the good, the bad, and the not-so-ugly

So there was the great post, all written in my head, about how today ran the gamut from bottom-of-the-barrel to woo-and-hoo! but I just finished figuring out how to post pictures over at wordpress for the CLAW blog and I am wore out, y'all. So, haha! I'll give you a list and you can sort things into the good, the bad, and the SOOOOO-not-ugly your own selves.

1. had very bad cold yesterday, as in very bad, causing me to miss brunch with some Crazytown extendo-family types and a memorial service that I really wanted to attend. Said very bad cold still present this am, but still I have to go to work because that is The Way It Is.
   
2. scramble to find tylenol at the only store open between my house and school, because that is the only pain killer I can take in the ttw, and a pain killer will keep me from killing the children at school, where I should not be because of above-mentioned very bad cold but too bad because that is The Way It Is.
   
3. cho-girl subs in my class and as a bonus to her greatness, brings me tylenol, because above-mentioned store only had the sinus kind or the allergy kind and those kinds will probably make my Baby the Possible have 3 heads and so I did not buy them, but drove to school near tears instead (crying in the privacy of one's truck - or one's dad's truck - is far different from crying in front of Teh Public, plus, I said "near tears" not "in tears" see? I was sick! Cut me some slack.).
   
4. half the staff of my school is out today - ok, not half, but 4 out of 14. No lie. But I get to teach with above-mentioned cho-girl, who is occasionally sympathetic but mostly just large and in charge of the children, which is just what the non-existent doctor ordered (things starting to look up here). Too much sympathy makes me woozy.
   
5. manage to not kill any children at school, nor do I give them my very bad cold, because they must all be immune at this point, having already given it to me. Thanks, children.
6. it rains. All day. We do not go outside, which means that I don't have to wake up my nappers. More sleep = yay.
7. Sandy, Sophie's mama, is on the radio when I get in the truck after school (this is where things really begin to look up) and to sweeten the deal, Sophie is not too surly! That's 3 days in a row! And is worth both of those exclamation points and this bonus one!
8. my roommate makes enchiladas for dinner. Enchiladas which will also be my lunch tomorrow. It is nice to be hungry again.
9. (the best for last) I got these in the mail today:

Thanks Mrs. B. Art saves lives, y'all.

lord.

Sophie, my pretend child, has gotten a cell phone. It's "sooo cool!" Heaven help us.

friday it is

So my full snow day did not materialize today, but it was a good day none the less. We started late and there were only 6 children and, although the post-nap period sucked, I did get a new hat from one of my kids, which he was very, very excited about. Pictures and lengthy prose about my lost hats to come.

Anyway - how about a list? You know you want it.
Teh Nice, in no particular order:

• new hat, see above
• at least half an hour in the card aisle at CVS with Sophie, buying cards for her mama, who does not want gifts for her birthday this year. The child's sense of humor is coming along nicely, thank you.
  
• guess who I just had drinks with? The currently most famous blogger near Starr Hill and my very, very dear old friend. Yes, you wish you'd been there. Yes, there was Maker's Mark.
  
• roasted chicken. Fuck me. I get chickens from my neighbor, who runs a restaurant and gets his meat from Polyface. The meat was falling off the bone, despite the over cooking and lack of brining. I rinsed it, salted and peppered it, stuck half an onion in it, stuck it in the oven and called it done. Amazing. All local all the time, y'all. Come over for chicken pot pie on Sunday.
  
• good news, or, rather, no news, about my lower GI challenged cat. All her blood work came back normal - no thyroid, kidney or liver issues. Whew. Now I get to dose her with anti-diarrheals and home made yogurt.
• sadly short but delightful phone chat with Hard Girl
• going to bed with a good but kind of scary book
• possible coffee with cho-girl tomorrow
  

withdrawl and ratios

I've got a small bone to pick with Apple. Since I upgraded to the new OS, I can't seem to use my friends' secure wireless networks. Even after they give me the password. It's happened here in Seattle and, looking back, I wonder if that was what was going on in Boston. Anyway, I am stealing my friend's computer while she naps. With the baby and her husband. I am jonesing for my machine - I really, really miss the two-finger scroll. Not an Euphemism. I swear.

