July 1, 2008

Side Bars and Stirrings


Mohave and Lenora, 2008.



G: They still haven’t decided what to do with the special project he was working on, so now he is back to the day to day files. He did get a hands free, Bluetooth speaker that clips on his visor. When asked why not an ear thingy, he said he wears ear phones all day at work. I note they are for music, and I smile. We discovered at Hal’s graduation that he has to open the phone for the speaker thingy to work.

G’ette:My life and thinking are coldcentric. Limited. I began running a temp last night. What a weird cold. It’s doing everything backwards. G dissuaded me from returning to my aerobics because of the temp I am running. I’m obviously still sick. I probably won’t go to the next two writing classes either. Darn.

Weather: Real fogs today. High though, and slowing freeways inland. Here at the beach it’s cool until about 11ish. 72 on the coast.

Tasks: I need to find an easy mordant for one of the dresses I bought at a sale this weekend. It’s a passionate fuchsia, and the die wasn’t set. I managed to get it out of the washing machine before it turned the rest of the load fuchsia, and I now have it soaking. It can’t soak forever.
I’ve been mildly chided. For some reason, probably lack of brain power this last week, I stopped using the little side box. I obviously felt there was nothing new one could say about a summer cold.

Instead of ignoring that little box, I need to make it relevant to what ever I am doing with my days, even cold filled days. For instance, I had forgotten to note that daughter Lenora had stopped by with Mohave in tow wanting copies of the Beth and Hal’s graduation pictures. She can no longer get them at work.

I draped myself across the bed in the bedroom to watch, blessings on the pocket door between the computer room and the bedroom, and G learned how to make DVD’s of the two recent graduations. Mohave sat on the exercise bike and drew for a while. Later while G struggled with the drives on the computers, her mom took her off to a real store and bought her the latest in a series she is reading. When they got back, I continued to drape, Mohave read, Lenora complained that the rest of the series was available only in hard back, and G had learned which computers drives worked and how they worked.

If I hadn’t been so sick, this would have been a very exciting visit. I try and stay out of my kids lives. Lenora still drinks. Her husband really drinks, and he works nights. My mouth has a tendency to open and say what my head thinks. So it’s better that I visit when I am invited.

In the years I went to school and worked two jobs, mother used to call before she came. Minutes before. The three roommates and who ever else was home attempted a clean up our large houses in a huge rush to make them vaguely resemble a home instead of chaos. Dirty dishes went into the oven, detritus vanished into closets or behind closed doors, and surfaces were wiped with something to make them look fractionally emptier. Bee, of posh Woodland Hills clean, and I, of Point Loma clean, still laugh about our antics then.

I don’t want Lenora to feel she has to do this. She doesn’t. If I don’t go over there, I don’t see anything to think about.

So I delighted in seeing her here for a while.

I used to have a category called visitors in my hand written journals. I used to have a lot of visitors. Some years I would take pictures. Slowly our friends moved here or there, or friends died. We rarely have visitors now. G isolates happily, and I, the social butterfly of yon, fell into his bad habits.

That’s another project…bestirring myself.

2 comments:

  1. Catching up on my reading again. Sorry you're not feeling well, but it was nice to read about your daughter. I'm amazed at how well you're coping and I think you're right to try to keep quiet. They have to live their own lives, learn from their mistakes. Too bad they can't learn as well by ours.

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  2. Your draping over the bed is a good description of how we all cope with illness. I wrestle with the keeping my mouth shut. That was what I was raised to do, and one of the few things I discarded. Years later, I just can't do that any more.

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