this is *not* going to be fun

Happily shopping away, putting some soda in the cart, feel a pinch/pull on my pinky. Look down to see that I've apparently caught my nail and bent it back...something we've all done at one time or another. Then I look closer.

That lovely red line in the middle of the nail? That's where it ripped. Ow. Ow ow ow. You know, there is a reason fingernails are common components in torture... >.<

[and I've realized that I use my pinky quite a bit while typing. I am currently hating the left shift key and the letter 'a'. thankfully 'q' and 'z' aren't used as often, so they escape my scorn. for now. until I have to type about quiet zebras or something. then I'll hate them just as much. maybe more. so here's hoping those striped horses stay noisy.]

a wonderful surprise

I came home yesterday to find these waiting patiently for me:

[sorry for the lousy picture...phone camera plus low light :^( ]

My Aunt Monie sent them to me for my birthday...and I don't think she'll ever really know how much it meant to me. Thank you, Antimony. I love you.

the other side of the coin

He heard a lot of things during those weeks before he died. Questions people had, their confusion, the hope that things would change. One thing that came up as a theme more often than others: cowardice. He wasn't thinking of others, he was being selfish, he was "running away", "giving up", "not trying".

I said it then and I'll say it now: his choices were brave ones. For him, for the type of person he was, "giving up" would have been to just keep going, losing more and more of himself, his health, his mobility each day. "Not trying" for him would have meant just going from day to day, letting things degrade, letting the diseases continue draining his life, his soul, his uniqueness, his savings, his dignity, his power, his independence.

Instead he made a hard choice, one that wasn't for everyone, but was the only option for him. What had once been a dim possibility, life without his love and with rapidly failing health, had become an exhausting reality. And things he had talked about in the abstract were now staring him in the face, forcing his hand and requiring him to evaluate, re-evaluate, re-re-evaluate everything that he was, everything that mattered, and the future he faced.

He stood tall, wrested control of his life back from the diseases that had taken it from him, and basically said "fuck you, you won't defeat me". That took a level of courage and fortitude that continues to affect me at profound levels, ways that will take a lifetime to process. He was a strong man who shared life with a strong woman...I was lucky to have them in my life. I can only hope I can be as strong...

certifiable

Will passed certification today...he's now a fully certified volunteer firefighter for Santa Clara city. Years of volunteering and hard work, plus running himself into the ground these past few weeks prepping for the testing, and it's all paid off. Me = proud.

low bandwidth update

Ibiza. Ryan, Nate, Will. Spoiled by United 747 Business Class on the way here. Tasty food. Ferry Corsten. Armin van Buuren. Sankeys. Space. Excellent people watching. Warm water, soft sand, gorgeous views. Unz unz unz unz everywhere, including cab from airport. Scooters. Dancing until 5a, talking until 8a, sleeping until 3p, good company, good conversation, repeat. Stupid migraine not respecting the whole "vacation" thing. Recovering today, on to Amnesia tonight. Good times.

connect the dots

Here are your clues:

• scrubbing the bathroom floor at 3:30 in the morning
• Bean getting an unscheduled bath, also around 3:30 in the morning

And a bit of necessary information: litter pans are kept in the bathroom.

I have faith in your deductive capabilities...and now you know how delightful my early morning has been.

Sigh.

and a bright and beautiful good morning to you too

Stacey asleep in bed. Bean lying on bed. Pepper tries to jump on bed. Bean hisses at Pepper. Pepper stops and just looks at her. Bean hisses and swats at Pepper. Pepper decides 'whatever' and moves to nightstand. Bean tries to follow, falling and flumpfing as she does. Pepper just watches. Bean gets to where she wants to go and suddenly decides that she MUST CLEAN NOW and proceeds to shlurp and shlorp noisily as she grooms fur that has apparently been tainted by the mere thought of contact with Pepper.

This was my early morning. >.<

Guh.

i have such a crush on this man

Leonard Nimoy, that is...

aftermath

Got hit with a two-day migraine Tuesday morning...not as bad as some in the past, thankfully, but lasted a bit longer than usual. The migraine part is done, and now my body is just...unhappy. Sore/tired/tense, like gravity has been turned up a notch or two. You know how when you have a sore muscle, your body twitches and does everything it can to not use it, which ends up throwing everything out of balance and off? It's kind of like that, starting from inside your skull, and working its way out and down. Just have to relax a bit and let things balance back out...darkness and quiet are your friends [well, they usually are, but now even more so].


[update: gardeners just showed up. how do they know??]

random good/happy/content memories

The smell of Claudine's general store, that powdery tangy sweet candy smell meets old wood shelving scent. I used to scrape together change to spend there...a little went a long way, and it was the best retail therapy ever. Cherry Chans, candy buttons, penny gum, Lemon Heads, those giant chewy Sweetarts, whatever those hard-won pennies and dimes could buy me.

A bit later in life: standing outside Claudine's on the pay phone, pumping in coins to call Greg long-distance. Scraped together coins for that one too. Talking away, only to be interrupted by "Please deposit 25 more cents to continue your call" [talk about old-school]. That one embarrassing day I was 25 cents short and had to hang up, only to have the operator ring back to ask for it. I ended up borrowing it from a neighbor who happened to live nearby...I felt horrible.

Lightning bugs. Freshly mown grass. Just rained-on concrete. Coconut suntan oil. Chlorine. Chick-o-sticks. Thunderstorms. Bike rides. Summer.

The smell and sound of the eucalyptus trees around the house in Half Moon Bay. The salty fishy tang of the Pacific, wafting in open windows. The sound of the surf.

Sharing pizza with Dad. Drinking daiquiris with Mom. Dad's tacos, Mom's spaghetti. IGA pizzas. Lawson's subs. Snyder barbeque chips. Those awesome sandwiches that Greg's mom made for him in high school. The pizza squares that dripped grease down your hand. Pepperoni sticks from the Dari Twist. Bloomer's chocolate and coconut haystacks in a big wooden basket. Archway Dutch Cocoa cookies.

Hanging out on Monie's front porch at the yellow house, running around the yard, playing, imagining, being a kid. Those crazy steep steps upstairs at her other place. The deer/forest mural on the wall. Squirrely and Puddles. The pop-up camper. The gravel alleyways, that crunching sound of riding your bike through them. Clotheslines full of laundry.

Working with Doug, trusting him as a friend and manager, loving the team he'd built, being part of it. Following him to two more companies, more teams built, processes created, people met, much learned.

My weird-ass L-shaped cube at Calico...a space that wasn't really good for anything, and I carved it into an awesome little area.

That one spring day in Foster city when I was driving my Cabrio, top down, music blasting [Papa Roach, full volume], making a tight U-turn on Edgewater, feeling content and confident. Not sure what it was about that day, but it really sticks in my head even now.

No trash pickup in Trinway back in the day, so we had to burn trash or take it to the dump. No mail delivery to the house, either...you went up to the post office. If anything was too big for the box, you had to ask the postmaster [or mistress] for it. You knew them by name, they knew you. Man, I loved that feeling of seeing the "parcel too large for box" notice sitting there...it was a little Christmas every time.

Dad at the house in Pacifica, wanting so badly to fix the doorbell. I loved how he took care of me, at the same time acknowledging that I didn't need him to any more. I think he knew that I would try to come up with things for him to help with...I liked it, and I think it made him happy too.

Flying home early from Paris to surprise Mom at work. Major success, many tears, many hugs.

Christmas in Moss Beach, opening a big box from Mom and Dad, seeing Runny Babbit tucked inside. More tears, big smiles.

[...to be continued...]