I've been IM-ing with Sophie, which is always entertaining, as it gives me a different, distanced sense of her. Not seeing her in front of me somehow lets me see her in a new light - she seems older, funnier. Minus the tweener-speak crap - "u" for "you" and that sort of shit. But really, y'all, the kid's a riot:

Sophie: i wrapped ur present 2day!!!

me: you mean, my pony?!

Sophie: uh yeah... (cough cough)

i needed sooo much wrapping papr to wrap it!!!

me: aw - i think i'll name it.....ummmm.....

paco!

paco the pony

is he cute?

say yes!

Sophie: hahaha

yeah totally....

me: thank god - i would give him back if he weren't cute

Sophie: paco the pony... real smart...

I'm always telling her I want a pony when she asks me what I want for my birthday or Christmas. I miss her a bunch. We always do run-of-the-mill holiday things once school ends, like walk downtown to look at the gingerbread houses and bake cookies and go to movies and lay around and read. But I'm not there. Oh, well - after I get home I'll get my fix.

In other, new baby news, things are good - we took Small Fruit Baby to the doctor today and she's gained 8 ounces since birth on Monday. Kid's a rock star. The birth was crazy intense, but things are as smooth as they can be now. Her daddy needs to write down her birthstory, because, god damn, the man can write. Other than the doctor outing, we're doing a lot of nothing - laying around eating, cooking and tidying (2 of my faves!), passing the baby, trying to convince her that day is day and night is night. I am more and more convinced that a ratio of 3:1 is perfect for newborns.

Oh! And? I drove! In a strange city! And did not get lost or scared!

brava

So I was late to Sophie's orchestra concert. Luckily, the 5th graders played first and then a bunch of them left, with their families in tow, so I scooted down the aisle and sat down with Sophie's mama and stepdad and big (as in my age big) brother. Her dad and stepmom were there, too. The kid's got a village, man. It's particularly entertaining when we all show up for back-to-school night. Anyway.

Did I mention she's first chair violin? Hmmmm, why, yes, I did! Did you know that means she was the concertmaster? Do you know what the concertmaster does? She walks in after the rest of the orchestra is seated and they all stamp their feet (and we, the ever-adoring audience, clap) and she bows, to us, the ever-adoring audience, and then turns and plays her A string (I could be making this part up, as I have no idea what the hell goes on with a violin) and then the rest of the orchestra plays their A string, or whatever, and then she sits down and the concert starts. At least, that's what a concertmaster does at her school. The bow was quick and to the point, but, oh the poise once she turned around to give that first note to the orchestra. Amazing. And she was lovely. So, so beautiful with her hair pulled back just at the top and her skirt "with a chain," as she puts it and tiny black flats. Cute, yes, because she still little enough that doing something as adult as playing in an orchestra is cute, but also beautiful, like young girls are as you see them come into themselves.

truth and lies

I won't lie to you. The body of this post is shamelessly cut and pasted from an email that is now a year old. It's still all true, though, except that now she is twelve. Lord.

Tomorrow, Sophie will be eleven.

Old, I say. Today, she got her haircut and asked for layers in the
front and though she had to sit in the kids' chair at Jodie's to get
the haircut, she now looks old. Adolescence is looming, I tell you.
I'd cry if I were the crying type. She pulled a curl from the
sweepings on the floor and gave it to me, because she knows I love
the perfect curl that grows from the left side of the nape of her neck.

When she was little, I could carry her from my old house to the bank
on High street. She was always tired after school and she'd fall
asleep on my shoulder and I'd balance her on the ledge at the bank to
sign checks while she slept, open mouthed, on my shoulder. The folks
at the bank always said something about how cute she was. In her
brown and fringy leather cowgirl vest and skirt that nearly fell off
because she was so skinny.

