counting the hours thing again.  what does that mean.  every so often i pause in whatever i’m engaged in and count how many hours i have left until i have to be wherever it is i have to be.  four until i go to the arts & crafts job.  what’s that all about?  i remember doing that when i first moved to New York more than 20 years ago, have i been doing it always? or just at certain times.  who knows.  (still four.)

OT has recommended a book and i duly went out and got it.  boy, am i resistant to this one. not because i’m resistant to its concept, but the author!  he seems like a complete flake.

I’ve got a blog up on my arts & crafts series.  Tomorrow will be week three, and i’m hoping they know me well enough now to let me take cameraphone pictures of their work to put up, rather than just my samples.  I still haven’t figured out how to let them see it, since the net is severely censored, of course, and nothing with pictures will come up that i can find.

please stop by and let me know what you think.

when i was 16 my family disintegrated. i hadn’t thought about that. i was a teenager and it was 1968, everything was going to hell and it was Up To Us to Stop The War, don’t you know, so i hadn’t had any time yet to realize the nature of family structures, that they were structures and not impermeable objects. the summer between my sophomore and what would have been my junior year my mother decided california was going to fall into the sea and put our house in Daly City on the market. when i begged and pleaded she said don’t worry, it won’t sell.

it sold in three weeks. by that fall we were in a motel in Sedona, Arizona—long before there *was* a Sedona, Arizona as you would know it; there was nothing there but a grocery store and the motel in the wide space in the road where we’d stopped—watching Richard Nixon get elected. my lifeline was writing hundred-page letters to my friends back home, all of whom were scheduled to fall into the sea at some point. i guess they did, because i have no idea where any of them are now. not much idea where i am, either. not too long after that i hit this road.

last month grace drove me back to that house. we were in a screaming hurry to get me to my plane and her back to her family, and it had been 30 years or so and then i couldn’t find the neighborhood, the neighborhood was somebody else’s neighborhood, and gracie was true to her name putting up with my ineptitude, and then finally she found it herself and we drove up the street i have been walking down in dreams every night of my life for the past several decades. walking down and down the hill and never reaching the bottom. the houses were there, my house looked the same. the people next door were probably still there but they’d be about 100 now and I hadn’t been in touch for a couple of years, so I couldn’t just pop in and say hi, i’m leaving now. so i didn’t. i stood in the street and looked at the houses, we weren’t there ten minutes. time warped, but i don’t know just how, exactly. i was rip van winkle. i was the ancient mariner. i was odysseus and penelope in one, i was home. grace took me home. “you’d do it for me,” she said.

yes. yes, i would.

today, and i’m attending electronically :(  badger put a picture on flicr of me and jo skyping (i’m not in the picture, of course, it being in california) and i saw it on flicr even while we were talking and i didn’t realize that’s what it was, just thought it was a nice pic of jo.  meanwhile, i noticed again that badger’s voice online sounds like me, but now so does jo’s, some, can it be no.cal. I wonder?  people in NY used to say my roommate and i sounded alike, could it have been some unidentifiable regional inflection?  liz and jo aren’t no.cal native, but could that be it?

we’re all blogging at woolfcamp2006.blogspot.com and i’m pretending i’m there while at the same time tim is here to fix the toilet seat. only there’s no cheese.

it’s spring and tim, the lawn guy, is to resume scything the patch.  AND, he says he knows how to get my broken toilet seat bolts off!  i await his arrival and perhaps, o perhaps, i will have a toilet seat again today!  please? it’s been a very uncomfortable, not to mention frustrating, several months during which i’ve almost fallen in, and even begun to question my gender.

i go play arts & crafts this afternoon.  i love this job.  the kids (the boys!) tell me i’m the best artist ever, and i am such a sucker.  i hafta find out about drawing hotwheels.  then after work i go to nola for an evening shift, which usually means absolutely no money but a nice quiet atmosphere, so no loss.  then i share a morning shift tomorrow from 8-12 (read probably fewer tips) and then, then!  I’m off completely until 7am tuesday!  almost 3 full days off.  i have an appointment with OT on monday.  other than that, some knitting shop? some house cleanup?  o the possibilities.  and i probably won’t take advantage of any of them.

moving into the 2nd quarter here, i can feel it…

i got my first quarterly bill for the payment on the money i borrowed from retirement to live for this year.  that means that one quarter of this year has gone.  have i done enough?  have i done the right things?  beats me, i don’t seem to be able to think anymore.  i made an appointment with OT for a checkup, perhaps he can help me think about it better.  a quarter gone.  in a way it seems as if i have done so much, in a way it seems that i have made little progress at all.

so this is not a particularly good day. i had the morning off but didn’t do much with it but sleep in and surf.  i picked up around the kitchen, swiffered the bedroom floor.  there is so much to do, i don’t even know where to begin, really, and just move things around.  that little bit made me very tired, anyway.  i don’t know if it’s much progress, but at least it’s circular motion.

i wonder if i should write out a list of everything that’s happened that i’m concerned with since i last saw him?  he says it’s been a year.  that really makes me worried as i haven’t done a year’s worth of things since last i was there, it doesn’t seem.  i’m just flailing here.  am i?

well, let’s just concentrate on this year, since my job ended:  i got unemployment for awhile, then found a part-time job teaching art and another one for pickup money at NOLA cafe.  i got into the “accident” with the insurance scam woman, and registered for the teaching certification course which, more and more seems entirely bogus.  rob got me in contact with charles washington who, when we finally got together seemed to have lots of ideas for what i should/could do but then never was available again. i went to Santa Cruz for woolfcamp and met all these folks i’ve been corresponding with (only no scriners, who must be shy.)  i applied for another parttime job at the Trib, which tish recommended me for, although i don’t kow how i would work it in with the fulltime art job in june and july.

