Well, I've got about a gazillion things to do. There are goats to tattoo and clip before the fair, as well as other preparations in that arena, a chapter of a book that I got drafted into assisting into editing-the deadline is sometime soon, a very banal piece of cross-stitch that I owe as barter, and the list goes on (and on, and on, and on, like energizer batteries). Therefore, what am I doing? I've been painting. Yeah, been painting up a regular storm here. I actually like some of it, too. And I don't think I've felt suicidal even once in the last, what?, four or five days. And that, my friend, is progress! No, you don't need to call the funny farm for me. For one thing, I'm fine right now. For another, melancholy seems to be a normal state of mind at least part of the time, or maybe I've become accustomed to it. At any rate, I've lived until now with it, so.....

About the paintings- most of the recent work is fruit or botanical. There was a library book sale last weekend, and we bought up a _lot_ more books. More on that later, perhaps. While there, I checked out the art that is displayed there, as well as the library books in that vein. The art on the walls is for sale. Some of it sells for upwards of $150, which surprised me. I mean, this is rednecksville! To behonest, the work was of that genre. Which is to say, it tends to be trite and shallow, without much depth or thoguht into the subject. Some of the artists have their technique down better than I do. I only started oils this year, and being self taught, it's pretty much trial and error for me. Apparently these artists have a club, as the quilters have a quilt guild (which I'm still part of although I hardly ever quilt these days), and they display their art in the library and local businesses and sell it. There is no commision taken and there is a high turnover- most of the work gets sold! (This is truly incredible to me, having seen the work. Sorry, but it's the truth.) I'm going to have to look into this further.

Other, extraneous thoughts: I wonder how other people think. How do their minds work? It's become apparent to me that my mode of thought isn't at all standard. For example; a single thought or subject can (and often does) torment, niggle, and weigh heavily upon my mind for days, weeks, even months or years on end. People tell me to 'quit thinking about X'. Huh? Quit thinking? How do you do that? The only easy way for me to quit thinking about one thing is to adopt another, different thought, and the new thought has to be pretty captivating. Then, I'll think about that for a long, long time, wear it out, and move on to something else, or mull over one of the old subjects again. What do other people think about? Do they not concentrate on one or two subjects? Their minds simply flit from one thing to another, never delving deeply into any of it? Do they *think*? Or do they react to whatever external stimuli they encounter throughout the day and that's all? Wouldn't it be sort of annoying to surrender one's thoughts in such a way? I mean, I react too, but only if it seems more important than whatever is on my mind, and even as I'm reacting, my mind is likely to still be churning over some interesting subject while my body deals with the humdrum everyday stuff. Ahhh...introverted thinking. Absent minded professers are not at all absent from their minds. Absent from conventional reality, perhaps. But who gives a damn about conventions, anyway? Not me! ;-)

Music- Today I painted a peach while listening to this song. It's perfect, the song that is. The peach turned out well too; nectarines are OK but they can't even approach the passionate luciousness of a peach. I love that song, it expresses everything so perfectly- the wistful, breathlessness of it all. :sigh:
Where was I? Oh yeah; so that was what I listened to earlier. Right now it's this. I can certainly relate to _that_. Sometimes I think we've been led astray and ripped off by our culture. I mean, maybe love is a pipe dream that most of us will never realize for any appreciable length of time. Perhaps if people weren't brought up with stupid fairy tales and hopeless ideals, they'd be better prepared for happiness in the real world. It could be asserted that the problem has to do with so many children growing up in broken homes and longing to find healing and fulfillment in a mate; however the truth of it is that even at the beginning of the last century, it wasn't uncommon for one of the parents to die due to various reasons, and of the ones who did have two parents, who's to say their life was actually happier than the average single parent child today? The fact that these fairy tales have been around for so long tells me the idealized love isn't a new fad, yet I still maintain that our culture weights love too heavily with too many expectations that it can't even begin to fill. Companionship, for example: if you can't be close friends with someone before falling in love with them, why in the heck should it be assumed that hormones will result in a friendship? And there are all sorts of other considerations and criteria necessary if a long term bond is desired. OK, so maybe I'm cynical. Whatever. Unfortunately for myself, I do still believe in love (Hey, yet another Elton JOhn song). It's just that, to borrow a line from another of his songs: "Tell me how does it work? How do you make things fit? Spent all my life trying to get it right, I put it together and it falls apart..."

