I found a way to work in the phase "does a bear shit in the woods?" to my book. sweetness! Ok, so I've downgraded my goals from 11 pages a day to 1 a day. So maybe I won't write a book in a month... but hey, progress is goddamn progress. Ok, and I didn't quite stick to one glass of wine. damn! I need to stop buying shiraz...too damn tasty! I'll start buying white zinfandel or something. : I~~ Or alternatively I could just drink vinegar. Or rubbing alcohol. Perhaps vanilla extract...

bleak. And I'm not just talking about the weather, though that applies too. Dreary! So what's wrong?

Well, first, those creepy crawly, bitey, nearly invisible fiends are back..the bird mites! J has been talking about them for a few days and I thought it was just psychological. I even did that little finger thing around the head that means "koo koo" to him a few times. But he finally had me check his back, and sure enough, there was what looked like a speck of dust sitting there. DOH! I'm not even sure the birds have left the nest yet... ?? Anyway, I'm pretty sure the cats brought them in with them from the porch, so at 10 pm last night I bathed the cats, had my 3rd shower of teh day while J took off all the bed stuff to wash and vaccuumed. Then I locked the cats out, but I still woke up with bites. I've been itching for a few nights, but with sunburn and skeeter bites, etc, etc. I pretty much itch all the time.

Oh well... we will vanquish again. Second, unbeknownst to me, J did a radon test down in the basement and surprise! we have high levels. Ok, that was sarcasm. Given the fact that radon comes from granite and we dynamited out a ledge of granite to build our house...not too shocking. But I still didn't want to know! Now what? Ugh.

day than a summer day today. It's cold and dreary, overcast and intermittently rainy. We were out late last night "gallactic bowling" with some friends. It was sort of fun, but I drank too much beer, ate too much bowling alley food, and well, I can't deny it... bowling kicked my ass. I started off strong with a spare, then as I got tireder and tireder (I know that's not a word) I got worse and worse and got many many gutter balls. But oh well, better than sitting home on my birthday. : )

Had sort of a crappy day at work. It wasn't so bad, but I got that feeling a few times...you know that high blood pressure feeling where you want to rip somebody's head off? Ever get that? But I took a deep breath, resorted to short sentences and turning my head, and then just blocked people out. I don't even have pms, which leads me to believe that people are just irritating. But what can you do? I'm in a bit of a spot because I've told people over and over again how NOT to irritate me but they don't seem to be paying attention, so that's it. I just can't let it bother me. Part of what bothers me is that I think maybe I'm not that good at my job. I know I'm good at parts of it, but I'm not great at everything (who is, right?) so that bothers me too. But all I can do is to do the best I can do and let the rest roll off my back.

I used to have one of those arm-length, Zach Morris-style cell phones. You know, the ones that are essentially guaranteed to give you eye cancer or brain cancer or testicular cancer, even though the thing barely fit in my pocket anyway. But then again: tight pants. I say "used to have" because at some point last week, between temp jobs and shows and overall sloth-dom, I lost it. No small feat, considering the fact it was slightly larger than a baby's torso, but then again, I've lost keys, guitars, permanent teeth. It's a super power, really. The Bush administration calls regularly when it wants memos misplaced. You should read the shit they send me.

My plan for today was to go for a long walk somewhere, preferably through woods, kicking up piles of dry leaves as I went. But I woke up today to rain — heavy, noisy rain gunning down for most of the morning. So instead I stayed inside reading the Fly Truffler, a beautiful, unusual love story that'll be a long time getting out of my head. I'm typing here to delay reading the last pages.

dealing with stress. I want a cocktail! No red wine! A goddamn cigarette!!!! ARGHH. I honestly can't tell if my life has recently gotten really bad or if I just can't deal with it without my vices. I've officially turned to food for comfort...having a smoothie right now. Today was really hard. BUT, the good news is that I now have PMS so I actually have an excuse to be a grumpy bitch.

