Farewell Geocities and Ode to the Corporate Wife.

It was ten years ago that I realized that "real" writers had websites, and I knew nothing about them. So I took a class, learned basic html, volunteered to edit for three different ezines, one of which I actually learned from, (and is still in existence) and decided to put my own writing site together. I was deep into writing sunrises then... I think there are 6 years of them in the files and I was committed to posting them. I never posted them the day I wrote them though. I wrote one day, then came back the next day and edited. Between times I'd write the journal entry or essay or story that the sunrise seemed to suggest, so the postings were always a day behind, a little cleaner and a little less random. At least in my mind.

The site was named the same as this blog, and lived on Geocities. Geocities, as a free site anyway, died this week. I pulled all the pages.. now I have two complete folders of web pages, one for my law site, one for the writing, that I really should take the time to upload. But i'm too busy playing around with twitter, facebook, plurk, and these new blogs to actually do something that I SHOULD be doing. I have finally requested the release of the domain name from Martindale for my legal site though, so ... progress?

Speaking of Loose Ends....A friend, in chatting innocently the other day, touched a nerve that I didn't realize was still raw. I hope I didn't let on how unsettled it made me when he referred to my Corporate Wife status. I was a little surprised he honed in on that... I seem to spend less time on that particular aspect of my life now than I ever have. I had also forgotten about the book I was going to write ten years ago, parodying the whole lifestyle. Can't decide if i just got lazy, busy, or swallowed the kool aid.

Determined to find out why that phrase unsettled me in the circumstance, particularly because I sprinkle it into my own conversations with some frequency, I did what any self respecting lazy over achiever does. I googled "corporate wife."

As I suspected, the literature on the topic is dated. The articles I found, mostly dealing with the uber rich breed, didn't reach past 2003, with the most in depth one done in 2000.

Hmm, I mused with myself... I wonder if my research from back then is still on my computer?

Hurray for Spotlight, and Mac :) Another seach of my hard drive and I found that "corporate wife" has been consistently in my subconscious, making its way into two nearly complete short stories, both of which I like (though one of which I clearly was having hormonal spikes as it turned the corner from emotional to erotic in ten pages or less!), one "novelette" and is a recurring theme for the women in my almost finished novel. When I planned the original book, I had NOT intended to include the usual crap... ."have your husband approve what you wear" (really?) but instead some of the more human aspects, which ...well... are funny. Or were to me, in my disrespectful attitude toward everything remotely discriminatory.

Has my attitude hurt my spouses career? Looking at where he is and where he came from, I am pretty sure the answer to that is no. I'm also pretty sure I'm well known among the industry as being outspoken (rude? nah. Sassy, maybe.) and more fun to sit by at a dinner than the usual pretty wife. And I'm lucky, in that we didn't either one ever set out on this road, and have written our own rules along the way. We get by with a healthy dose of "whatever works" tempered by "say yes whenever you can."

And I started thinking about the friend who jarred this memory, and about how he is doing a bit of the gig himself, and about my daughters, and think maybe I should update those files, send out those books, and write one more. I have research from ten years ago... how much fun this will be to go back to my chosen interview candidates and update.

If you think you have something to add... you know how to reach me.

Gaps

"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself. "

From The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai

i should blame stewart

But I suppose that wouldn't do. He did after all, post a pretty sunrise/sunset before he closed me out of his blog. tsk tsk.

But one of my favorite quotes... okay, one of the thosand quotes i have stuck here and there on postit notes, stickies in mac vernacular, is this one:

When you blame others, you give up your power to change. -Douglas Noel Adams
So Stewart is off the hook, as are the rest of the writing group, and the pompous neighbor who had the audacity to die without letting me know.... imagine that! And so are my brothers and my sister and the cyberlaw boys and and and.

Writing became another chore I was fitting in, and the minute it became something to cross off a list was the minute it no longer felt like art, but craft. Now i'm sure there are elements in all writing of both, but the important point is what it FELT like. And when i no longer felt that i was creating, it became just another boring exercise.

So why now?

Because i find myself speaking in poetic quotes, things i've heard and said aloud so i would remember them. I am meeting new people behind the veil of sleep, characters fully considered, fully alive, tempting me like a man who wants me, but doesn't want me to know it.Poems in magazines in drs' offices, repeating like new budding branches. I am again drifting to literary fiction, putting aside the non fiction, the popular novels, even the classics that have kept my attention for the last year. Clean, clear writing, mesmerizing characters, plot i have to think to follow.

it's what i want to be when i grow up.