what i still have to work on is the teaching certificate course, finding a teaching job, setting up an ebay store, selling the land for a cut rate to pay off bills, making art and cleaning out the house.  i haven’t even really begun on those.  maybe OT will help me to prioritze them, or look at them differently.  or tell me to do everything all differently as it’s obvious that i’m fucking crazy and rudderless, heading for a giant crash.

or not.

has transformed, exploded, transmogrified!  it used to give me a slideshow of the pictures on my hard drive, right there in the google sidebar so i would get continual random but guided visual stimulation and reminder.  now, however, it apparently has leapt over my deliberate acts of salvation and has expanded itself to include any picture i’ve ever even looked at, no matter how briefly, including others’ flickr streams and any website i happen to visit, mixed in among my own hard drived specimania. it is become a Random Deja Vu Generator!  who the hell is THAT?? he looks familiar, but…wait! isn’t that..???  liz?  mikey? jack. moomin! how the hell did moomin get in there???? st. joseph.  that lovely young frenchman who looks a bit like danny, he seems particularly sticky… miami.

ahh, juxtaposition.  O, the richness!

a whole day! with nothing planned, nowhere i have to be, several projects to choose from and 23 free hours ahead! yippee!

my first ever, courtesy of jo spanglemonkey.

1) Who is the last person you high-fived?

Christine, my fellow arts & crafts teacher, or rather she high-fived me last week and my return was rather anemic, more of a low three, i guess. before that, i think it was a stranger on the street in new york when the mets won in ‘86.

2) If you were drafted into a war, would you survive.

probably

3) Do you sleep with the TV on?

no, the radio.

4) Have you ever drank milk straight out of the carton?

no, i never have drank.  i often have drunk milk straight out of the jug, though, or anything else.  i love milk.  and grammar.

5) Have you ever won a spelling bee

never been in one.

6) Have you ever been stung by a bee

wait, this sounds familiar….stung by a dead bee?

7) How fast can you type

useta be 110 wpm, now it’s about 4

8) Are you afraid of the dark?

no

9) Eye color

brown.

10) Have you ever made out at a drive-in?

yes

11) When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower?

i only bathe.  can’t remember the last time i showered.

12) Do you knock on wood?

Yes.

13) Do you floss daily?

no.

15) Can you hula hoop?

useta could, back when they were invented

16) Are you good at keeping secrets?

yes

17) What do you want for Christmas?

a job using my talents, that i can live on, with benefits.  preferably before christmas.

18) Do you know the Muffin Man?

the muffin man? the muffin man?

19) Do you talk in your sleep?

not that i’ve heard.

20) Who wrote the book of love?

Oom D. Doodoodoo

21) Have you ever flown a kite?

yes

22) Do you wish on your fallen lashes?

did you mean arches?

23) Do you consider yourself successful?

no, not yet.  always so tantalizingly close, though.

24) How many people are on your contact list of your cell?

5 or 6?

25) Have you ever asked for a pony?

no

26) Plans for tomorrow?

going on a two hour knitting cruise around tampa bay. really!

27) Can you juggle?

no

28) Missing someone now?

yes

29) when was the last time you told someone I Love You?

i don’t remember, probably when my mother died?  or a friend after 9/11?

30) And truly meant it?

sure

31) how often do you drink

couple of times a month, maybe, i guess

32) How are you feeling today?

okay

33) what do you say too much?

just about everything..

34) Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?

no

35) What are you looking forward to?

fulltime employment

36) Have you ever crawled through a window?

sure.  i once broke into a dorm room in ashland, oregon to spend the night. the dorm was unoccupied for the summer and i had occupied that room legitimately for the week before, but the program i had been in ended and i hadn’t been ready to go, so i broke into what had been “my” room again that next night, before catching the bus out the following morning.

37) Have you ever eaten dog food?

no

38) Can you handle the truth?

so far

39) Do you like green eggs and ham?

i do not like them.

40) Any cool scars?

no cool scars, just minimal ordinary ones. also no tattoos or piercings other than my ears, which i just got a couple of years ago. (the holes, not the ears.)

Pass it on to, now who would do this? boot, grudknows and keith!

my mood is… cheerful, a bit purposeful but somewhat cramped, as usual. i don’t have to pour cafes au lait until 4 this evening and it should be a quitet night, which i like, but of course quiet nights bring no tips, which is the point. and then i actually waded into the studio and pulled out all the yarn, for starters. the house is trashed and i must untrash it, but one little bit at a time (jo’s mom’s story of the man with the flowers) i figure, so i put all the yarn in two big bins (i take my own advice) and took it into the living room for catalogging tomorrow. tomorrow is a day off, and i have An Activity planned, and then i have Monday off, too, so that’s promising. must be purposeful, get things done. too many important things to do to get them done, it seems. which is why i’m torn between reading my blogs and email and getting down to the knit shop soon, beginning to straighten up the place or beginning to study for the teaching certificate stuff, and staring at the wall. my mood. and the clock creeps closer to 4.

my goal today is to get a few things accomplished in a way not to frazzle me out, and to appreciate the day for what it is without worrying what it isn’t. i guess that’s too big for a goal, huh? this should be a post to my own blog, going there now…