Current mood? How about a weather forecast: Severe storms culminating in hell and despair through Thursday and Friday. By early Saturday morning the storms had abated somewhat and the skies remained darkly overcast with frequent showers of anxiety throughout most of the day. Saturday evening showed us a few lightning strikes and thunder in the distance. Overnight, a northern front moved in and the temperature dropped resulting in cool, clear resolve throughout most of Sunday. Forecast for the next few weeks: the cold front is expected to remain for some days with a high probablity of ice storms. Preperation and precautions for this are advised. As the cold front and severe weather recedes, we expect to see partly cloudy skies turning to mostly sunny after several weeks. There is a possibility of more hellstorms around that time, but currently it is too soon to tell.

Finished the nectarine painting. It isn't perfect, but succumbing to the temptation of overworking a piece tends to ruin it completely. The essence of the idea is there, which is what counts (I guess). The other oil painting, the one with the tree, may have to wait a while longer. I want cerulean blue for it, and can't get the color locally. I could settle for lightening up the cobalt blue, but it wouldn't be the exact color I want, so i'll wait.

I've reconnected with several old friends/family members in the past week and a half. It makes me feel profoundly depressed and lonely; they have so much feeling and richness to their lives, and here I am like some sort of an emotional retard. I mean- they gush, they've missed me, one of them had been 'mourning' for me, and what do I feel? Very little. It's hard to know how to respond to that sort of thing, but it does make me feel guilty. I try to think of the people I do care about enough to really miss (more than momentarily), and I can count them on one hand or less. It's true that there's a depth there that could be missing in those who have many connections, but who am I to determine or compare that? Can one go through life like an android or the Tin Man? Sometimes I don't like myself very well. :-/

Full moon tonight, and meteorites, too. I'm getting tired of the banner ads here. They're boring. Let's see if I can change them: Renew rational thought process! Revolutionary breakthrough proves herbal formula causes impotence! Jungian type tests show that there aren't nearly enough NT's in the world, and altogether too many extraverts! Self help manual for over sexed INTP s! Ancient formula for love and aphrodiasiac capsules has been proven to be as ineffective as we all suspected in the first place! MBTI and IQ analysis indicates intelligence can be a contraindication to romance! Better than viagra! Meet sexy nerds now!!!

Let's see...did I miss anything? ROFL.... I get such a kick out of spam even as it annoys me. There must actually be people in the world who fall for it, or it wouldn't still be around.

Well, it's 1:21 AM and I'm still up and only moderately tired. The pony arrived today; he's quite small but very gentle. I don't think it'll be any trouble at all to train him. I cycled into town, got groceries, and after dinner and milking started on two oil paintings. One is of a tree/landscape, the other is a large nectarine. I used to think of nectarines as sort of androgynous, but I've revised my opinion of them. They're quite sensuous fruits that simply get overshadowed by their very female sister the peach. They've got a little more acidity and firmness to them, too. Maybe I could actually grow to prefer them to peaches. Perhaps.

Random thought for tonight- when people feel driven to fulfill societiy's expectations and demands, why do they do it? Do they feel obligated to do so out of duty? Who defines these epectations? Consensus. Why would anyone want to live that that and how can they bear to do it?? If they want to do XYZ that's fine, but simply to do it because everybody does XYZ and that's the way it's done? What do they have to look forward to or to strive towards? Why don't they ever question it? Are they afraid? Or merely complacent?

My dad always told me I had to be conventional. I couldn't do it and never actually tried...He used to say that wherever I went, it'd be the same, that people wouldn't accept me, that I'd have to jump through hoops and do things the normal way. Being stubborn, I had to try to prove him wrong. The truth of the matter is that I've got no tolerance for people who don't make the slightest attempt to think for themselves, and I care very little whether they approve of me or not! Except, he was right. in a way. It is lonely, and I don't fit in anywhere. His mistake was in thinking I could be anything else.

Yes. The reason they do it, the reason they conform, is that life is less kind for the outsider. They're bound together by a sort of permanent, pervasive, and lifelong peer pressure. Herd animals.

