Happy Birthday, World!

Today and yesterday evening and tomorrow too, we celebrate Rosh Ha Shanah, the "head" of the year, or New Year. Despite a long long day of singing and sitting, after which I returned home and made a nice dinner, even though Jeremy had to go to class and Richard will be at work for quite a while longer, I cannot help feeling optimistic.
Even if I'm out of work and EDD wants to "retrain" me (for what, I ask?), despite unpleasant developments in this country and out in the world, when I was up there on the bimah singing and looking at all the familiar faces out there, I felt fine, as if this were the antidote to all that poison.
So I didn't get upset at having to pay for the window Jeremy broke because he was angry with his math professor, who I'd love to tell off for her bad pedagogy and the pain she put Jeremy through. He is an adult now, and will have to manage his own affairs in this department.
So I send all of you love, and again, apologize for all the many screw ups this year and the times I made you feel slighted or hurt your feelings or took advantage of your good nature. I'll try to do better.

As it turns out...

I heard from my cousin, who read the essay I published last week about my grandmother, my great-grandfather, my father, and me. He is denying that there is anything to what I am saying at all about my grandmother, father, and the family in general, calling it "fiction."
I suppose I should not be surprised. My family is so closed mouthed about nearly everything! I guess my grandmother instilled it in them. They are in denial about most problems, whether they are political or personal, but the problems don't go away. They tend to get worse and fester.
This is a difficulty that every autobiographical writer probably has to face: dealing with the feelings and views of the people one writes about. They have their right to their own perspectives, but not to deny mine.

Appalled

I have been following the protests in NYC and other cities across the U.S. against the banking system and other more amorphous forces that have been leading our country down a dangerous path for the past several years. However, until a few days ago, I was only following them out of the corner of my eye, so to speak, mostly because I didn't seriously believe they were happening as reported.
Like most Americans, I have trusted the mainstream media (at least certain sectors of it--PBS, for example, and the NYTimes) to present most of the truth of what is happening in this country. But even when a group of unarmed protesters, all female, were herded behind a barrier and maced full in the face, apropos of nothing at all, seemingly, except speech that is guaranteed under the Constitution, I became alarmed. Even in the 60s, when something similar happened, the papers and news programs aired it all as their top story. People were shocked, inquiries were made.
What has happened to our country that this is happening and no one seems to care about it enough to publicize it? What can I make of this? Is this becoming Yemen or Libya, or Egypt? Do the banks own our government, our news media, our lives? And what can we do about this?
Taking to the streets is evidently not the answer. All it will get us is a boot to the face (or a spraycan) and no one will care, or too few to matter.
What can we believe? And what can we do to take us off this path of destruction, economic and political, that we seem to be running on full tilt?

Friends

The recent problems with my email have let me know again, in case I have forgotten, that I have a lot of friends who care about me. In case you didn't know, someone hacked into my email and sent out a noxious request for funds, purporting to be me, and saying I was stuck in Wales of all places without money or passport.
Surprisingly, people thought of sending money, though I had not said anything about traveling abroad, and without a job, have no money for such a trip anyhow. I was unable to send emails to anyone because my list of contacts had been erased. But some people emailed, some called me and R, and all in all, I have been very moved by people's loving attention. Thanks.

BKS Iyengar Videos

This morning I watched some videos of BKS Iyengar, guru and founder of the school of yoga I practice, from the mid-seventies. He was practicing yoga and in one of the videos, explaining it at the same time, and it was almost like breathing for him. Apparently, breath indeed had a lot to do with his ability to get into these poses too.
His was louder than I might have expected since I have been told not to breathe loudly by my own teachers. If I knew how to post them, I would put them here, but they are on YouTube.
If I were able to make myself practice as many hours a day as he does, perhaps I would be able to do some of the poses he does, but my stiff, bulky body cannot open anywhere near as fully as his. He looks like a time-lapse film of a plant unfolding. Amazing.
Here is a link for the one where he explains his poses:
http://youtu.be/JrveBAnKNyE

Essay online

Here is the link to the essay published on the Easy to Love, Hard to Raise website.
Enjoy.
http://www.easytolovebut.com/?p=1297

On The Road

Today I drove on the freeway--the 405 to be exact--on the way to Little Saigon to eat lunch. After Liz and I hiked for an hour or two, I overcame my anxiety enough to drive right up onto the road, and with her help, made it there without incident. I had no idea where I was as I drove the road, seeing only the car in front of me and the cars and trucks to either side, like a blinkered horse. But truthfully, once I got going, I really didn't have time to panic or feel afraid. I just kept going.
It is hard to imagine that I will be able to do it alone anytime soon, but I guess with some practice, I will get used to it, just as I did the surface roads I drive on every day. It is a matter of habit, and I know I can do it.
Thanks Liz for braving it!