When I first started keeping her, we used to drive back to her house
in Belmont and get stuck on the bridge over the tracks at 5, as the
sun went down in the fall, and I'd tell her to look at the sky
because the clouds were so pretty and because she was a captive
audience to my awed ramblings. Sometimes she interrupts herself now
to point out the sky to me.

She mows the grass for me. For real. She is good at it now. She
always volunteers when I say there is yard work to be done and she
once mentioned casually that she liked mowing the patches of clover
the best because she liked to watch the clover leaves pop around as
she ran the mower over them.

She had me read a story she's writing for school today and said she
wanted me to edit it, not just read it. And it was remarkably free
of spelling mistakes and was funny. Truly funny.

She got a poor grade in social studies last term and she has pulled
it up and is very quietly proud. (I am loudly proud.)

She says, "I knew that," in a very sassy fashion when she is caught
unawares. Mostly, I hate this, but it is also a little endearing,

She holds the door for me when we go places.

She and H***** have the exact same color hair and Sophie is so, so
good with her.

She yells, "honk," as loud as she can when we pass the peace
demonstrators with their honk for peace signs.

She has begun to have dreams about celebrities but she still believes
in Santa.

She had her first orchestra concert yesterday, and she looked
slightly bored. And very 80's with her slouchy boots.

She is planing on buying her birthday party favors with her own
money, prompted by no one.

She washed the car windows in the freezing cold for me today when I
got gas on Harris st.

She still thinks she can teach me to ride a bike.

Tomorrow, she will be eleven.

What? You wanted to know about my RE appointment? Haha. Maybe another day. It was good.

warm

Yesterday, at An Event, I was reminded by a friend about walking to work. Well, how it really went was she asked, in the context of a conversation about endophins, how often I was walking, and I, somewhat shamefaced, had to admit to not very often recently. Oh, I had all the excuses - it's dark when I get up, it's hard to deal with picking up Sophie without the car, catching the bus home is too tightly scheduled and I'm too tired to walk all the way after school, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway.

I got my ass out of bed when my alarm went for for Teh Daily Temping (97.2ºF again? WTF?) instead of snoozing 4 or 5 times and was fed and out the door by 7:20. Woo and Hoo? Yep. I had Little Star on my ipod and the sky was clear. The sun was up, but things were still just pink and the park was empty as I cut through to cross over by the courthouse. All the early commuters in their mini-vans with dozing children and the construction workers rushing late in their pickups were not near as happy as I was on the sidewalk. It was Teh Cold though. Or rather, it would have been, except while at the above Event, another friend had gifted me with the warmest ever Pseudo Gloves. They are about as long as my arm, and have holes for my thumbs, and are kind of like extra sleeves. So it was cold, but I was not. Not cold in the least, a little over heated by the time I got to school, in fact.

So, yes, Woo and Hoo! I think I'll walk again tomorrow, since Sophie has crap at her school until late. Did I mention she's first chair violin? Well, she is.

all the kids are doing it

Just a minute ago, Sophie, my pretend child, walked out the door. By herself, heading home. Now, I'm sure some of you are saying, "Hell, the girl's almost 12 - why is this blog-worthy?" (And I am quite sure some of you are also asking "why is this blog worthy?" And I say, "worthy of what?") But she's not ever walked quite that far alone (and really, she's not going all the way home, her mama is meeting her part way). It's not really so far - 5 long blocks - but the train tracks run diagonally between our neighborhoods and there's a construction site for a big, stupidly overpriced set of condos she has to walk around. The child has been blessed (I'm sure it feels like cursed to her sometimes) with a bounty of adults to parent her. Even though her mama works full time, she's never really had to do much by the way of spending time without an adult she trusts within shouting distance. There's her mom, and her step dad (who would do pretty much anything she wanted) and her dad and her step mom and me. So there's a lot of us. And she gets scared of things pretty easily. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit I secretly followed her part way. Not far! Really! I just walked around the corner, so I could see her when she got to the top of the hill where the construction is. She looked so tiny from that far away, with her giant backpack and her fiddle in one hand. Apparently, she made. I just called to be sure. Quit laughing.