Something lighter for a change. ;-)

Coral Castle
Luna Parc
Forestiere Baldasere

Three inspiring dwellings; They're all neat but I tend to prefer Baldasere's underground gardens.

Somewhat less inspiring: In my old home town, Harvard, Illinois (former milk capital of the world), they're going to build the nation's largest indoor water park. It'll be six stories tall and include a vaariety of other diversions. The site where it will be was formerly a Motorola plant, which I didn't find all that inspiring, either. I remember the area for corn and soybean fields and Holstein cows, not tourist traps. :-/ It could be worse: the Motorola plant can be seen easily from my Grandma's back yard. The last time I was there, she insisted on driving me to it and all around it (why??). She was quite proud of it. Then, it almost got turned into a state prison facility and she was pretty upset about that. So she's thrilled about the water park. Maybe I'll go visit it the next time I'm out there. Since it's there, you know (or will be).

I've been looking for a picture on the computer, and somebody moved it. :snarl: I know it's here somewhere. It doesn't matter. I've got a practically photographic memory. All the same...irritating! A person can become accustomed to physical objects being moved (mostly by children), but you still expect things to stay where there are, here, at least I do.

Anyway, moving on to other subjects; on Monday we'll be getting a pony in exchange for boarding a pair of goats that I just sold a few months ago. It's only a year old, so it will need several years of time and work before it can be ridden. Right now it's no bigger than one of the goats. I've wanted a horse for some time, but if the kids were to ride it, it has to be tame and gentle. This way I'll be able to do that myself and there will be no bad habits to break. I actually wanted one that I could ride, but there's not really time for that now. Someday...there are a lot of things I'd like to do someday. If I don't start on it none of them will ever happen.

Some aquaintances with a whole herd of children are getting a divorce, and it's been really messy. She calls the cops on him, he denies charges, they go to court, it's a real disaster. I can understand that it's not always possible for two people to get along for their entire life together. What I don't get is why they have to end that time in such an angry, negative way. I mean, why don't they just sit down and say, 'this isn't working anymore, we've had some good times togther, let's part as friends' ? Particularly when there are children involved, why does there have to be such an excess of hatred? I suppose they're defensive. Divorce still carries a stigma and each party wants to blame it on the other person. Or, maybe they postpone the parting until they absolutely, positively cannot stand the sight of one another and are *really* angry and bitter. Waiting one is overwhelmed with irrational rage and emotion to make a life changing deecision seems very unwise, but that seems to be the way it's done more often than not. :-/

What else...we finally got an amplifier for the record player. It's laughable- everyone else is out getting the latest technology and here I am buying up old Peter, Paul and Mary albums. Having bought them, I needed a way to play them and two years later, I can. There are also some classical records including one of Bach. I put it on today- talk about a blast from the past. I recognized almost every piece, I'd heard them since birth and quite possibly before. My dad is a musician. My earliest memories of him are of his music, of him practicing the organ while he played in the church balcony. As the music played, I could hear the soft flapping of the pipes in the little room they occupied, smell their scent, the scent of music, feel the vibrations of sound through my body. It took it all for granted then. It was a part of my life and at times I grew very tired of it. I miss it now. When other people play the piano or organ, I just smile and nod. They're good, but not like dad. Other people's music is jumbled, emotional, the notes mess and slop against one another. When he played, it was like the sound of mathematics, every note clear, clean, precise. The notes were brilliant, they didn't just pile up against one's conciousness like a pile of debris. He played a lot of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, but I think more Bach than the others. The highest compliment I can pay a piano or organ player is that they sound like my dad, and it's funny because in his mind he's not good enough. I miss his music, and I miss him. Unfortunately we don't seem to get along well enough to spend very much time together. I'm too opinionated, too strong, too unconventional. Regardless, nobody can substitute for him.

And that's the way I am: within me there are compartments, and once a part of me is set aside for someone, nobody else can fill that place. Is everyone like that? Maybe I'm just more stubborn and adamant about it than most folks. Will have to think about this.

Life is better tonight (although somehow, everything is pretty much the same. It just doesn't bug me as much.) I did another watercolor, and this one turned out well. It wasn't the disembodied sort, for a change.