Do you think it is time yet?

poor brad

Where did you go, the person in my mind, the one who can muster up anything from a murder to an orgasm and let me feel the terror, taste the blood, come screaming down the other side? Where buried in the chasms… that's the word I misspelled to lose the Indiana State Spelling Bee…. where are you hiding? Did you take all the words and leave? Did you gather my friends one by one and form a perfect V in the sky as you flew south?

Wait. I am south. Did you go back home?

I dreamed I had sex with Brad Pitt last night. Very bad sex. His penis was tiny, like that of an anatomically correct boy doll, and I think he was as disappointed in me as I was him. After, he didn't run or act shallow, I didn't cover my naked skin, I guess we figured the jig was up (is that the phrase? Why does it sound awkward and what does it mean? I could google it, but if I did I'd be swallowed by the internet and never come back again, so the jig will simply have to be up.) We talked about his condo resort development, named in my dream head Redfield, which I know is a photoshop plug in…. and as I looked out at the mountains from the old farm house (the resort was all booked up of course, I asked him, which one do you own, and he said, with awe in his own voice, all of it. I like thinking of famous rich confident people in terms of their most base parts...like Brad as a young boy who just can't quite believe he is where he is. (Disclaimer, I don't know Brad Pitt, only like about half his movies and really never fantasize about movie stars… I think this dream had more to do with things not being as they appear, don't you?)(Unless you really want to believe that rich famous beautiful men have tiny cocks that look like plastic)

Today, I will take pictures of jasmine, magnolia and azaleas. I'm working on a project and I want all the flowers of the tropics in my files to finish it.

Today I will buy tickets to Madrid. I am meeting my daughter there in April. We will fly into Madrid, then train to Cordoba, and then see Granada, Seville and the coast. I am thinking I will rent a car and we will drive to Lisbon then. Ten days. I do not think I will take my computer. I want to travel light.

The first trip time I took my daughters to Europe was the summer we moved from Michigan to Iowa, the summer I actually started writing, really. It had been a whirlwind career year for my spouse, and a good one for me as well… I broke all my personal income records that year. But we'd been on several Corporate trips, all over the world. For this trip, I sent my boys, 4 and 9, to stay with my mother, and packed the girls up with me (middle school and high school).

It was a trip with all sorts of typical family mishaps… passports late in arriving, missed connections, lost luggage, etc, but by the time we had toured Paris and headed to Toulouse for my spouses meeting, we were relaxed. While he did business, we chose to go to the coast… I was given a rental car. I was actually quite proud of being able to drive in France, and the girls were thrilled with the independence the car gave us. We were even doing well with the foreign road signs, until we got to the tollbooth. The fare was something like ten francs (yes. Well before Euros) and I tried to give the toll taker the coin in my bag with the 10 on it

She refused it. I looked again, yes, it said 10, as did her sign, and tried again. She blew her bangs up in the disgusted way the French have and huffed "not a franc not a franc" over and over. My alert daughter finally figured out that I was trying to pay in Mexican Pesos.

We all love that story, but recognize it has limited appeal and sounds very snobby. So we only tell it in the family. If you are reading this now, does it make you family?

So yes, now it's Euros, and I think I can drive. But do I want to? I do love trains. We'll see. First I have to book the flight.

And before I can go, spring break will be here. I believe I am the only person in the world who does not like all the holidays. I miss routine, I miss work.

Wow, bad sex with Brad, and negative on holidays. I think my inner psyche is shouting "not a franc."

on living and dying fast

i went as soon as my husband was home from his travels, and could watch our son. I was lucky, i got to spend a good day with my sister, where she was awake, mostly, and alert, and she knew me.

I didn't know what to do. Terminal illness, when treatment has concluded, doesn't take a lot of time. My other sister, my one remaining sister, and my stepfather had the routine perfected. And the pride of the patient, which always came between us, wouldn't allow me a lot of hands on time.

But i couldn't just walk away, and just as i knew in my guts on Friday it was time to get up there, i woke up Saturday morning knowing exactly what i had to do. It was like i was channeling my mother. They needed someone to cook.

To be fair, my oldest sister was the best cook, the one who had the most years and most attention from mom. I was always destined for a career, so it surprises me still when i know how to do things without looking up directions. Osmosis.

It is also Thanksgiving week. Being in my mother's house, despite the circumstances, meant it was wrong not to have things around for guests to nibble on, for distraught family members to take nourishment from.

