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.

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!

That will be my topic today. Ok, I'm sure I've spouted off my radical leftist, environmental views before. Yes, I was on the forefront of environmentalism with my much beloved Hyundai Accent that I bought in 1996 and drove till I totalled her 3 years ago. Ok, so maybe that had more to do with the fact that the car cost $10K and I only made $17K, but still... I've actually always liked little cars. They're zippy and easy to paralel park (unless they don't have power steering, like my hyundai), and they're just gosh darn cute. So I've always been one of those anti-SUV people. I think they're pointless and for fat, lazy people who can't fit their fat asses into a normal size car. Plus the whole status thing... and the whole intimidation thing. Basically they represent everything I don't like about people.

And yet, there are those SUV lovers, (yes I"m talking to you people in TEXAS) who still refuse to let go of their gas guzzlers. I mean, if it was a sentimental thing...like if you had a 66 Corvair Monza that guzzled gas but looked really cool and said something about your personality..fine. But an SUV? Here are the irrational "reasons" people need SUVs:

--I have kids. Big deal! Kids are smaller than adults. They should take up LESS room.
--My kids play sports. Uh huh..I'm sure that soccer ball can't fit in the trunk of an Accord.

Every tour has its stupid nickname. I remember the "Respect Your Opinion Tour" of aught six, where us four Birdmonsters resolved to stop bickering over the merits of Don Henley's catalogue, the proper Waffle House ordering strategy, or the intrinsic value of Street Fighter The Movie. Other tours have been defined by exploding transmissions (the "Arizona Hates Our Face Tour") or novel experiences (the "Baby's First Tour; Hello Both of You"). This time around? It's the "'San Francisco' is Code For Gay Tour."

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 used to own a movie (back when there were "videotapes" called Bodies, Rest, and Motion. It was one of those independent films where not much happens, but for some reason I liked the movie. It's about a couple who moves to Arizona and then once they get there, they break up and the guy starts dating someone else, who he now lives with. The guy and his girfriend are still friends iwth the ex. So that's just the background, nothing has actually happened yet. Ok.. now the boyfriend decides he wants to move to Butte, Montana. Girlfriend doesn't really want to go, but she's a nice, peaceable girl so she will follow him. They get all packed up, hire a painter, quit their jobs...at the last minute boyfriend tells her that he's going alone. And he leaves. She's stunned. The painter shows up and they start chatting, get high, and have sex. He goes on about love. She gets up in the morning and leaves, not waking the painter. The painter decides he will find her.

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?

I am sorry I have been laxed in posting. A lot has been going on over the last couple of weeks. My mom, cousin and aunt came to stay with me the last week of February to help prepare for my baby shower. They were really sweet and helped keep the house picked up so that I didn't have to. The shower went off without a hitch with about 21 of our nearest and dearest friends in attendance. Baby got a lot of cool loot to keep him clothes and entertained. One of our friends actually quilted a baby blanket to look like the pieces from the Carcassonne game. Needless to say Dan was seriously coveting the blanket. He also was in love with the Organic stuffed monkey. The weather was really great that weekend so we went for a picnic and walk at Zilker Park. Later that night after we had all gone to bed my uncle called to tell us that my grandmother had passed away. My mom and I were up most of the night talking. The next day my mom and aunt were on their phones with my family up North trying to coordinate all the details of my grandmothers passing. They flew back to Arizona's to get some clothes and their husbands before flying to Detroit and driving to Ohio for the funeral.

The book is entirely out of my hands now, but the pressure still hasn't lifted. Several times a night these last few nights I've woken in heavy sweats, desperatley wanting to change words I am no longer able to change. It is a terrifying thing to accept that the way I said things on particular days sometime at the end of last year are now set forever.

I woke up and lay in the dark at 3am last night trying to force myself to remember the words of the serenity prayer. I eventually remembered 'accept...', 'change...' and 'know the difference...' But I couldn't string the rest of it together or get any comfort from even the jist of it.

They are just words I keep telling myself, just, just words... But it hasn't been easy letting go of them.

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.