I sent in the entry forms for the fair, so it looks like I'll be taking about 16 goats for a four day vacation. Sort of...if you call camping out and showing dairy goats such. It'll be a *lot* of work. But, it'll be fun, I'm looking forward to it, as long as it goes better than the last show. That time, I was simply unable to do the amount of work necessary in order to give the girls a fair shot in the ring. Half of them were not clipped, and....there were a lot of things that went wrong. It was really embarrassing, and being a public performance made it worse. :shudder: I'll have to do better this time.

What else; I found two fairly amusing origami sites. This one is simply hilarious! If you're sensitive or prudish you should probably skip this. Honestly, I would never have guessed...lol! I like origami. It's cool. I've been meaning to make a mobile for my baby boy (Noah), with a variety of origami animals. I'll have to look around for some ideas. The ultra simple ones aren't any fun.

Current mood: groggy and tired, the detritus of dreams floating around in my dehydrated brain. Some are like jewels fallen from my grasp, others like faded shreds of old cloth or sinister nothings hiding behind a dark corner of my mind.

I've been watching a movie about Jackson Pollock (the movie is, appropriately enough, 'Pollock'), mainly because I wanted to better understand his work. In all truth, this is one artist whose work I never understood at all. In short, it looks like a mess. Actually, the impression I had was that the guy has chewed up a bunch of paint and then gotten sick and vomited all over the canvas. Why anyone would want to pay for it was clearly beyond my comprehension. Now that I'm halfway through the movie, it comes into focus. This guy was a mental and emotional _mess_. He was an alcoholic completely out of control, unsure of himself, insecure and clingy. He was disposed toward sudden outbursts of rage and inappropriate behavior. His work only expresses his inner turmoil and confusion. We all- artist or not- express our personality in everything we do (or don't do). I think of Piet Mondrain- a precise, tidy, and rather ascetic man; his works reflect his personality. Van Gogh- a tormented dreamer and romantic bordering on madness; his paintings reflect that.

I've been working off and on, not as much as I'd like because I require a certain amount of solitude and time for thought and quiet in order to work at all. This isn't easily attained in a house with five children. Much of what I do these days, and indeed, for the last ten years, seems tentative and rather forced. I used to be able to work without really caring what anyone else thought, used to be capable of whipping out fifteen or twenty drawings before I came up with one good one, and didn't give the failures a second thought. They were necessary and I recognized that. Now, I'm afraid. I don't want to waste the paper. I want every stroke, every mark, every line to be perfect, the first time. If it doesn't work out, and it doesn't, because it's too planned, too staid, I pick it apart and it torments me. Every once in a while I let go and produce something confident that's actually decent.

So- of the work that I do have; the latest is one of a single walnut leaf. It's pretty hideous. The colors- bright green against a rose pink background, are simply awful. I wanted chartreuse against fuchsia/magenta, but the green turned out too strong and I had great difficuly attaining even a faint approximation of magenta. If you knw how to get this shade in watercolors (or purple for that matter), please let me know! Before that, there was the oil painting of the skunk cabbage flower. I'm happy with that one, except that again, I wanted some purple in the background. Before that, there were at least three with a double theme- two cyclamens (twice), and two segments of an orange, two failed oils (again with a solitary image) and an oil pastel with a single comet against a black sky, inspired partly by this song. My watercolors are almost always done in a very controlled style in which the subject is broken down into segments of color. The segments do not touch and are seperated by margins, the white of the paper. It isn't a very spontaneous technique.

A single leaf, bloom, or peach, I hardly ever draw or paint a group of anything; in some way perhaps the single theme expresses isolation and aloneness. People often tell me that I must feel isolated because I rarely get out or see other people: this is a line of crap. Whether I'm with someone or not, I'm usually alone, and it's much more pleasant when I'm also physically alone. There have been a very few times when I've felt close/ in harmony with another person, and they are some of the happiest times of my life. There is always the temptation to prolong them, to try to make it a permanent state, but inevitably the moment passes and I'm alone once more.

The margins and spaces- in a way these echo the single theme, but there is the added element of detachment, of seperation. The pieces fit togther like a puzzle, forming a whole, yet each retains it's own shape and individuality. The thought of being swallowed up into another's identity, of boundaries being erased, gives me a panicked, claustophobic feeling. So perhaps what my art expresses is this: there can be beauty in detachment and solitude.