In other news, I finally got it together to remember not only to take my camera to school, but to *use* it.






Thanks for the buckle frame, cho-girl.

she's the one

Who is the best and the brightest? The small but sometimes surly light of my life? Yes, the answer is Sophie, my pretend child.

She found out today that she and one of her best friends (a very, very nice girl who is welcome at my house anytime, unlike some other friends) are sharing first chair for violin. Which means she is the best (or rather one of the two best) in the school, which is made up of all the 5th and 6th graders in the whole city. Did you hear me say "whole city"?

"Are you so proud of me?" as one of my children at school asked today when she showed me her sweater she'd buttoned all by herself.

Yes.

Yes, I am so, so proud. So much so I could nearly burst. But not quite so proud as Sophie herself seems, which is as it should be.

Teh Weekend

It was Teh Busy.

Friday, I went to the theater and saw a play, that was really pretty good. Mamet, I love him. I do. Anyway, since I have buried my self at home since starting ttc, I have just not been at the theater, and, as things do, it has changed. Not a lot, but also not a little. I used to be there all the fucking time, but then my job changed and I started ordering sperm.... you know how it goes. So it was good to be there and to see folks and get a little visit with my friend JG. I'd not told him I've been chasing after a baby lo these many years, but I mentioned it (while we waited for a looooonnng train to pass, so we could walk to his car) and that was good. I've tried to be careful of myself , with whom I tell, but there was no good reason why JG didn't know - we're tight, when we see each other, that is - I just don't see him so much, what with the buried at home thing, and it never came up.

I took Sophie, my pretend child (MPC? - I love the acronyms) to a weekend sleep-away camp on Saturday. Over by the mountains. We drove south on the Parkway. And jesus christ. It was so pretty. Like to make you weep pretty. And I'll be damned if the company in the car wasn't pretty, too! After a week of mostly moody tweener angst, we had a delightful and fabulous drive. She did Mad-Libs and and read them aloud to me; she gleefully told me to guess what music she picked when I handed her the i-pod (The Be Good Tanyas, which bring up their own host of bittersweet memories - wow, could that have been a cheeseier phrase?); we talked and talked and interrupted each other to point out especially beautiful views or trees just turning; she spotted a red-tailed hawk that I had already dismissed as a turkey vulture; we saw tiny chipmunks scurry across the road and spent a good half mile laughing about how cute they were; she was put in charge of directions after we got onto rt. 56 and handled it masterfully. Whew. Maybe we'll make it through the storm of hormones and the culture clash after all. So long as I plan long drives through the mountains every couple weeks or so.

And then I hosted a party for dear, dear, SAR, who will, very briefly be only one year younger than me. It was a nice low key sort of thing. Although it did get raucous enough for my porch swing to break. Again. Oh, well. It is time to find a new handy-person anyway. You can leave your resume in the comments. It was a treat to have the house full of folks - or rather the porch full of folks. That may have been the last good porch night of the season. I had the chance to talk shop (Come on, what is the blog about, other than me? Getting knocked up - duh.) with a friend of SAR's who's in the throws of it herself. She works in L&D and so had interesting things to say about the REs in town. Plus, she is cute.

I went looking for pee-sticks for my good friend, old Clear Blue today. Remember her? Yeah, I knew you did. There was Shit Going On today - a trip to work (unpaid - ahem), lunch with my daddy, a trip to the health food store, laundry, making of dinner for friends with a new baby, etc, etc. In the midst of this, I remembered that old CB would be asking me to pee on a stick tomorrow or the next day. But I have no sticks! Ack! What's a ttc girl to do? Well, run to C.V.S, of course. So I did, but they had none. And? The sign where they should have been? Yeah, the one with the price. It said $49. For sticks to pee on. Now, you tell me, is it only ok for rich folks to have babies?