With the exception of curly finger nails, Howard Hughes-types and those less wealthy shut-ins who smell vaguely of rancid cranberries and Grandpa's cardigan, everyone loves traveling. We hear that guy with the brogue during the interminably long commercial break between Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy admonishing us to "Visit Scotland" and we picture ourselves in some verdant meadow, wearing plaid, eating sheep's innards. We smell great gumbo and fantasize about a late evening, two-third blotto, watching jazz in a smoky New Orleans dungeon, drinking Brandy Milk Punch. We see a friends photographs from Eastern Europe and we imagine ourselves...ah...doing whatever cold-ass, root-vegetable things they do over there. To a certain extent, we all have a case of wanderlust, again, purposely disremembering about the Spruce Goose building contingent here.

Time is playing its tricks with my mind again. I have been away for a few weeks, to Ireland — and now that I am back everything seems either slowed right down, or speeded up: it seems impossible that summer is almost over, or that it is a whole year since I first rolled up my fleece as a pillow, loosened my boots, laid my head down on the passenger seat, just to rest for a while, and ended up sleeping in my car for the very first time. Time seemed all scrunched up then too. I couldn’t hold it back, and so didn’t want to know about it, blanked out as much as I could — couldn’t even say what day it was sometimes; and sometimes, now, too, it is difficult to decide whether it seems ages ago since I was in the car, or more like yesterday. Seems a bit of both. Despite two massages and a hard bed, my back still holds most of the pain of it, so healing is no indication of time lapsed.

I came into London today to talk on a local radio show about my book. It was a very strange thing to do. Not only sitting in a dark booth at BBC studios infront of a console with such a bewildering array of buttons and dials that it looked like we were about to take off, but just the talking about the book at all. Writing it was bad enough. It is definitely not a comfortable thing to publicise. I have been psyching myself up for it for weeks, though I was very glad to get it over and done with today, particulary given the cold I have. But the presenter's reaction was so lovely, and in a way unexpected. I assumed like most people his interest would be in the homelessness bit and how I wrote the blog. He did talk about the shame and secrecy of homelessness, and how it had been for me living in the car for those nine months, but he focussed mostly on the earlier part of the book — on some of the childhood stuff.

Yes, for the short attention span sufferers like me, there is that ever elusive flow... when you lose track of time doing something that engrosses you. I have plenty of interests and I don't think of myself as a passive participant in life, but flow eludes me most of the time. Even when I'm doing something I really enjoy, I look at my watch and say "good! I've been doing this for an hour (or half an hour) time to stop and relax! Mission accomplished! I just don't like doing anything for too long. Day long excursions freak me out. Folding laundry all at one time freaks me out. Basically, I hate to commit. That's what it comes down to. I don't like to feel obligated and I don't like to commit too much time to anything.

(long time lapse..talking to my friend J who I haven't talked with forever!) Anyhooo... so I have found some flow lately, mostly with kayaking. 35 minutes felt like 5 on Sunday when we were out there. Something about paddling and focusing on each stroke...i suppose it's something like meditation. Gardening does that for me sometimes too, but I have to force it a little more. I do a little and want to give up (because it's hard work!) but I tell myself, just a little longer, and then eventually I really do lose track of time. anyway, it's a good thing. I hope to cultivate more flow in my life.

I found this meme posted at A Fraternity of Dreamers. Kookie had such fun answers that she inspired me to give it a shot. Here goes:

What kind of soap is in your shower right now?
Ivory(DH), B&BW Rice Flower& Shea(Me), B&BW Exotic Coconut(DD),
Old Spice Red Zone(Sons)

Do you have any watermelon in your refrigerator? No

• The Wife •

For the home debtors out there hoping to recreate the success of our cat with 9 lives and live rent free and mortgage free, now there's a website selling a kit just for that.

I can already see REALTARD® Kent sitting pretty in his 5,500 sqft Santaluz castle, rent free, mortgage free, mello roos free, HOA free, and property tax free until the end of the year. Now who's the real REALTARD®?

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.