Today I cycled in to town, washed some clothes at the laundromat, and brought home a canary melon for dessert. I finished reading Lucifer's Hammer. Several trips to the thrift store have yielded a new supply of books, and I am now working through a course in Latin. I finally found a source of decent music in this town- the pawn shop! Used CD's are just $3 apiece, and at that price you can afford to experiment a little. They have a _lot_ of CD's; it says something for the economic state of the area that people here are desperate enough to pawn off all their music. Another book- The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. It's about Paul Erdos, a great mathemetician. Apparently he lived for nothing else but mathematics; was celibate his entire life, cared little about food or clothing, and was quite an eccentric.

I guess most people would pity him, but to have that sort of a driving purpose, to be consumed with passion for one thing and devote one's life to it, to be enamoured with something he could have, that nothing could take from him, and to be satiated with it...I sort of envy him. If only life were that simple for the rest of us.

I've been cycling into town the last few days. Yesterday and today I hit the thrift store and loaded up on books. A partial list: a lot of Discover magazines, an Algebra book that looks better than the one I've been trying to work with, Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook (an old one), one about names (can't say why but names fascinate me), More Games for the Super-Intelligent, an Internet book that seems geared pretty exclusively towards IE and the like, one about MBTI types and careers, an art book of photos by Edward Steichen (one of Abert Steiglitz's proteges), and a set of work/text books on learning Latin. I'm pretty pleased with this last find; I've wanted to learn Latin for years. The Games book is what it sounds like, math, logic, and word puzzles compiled with the help of Mensa. Speaking of which, somebody mentioned an online Mensa IQ test, which I didn't think existed, so I went and hunted around for it. I was right, they have a workout but they are explicit about it *not* being an IQ test. I ended up taking two other so-called IQ tests instead. The one on Emode was entertaining enough, but dropped my IQ by several points from what it had been in grade school. Of course that wouldn't do, so I took it again later when all the kids weren't making noise and distractions, got the same exact score. I then took another, which claimed to be scientific; this one boosted me by almost 20 points. So much for accuracy....it's a little scary when you consider that life changing decisions are sometimes made for small children on the basis of an IQ test score.

Now I feel bad: the gal I was fed up with just e mailed that she is going to pay for the does. I hate the way that money issues can take control of a person's life. The truth of the matter is that I'd be perfectly happy to *give* the goats away (assuming they went to good holes and were duly appreciated), if it weren't for the fact that the ones I keep incur expenses in vet bills, feed, medication, and replacement stock- also the yearly LN2 bill, which is coming right up.

Every so often I think that I should cut my losses and sell them all. Yeah, they're my friends, just about the only friends I have, and the only pets, at that. But they cost a lot to feed and I can't afford to do them justice so they can really hold their own in the showring. There are just too damned many of them. See, and that is the thing; when I'm really passionate about something, it isn't enough to have a token whatever and settle for that. One little scrub goat isn't enough, it has to be a herd of long, elegant, living sculptures with top of the line genetics. If I want concord grapes, one sprig won't do; a whole box might- two boxes is better! If I fall for a guy, I don't just like him, I totally lose my head and go completely out of my mind over it. I guess that the limited number of things that interest me is compensated for in intensity.

The thing is, if I sell the goats, it won't do any good. I'd just get a horse (or two, or...) or birds, or some non animal interest, and go ape over that.

Ooooh, I am ticked. Ticked, ticked, ticked! There are three people who've bought goats from me and owe me money. One of them will never pay me. Another might....maybe. The third one is what's got me seething. I went out of my way, bent over backwards to sell her a doe, and it was a last minute thing so she coudln't pay me before I sent it it her. I even threw in a free doeling, and the prices were _cut-rate_ let me tell you! She sent some of the money, came up with excuses, said she'd send it by X date, didn't, sent a little more later, and still owes me about $100, I think. Here is what burns me- she's already sold both the does, as well as the kid from one of them (she was pregnant), and has been buying pricey stock from across the country. I don't know who's been buying the does that came form me, but I feel sorry for them, because they've been scammed. Those goats will never have paperwork until I've been paid off, and it's a shame because they were nice animals.