Where to?

Now that I have opened the portal to a different world by stopping my frenetic movement from one year, one semester to another, doing more of the same, I can see there are lots more things out there I might be doing with my time than what I have been doing.
It took a while, but I have come to like very much the routine of writing and sending out and going to yoga and chatting with friends. Of course, I have to go back to work sometime, but is there a way I can leave more of myself to be plowed back into the writing/work and still work for money? There must be. I wish I knew what it was.
Perhaps tutoring, if I could only get it started, would be just the ticket, but for some reason I have not gotten around to making decent signs and hanging them or finding a place to advertise that works. Any suggestions will be gratefully accepted.

Stoked

I didn't sleep too well last night, but it wasn't for a bad reason. Yesterday I found out for sure that my yoga chapbook, Balance, will be published whenever my cousin finishes with the drawings, which I think will be some time in November.
I will get a bunch of free copies to sell as I can. I know I can do that. I belong to so many communities now, the yoga one especially, where people will buy the book.
And I will do lots of readings wherever I can. I am really looking forward to it!
I had already planned to do readings in November for the release of Easy to Love but Hard to Raise, so I'll just do more for the chapbook too. I'll be very busy, so it is probably a good thing I am not working right now.
The people at synagogue will buy books too. I can even place some at the gift store there. Even though these people may never have picked up a book of poetry before, they may buy this one.
I'll keep you posted on when and where I am reading and when the book is coming out!

The Hedgehog

Lately, meaning most of this summer, there haven't been any movies that looked worth seeing. But now that summer is past, the good movies are beginning to emerge from wherever they were hiding (mostly abroad, I suspect), and today, I went to an afternoon movie with Liz, a French flick adapted from a book. The film was called The Hedgehog. I forget what the book's title was.
It was one of those delicate little foreign flicks told from the pov of a precocious child, 11 years old, and way too smart for her own good. She was part of a rich and completely ridiculous family, which seemed like a caricature of a family in fact, and she planned to kill herself on her 12th birthday. No one noticed or cared about anything she did; they were all locked into their own separate "goldfish bowls," as the girl, Paloma, had it. She wanted to die because the idea of growing up to be like them was too awful to bear.
Luckily, she was not the only one out of place here... a secretive concierge with a cabinet full of books and a new resident in the building, a Japanese director keeping the secret of his own fame in another country were there to rescue her by making her realize that she could be what she chose to be and would not be limited by her birth.
I could have stayed to watch another film, a Japanese parody of martial arts movies, but I had other things to do. Still, it's very encouraging that there are good movies out there again, and it seems more are on the way! Hooray!

ANOTHER New Publication!

After I got the advance copy of Easy to Love but Hard to Raise, in which my essay is published, I had a few email chats with one of the editors, and she suggested I write an article for the website or possibly for the second volume of the book, which will focus on educating kids with disabilities. I started off trying to write about why I didn't home school my son, but ended up instead talking about genetics and disability in my family. I described how my life replayed that of my grandmother's in several ways because of this history of disability and abuse, but the outcome was, thankfully, different, partly because of the differing circumstances pertaining to the times in which we lived our lives.
This essay will appear on Friday on Facebook at the book's blog/Facebook Page, Easy to Love but Hard to Raise. I'll publish a link when it comes out.

New Territory

Today I went to a do sponsored by the Women's Connection at synagogue that normally would not have been something I'd go to. It was "a day of beauty," in which there were people talking about make up and clothes from Nordstrom's. The clothes were of course beautiful, but so hot on a day that was about 90 degrees and for which I was not properly dressed, wearing long sleeves and pants, though thank goodness, I had the sense to put on sandals.
There was a lovely luncheon, though the main dish was not something I wanted to eat. The salad and fruit were wonderful, especially for this weather, however! Best of all, I met and spoke with so many people from the synagogue I didn't know, who were able to give me leads of various kinds that might lead to jobs and tutoring.
I even found a group of women who go on walks and hikes together on a regular basis, and I am going to get involved in that because I was just saying to R yesterday that I wanted to walk more! Perhaps that will help me to get rid of some of the excess weight that has been accumulating around my middle for no discernible reason.
So it turned out to be a very good day, one that made me happy for my friends at synagogue and also happy that I chose to leave my safety zone for once and try something new.