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:

with my husband. Marriages just can't sustain things like that. At least mine apparently can't. We both worked from home today to save a bit on gas... the theory being that since we usually carpool, with only one of us working from home, we werent' really saving anything. Makes sense.. So it all started out lovely, and actually it was all lovely until about an hour ago, when we had our daily spat. Do all couples fight this much? There is a lady at work who fights with her husband constantly and they legitimitely just can't seem to stand each other. I want to yell over the cubicle wall "get a divorce, lady! You'll be happier!" We don't have horrible fights, but I do feel like lately we fight a lot. Oh well... the nice thing about life is that it has a way of working itself out. Either it will get better, or it will get worse. Not much point dwelling on it.

Veronica Mars?
Originally uploaded by m.Lee Dear Veronica Mars,

You suck! (not Kristin Bell personally but the show itself)

Every day, I am amazed at the sorts of things people are afraid of.
Perhaps because of my time in the Fusiliers Marins, - and because a handful of my friends are in hot war zones where death could come at any moment from a sniper's bullet, landmine, rocket, mortar shell or IED, - I am not really all that phased by the thought of getting yelled at by my boss or looking bad when one of my projects doesn't pan out the way I thought it would.

Another day and night have passed. I went to the doctors this morning for another non-stress test. It came back good. Baby was SUPER active so we were given the go ahead to go home and wait it out. Everyone thinks he is going to hold out until the scheduled date, Monday. I am pretty uncomfortable and am developing a short fuse. I am off to relax and take a little nap to catch up on the sleep I lost last night.

Looks like we might get some rain this weekend! Dan and I are planning on going to go and see a movie. We are going to avoid people that would say, "You're still pregnant!".

Woke up to bleak, grey, drizzly skies again today. Everything, even the grass and, in the mist that hung over everything, the trees, looked grey today. I stood at the kitchen window, in the new, pink bathrobe I got for Christmas, eating cereal, staring out at what could have been a scene straight from an old grainy, Sunday-afternoon black-and-white. Definitely a day for thinking about going straight back to bed... But for a while I stood there, chewing mindlessly, watching a pair of magpies hopping about next-door's lawn. Then just as my eyes adjusted to all the grey, two tiny, colourful little birds flew through the drizzle onto a birdtable in the garden at the other side. I don't know what they were, but seeing them there among all that grey made me smile. They were soft, minky-brown little things, with yellow breasts and bright red faces. Tiny like tits, but not tits...Beautiful splashes of colour brightening up the monochrome. There was something quite clownish about them.

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.

My birthday weekend did not quite go as planned, but we still managed to have some fun. Saturday Dan got up early and cleaned the whole house for me in preparation for our guest. That was a huge present in and of itself. He went out and got me a cute little ice-cream cake with yellow roses on them. The plates he got even matched the cake. He then made pasty pie for dinner for everyone. The first guest started arriving around noon. Jen was the only book cluber who could make it this month so we talked briefly about the book before the rest of the group arrived. We headed out for Eglin around 1:00. We soon found out that google maps directions were very off. So we pulled over to a gas station and asked for directions. Turns out one of the customers lived on the street we were looking for so he was able to give us detailed directions to the pumpkin place.

The marathon moves on, potential trades with the same names, with mainly the same destinations still in the incubation stage, much like a Senators power play of late with little finish around the net.

In fact the second hour of the day takes on a decidedly Ottawa theme.

At TSN, Dave Hodge and his Reporters crew are in the house, as the Sunday morning panel assemble to pass on their sage advice on the day’s happenings, Hodge boldly predicts that Ray Emery will be gone from Ottawa by the end of the day.

About a half an hour later, TSN expands the exodus list for Ottawa.

TSN’s has decided to carry the Paddock must go theme on through the second hour, at 650 they check in with their Senators reporter Brent Wallace who citing Senators sources says that Paddock’s days may very well be numbered. The TSN rumour mill suggesting that Bryan Murray is set to return to the bench to handle his stumbling charges.

Wallace also reveals that both Martin Gerber and Ray Emery have asked to be traded, which consensus seems to be would be a positive move in Ottawa. Pierre McGuire tracing a lot of Ottawa’s troubles to when Ray Emery signed his contract and a change in the goaltending coaching dynamic took place.

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.