Now I've been browsing a couple of benefit auctions hosted by goatbreeders for various good causes, and guess who's been bidding helter skelter? Yeah, she has! Grrrrr!!

But mostly, I'm mad at myself for letting three different people get away with this sort of thing. I hate confrontations, and I hate hitting people up for money. I hate dealing with money, period, to be honest. I wish I could just breed goats, have people call me up and say "I want that one", pay me in full and go home happy. Or, if I could just keep goats and not have to worry about the money end of it at all.

In the garden- the lavender is in bloom, as I think I mentioned before. I counted six different types of bees pollinating it: honeybees, bumblebees, huge elongated bumble-type bees, small fuzzy golden bees, and two sorts of small black bees. It's fun to watch them; they treat each sort of flower differently; but they seem to prefer the lavender. I'll have to plant more of it, it doesn't need much water and has been one of the more rewarding plants we've put in so far.

Lately, I often think that I don't know what to believe in anymore. Is there such a thing as truth? What is it, where is it? Are there any answers at all, or do we simply deceive ourselves into believing what we feel most comfortable and secure with? What irks me is that when I ask questions like this, I don't ever get any straight answers. More often than not, I get a bunch of rotten, worn out banalities and platitudes, or a heartfelt emotional reassurance, which leaves me with the uneasy sense that the person in question is actually attempting to reassure themselves rather than me.

I think I still believe in the golden rule; it seems like the only sustainable way to behave, since everything else would eventually backfire in one way or another. Perhaps sustainability is the measure? I find that I am often plagued by a feeling that I should be doing something, that I've been idle. But almost everything I consider, when I draw it to its conclusion, seem pointless. When I was a kid, I used to draw mazes, really involved, elaborate mazes. And that is the way it seems- like drawing into one dead end after another, finding a lead that looks workable, and it's not.

I can kind of see where orgnized religion comes in handy; it takes all the guesswork out of it. if you have a question, just look it up in the bible. Can't find it, then ask your pastor. So simple! I can almost envy them.

Current mood- Really tired. I'm a night person, staying up until 1-2 AM. My baby is very much the early bird. It's not a good combination. He wakes up and cries, not because he's hungry, or wet, or whatever; no, he cries because he's bored! When I sit up and look at him, he smiles. Try to go back to sleep again and the crying resumes. :groan:

My latest interest has been codes. I've got one that I think has the potential to be nearly unbreakable with a little more work. It's handwritten though, and I can't figure out a way to use it on the computer. The same characteristics that would make it difficult to decipher also complicate using it with a keyboard, even if I substituted conventional letters and numbers for the symbols. It's kind of funny that I spend so much time on it- I've been working with it for years- because when I first started I wanted to share it with someone and nobody else had much interest in it. And now, it's not as though anyone is threatening to crack it; it's simply fun to work with and I want to make it stronger just in case. Heh.

In the garden- hardy gladioli and daylilies are blooming and the raspberries are starting to ripen.

I shouldn't be up at this hour, but I am. Of what use are the shoulds and shouldn'ts of life when they don't mesh with reality? So- I found two more verses to 'You are my sunshine'. The goats will be happy for a little relief from the old version, methinks. While I was perusing the search results, I also ran across the chorus from an old Statler Brother's song. I used to like it when I was into country music as a teen.

Do you know, you are my sunshine
Do you know what your smile did to me
Do you know you are my sunshine
And it looks like you're always going to be.

Nice song. I went in to Newport today and spent entirely too much time trying to locate some decent music. Ben Franklin's didn't have what I wanted, they referred me to Radio Shack (which seemed dubious, and it was- NO music at all), then I found a better selection at the pawn shop, including 2 CD's that looked good- the actual CD's were different from the cases. Arrrgh! Culturally speaking, this place is pretty pathetic. The speakers aren't hooked up to the computer or there'd be a little more variety. As it is, I like the library CD of Art Garfunkle depresses me almost every time I hear it, even though it's hauntingly beautiful and I can relate to it, and the Elton John tape is great but how many times can you listen to one tape before you get sick of it??

