and big enough and strong enough (not to mention reckless and still babyish enough) to do some real damage -- to himself, to the stuff around him, and above all to my sanity (and my resolve not to spank).

So discipline has become a real challenge because he won't stay in the time-out space, and he's not really safe even gated in their room (because he yanks the CD player cord and wants to play with the night light and makes his plastic characters, Eeyore especially "dance" on the windows -- which basically means he bangs on the window glass with the plastic donkey really hard and says "Eeyore dancin' Mommy" if you ask him to stop, which makes me reluctant to leave him in there alone for long, lest he break the window and be halfway out, covered in glass shards before anyone realized he was dangling from the second story window ledge). As a result, time out in their room doesn't feel like much of an option, but there's not another good (read safe and not filled with toys) place in our house and he's still too little to really understand longer-term consequences -- so it's hard to come up with threats that work effectively. Because by the time you get to the consequence (like "no tv tomorrow," which works wonders with Mara), he's forgotten what it was he did to warrant it. Not to mention the difficulty of enforcing consequences for one kid when the other kid hasn't done anything wrong... ugh.

And, it really doesn't help that he is so cute. It's just exasperating and it's been that kind of weekend all over. I don't want to spank him, but some days I find myself really lost for better options. On the whole, I am really tired. I think I'll just go to bed. There just aren't any great solutions to this one, I'm afraid.

One Nation, In Paranoia

I suppose it's inevitable after the day I've had:

Absolutely Shaking with Rage

Okay, so I have some relatives (don't we all?) and many of them are far more conservative than I, but in the hope of reaching a larger number of people, I sent out an email asking a whole bunch of folks (some blood relatives, some old friends) to look at the Mothers Opposing Bush website.

[That site is www.mob.org in case I didn't get an email to you, dear reader, but I really did only send it to women who were actually mothers -- the website is very open to non-parents too, though, so go check it out.]

Here's the text of my email:

Hi to so many people I care about!

I know many of you haven't heard from me in a long while, and for that I apologize, but I would like to ask for a favor from you. Please check out this website: http://www.mob.org/

The site is Mothers Opposing Bush, and while I know there are probably some folks receiving this email who will think I am nuts to be sending such a request to you, I really hope you will each take just a minute to look at what the website advocates.

This election year is too important for us to sit by without truly understanding what is going on in our country. For our children, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews -- for all of us, and for the future of the world, I believe a change must happen now.

I am personally terrified more by the prospect of four more years of Bush/Cheney than I am of anything terrorists might do to us. What they are about is not compassionate and it's certainly not Christian, although they wrap themselves in both descriptions and hope we won't notice the reality. This government has nothing to do with loving your neighbor, it has nothing to do with helping folks or making the world a better place. Our children (we all!) deserve better, and it's just wrong to live blindly in fear and complicity.

Even if you heartily disagree with me, please, just take a look and see why they have organized this year: http://www.mob.org/

Thanks and love, Katye

Over the past several days, I've gotten back several replies, most of which were positive, saying "we're already voting for Kerry, but glad you're involved" and that has frankly been a relief, because, as I said, not everyone on my recipient list necessarily views this situation the same way I do.

Tonight I got my first hate mail replies. And while I would like to say the senders surprised me, they really didn't. Instead of just deleting my mail, two of my male relatives (one of whom hadn't even been on my original recipient list and the other of whom is clearly not a mother) decided to send back long rants explaining why I, as a woman, should be so delighted that we invaded Iraq to save those poor Arab women who are so trampled upon. They also wanted to elucidate a few things for me: that I am incredibly lucky to be able to write garbage like my email about the president (although, as one wrote, "some sacrifice is required to preserve those freedoms"); that the only way to stop terror and oppression in the world is to show strength and stop turning the other cheek so many times, etc. etc.; that Saddam was on the cusp of destroying the world -- oh, you know the drill. Of supreme importance, and if I had any questions, was the attached video clip of the towers coming down. Which I was instructed to "watch over and over and over" until I "get it." (What he actually said was that I should be forced to watch it over and over again, but that's such a minor little difference in the grand scheme of things...)