Pune Daze

This morning I went to Denise's workshop in her studio. Pune Daze is a sort of master class that is meant to be very challenging. These workshops are seldom the same twice. In fact today Denise said that she had not taught this class since 2006 or so. She named several dates, each about 4-5 years apart, when she taught it. Apparently, she keeps careful records.
The people there ranged from very young and inexperienced naturals, who could do these asanas as if they had been doing them all their lives, while I have been studying Iyengar yoga for 25 years and still can't do a handstand and other things, to post-middleagers from the retirement set, like myself.
It should be known that I have a couple of bete noir poses that I simply cannot do, handstand and another related pose called pinche mayurasana (sp?) being two of these. Then there's urdva dhanurasana (sp?), a backbend you've probably seen where the person's hands and feet are on the floor while her middle and back are hoisted up to form a sort of table. Whenever these poses are taught, I usually end up frustrated and upset, as well as terribly sore from trying to hoist my body up on insufficiently strong arms and shoulders. These poses played a part in the class today, but unlike the usual scenario, I actually managed to get up into urdva danerasana with a chair, and to straighten my arms completely. But when I tried to do it on the ground again after that, it still wouldn't happen. All the same, it gives me hope to keep practicing it till I can eventually do it from the floor.
I went into class feeling as though I was coming down with something, achy and vaguely feverish (though I doubt I was actually sick), but after the class, I feel great. My mind is clear and calm and my aches and malaise gone. It left me feeling I want to come every month to Pune Daze, or whenever possible, if she doesn't mind.
Thanks Denise!

Reading Matter

These days I have begun to get back heavily into reading, and I see that I will have to pay another visit to the library to replenish my store. I just finished luxuriating in a good old novel, The Codex, by Lev Grossman. I loved his fantasy novel of last year, The Magicians, a play on the Narnia books, which I read over and over again as a child and young adult. That was his first foray into fantasy, according to the reviews I read, but when I heard he had a new novel, a continuation of the Magicians, and couldn't find it at the library yet, I settled for an old novel of his, perhaps his first, called The Codex, having no idea what I would find.
I was immediately plunged back into a fantastic, partly-fantasy world of Grossman's making, a thriller-mystery about a young investment banker wonderkind who gets mixed up in the world of bibliophiles and scholarship, along with an unlikely cloak and dagger element. The plot is full of twists and turns, the writing sparkling, and despite a very few missteps in detail, it had me totally hooked from the start. I recommend it, and am looking forward to getting hold of the man's most recent book.
I also finally read Nicholson Baker's book The Anthologist, about a cracked poet, Paul Chowder, who is trying mightily not to write an anthology, but finally does it. The character was so close to the bone that it was almost painful to read, so it took me an age of bedside reading to finish it, despite the fact that it is indeed an excellent and heart-breaking portrayal of character. So now I'll be looking for something else to read. Unfortunately, that is not so simple. I discard more books after the first few pages than I read. Any suggestions?

New Publication!

The poems accepted by Victorian Violet Press are coming out a few weeks early! Here's a link so you can see for yourself.
http://www.victorianvioletpress.com/issue_8/robi_nester

Aftermath

The dinner went well. Everyone was in good form, and the food turned out well. The chicken tasted fine, though overnight in the sauce would no doubt have made the 10 cloves of garlic easier to taste! I particularly liked the tomatoes in pomegranite sauce. What a great combination! The zucchini with tahini, lemon, and yogurt was also delicious. I'm glad I threw in some mint at the last minute; next time I'll add garlic too, but I'll definitely make it again.
The tablecloth, which I forgot I had, is definitely the worse for wear because of a spilled glass of wine, but what the heck? I didn't even know I had it till yesterday anyhow. My parents' good china looked great on it, and it brought back memories to eat off of it.