And now i'll try to use logic to make me happier. I have a job that pays better than anything else I'll ever find in this godforsaken state. If I could learn to get along with my coworkers again (which could be a real challenge now that I know them for the bratty, self-centered egotistical twats that they are) and could just accept the fact that I"ll never get any respect or recognition, I'm sure I could learn to be happy there again. Are you convinced? Yeah, me neither, but what's the option?

When I picked up Coraline, I was in the mood for light, quick, and fun. I got all three with this one. It sort of reminded me of The Nightmare Before Christmas. A young girl named Coraline (not Caroline) gets bored and "explores" a lot. In her very own apartment there is a door which is always locked. One day her mom opens it and it's all bricked up, but she forgets to lock it back. Coraline goes back and it is a doorway to the other part of the house which looks exactly like her apartment. Inside everything is like over on her side, only not like it at all. It contains a hint of magic and wonder.....I loved it!

Paul Pierce copped a little 'tude whileout on the town in Toronto.

This story comes from a friend of mine who currently lives in Toronto and is a huge basketball fan. He would prefer to remain anonymous on the site, so I will refer to him as "Toronto Jones" or "TJ." Anyway, some members of the Boston Celtics were gettin' jiggy with it the night before they played the Raptors, and one particular Celtic got a little too jiggy. Here's what went down:

I've finally crashed through a barrier. I finished reading the endings of several books I've had on the go for what seems like months, and it's a fantastic feeling to have finally done it. It was almost a psychological block. For some reason, I just wasn't able to finish them. But in the last few days without even thinking about it I found myself opening them at the bookmark, curling up somewhere and, one after the other, reading on until the last page. Pure joy.

At this time of year it is sometimes difficult to know exactly how to dress.
I don’t mean fashion-wise [although fashion-issues also apply, that is, if one is fashionable per se, which I myself, am not] but I mean morseo, temperature-wise.
At this time of year, bright and sunny does not always mean warm!
But today I got it right.
As the door to my apartment building closed behind me, I breathed in the freshest air of 2008 thus far, and thought one thought:
This is springtime!

bleak. I can't really think of any other time in my lifetime when the economy looked so bad and the future looked so scary. I don't know if it's because I used to live in a wealthy area and didn't drive far to work, and just didn't notice things... or it really is that bad. When I was visiting VA a few weeks ago, I was going on and on about conspiracy theories and how the middle class will be wiped out and my sister said to me "what do you care? you live a good life. enjoy it." All the news coverage lately just ... I don't know... it makes me think of a Hollywood movie of a futuristic world well it all effing sucks! I don't anticipate not being able to afford food. I have a decent paying job and with carpooling, etc. we'll get by, even with the price of gas these days...but this is the first time that economic factors like that really have changed my life. My driving habits have changed (65 mph baby!), I'm carpooling, I asked my boss about telecommuting. Our expendable income has gone down...I dunno.

Call me a nerd, but I've wanted to do a labyrinth walk for years. I have no idea why.. it's just one of those things (like the nautilus) that I see and I like and then I become semi-obsessed with. I have dreams of building my own labyrinth in my side yard out of rocks and flowers. But tonight, I actually walked one! There's a church in Portland, probably 2-3 miles from where I work that has a labyrinth on a canvas and they open it up to the public once a month or so. Now, I'm not religious at all and I've probably stepped foot in a church a total of 10 times in my life (half of them at a daycare center when I was a nanny, once I went with a boyfriend on Christmas, a few times I went wtih friends when I was kid, and once to a wedding in a catholic church). Oh, and once I blew a tire on my car when I veered trying to avoid a squirrel and hit the curb... wanted to see if they had a phone but the door was locked - typical!

• The Wife •

Judith St. George, author of the Caldecott Award book So You Want to be President? Revised and Updated Edition puts her knowledge of presidents and the White House to work in this gentle First Family ghost story.

my head hurts from way too much exertion. I've almost memorized the whole Jessica's theme song. It's a tough one and I'm about 3 measures away. I still have to look at the music sometimes to peak, but I'm very very close. It feels good becuase it's been a real challenge and I'm almost there! I'm not even going to worry about the Enya song for now because that's easy by comparison and if I have to I could even drop that one. But I don't think I'll have to. I've got a long weekend and another 2 weeks after that so I think I'm golden.