What's happening in our nation today is so irrelevant they didn't even mention it, except to drop a couple of well-known (and just plain immature if not blatantly untrue) jabs at John Kerry's senate record. They both managed to add in closing that they hoped God blessed me and my family (though I suspect what they would like me blessed with is a change of opinion and some rationality, also a more appropriate level of respect for my betters). Hatemailer #2 even went so far as to express delight at having my email address since "I love to talk politics and will be glad to be back in touch." Puh-lease!

Now, I say again, that I am not surprised. Because I'm not. But I sure am angry -- in part because one of the hate-mailers was kind enough to forward my email to his brother, since I hadn't included hate-mailer #2 in my original message. And I'm angry because my original email was intended for hate-mailer#1's wife (who is a mother and godforbid might have a thought of her own, if she was even allowed to SEE the email at all, talk about women who are getting the shaft right here at home...), so did I need his reply or even want his opinion? Nope, he just felt like it was real important for me to understand what a traitorous idiot I apparently am. And I'm extremely angry that it was so very important to both of them to clarify for me what I "as a woman" ought to be worrying about in regards to my beleaguered sisters on the other side of the world. Hate mailer #1 also wanted me to know what "your friend Saddam" had in mind for us all if he had not been taken out by our heroic military, led by our illustrious (and mighty strong, also full of righteous conviction commander in chief who never made a decision he didn't like).

Then he has the audacity to tell me he "respectfully declines" too look at my "idiotic website" and how much he loves me and my family! What an asshole. But I say again, what I said to him in my response, he hasn't changed much since we were kids. And, to hate mailer#2, if you are going to spew invective at someone who didn't even email you in the first place, the use of correct grammar and spelling is always a nice touch. Cudos to both of you on your enthusiastic use of ALL CAPS. Because I never would have been able to figure out where you REALLY WANTED ME TO UNDERSTAND THAT WHAT YOU WERE SAYING IS IMPORTANT!!!!! For real. I'll freely admit that I overuse exclamation marks, but geez, get a vocabulary already. And don't EVER tell me what I ought to be feeling, as a woman or otherwise!

Folks, there is a mess of hate and stupidity in the world. And sometimes it comes from people who ought to know better.

Please go to www.JohnKerry.com or www.mob.com and sign up to actually volunteer now. Trust me when I tell you that just reading my blog is NOT activism enough in these days we're living in.

I Think This Just About Says It All

We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore
By Garrison Keillor

Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party.

Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned—and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today’s. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.

In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. “Bipartisanship is another term of date rape,” says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.

Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good.

Our beloved land has been fogged with fear—fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.

There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn’t the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it’s 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn’t the “end of innocence,” or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn’t prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time.

Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term.

This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm.

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.

This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger.

Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It’s a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning.

Here We Go

Okay, I promised 100 things and here they are: [Brace yourselves!]

1. My birthday is May 19, and I was born in Virginia.

2. I love that my full name is spelled Kathryn

3. In my life, thusfar, I have lived in Georgia, California, West Germany,Tennessee, Ohio, Scotland, Wisconsin, Virginia, and Indiana.

4. I was an army brat and a PK, though not at the same time.

5. By the time I got to ninth grade, I had attended 9 different schools for
   elementary and junior high.

6. Of the nine schools, only three (that I know of) are still standing in their
   original form. Most have been demolished in part or in whole.

7. To my knowledge, I am not responsible for #6. [But I could be wrong...]

8. In the 4th grade, I led a protest/petition drive to have our PE coach fired.

9. Also in 4th grade, I was placed in remedial reading.

10. Miraculously, by 6th grade I was tested as reading at above the 9th grade
    level (Note: that's as high as the test went, so I could have actually been
    reading at an even higher grade level. What a remedial program it must
    have been, huh!)

11. I was asked to leave a softball team in the summer between 7th and 8th
    grades because I couldn't hit, catch or run fast enough.

12. I graduated somewhere around 50th in my class of 82 students in high
    school -- it may actually have been lower than that, I have blocked the
    memory very effectively.

13. In high school I was the co-editor of our school paper, the secretary of my
    sophomore and senior classes, a student government representative,
    starting member of the quiz bowl team, a prom committee member, and
    student rep to our PTSO. Based on this involvement (and a kick-ass
    essay), I won a 4-year leadership scholarship to the College of Wooster.

14. While at Wooster I only served one semester on the Student Activities
    Board & one semester as a member of the Women’s Resource Center.
    I did not hold a single leadership role during the entire four years.