For those of you playing along at home: it's CD 8, and I've got a low reading on the monitor (good old Clear Blue). Mood-wise, it's been the usual ups and some sightly more intense downs, but I think those are circumstantial, as opposed to hormonal. But next week- woo and hoo! - the estrogen should show itself for real and everything will be great! Interestingly, after a week on the crazy Chinese herbs, my pre-o temps are a good 3-5 tenths of a degree higher than usual. Stay tuned for exciting news about my post-o temps!

many days you have lingered around my cabin door

Today is good.

I got to work with CHO-girl at school. Yay! Just like old times.

My folks from Teh Internets were everywhere. In my email. On my blog. Everywhere. Yay. My folks IRL were everywhere, too. At my school. In my house. On my street. Fab.

Sophie was her usual charming self and delightedly told me to read a sad but beautiful passage from a novel she'd just finished.

And there was wine with the kids from New Orleans.

And there was dinner with the girls from New York.

And there were crazy Chinese herbs, listed here, for your edification:

• hoelen/ fu ling
• licorice/ gan cao
• astragalus (processed)/ zhi huang qi
• atractylodes (white, cooked)/ chao bai zhu
• tahn-kuei/dang gui
• cortex moutan/mu dan pi
• codonopsis/ dang shen
• white peony root/ sheng bai shao
• rehmannia (cooked)/ shu di huang
  

And then there was sleeping and great joy.


Oh, hard times come again no more.

HerSpace

Sophie announced to me and her mother, quite randomly, that she wanted "a MySp@ce." Read all the pre-teen attitude and psuedo-angst into those quotes you want. Poor kid, she got a no from both of us, immediately and with no qualifications. She wheedled and cajoled to the best of her ability (which works well with some of the adults in her life, but not with me, nor with her mother - we are a strong and united front), and gained no ground from either of us, but did get a crash course on how weird and dicey the internet can be. Plus, more noes (is that right for the plural of no?). The agony. Oh, wait....

****** there is some man walking through my neighborhood, singing to himself, something about, "give peace a chance, and see what happens, bum, bum, bum....." not the John Lennon version, but something entirely of his own making - fabulous*****

Anyway. I really think it is clear she's not old enough to navigate an adult social/hook-up network by herself because she's still naive enough to think that she should ask her mother and me. I guess this is good, the keeping open of the lines of communication, but really, I think if she were savvy enough to pull off registering on her own, she'd be savvy enough to tell the difference between people who want to be her friend and people who want to be her "friend," or at least savvy enough not to tell these "friends" too much about herself.

But back to the plot, or lack thereof. So I told her I'd see if I could find any teen social networks for her and we let it all go at that. And I did, but she didn't mention it again. Until today, when she asked me what year she would have been born in if she was 13 now. As background, when we set up her now-defunct h0tmail account, we faked her birth date, so she'd be old enough to join. So I opened my mouth to prompt her to do the math herself, and then thought to ask what she wanted to fake her birthday for. Nothing, she said. Uh-huh. So I told her she was on her own to figure it out and went back to the comics page (I am a *very* attentive caregiver). I reminded her a little later that I had, as promised, found some teen versions of MySp@ce, and showed her the link to one that I cannot remember the name of the save my life. Whatever it was, she jumped on it. Jumped in an I-don't-really-care-about-this-tweener way. (Lord) Which means that she set herself up an account and fussed around with it for the better part of an hour. She even showed me her avatar.

Score! Puesdo-angsty pre-teen - 1! Me - 1! We're all winners chez Starrhill!

last days of summer

It's over. School starts tomorrow. I'm *so* 'cited!
I crammed as much summer into the past week as I could:

* forced Sophie to mow the grass in the heat. I did yard work, too! She offered! The girl loves to mow the grass, what can I say.

*had drinks on the porch with Sianey and Jim - twice in fact (stay tuned for our new trendy restaurant idea; it will be fab and we'll be rich - it's Top Secret - don't ask me about it).

*put up produce for winter, somewhat frantically, as if I could hold on to some last small bit of summer if I had enough sun dried tomatoes and frozen peaches.