Lead in to the Dinner Party

This morning I hopped out of bed as usual at 5:30 AM, as Richard was slipping out to go to the golf course. He took a day off because the semester starts Monday at the U, and for him, that will mean more than more of the same: his department was eliminated, and there is only him and one other writing instructor left of what reportedly will become a new writing center. Why they needed one is beyond me, but that's okay. It's their dime.
The phone rang about 6:30, as expected. It was Liz, telling me where to meet her for our morning walk. We went down to a lovely little park tucked neatly into a corner across the street from a mini-mall. It was meticulously maintained, with a little creek, sculptures and other art work, a peace monument, and paths. These were not too well maintained, sad to say: lots of dog poo from the many dogs walking there with their owners. Since there were no bins to dispose of the waste, it was left where it was, I guess. We saw a white heron and an egret fishing in the creek, but no other wildlife.
After our walk, it was already getting a little warm. We went home to cook. It's amazing how much fun cooking is when you don't have to do it alone. Things go much faster when you can chat, and the work seems much less onerous. Unfortunately, I noted that I SHOULD have left the chicken in the sauce overnight, but I'm sure it will be edible, just not perfect.
Though I don't want to have another party soon (too expensive!), I will definitely do it this way again, if I can talk one of my guests into being a sous chef (sp?).

Poetry Reading

I managed to get myself up off my bottom to drive all the way to Orange to a poetry reading. I was hoping that Denise wasn't having a yoga workshop at the same time so I could park at a particular spot near her house that is the only place I know of anywhere near downtown Orange that does not require either a permit or payment at a lot, but if I had known where an easily accessible lot was, I would have parked there.
When I came in, somewhat early, despite driving around and around till I found a spot in the general area I was planning to park, the room was next to empty. The students were mostly congregated by the buffet table, which contained an assorted and not very healthy bunch of junk, mostly sweets--nary a crudite to be seen. One could tell it was chosen by a man who opens a lot of cans and microwave boxes. But the students seemed to like it.
At first, when I came in and sat down, I took the poet, Amy Newlove Schroeder, for a student. She looked so young, and I guess was young, though a bit older than most of the students in the room, having finished her PhD. She struck me as an honest and intelligent young woman, but one who is not used to reading her work at events like this one.
There were many exceptionally lovely lines in her poems, though she threw them away, mumbled them under her breath. Good thing I wore hearing aids, or I might not have heard her at all.
Half of the reading was from her first book, Sleep Hotel, which won the Field Poetry Prize, though I'm not sure when. The rest came from her new collection, which she said she was going to call Low Magic, though it did not yet come across as a tightly bound collection, as her first book was. Some poems were, it seems to me, still under construction. Not being used to reading, she had brought them out into public a bit too soon, perhaps.
But it was a pleasure to hear her work, and when I am in a book buying mode again, her work is something I might want to own.

Dinner Party

Before we moved into our new house, I swore I would entertain more if I only had a larger kitchen to cook in and a nicer space to host my guests in. However, as of yet, I have not done it, really, though I did have a memorial lunch for my parents a couple of months ago.
I enjoy cooking, and like feeding guests. Sometimes I know I go way too far with the process, in fact, preparing fancy menus for weeks ahead of time. That turns the process into something stressful rather than enjoyable.
I decided to cook a dinner for a few friends from yoga. I had gotten a lovely new cookbook from the library--Purple Citrus and Perfume--mostly Turkish and other middle eastern dishes, mezzes, dips, and a few entrees. The book is so appetizing and interesting, even though there are lots of ingredients I would have a hard time gathering up.
After some thought, I settled on a menu including both a light lamb dish (pastries containing ground lamb, red pepper sauce, and pine nuts) and a vegetarian one (red lentil balls with pomegranite). However, I found these to be unpopular choices among my guests, so had to reshape the menu entirely. I am a little unsure about how the new choices will turn out, but I'm anxious to try them. I decided to do satsivi (Georgian chicken in walnut sauce), a Turkish rice pilaf with pistashios, and tomatoes with pomegranite and sumac, a middle eastern spice that tastes lemony when used in small amounts. I'll serve this with fresh lavash from the Persian market, a fresh baked flatbread that is so popular that the line stretches through the whole store sometimes. I plan to go early in the morning though, before the line grows so long.
I probably will just pick up some baklava or make a fruit crisp for dessert.