So I went to the grocery store, and i cooked. I bought thigns for sandwiches, soup, casseroles, and pie Yes. Pie.

I believe that those things, the soup and the pie, chocolate, made from scratch, were the last things on this earth my sister tasted.

My flight home took six hours. When i left her this morning, she was resting peacefully, breathing well, but sound asleep. I stroked her hair and said, I'll see you later.

I knew as i said the words, the same ones i said to my mother the last time i saw her, that i wouldn't.


She lived fast. She didn't finish high school, though she got a GED later. She married 4 times, though twice to the same man. She had three children. She leaves a grandson.

She started smoking cigarrettes across the street from the jr high when she was 12, because it was cool, and because her sister who was such a "good girl" wouldn't like it.

She had a bad cough that she saw the doctor for in June. By then the cancer was stage 4.

She was 48 years old.

She died before my plane landed in Houston.

She once said, when asked about current events, that she didn't care about that stuff. If it didn't touch her world directly, then it didn't really matter. Life is relative, you know.

I thought that way about her for many years. But I was wrong.

i was wrong.

Rest in peace, little sister.

Still trying

So i've been telling the folks at Ipowerweb, who host my website, that it hasn't been working, since March. Actually, as I review past entries, i see it's been since may. Still, i can't edit, can't upload and even though i think that i don't really care if anyone reads these little blurbs, it seems i do... if i didn't care, i'd continue to write entries and save to draft.

I'd switch to blogger save, but then anyone who clicked my domain link would not see. So frustrating. My annual fee is up for renewal in a few days.. i suppose that means they will handle it.

or not.

anyone know a good hosting service?

just more late night words

Busy week, full and stressful, just the way i like them. But I've neglected the non profit, must get the 501 c3 app filed soon, and the novel lies in dusty stacks all around the office.

I got a copy of the latest anthology in which my work appears in the mail, and even my critical editor child gave the book and the contents good marks. And i got paid.. which makes it even more of a banner week. I know, a good promoter would link her to the amazon site to order, would shamelessly pim the project, but i'm not doing that here. Maybe on the website if i ever get the isp to respond to the publishing issues. The contract is up the end of this month, so if nothing else, i'll switch then. There are just sooo many files.

A few months ago i created another blog for my second life character. i will link you here to it, but not it to you... too much crossover I think. But so far in my almost one year of SL, I've gone through three careers. And I always come back to words for solace.

Depression has been at clinical levels for about a month now. I've promised myself that if i can't break the patterns this week, i'll go in for the medication. Or take the one that i've left sealed in my bathroom vanity since 2004.

but that's another story, and these posts aren't showing up, so i'll leave this to edit another day.

yet another test

trying again... going to switch isp's

august

Reading my friend Fred always makes me want to write as well as he does. He's just journaling. I remember just journaling, but for almost 8 months now, I've abstained. In some ways, it got to feeling like those Christmas letters I quite sending about five years ago… like what I was doing was putting my life out there like I was bragging or something. Not sure why, especially when most of the people who read me lead far more interesting lives, but I guess it's the way I was brought up. You share bad things; you keep good things quiet so that the people around you who aren't feeling so good don't feel worse. It was an upbringing where the negative was always stressed, the positive taken in stride. I don't much care for that.

Right now I am sitting outside the cottage in Michigan, the view of the blue lake available over my shoulder, across the empty lot and through some trees. Not the perfect view of a bluff side cottage, but the safe view of one far enough back for mortgages. When we bought the place, banks wouldn't lend lakeside. The risk of their collateral ending up as trinkets on the beach was just too high.

The air is warm with an edge of crisp morning chill. The newscasters say it is the hottest week in Michigan so far this year. Coming from the sauna of Texas, I feel like I am breathing for the first time in a year. Maybe that is why I am finally writing.

I have bare feet. Grains of sand cling to them and make me a bit uncomfortable, like I am dirty. I am not. Except for the grains of sand.

There is a different value system at a lake cottage in Michigan and a suburb in Houston. Grains of sand on bare feet are valued here, but there, I feel under dressed if my toes aren't perfectly polished and encased in new or nearly new shoes. Part of it is beach mentality I know. Part of it is just not caring about details. Or maybe recognizing which details matter. I don't know.

Today is my last day here this year. I think that has more to do with the writing today than anything else. It took eight months away, and two weeks at the lake to want to do this, and I am afraid the next break will not have an ending.