*almost equally frantically hung laundry on the line - not out of any sort of pre-nostalgia for summer, but because I had no clean clothes.

*had dinner with my old friends who are back in town and sat around in their air conditioned living room after the baby went to bed. There will be no energy for leaving the house once school starts, so this was a particular treat.

*planted a fig tree on the south side of the house. Yay figs! Ok, so it is not really *my* fig tree, it's Kaity's but I will get some of the figs as rent for housing her tree. If I don't kill it.

*got visited by my friends from DC (one of whom now lives in Richmond) and got treated to dinner by them. I love them. I do.

*saw my New Fab Assistant (NFA) out of the house - without her children and with her husband! At night! He had his hand on her thigh..... It was cute.....

*had brunch with Best Actor, featuring Real Coffee Not Decafe. Delicious, but it did fuck with my nap plans.

*raced to Mono Loco for The Last Sangria of Summer (TLSS) with the CHO-fam and Their Lesbian Friends From North Carolina (TLFFNC). The smallest CHO shared his calamari with me. *swoon* I heart him. Teh Sangria must have been Friday night's sangria, and I was served it on Sunday and, god damn, it was good - all saturated fruit and chilly wine.

*played a rousing game of Apples to Apples after the children went to bed with the above mentioned CHOs and TLFFNC. So much more fun than you'd think. There was also popcorn, which deserves its own post.

*napped. Everyday.

*stood on the porch looking blankly ahead. This would sound more "spiritual" if I said I stood on the porch looking at the sky, but really, I was just staring ahead, blankly. Again with the everyday.

*rather obsessively charted my temperature; monitored my pee with my partner-of-the-week, old Clear Blue; plotted how to do some opk's at school; emailed with my sperm donor (the man needs a blog-name); mentally and emotionally planned for pregnancy and simultaneously for the crash and burn of not being pregnant; thought about how I'd.... oh, wait, I do this shit all the time, not just when summer is ending, because I am not fucking knocked up yet.

weekend randomness and a mess of capitals

After year - years, I tell you, oh internets - of encouragement by me, Sophie is reading the comics. And reading the Mini Pages and doing all the puzzles therein. Out loud. It's about damn time. All that printed entertainment had been going to waste all those years.

Lord. Now she is telling me all the jokes from it. Maybe this is not such a great development. And she says she loves Family Circus. *sigh* How do I go about improving her taste in comics?

As this is my last weekend of freedom/slackerdom, I have filled it with lots of naps, visiting, and some small amount of travel. I go back to work tomorrow and we set up and have meetings for a week, and the the children come after Labor Day.

There was music in Lynchburg yesterday afternoon and I rode down with some friends and had a throughly enjoyable trip. We only saw the last bit of music, missing several other great people but to make up for that I scored (I hope) a fertility monitor. The whole reason for the trip was to attend the official opening of the coffee shop some friends just bought. So. The wife of the man they bought it from was there with her (4th?) tiny, tiny baby. And one of the owners of the coffee shop (who happens to be an ex from long, long ago) was holding said tiny baby, and knows all about my continued attempts at conception, and passed me the baby. Realizing the mother didn't know who the hell I was I felt some explanation was in order and I told her how I'd been ttc for a while now and she warmed right up to the subject and wanted to know if I had tried using a fertility monitor. Then she offered me hers, plus the 50 sticks she's still got to go with it. Then, after I'm done with it, I am to pass it on to my ex, who is thinking of having another baby shortly. Now I just need to coordinate picking it up. And thank her profusely.

In other productive news, I also cleaned out the gutters at school, after being put in pseudo-charge of playground workday after my boss left. This meant I was up on a ladder, with lots of parents asking me what to do while we all melted in the million degree heat.