9-11, 10 year Anniversary

Last night in synagogue, someone read this testimony by a survivor of 9-11. It moved me so much, I want to make a poem from it, but meanwhile, I thought I'd let you read it. It's part of a longer peace, but this is the gist of it.
It starts here:
My name is Usman Farman. I graduated from Bentley with a Finance degree last May. I am 21 years old, turning 22 in October. I am Pakistani, and I am Muslim. Until September 10th 2001, I used to work at the World Trade Center in building #7. I had friends and acquaintances who [also worked in there].. Some made it out, and some are still buried under the rubble.
We were evacuated to the North side of building 7. Still only 1 block from the towers. The security people told us to go north and not to look back. 5 city blocks later I stopped and turned around to watch. With a thousand people staring, we saw in shock as the first tower collapsed….. The next thing I remember is that a dark cloud of glass and debris about 50 stories high came tumbling towards us. I turned around and ran as fast as possible and I fell down trying to get away.

I was on my back, facing this massive cloud that was approaching… everything was already dark. I normally wear a pendant around my neck, inscribed with an Arabic prayer for safety. . A Hasidic Jewish man came up to me and held the pendant in his hand, and looked at it. He read the Arabic out loud for a second. What he said next, I will never forget. With a deep Brooklyn accent he said "Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us, grab my hand, let’s get the hell out of here." He helped me stand up, and we ran for what seemed like forever without looking back. He was the last person I would ever have thought, who would help me. If it weren't for him, I probably would have been engulfed in shattered glass and debris.
(end)
I have heard many such testimonies of survivors and also those of family members of those who did not survive. The sense of unreality of the whole event, precisely the feeling I felt, and that I'd wager all of us felt, hearing about it or watching it the very first time, as it was happening that Tuesday morning, envelopes me afresh when I hear these stories.

Bright Spot

Something to look forward to! Yesterday I got the advance copy of the anthology on and for parents of disabled kids in which I published an essay, Easy to Love but Hard to Raise. I've had that title backwards all this time, and perhaps because of my glass half-empty psyche, still hear it better that way. But never mind that! I've been reading the whole book, essays and in-between commentary, and think it is fantastic! If I had a book like this one when I was bringing up my kid, it would have made all the difference in the world. What a blessing that it will be out there, spawning all sorts of support groups, conferences, perhaps a whole movement that will help all those who don't know what to do to help their kids. The only thing I don't see there so far, and I'm scarcely 25% through the book, having just gotten it late yesterday afternoon, after going to the post office and paying postage due, is stuff about what the law says schools and public institutions owe our kids, what we can fairly ask for. I'm going to tell my friend in Philadelphia, Linda, to write to the blog for the book on Facebook, and perhaps she can add that dimension to the discussion.
I shouldn't put so much hope into this, but I'm thinking that if this book hits it big, perhaps I can draw some attention to my writing and pick up some sort of online writing job or teaching or something or get my books picked up by a publisher somewhere. This is the kind of thing people will buy; I know, because I have bought many books on similar subjects, and at one point, I would have bought anything I thought could help us deal with the difficulties of raising a kid with neurological differences.
I told the editors I wanted to help market the book by contacting NPR and doing interviews, doing readings, chatting up Facebook, or whatever. The book comes out in November. I can't wait!

Tuesday

Today I woke up with red eyes, sweaty and hot. I had a terrible dream, and apparently didn't sleep all too well. But I jumped out of bed because I knew I had to be ready early to go on an outing with Liz and her friend Ron.
Ron used to work with Liz in the County Appraiser's office, and in fact still works there, though she has long ago retired from that job. He lives in Huntington Beach, north of us, and she often goes up there on little day trips with him. Today they let me tag along as they walked the trails of the estuary at Bolsa Chica. I used to take the bus up there years and years ago, before the trails were built, to look at the egrets and herons, among other creatures that inhabit that place.
Today we began to see interesting wildlife as soon as we started our walk, when a posse of stingrays appeared in the shallow water, congregating not far from shore. In the background, small silvery fish of an indeterminable kind flashed as they jumped from the surface occasionally, perhaps to distinguish themselves among the hundreds and thousands in the schools filling the channel. This made them attractive to the many shorebirds: plovers, curlews, terns, egrets, sandpipers, and herons, calling out and wading into the water looking for a meal. Every once in a while, a tern or egret would dive into the water and come out with a slippery sliver of fish flapping from its beak.
We walked and walked, as the day got continuously hotter, then decided to head to lunch at a Mediterranean grill called the Olive Pit. The place was clearly popular, as a line stretched toward the door. The menu offered attractive alternatives of mezzes like roasted vegetables, hummous, baba ganoush, and lesser known ones as well. Or one could craft a lunch out of a mixture of a protein, salad, or 2 mezzes, which was my choice.
FFrom the list of choices including things like fried calimari, seared ahi, chicken, beef, and lamb gyro (and more), I had the homemade lamb sausage, roasted mushrooms, and roasted artichokes. Aside from a tad too much salt (I don't generally salt my food much at home, preferring to use garlic, spices, and lemon instead), the meat was full of flavor, and the artichokes were amazingly large and tasty. I confess to being unsure what to do with artichokes at home, being daunted by the sheer labor of getting to the hearts in order to cook them. Of course, I eat canned and marinated artichoke hearts, but seldom buy a whole artichoke, though they are plentiful and often quite cheap here in either the large or baby sizes.
Afterwards, it seemed a shame to go straight home, so we headed for the freeway and Joe's Italian Ice, where one can get an authentic Italian water ice like those I grew up with in Philadelphia. Though the concrete magnified the heat so that the air felt as if we were in the desert rather than so close to the shoreline, the water ice froze our brains and made it hard to speak. Still, it was amazing and delicious, with chunks of cherries and the flavor of fresh watermelon in my mixture of those two flavors. I don't understand why water ice has not caught on more in this area, which seems to me perfect for it. Philadelphia steak sandwiches are readily available and authentic, but water ice is rare and even when one finds it, not usually made this well. The quality of ingredients shines through, and perhaps that is why this dessert is not more available throughout this area. People just don't want to put the time or money into making it right, as Joe's does. Too bad it is so far from home, and would take an age to get to on surface streets!