And I ask myself, so what?

i'm having issues with uploading photos, and am now wondering if words are a problem too. If this works, i'll be back

playing with words

Recently I had a conversation with a songwriter that reminded me how easy it is to play with words and how much fun it can be. I think that many of us who consider ourselves "writers" fall into a trap of taking ourselves too seriously, trying to hard to be good and forgetting the value of telling a story, or expressing an emotion just the way we feel it.

Last week, for example, I had a few "moments" where I found myself saying, this, this is the essence of what I want to say, just remember this scene, write it down, feel it. Oh so artistic! But when I finally got back to my desk, booted up Word, (so dusty from non use!) I could only remember the place, and not the sensations. So much for writing when I get to it.

Today begins the challenge of "summer." The last day of school marks freedom for my son, but increased pressure on making time for work and writing for me. It has been this way every year since I moved my office home. Every summer I think about moving back out to the commercial district, but then I go to a meeting or conference and remember that I was at the beginning of a trend, not a follower, and that it is easier now than ever to work from a home office.

I promised myself that I would write something before my 10 o clock meeting, and it's time to leave for that now. This will place hold for that "moments" thoughts I had, and will make me get back to them. I'm going to seriously attempt daily blogging for a while, see if I can get back into a mode of discipline.

marching on

It is closer to morning on Wednesday than night on Tuesday, but I can't sleep. If my contacts didn't hurt so much, or my glasses would stay together, I'd just stay up tonight. Neither of those are the case.

I've been nagged. I have been on hiatus. hell no, i've been lazy. Playing games, playing house, playing play. Yet none of it makes me feel as though there is anything to show for the days that have passed, and i don't even have littel blog entries that i can point to for explanation. A kind of depression, a kind of head in the sand let it all go by kind of season. I've let myself detach in a way that is too much like what i always never wanted to be. The only connection to the person capable of that judment, that "what i always never wanted to be ness" comes when i can spit the words out of my way and just write.

I had a moment last week. I had a moment when the novel came alive and all the critiques i'd heard finally came together. I know now how to get all the characters in the same room together, which is the goal, they tell me, of a complex multi plotted novel. I didn't know it was suppoed to be so easy. That's why i go to workshops.

My goal in January was to write 20 flash pieces in that month, and I wrote only two. I had also a goal of having sections of the novel finished for each presentation time in workshop, and i did that. Not completely dead i suppose, but certainly in need of resuscitation.

I'll edit this tomorrow. If you read before then, all i have to say is that it is 4:09 am, and i've not slept.

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up,
at least a little bit. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)

magnetic poetry

So she challenged me, with words. Not a duel so much as a "get out of your tax return right brain mode and play" kind of challenge.

here are the words:

grass,idea,rain,wood,upon,chant,fever,compose,smear,write,find

here was the result, leaving me happy to write prose.

I don't know
if it was the grass we smoked
or the fever of lust,
but when he scattered kisses
in a chant across my thighs
and let his weight down upon me,
his body hard wood,
I got the idea that I could write.

Though before
I could compose the words,
he left me
with a smear of what had once been
love.

barking at the sky

Whether it is because we are between Ellington Field and NASA, or close to the water or what, we get all sorts of interesting aircraft flying over the house. Fighter jets, hot air balloons, antique war planes--a regular air show if you want to sit out and watch it.

I'm sitting in my kitchen with my laptop, waiting for the new battery (ah) to run down so that it will stay as charged as possible for as long as possible. Then I have to plug everything in and deal with the work that waits for me. But i was reading for a few minutes with the back door opened, so the animals can come in and out and I can feel the real air. It is cloudy today, and cool, and the air is soft. Cool, here, of course means it's in the low 80s.

All of a sudden, Scout started barking. She always barks at the doorbell or when strangers approach, and we've had all sorts of odd break ins in the neighborhood lately...so I was a little concerned...this is the back of the house, no service people due, and she wasn't moving like there was someone at the gate.

I looked out, and realized she was barking at the sky.

A blimp, SANYO across its side, flying so close it made her feel insecure. I tried calming her, but she kept barking until it was out of sight.

Something about it makes me feel like I am doing just that, futile though it is. Just barking at the sky.


edit: make that a Lightship.

sweet

Every once in a while I actually send something out for publication, and every once in a while, someone likes it. The good folks at Long Story Short are publishing me this month. Here's the direct link to my story Outfield.

Nice publication, and I'm flattered to be in such good company.

refueling

I want to write about the experiences I had last week at
Big Bend, but somehow the noise of the city has filled up that perfect silence that I found in the desert, and the scent of petroleum in the air replaced the perfume of wildflowers.