I made a new friend out of an old acquaintance, and through her met a very nice femme-y gay girl who lives not 5 blocks from me. This is great because yay! New friends! Especially those who will sit on the porch and drink whiskey into the night. While I'd rather be knocked up and avoiding Teh Whiskey, it was nice to have my Last Weekend of Summer include whiskey on the porch, which is The Summer Activity To End All Summer Activities.

friday

Sophie fell asleep upside down in the chair after reading this afternoon. It was like relay napping - first me, then her. It is so fucking hot here that there is nothing else to do but lay around under the fan and nap and read. The humidity has made her hair very curly, which she hates, but I (secretly) love.

This morning was The Morning Of The Home Visit Marathon - 5 visits in 3 and 1/2 hours. Greenbriar to Belmont to Ivy to Ruckersville to Barboursville. And then back to Starr Hill in time for lunch with Jen at the Diner before picking Sophie up. Whew. It was like a whirlwind tour of the county. It's pretty here - it really, really is. The sun came out after a week of hiding and so it was suddenly again true Virginia in August - hot like you don't want to move and so hazy and humid you can hardly see the sky, let alone the mountains. But, lord, it is pretty.

Last night, in the midst of the sangria (oh god, so good...), I was talking with the girl I had dinner with about the land here. See, she just moved back to Virginia and she said something about wanting to write more and thinking that would be easier, somehow, at home. Even the sky looks different here, she said. (She was far more eloquent in the way she put it, but I was not taking notes - sadly.) I started running on about something I'd read in one of Montessori's books about how physicians in her day - say, 100 years ago - would send really sick folks back to the land where they were born. It was supposed to be healing, or something, because a person would have a connection with that land, having been exposed to it in infancy. Now, old Maria used this to help justify her ideas about oh-so-carefully constructing an infant's environment, because that's one of the first and best tools that babies use to create themselves, but it hit me like a ton of bricks that summer I was doing my Montessori training. I was away from home, from my bed and my house and my world, for the longest I'd ever been and I realized, I missed the land - flat out missed it. I do appreciate how pretty or breathtaking it might be somewhere else, but there is something else entirely about how it looks here, where I'm from (although, I wasn't born here, just raised here). There's a palpable sense of relief for me, flying home from somewhere, when I see that first bit of the mountains out by the airport, an almost painful feeling like falling in love when I cross the Blue Ridge at Afton and see the valley spread out, looking like it will never end, like it goes on and on until it gets to the Pacific a whole continent away.

So, even though I drove to hell and back, even though it was hot and humid in the car like a motherfucking sponge, it sure was pretty. Pretty like the end of summer, which it is, and stuck in my mind, helping me to create myself, still, like Maria said.

not

Hmmm..... no more ambiguity. My period started this morning. Interestingly, I seem to have cycled through all the more intense emotions about this failed attempt already, and so I am surprisingly ok.

So let's move on. On to the fact that Sophie is done with her homework and hogging the phone - her looming adolescence is..... looming.

I've been home-visiting all this week, to get my new children ready for the start of school, and that is always a treat. Home visits are such a nice way to introduce myself to the children - even my grandmother is impressed by them.

And now, I am off to a dinner involving lots of sangria with a new friend, courtesy of Evren. The new friend, I mean - Evren bears no responsibility for the sangria.

my best girl

Sophie, my pretend child, is back from her extended trip out west (where she got to see Kater, lucky both of them). She's been gone for over 2 weeks and it was like to kill me. As was not seeing her mama.

You see, Sophie is my girl. I've been keeping her since she was 3 - almost 9 years now - and the connection I have with her and her mother is one of the most amazing ones in my life. Sophie tried to teach me to ride a bike and her mama found my donor for me, because as she says, she's going to get me pregnant or die trying. They are my family. (An addition, not a replacement - my blood family is great, too.)

And, as public schools start again tomorrow, we are back in the swing of things. I'll pick her up from the usual place at the back of her school, under the tree, *after* the buses have pulled out (it's clusterfuck with the buses there), and we'll come home. She'll sit in the chair by the stove to do her homework and I'll wish she'd use the table, and she'll interrupt herself to get a drink of water from the tiny glasses I put on a low shelf for her years ago when she was little.

Or maybe we'll go to the coffee shop for coffee and ice cream instead.