My sister helped me come up with a great idea for a book. It needs a little fleshing out but it has the potential to be really funny. And hey, if I'm only spending a month on it, I can take the risk. No pressure, right? The plan is to start June 1 and obviously be done by June 30 with the first draft. I see it as something sort of Carl Hiaasen-ish. Funny, irreverent, a bit kitchy, but with a little bit of a message (yet to be determined).

I woke up this morning with the cold howling around inside my bones. But looking out of the window everything was all white and beautiful and brilliant, the sun like pearl behind white sky, and everything glittered with frost. It looked quite magical. I love mornings like this. Give me this over rain any day. I went to a pantomine the night before last, and the fairy godmother in it was fantastic, really throwing herself into the part, tip-toeing around the cast waving her wand and whispering good into everyones ears. That's what it felt like this morning, waking up to all this whiteness, as if someone had tiptoed through the night - over rooftops and hills, through the trees, up and down streets and alleyways and parks, waving a magic wand, turning the land this clean, silvery-white. I felt happy just laying there thinking it. I turned up the on the music on the CD alarm — the Late String Quartets again!

Despite holding a 3-1 lead at one point, the Ottawa Senators couldn't find any insurance markers against Nikolai Khabibulin who closed the door once his Chicago Black Hawks pulled even with the Sens on Saturday night.

As overtime ran its course and then the shootout, the Hawks seemed to gain inspiration from their goaltender, rewarding him for his hard work when Jonathon Toews put away the winning shoot out goal handing the Hawks a 4-3 road victory.

A disappointing finish for the 20,171 who gathered to provide the largest crowd of the year at Scotiabank Place, a crowd that at one point felt as thought two points were the home sides, until the Sens allowed coach Denis Savard a happy homecoming with an impresive come from behind victory.

Just for the record, let me say that I was wrong...writing books is not as easy as I thought. Obvioulsy I didn't think it would be a walk in the park, but after all that time in the car, living how I was living — on the outside of everything, depressed, isolated, without focus or purpose, no job or project to throw myself into — I thought everything would be easy after that, that nothing could phase me and nothing could beat me — which hopefully is true, now I have fought my way back - and I thought that since I love writing, that that would be a joy to do for the next six months.

And occassionally it was. The times when I forgot that I was writing about me and just sank into it, but writing your own story is hard. And writing books generally takes everything you've got. Not nice...Feel wrecked. But at least it's over now. Now I can start rebuilding...

something new tonight. I've been thinking that instead of just rambling, I should have one of those...whachamacallit... a topic! I dont' have one yet, but I hope to have one by the time I finish.

Well, I was looking at my list and realized that to get them all done, I'd have to do 1 every 10 days. Sooo...since my car's inspection sticker expired a week ago, I thought maybe I'd the "take my car to a new place" one (which is a scary one for me...creature of habit that I am), but I thought better of it and just went to whole foods for lunch and bought the same sandwich I always get (grilled veggies with arugula and goat cheese). Then thought I could try a new food (also on the list)...uh...maybe tomorrow. Then, I thought..it's grocery night, I'll do the one about striking up a conversation with a cashier. A little background:

This morning I woke up to NPR on my husbands alarm. The newscaster was informing everyone that Detroiters were loosing their homes at a rate of five times that of the national average and that Michigan had one of the highest unemployment rates. Lovely, just what I want to hear when I wake up in the morning. A friend from Michigan e-mailed me this week to tell me she had just been laid off. She is joining the half a dozen people I know from back home that are without a job. For me January 2009 can't come fast enough, we need change and we need it now!

On to more boring items, my day today is again booked. I had hoped to get the car today and do some shopping but the plumber called and said he could come out today. So he and the pest control guy will be crawling around the house this morning and part of the afternoon. I informed my husband that I desperately needed to get out of the house tonight.

Last night was our second to last hypnobirthing class. It went really well. I wish we had gotten the opportunity to get to know the other couples in the class better. Last night we realized that of us five, Dan and I would be parents first. We promised to e-mail the instructor our birth story for the class to know how everything had worked out.