I wonder why we live like this.

is this heaven?

When I woke at five a.m. I was surprised to see so much light. My senses and the chart I downloaded suggested that it was too early for the day to begin. I was thirsty though, so I got up anyway…to every light in the house blazing. I checked the garage, assured that both of the young adults, who live here from time to time, checked their rooms, and went back to bed. There is a cycle going on here and most days, it takes my breath away. That's not a bad thing.

Is this heaven?

The cold rusty taste of well water reminded me of my grandmother's house, the metallic flavor of childhood bubbling up from the fresh spring. A small river ran alongside the park housing the "fountain" …the fountain being little more than a copper pipe stuck into the spring, and a catch basin made of iron or something non-descript, funneling the unused water back to the ground to be cleansed, and bubble up again.

Fresh air, air that didn't make me feel dirty, that made my skin soft and kissed my hair into relaxed curls, blew in gentle breezes and I enjoyed the scent of the Midwest, grass and woods and trees and …home. Parts of home I'd not enjoyed since before my mother was sick and no longer able to get outside, every trip back spent indoors, or running errands, or the non-stop eating that is the essence of socializing in farm country.

We walked along the river awhile, past a butterfly and perennial garden bordered by a stone path, a small refuge. It seemed more like a preliminary graveyard to me…memorial benches and such scattered among the trees. It would have made sense if the park overlooked the river, but it didn't. Next door was a metal pole barn, across the road, someone's house. Strange.

We walked on and came to the cemetery, where the family engaged in the annual spelling of the surname debate… one side spelling it with an "o," the other with an "e." My role was to offer logical educated theories, none of which were given any credence. I figured any family not close enough to know why one brother spelled his name one way while another spelled his differently didn't need any more of my attention, so I wandered away from Rasmus and Sine's grave, and that of their infant daughter whose name was no longer legible on the carved stone tablet. I walked a few hundred yards, and browsed. Obelisks hewn of soft, white stone…definitely not marble, marked graves of entire families, some born and dead in the same week, or month, or day. Many of the simple monuments marked the graves of both infant and mother, none with the poetry I'd like to think belonged there. But these were pioneers, old country Norwegians and Danes and their heritage didn't leave room for the fussiness of words at such times. Stoicism must have come from Scandinavia.

We came back to the house, and my youngest pulled me aside. "Have you noticed that I'm the only one whose picture isn't up?" He doesn't understand. I don't either. I took the risk when my son, my spouse, his brother and father went to play golf. I told my mother-in-law it hurt his feelings. I wasn't sure she'd care; she's never warmed to this child. Still, I had to say something. The omission seemed so blatant, and cruel, especially when he'd ridden 18 hours one way on his last weekend of summer to visit her.

Later, she brought me three folders. The meticulously organized folders were filled with obituaries and photographs of ancestors from my husband's family long gone, some of them from recent years, some from centuries ago. Mostly, they were lists of names and dates of death and birth. In many cases, there were cemeteries listed, so that markers could be located for the deceased. And in the back of the last folder, there were several pages, handwritten in beautiful script. The same script, over and over, as if rehearsing for some handwriting test. My mother in law had been told how important it is for a family to preserve their memories. She was trying, I think, to understand family, but what she'd written was mostly a tribute to her own mother. Her last sentence said: "She is not only my mother, she is my best friend."

The narrative was written the year before her mother died. I saw something in those words that I'd never seen from this woman who, intentionally or not, has antagonized me for nearly 30 years. I saw her as a person. A person who was pacing the kitchen the whole time I was reading. A person who I've felt judge my meager attempts at cooking, cleaning, and other things that are the province of women from her era. And I saw that the tables were reversed, that she was nervous of the judgment I might pass over her attempt at something that I do. So I was honest, and gave her what I give the other people whose words are important.

"This is great," I said. "You should write more."

She breathed and I wonder if she knew she'd been holding her breath. "Thanks. I like to write."

The rest of the family returned after that, and she made a show of pulling out another box, and sifting through its contents until she found what she was looking for. She wiped the dust from the simple frame and carried it to the living room: my youngest, proud in his baseball uniform. Then she stopped and fluffed his hair.

The trip left me aching, lonely for the things that will never be again. But it also gave me some perspective on things I never quite understood.

As we crossed the countryside between their house and the interstate, taking in the luscious rows of tall corn and verdant soybeans, sectioned off in perfect one mile squares, I felt connected to the past, to family, maybe even directly to the earth. I was pondering the clean life of Iowa, the simple wholesomeness. But then I think we crossed into the twilight zone…

Disjointed notes written down sporadically over the last few days.