15. I sometimes wonder if they would like their scholarship money back.

16. I am not EVER giving the scholarship money back, so I hope they never
    ask for it.

17. Despite my loudness and brashness, I am actually incredibly shy.

18. I am surprisingly unbitter about #11.

19. I am extremely bitter about not being allowed to continue in the
    PhD program in English at the University of Virginia in 1993.

20. I was the only member of my M.A. class at Virginia to hold down a 40-hour
    per week full-time job in addition to a full load of coursework.

21. I did not receive any grade lower than an A- at UVA, despite #20.

22. Did I mention that I'm still really really bitter about not being allowed to go
    on to the PhD?

23. Because the degree to which I'm still really really bitter about it cannot be emphasized strongly enough.

24. Before we moved to Ohio, I was working on a PhD and teaching college
    students at the University of Indiana in the Department of Language
    Education.

25. Once we moved to Ohio, the only job I could get was at Pier I for $5.65/hr
    and none of my credits would transfer unless I signed up for another MA.

26. I’m still pretty bitter about that too, but I’m working on it.

27. I have no idea what I'm going to do next with my life after being a SAHM.

28. I am open to suggestions in regard to #27.

29. Someday I will write a short story and/or novella entitled:
    “Shoot-Out At the International House of Pancakes”.

30. If you steal this title and use it before I do, I will be extremely irritated.

31. I really enjoyed being pregnant and would love to be pregnant again,
    however:

32. I have realized that I am very content with my two wonderful kids, even
    though brand new babies sometimes make me drool and trips to the
    maternity floor at FMC are very tempting.

33. My two stays in room 210 at Fairfield Medical Center, where I had Mara
    and Matthew (yes, I got to be in the same room twice, isn’t that cool?),
    were some of the best days of my whole entire life. I have never felt
    more loved, more special, more taken care of, more “right where I’m
    supposed to be” or more completely in the moment than in those days.

34. I was in Germany when the Berlin wall came down
    (though I was not actually in Berlin, since I was in Hamburg with shingles).

35. I am proud that I have marched for Choice in D.C. twice (in 1989 & 2004)

36. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the College of Wooster

37. I get most of my news coverage from The Daily Show and National Public Radio

38. I find bald men incredibly attractive.

39. Although she is neither a man, nor bald, (well, except in Wit),
    I think Emma Thompson is simply scrumptious.

40. And, despite the fact that he has lots of hair, I also find Al Franken
    incredibly attractive.

41. I don't understand the appeal of "reality" TV.

42. I will personally strangle anyone who signs me up for Trading Spaces,
    Clean Sweep, Mission Organization, or What Not To Wear.

43. I believe I could redecorate your house much more tastefully than anyone
    on Trading Spaces.

44. I probably own and/or enjoy using more power tools than you do.

45. I am a huge Dar Williams fan.

46. I have a little crush on John Kerry in addition to believing he will kick ass
    when we elect him President.

47. Everything I cook has garlic in it. Lots and lots of garlic...

48. My drink of choice is a gin & tonic, made with Tanqueray.

49. I used to be able to type 65 words per minute. Not sure now...

50. I really hate tequila and just the smell of vodka makes me want to hurl.

51. I have never written a fan letter, despite composing about 7500 of them in
    my head, mostly to Madeleine L'Engle (also a few to Emma Thompson).

52. Madeleine L'Engle was my absolute, all-time favorite author when I was
    growing up.

53. My two favorites now are Terry Pratchett and Angela Thirkell.

54. I had to use a calculator to comment on Melanie's blog because I was too lazy and too sleepy to figure out how many was left from 100 take away 29.

55. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to homeschool in math if I am this lazy and/or math incompetent.

56. The answer to #54 is 71.

57. In my sophomore year of college I lived in Russian House (Russki Dom) with Deb. My Russian was not very good. Hers was lots better and she was a whole year behind me.

58. Now it's completely gone. As are my German and most of my Latin.

59. I am a person who gets crushes very very easily.

60. I am also a person who loves people forever.

61. I would be much better at holding grudges if my short term memory weren't so bad.

62. My grandmothers on both sides had Alzheimer's.

63. I forgot the point I was trying to make with #62...

64. When I am feeling uncomfortable about something, I often joke inappropriately.

65. I also have terrible telephone manners, esp. if I am not the one holding the phone.

66. The only thing I am allergic to is newsprint, which makes my nose swell up.

67. If I could go back and do my life over, the only major decision I would change is going to Wisconsin for my first year of graduate school. Instead I would get a job in Wooster or Nashville, thus avoiding my nervous breakdown / year of starvation.