Jackie Urbanovic's ebullient Duck at the Door starts the fun right on the title page, which shows a weary, wayworn wanderer of a little mallard trudging, head down, through the deep and driving blizzard, a dollop of snow on his head.

Whew! Mama Llama's put little Llama in his red p.j.'s, read him a bedtime story, given him a big kiss on the top of his head, and with a sigh of relief hustles herself downstairs to the kitchen to finish the supper dishes. For the moment all is quiet, and she relaxes with that warm, end-of-a-long-day feeling.

But upstairs in little Llama's darkened room, things are not so good.

Llama, llama, red pajama
feels alone
without his mama.
Baby Llama wants a drink;
Mama's at the kitchen sink.

I need to vent a little.

Unfortunately, the time has come for my wife and I to find a new rental. Reasons being that she works a couple days a week in Duncan, and we live south end of Victoria, so the commute is long, costly, and I don't really like her driving the Malahat so often (I'm a bit of a worry-wart). Also, we are hoping that in the next year or two, we will require more space, as in another bedroom. And so, we are looking for a 2 bedroom and den or 3 bedroom rental that is west of View Royal.

Rentals of that sort are not easily come by! And the prices! Yikes! Are any of you looking for the same thing these days? Unbelievable!

Three-quarters of available rentals are 1 or 2 bedroom. A 3 bedroom rental will be either an entire house, or the upper portion (there are a few 3 bedroom lower rentals, but I imagine them to be dungeons.) Monthly rent for a 3 bedroom does go as low as $1100 / month, but most are more that $1400 / month, the average probably being around $1800 / month. A lot of those don't meet our location criteria.

The city of New York is rightfully famous for its cuisine. New York is where bagels taste like bagels, where pizza can make you cry, and where hot dogs that fester in off-colored water are somehow appetizing. When Sinatra sang "if I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere," he wasn't talking about success, he was talking about food. He also wasn't talking about burritos.

Because, see, New York burritos are shit. Sloppy Joe meat inside inside a leather tortilla does not a burrito make. That goes for you too Michigan, and you Chicago, and Ohio, please, Ohio, don't make me come over there. The rule, essentially, is this: if your state isn't touching Mexico, I will not eat your Mexican food. It's that simple.

So when our producer Tom arrived from New York that first week, I wasn't that surprised to hear him hankering for a burrito. I wasn't too surprised the next day when, less than twenty hours later, Tom wanted another. I wasn't all that surprised when we returned for the third and then fourth days in a row. In fact, it's hard to say when I really did feel surprised. I suppose it was when Tom's head turned into a burrito, somewhere during the third week.

I've gotten a couple of emails since I posted about the poop machine, er, I mean cat.

To quickly recap, Jules and I got a previously traumatized cat with some wacky problems. I even went so far as to drop some money on a cat behavior consultant, thereby earning myself some of the most palpable shame I have felt in years.

Anyway, the update is this: the cat has had two teeth extracted by the vet, one which was cracked and the other which was abscessed and was one of the most gnarly things you will ever see. Pumpkin also is constantly on some kind of medication for her ears which get this gross goopy buildup if left alone for a couple of weeks.

Noah was super cranky last night, I got very little sleep and was cranky myself when I woke up this morning. Thankfully I was able to get a little shut eye late in the afternoon when Noah went down for a nap. He has been napping on and off all morning.

Interesting bit of international news: Carme Chacon was appointed the first woman ever to be defense minister in her native Spain and she is seven months pregnant.

Driving home, I noticed that wonderful thing... that glorious sign of summer...that harbinger of all things sweet and juicy was out... the "Strawberries U-Pick" sign!! Painted in red on a white background in stenciled letters and an arrow pointing toward the river. Yay! Seems a little early and I was hoping they woudl be picking while my sister is here, but whatever. We'll probably get out there this Saturday adn sometime next week because I WON'T BE WORKING... bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha. Anyhoo, I also picked the first lettuce from the garden tonight to have on a delicious black bean burger wrap with avocado and cheese. yum.