Speaking of Elton JOhn, one of his songs has been running through my head. Here is a snippet or two of it; the lyrics for the whole song can be viewed here

Love hurts so much
Love leaves a scar
'I don't love you' is like a stake
Being driven through your heart
:snip:
I have no feelings, I have no heart
Love always cuts out the warm and tender part

I guess that subconciously, I sort of believed this. While butchering the goat the other day, I came to the part where you remove the viscera. As far as I'm concerned, organ meat is either dog food or compost material. DH doesn't agree. So as the mass of stomachs, intestines, etc were about to fall into the bucket, he quickly reached in and grabbed the liver. Yuck! Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief and about to can the rest of it, he goes in for the heart, but it wouldn't tear free; I had to hold it while he cut it loose. I was surprised by the way it felt. It was- so soft, so tender and vulnerable, sort of squishy. I felt a sort of sympathy for the heart; somehow it seemed to deserve more respect than the brutal way it was being rippped out of the chest cavity. The texture and softness of that heart haunted me for the next few days, because for some irrational reason, I hadn't expected it to be soft. I thought it'd be, well you know- firmer, harder, sort of like a leathery football. That's how I've always thought of my own heart, as having a sort of shell or crust around it. After all, when emotional crap comes up, it does feel like stabbing/breaking. But contrary to the song, the sensation and actual state of the organ apparently don't have much correlation. Ack, I'm finally getting tired and not making a whole lot of sense, I fear.

Current mood: wired and frustrated. Which is sort of surprising actually, considering that I didn't get much sleep last night and it's past midnight now. Current music: none (kids sleeping) except for the Beatles song rolling around in my head- '...it's driving me mad, it's driving me mad...'

In the garden: the lavender is in full bloom, very nice and smells wonderful. A few of the lilies survived the gophers and will be blooming soon. The hay has been cut and baled.

The house is currently undergoing a lot of renovation and one of the next steps will be installing a floor. With that in mind, I've been looking through three sets of floor tile samples; there are about 40-50 in each set. There are a lot of similarities between the sets, and here is the amazing thing: none of the sets have pure, solid colors without some sort of textured pattern (the surface is smooth). I mean there isn't even a plain white, only white with flecks of blue and pink and grey or whatever. Perhaps they carry these but they are not in the sets. It's a little odd. So anyway, I am trying to come up with a color and or design for the floor. So far I am debating- midnight blue w/ pale yellow, medium light blue with a slightly stronger yellow, or maybe just beige (how boring, and I've always despised people who choose the ultra safe route, too).

LOL...Just deleted a spam email. It was titled, 'binoculars that take digital pictures!' And what would we use those for? To view the parties who've taken herbal pills to enlarge their breast or penis size? Oh dear...;-) You know I just don't get why there is the constant assumption that bigger is better. After all, there *are* practical limits.

Can't draw a straight line

Drawing the line is so hard...
Where is the line?
What is the line?
Dammit, where is that line?!
I can't see any lines
anymore.
Only greyness all around
Like a fog smothering me.


I hate goodbyes

To say goodbye
is to feel the door
swing closed
and to hear the click-
finality
Throw the key away
and then weep
in the black darkness.
Ever alone.

Some interesting sites A sidenote- if you're easily offended, don't look at these. I don't necessarily agree with them all.

Anarchist's wedding guide

About hermaphrodites

40 mistakes men make.... Uhhh, this is one of the sites I don't agree with 100%. But still, some of it seems so obvious that I can't believe it warrants being put on a list!

This article makes an interesting argument to the effect that nearly everyone is gay.

Another article, slightly different theme, same basic subject.

Then there is this, which I can only conclude is satire or a parody of the prudish. If it's not, well, I feel sorry for them!

By now you're probably wondering why I looked at and saved links for these sites. It's simple. My husband likes to leave windows and articles open on whatever browser I'm using. When I log on to the computer in the morning, I'm confronted with a page he thinks warrrants my attention. For a long time there were pro Palestinian and anti Israel sites. Then it was feminism, and the evils of it. I haven't listed or saved all those. Actually, the ones here are a mere sampling. If they amuse me, I save them. I have an idea that not all of them were posted with that intent!

And here, to top it all off; the sort of wife I will never, ever, be.
The Good Wife