68. The one really good thing about a year of starvation / nervous breakdown is fitting into your auntie's very gorgeous teeny tiny wedding dress.

69. Given my experiences in Virginia and after we first moved here (see #19 -26 above), I find #67 extremely surprising. [But still true.]

70. If you would like to know more about why #67 is true, you should buy me my drink of choice (see #48) and some potato skins or cheese fries and I will explain.

71. My craving weakness is salty food -- like cheeseburgers -- and not sweets. I am not a late-night sweet snacker, I’d rather have a roast beef dinner instead...

72. Which is probably why I have always found the Three Course Meal chewing gum in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be an amazingly clever idea..

73. I am much better at organizing other people's spaces than I am at organizing my own.

74. I wish I lived closer to my sister.

75. I have never been to New York City or Boston.

76. In a couple of weeks, #75 will no longer be true. Hee hee.

77. Like Diana, I am a collector of hobbies and I believe I can do anything, provided I can get hold of a book about how to do it.

78. I taught myself to knit using a book.

79. Freakily enough, my sister (without talking to me about it first), bought the same book and taught herself to knit over the exact same weekend that I was learning.

80. After years of procrastination, I have finally finished knitting the sweater-vest I started for Tim in Indiana in 1997.

81. I really hate trying to lose weight. And not just because I don't like having to change my lifestyle and eating habits.

82. I have had negative body issues since I hit puberty (actually, it's more like puberty hit me. I am now pretty sure I should have hit back!)

83. The “war on obesity,” as a result, makes me extremely angry. Fat people are the last group it’s actually still okay to make fun of with impunity-- but hey, we’re used to it, right?

84. I am probably not as stable/together/confident (or whatever) as you think I am.

85. Sometimes I wish I had gone to medical school -- but I can't ever decide which path in my life to change in order to accomplish that (see #67 above).

86. I kinda like to be famous, but only in a semi-invisible way, like being an author who never gives interviews or puts a photo on the book jacket, or maybe by writing under another name.

87. I have always been vain about my eyes. I think they are my most beautiful feature, and, as an added bonus, I have 20/15 vision.

88. Each of my friends and family members has at least one quality that I would like to borrow. Lots of you have so many that I would have trouble choosing just one!

89. I would really like to spend one day in Kym's body -- just to see what it's like to be an athletic person with a tiny cute butt, and also to understand what having really bad vision is like and also to wear a cute tank top with spaghetti straps and a built-in bra.

90. I would only spend that day in her body if I was absolutely positive I could be back in my own body after the day was over.

91. I am incredibly grateful for my support network -- you all know who you are. I would not be here without you.

92. I believe in a karma and the power of believing. If you think there will be a parking space, there probably will. If somebody helps you, it's your job to help somebody or somebodies else. I believe this is the way the whole world ought to work.

93. I don't want to be rich, but I would like to feel just a little more money-safe.

94. I am terrible at gardening. But I got a book about it at the library so...

95. In 1991, I won the James R. Turner Prize in Women’s Studies for my Senior Thesis, which was entitled: Writing the Waves: an Exploration of Feminism in the Work of Margaret Drabble and Alice Walker (or something like that).

96. I’m really proud of winning the Turner Prize, but sometimes suspect that I peaked that year and will never do anything that amazing ever again.

97. I have dated at least three men who later revealed that they were gay.

98. Sometimes this makes me feel incredibly stupid.

99. There are, in fact, any number of things that often make me feel incredibly stupid. Like hurting people accidentally, when I really only meant to be helpful.

100. Right now is an okay place for me, most of the time.

101. I really enjoyed making this list, even though I thought I wouldn’t. I hope you enjoyed it too!

102. I am delighted that people have fun reading my blog. Yay Kym for making me do it!
     

Dangit

So I went for my extra-long Thursday night at the gym tonight (thanks Tim and Kym for making it possible) and had a pretty good workout. I added some weight to some stuff where I'd been pretty wimpy and worked up a good sweat. And got the knot out of my left tricep -- owwie -- Kym has showed me how to stretch that particular muscle, so that should help avoid future knots too. I did bunches of reps and felt really good.