Storm

Today the wide sky is filled with grey clouds, stretched like insulation along its drafty edges. An occasional flash of lightning in the distance surprises me. It seldom rains here, at least this time of year. When it does, the feeling is unmistakable.
Of course, there is a fair amount of disappointment on the part of kids celebrating their last day or so of summer, families hoping to barbeque with friends, folks heading for the beach. But for me, who was staying home anyhow, it is a cozy fall sort of day, with breezes making fans unnecessary for the first time in months.
Don't get me wrong; it hasn't actually started here, the rain, except for a few early drops. And maybe it won't actually happen, at least till after sundown. Remember that line about Camelot, in the musical? It never rains till after sunset... ? Well that's true here.

Early morning

It is early Sunday morning, and everything is silent, except the crows, out there calling to each other by the pool. If I were more ambitious and a little less apprehensive about mountain lions, this would be a good time to go out walking in the hills. However, given that people have actually been eaten by the beasts not far from here, I think I'll wait till others are about before walking, even though then it will likely be too hot to think about it. Maybe later in the year!

Big Waves

Today, since I missed yoga class in the morning because of my interview with unemployment, I went to Laguna for a long walk with Robin. We really walked far, and spent some time marveling over the extraordinary surf. Lots of enormous waves, full of surfers and assorted junk, like huge hunks of kelp. It would probably not be a pleasant thing to be whacked by a chunk of that stuff while one was struggling to get up out of a skyscraper-size wave! On the way home, we saw a helicopter flying down low, close to the beach. Perhaps he had just rescued someone from one of those waves.
Following that walk, I went to yoga class, where my feet were tormented by asanas meant to test their mettle. I am sure mine are tin. I need to work them out more often. They cramped up all the way home. I hate when that happens while I am driving!

Finding What Was Lost

Since we moved into the new place, I have reveled in my wonderful pantry, featured in the picture where I stand in a doorway precisely my own size. I have a little angled room under the stairs where I store canned goods, potatoes, onions, sauces, rice, etc. And for the first time, I do not overbuy because I can find these things, laid out before me in relatively orderly ranks.
Upstairs, where I had closets built with shelves to hold my many shoes and clothes, accumulated over the years, things are rather different. I have never been very good at folding, and tend to cram things back in the cupboards after laundering in a way that wrinkles them and makes what is present under and behind them less than evident.
Today I took everything off the shelves and organized it into sensible categories. If I can only remember what these are when I wash things, I will be able to find what I have, and recall that I have more than three or four wearable pair of everyday pants or shirts. There were so many things I had forgotten about, that need only ironing to make them presentable. I don't need to buy anything; I just need to remember what I have! Revelation!

Labor Day Weekend

How odd it is that weekend or week day, holiday or quotidian workday, none of these distinctions matter right now. It is totally disorienting to someone like me who has worked year round for year after year! No wonder I feel a bit out of sorts. Simply breaking habits is hard.