In case you are doing it this year, please to friend me: http://www.nanowrimo.org//eng/user/174773

Got all the paperwork for my new contract. Damn, I'm excited. I can't even believe it's gonna happen!

I like showing them the clock at the exact time it's obvious that our neighbors are drunk. It's usually around 2pm or so. Something about it makes them laugh.

Holden Caulfield!


No, just kidding.

This goes out to Sue:

I can't believe how much I love "The Hazards of Love" by The Decemberists. I liked it when I first heard it, but it's grown and grown on me. I think it is so good that it's hard to even call it an album. It's a story, it's an opera, it's a novella, it's something other. It's a cycle of songs, to be sure, but it feels so beyond an album for me.

I found myself distracted in class today, thinking about the songs, thinking about the stories.

I used to be a musician, and I always had this idea that it would be cool to do a performance where the songs were part of a whole, where you go from one song to the other in a long, tiring, sweaty performance. A real and true performance and not just a concert. This lame little vision of mine has been realized in this album. You can hear them play this whole album on NPR. They performed it at Stubb's, probably my favorite place to hear music I've ever been to. It's worth your time to hear it, but you should print out the lyrics (make sure you get the lyrics that tell which character is singing, not just a transcript of the lyrics like on some sites). Make sure your kids are in bed and that you will not be bothered for a good hour or more. They gave it their all, the least you can do as a listener is to give it yours.

Anyway. I'm impressed and I'm jealous. I miss playing music, but I also feel like it would be pathetic for me to ever try again. An imitator, I. A Salieri. I'm blessed with the ability to be profoundly moved by music, but I never did move anyone myself. What a curse. This album inspires me to write, as well, to try and do something moving.

Maybe I'll do guitar lessons. Or banjo lessons. I've done a crap job of teaching myself either instrument.

I have lived in at least 24 different houses and apartments. I have lived in 9 cities. It depends on what you call "living" somewhere and what you call "staying" somewhere because you have nowhere else to live.

It's hard to peg a favorite, since they are all so wrapped up with that particular part of my life. There were times I loved Fresno, but most of those times were when I wasn't living there. San Diego was great, but I was in college and totally free from so much responsibility. Monterey was beautiful and it was so great to live with Sue there, but we weren't making a lot of money and got ourselves into debt that still haunts us terribly every day. Waco was culturally boring, but a beautiful place and an exciting time of life (thinking specifically of the second time I lived in Waco). Austin was the best city, but again, there was so much trouble in our lives.

I can say a least favorite: the apartment my family lived in in Atwater, California when I was little. The place was terribly small for us and my dad wasn't working. We had almost no furniture. I don't think I have any really pleasant memories from there.

I tricked Daphne. She thought it was funny.

I can't believe i was just asked this. I don't even know if I have the time and energy. So, the short version.

I was driving to Texas from California with y family when I was 18. It was early morning and we were just entering New Mexico. My dad had driven all night and it was my turn. We were in the left of two lanes, going about 86 mph. In front of me was a red car and a semi. The semi pulled to the right lane very quickly and slammed on its brakes. Coming straight at us, in our lane, was another little red car.

The two cars in front of me hit head-on. When they hit, there was a flash of light and the two cars had all 8 wheels between them off the ground. We were going very fast and I could tell that there was no way to slow down. So I sped up. My idea was to hit the cars as hard as I could and kind of force them out of the way.

the cars, stuck together, rotated in the air, looking something like a flying saucer. The spun about 90-degrees and then started to bounce apart. As the bounced, it was like seeing the Red Sea part. I couldn't believe my eyes--we were just going to hit the very front of them. But, as we got closer, the two cars were still in the air and they kept parting. My dad yelled, "Drive straight through it!"

We got to a cloud of smoke and debris. I gritted my teeth and tried not to imagine the steering wheel coming through my head. We could see nothing for a moment and only hear the sound of the debris hitting our car. I was waiting for that big hit, that big sound. But then the cloud was gone and I could see that we had cleared the cars by mere inches on either side. I swear right now, inches.

I stopped the car and my dad and I left my sisters and my mom in the car and went back to see if we could help. In one car were two older people from New York. The man, who was driving, had ribs sticking out of his chest and I don't know if I ever saw him awake or not. The lady was covered in blood, sometimes awake, sometimes not.

In the other car were two Indian guys, about 20 or so. They had clearly been drinking. The driver was in and out, and looked like a mess. The passenger was literally cut in half by the engine that had come in through the dash. He was cooking on it. He was awake at times. It was two hours before the ambulance showed up, and we left at that time. I'm pretty sure that no one lived. I couldn't tell if anyone was alive when we left or not. It turns out there's a real shade of gray in there. I never knew.

We lived. We were fine.

Why can't some people just accept that my name is Sol? I get this all the effing time.

Some week it's been.

I think it's so silly when people think the world will end. Eventually there will be a mass extinction senario, yes, and it will be from a meteorite. That's how things work. All of those other things would never be able to touch the entire population. And a good deal of mass extinction meteors won't end everyone. But after a while, the sun will lose it's energy, which will make it expand into a red giant, which will absorb the earth as it stretches out to near the asteroid belt. Then it will collapse onto itself and become a black hole, which won't matter because we won't be here anyway.

But what do we mean by "the world?" Do we mean humans? Because BFD. We haven't been here that long, probably have a while to go, but we're not the most special things in the world. At least when people thought that everything revolved around the Earth, they were being honest. Now we say that we're not the center of things, but we think we are the center of importance. We think that the world does not exist without us--as if it is a biproduct of our condition and not the other way around.

Absurd.

Last night Luna had a bad dream. She came into our room crying. She told it to me like this:

"There was a baby like Daphne but she had black hair and little pigtails and I did not know her name. And I had to make her be safe in my bed and she was next to me on my pillow and I was making her safe. Then someone put something on her eyes so that she could not see and she was crying and then they dinged her head and she was all gone!"

The poor thing has talked about this baby all morning and had me draw a picture of her. Then she put the (very rudimentary) picture up on the ice box where she could "make sure the baby was safe for all day."

Here are the lyrics to the song that Solstice was singing, roughly to the tune of "Hazards of Love." (Let it be known that when the girls talk about us "having sisters" they mean having daughters who are sisters):

Mommy was little, and she didn't have any sisters
but she had a horse and she got to pick out
all the horses that she would want to ride

Then she met a boy and his name was Sol!
And Sol said "Do you want to be my wife?"
And Mommy said, "Yes, do you want to be my husband?"

They got married and at their wedding
They had FUUUUUUUUUUUUN!

And then Solstice said, "I want to come out first"
and she came out of Mommy's Tummy
and then Luna came out and Daphne Blue

And mommy had sisters and was so Happy!

As part of turn off your tv week, we will be cutting down computer usage to only the essentials. I will be checking email once a night, after the girls are in bed. Be not offended that I don't comment this week. Please hold any dramatic events in your lives until after April 26th. Thank you.

Stolen from Lupabitch:

65 Questions You've Probably Never Been Asked Meme

( read )

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Crazy Horse. That's what I would like to name a son.

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