Then I got on the treadmill with Melanie's copy of The Onion Girl (by Charles de Lint) and read about 75 pages while I walked for an hour. Only 3 miles, but I couldn't have done that much last week. Good good book, but I find I read so fast, I am just constantly turning pages, which is a little tricky on the treadmill. Maybe I'll try the stationary bike next time.

Here's the dangit part -- I've gained back three of the four pounds I lost. Ugh. Tell me it's all muscle. I really need to believe it's all muscle. It is, right?

Grumble.

On a more positive note, we are seeing John Kerry tomorrow! I am so excited!!!

I.O.U. 100 Things About Me

Sorry for the delay. I am working on my list -- can't do it on-line, too distracted by other stuff. Also, trying to think of things everyone doesn't already know about me.

Stay tuned.

Happy Birthday B-I-L

So, almost five years ago, I was getting ready to have this baby. My sister, then 25, in medical school and stressed out beyond belief, was not really dating anyone, hadn't dated anyone in a while, and was frankly having a minor crisis about it.

"When," she asked me "am I ever gonna meet anyone? I don't have time to date. I don't wanna date another med student (this with a little shudder of yuck) and I just hate feeling so all alone!"

I was frankly kinda preoccupied with being hugely pregnant and all, not to mention still dealing with my depression at working at Pier I, so I didn't have very many useful ideas. But I carried her concerns in my heart, and after they had finally stopped the soul-wrenching contractions that were doing absolutely nothing to bring said baby into the world, and I was lying there waiting to have the c-section (and cracking-wise as usual), I remembered my sister's plight.

And gazing up into the impossibly blue eyes of Dr. Andrews, the extremely adorable anathesiologist, I asked him "Are you married?" Which made everyone in the delivery room hoot with laughter, until I explained the situation and asked him where he met his wife. "In medical school -- she's a doctor too." (I think they all also realized that I would have found Guido the Weasel Boy incredibly attractive if he'd had the power to stop those freakin' contractions, and also I was just being amazingly entertaining for somebody about to get cut open and scooped out like a cantalope)

Hmmm. The met-her-in-med-school answer didn't seem likely to solve anything, but I relayed the information. The now Anti-Meg came to visit us and see her new niece and again lamented her singleness. I still didn't have any solutions and you all know how much I HATE not having solutions! Besides, I'd been fighting this nagging worry that when she finally did find somebody, he might not be a guy I really wanted to be my brother after all. (For the record, it's not that she has bad taste in guys, we have just not ever had a great track record on compatability with each other's boyfriends)

But, not too long after this, there is suddenly a guy. A kinda cool, but still essentially adorably geeky guy. A guy you'd drive almost three hours one way to visit for a weekend when you ought to be studying instead. A guy who likes comic books and music and interesting music. An artist, a musician, a tall guy (I'm not kidding, he's 6'7"!!!), a funny guy, a smart guy, a nice guy -- a potential husband? Maybe.

So they came to visit -- and there's this giant, sleeping on my futon with my sister. And he's awesome. He's a terrific uncle (and he's not even an uncle yet), he speaks Russian with the most fantastically rolled R's and L's ever, he draws and paints and sings and participates in interesting conversations and is extremely silly. And he makes my sister happy, which she hadn't been in a really long time. And it was just so weird!!!

So then it's some holiday or other, I don't remember which one, and he's there and again it's so weird, because he is simultaneously part of the family and not part of the family, and you don't wanna get too attached because maybe it won't work out, but wow, wouldn't it be great if it worked out, because he and Tim get along really well and sure, he's got his own issues, but doesn't that just make him fit in great -- who would want a sane person in our family after all? And wow, wouldn't it be great if it worked out? (but let's not push or we might wreck it...)

On June 1st, 2002 (just 5 weeks after Matty was born), Meg and Dan got married. Hooooray!!! And now we get to keep him. And I just wanted you all to know that he is fantastic. So shout out the Happy Birthdays now, 'cause it's my brother's birthday today and I love him so much (even though I didn't get his card or present in the mail...)

Fo shizzle!*

* For the record, I don't actually know what Fo shizzle means, but it's one of those things Dan says all the time so I thought I should include it.