Tuesday Night: Full moon, blurred by clouds. Wishing I were still at the beach, but remembering it rained today.


Last week in Michigan: Man in the Laundromat when I went back to change the washer to the dryer, having run to the grocery store in the ensuing half hour, had dumped his dirty laundry in on top of my clean. He was tall, about 6"3" and probably 275. But his glasses were so thick that his eyes looked like frog bulges through the lenses. I sorted his dirty clothes from the top of my clean ones in one of the seven machines I'd been using. Sand poured out of some of them, and I felt very odd handling his dirty underwear.

His only comment to me was "I thought it was empty."

A well-meaning patron came over and whispered to me "He's legally blind, but so independent!"

"I can tell," I replied. I shook the sand from the clothes and put them in the dryer. No harm, no foul.

The other day in Chicago: First shock was staying in a room identical to the one I was in when I found out my mother had died. I didn't realize it when the doctors gave me the details. I didn't realize it when my sister called and said you need to come now. I realized it when my friend, on hearing the numbers the doctor had given me said, "oh hon."

Later, I had to go to the lobby. I don't pay good attention to the directions in hotels and so I turned the wrong way out of the room to get to the elevators. I passed someone else I knew but didn't really want to chat with, so kept going as though it was the right way. I ended up at the end of the hall where a floor to ceiling window looked out over the river and straight on to the lake. It was stunningly beautiful. We were on the 34th floor. It made me dizzy.

I've been through the mail from the last three weeks now. I did all the laundry before I came back from the lake, but I need to unpack the suitcases and put it all away. Something really sad about putting the luggage away, even though I 'm desperately ready to be finished traveling for a while.

June already?

If it weren't for the fact that I've been incredibly busy, I'd feel bad about letting this little blog founder so.

What have I been doing?

reverse order....
-Celebrated our anniversary in San Antonio weekend of the tenth of June.

-Studying creative writing with Justin Cronin for the past six weeks. Great teacher, great writer. I've got ...direction again. Anyone who writes knows how hard that is to maintain over the incredibly ridiculous amount of time it takes to write a novel. I was going to qualify that noun with "plot-driven" or "literary" but none of those words are necessary, or probably even appropriate.

-Spent nearly two weeks traipsing about the United Kingdom with my youngest daughter. Learned that traveling light is something to aspire to, but also that climbing stairs and schlepping luggage is surprisingly good for bad knees.


Those are the most recent passtimes... I'll try to add some more detail in the next couple of weeks. I'm heading back to Michigan next weekend though, and there is no high speed internet there.

free writing, ten minutes

/Ten minutes. 10:58 pm

I used to be able to tune out all the sounds in a room and focus only inside my head. This led to a bad startling habit … being so far gone anyone from the outside world would frighten me if they intruded. I'm a little jumpy that way.

The rain was back by the time I left the gym today and left raindrops on the fence posts like spiderwebs in an iron woods. What light there was sparkled through the clinging drops and made me think of the beauty of an ice storm. I tried to take the picture, but I failed.

I don't miss ice storms, though I must say I'm glad to have known their beauty.

I'm planting an herb garden this year, designing my own planter and placing it outside the window in the family room, which is connected to the kitchen. I thought I would have it in place by now, but won't allow myself the freedom of creation while the tax files are still spread across my desk. Deadlines there, and I face only the deadline of nature with the herbs.

I did lust over some spearmint today. I can't think of what I'd do with it, unless it would be to flavor mojitos. And I'm not particularly fond of mojitos. But it was a nice plant.

I let myself have only one glass of Chianti tonight. Homemade lasagna. I know, it is overkill, but when all I can create is in the kitchen, that's what I'll do. When I went to find the recipe though, I found that the page was missing from the cookbook. It's some thirty years old, can't hold it against the book. So I had to try to remember the recipe, something I've made many times but never really worried about needing to remember. I know I had all the ingredients, but the proportions seemed wrong. It tasted fine, but it wasn't what I expected.

So there is your metaphor for tonight, the things we remember to make the things we want, getting all the pieces right, but missing it somehow. The result isn't bad, just not what we expected.

The iris are blooming in the garden I planted last year, bordered by Mexican heather…the same shades of purple repeating in the tiny blooms and the orchid-like iris. I thought about picking them, bringing them inside to brighten the gloomy rooms.

But I didn't. I let them bloom.

11:09/