I think Mary Travers said it best. My bags are packed. I’m ready to go. Tomorrow will be a blur. On Tuesday I’ll be writing back on my little page.
Send Dru big hugs tomorrow for her birthday.
Let’s hope I shake the daze.

So much depends on a red cardinal
sitting on a leaf bare branch
in M & Ks back yard.

I was going to write a long entry about the screaming battle we had here on Thursday. But I don’t have it in me. I’m spent. Exhausted. Suffice it to say that it began as a hang up the picture that fell down project and ended as a screaming door slamming fit. I spent the rest of that day and most of yesterday sequestered in my room with a book. Since they are used to having battles, they are fine. I’m still aching.
It’s just so hard. These aren’t simple relationships. I love my Mom in a way that you can only love someone who you have lived inside. I smell her in my own skin. I love it when she laughs. We talk in baby talk to each other. But, I know that she doesn’t get me in really deep and important ways. And our time has been absorbed in caring for Ken. And Ken, being who he is, doesn’t make that easy. And they, being who they are, are a third character. I think they call it triangulation.
Today I was making sausage and biscuits and I reached up to turn the light on in the hood above the stove and the whole hood fell down. If I could bring myself to write out the story of the picture hanging debacle it would be clear how this moment affected me. Mom called the handy men that work for the place where they live and, fortunately, they were here on a Saturday. They fixed it in about ten minutes.
I’m tired.
I read Mike earlier today. Riffing on some interesting stuff posted on Wood_s Lot. I even had enough time to really read some of it but not enough to feel like I can respond directly. I miss Wood_s Lot.When I get home I'm going to sit at my desk and spend days reading all I've missed there.
When people asked me how I was going to take care of myself while I was here I said, “Well, I’ll have my blog.” And when I first got here it was so hard to find the time to read and write on line. It’s a little easier now. But I felt like the blog and my blog roll and email from friends were the threads pulling me back to myself. And it seemed odd to me that it was so easy to lose track of myself.
There’s a line in a Joni Mitchell song, of course.
“I see something of myself in everyone.
At this moment in the world.”

Mom likes frogs. They’re everywhere. Glass ones, cloth ones, ceramic ones, frog earrings, bracelets, a frog on her watch, her shirt. It’s not that she buys them. People give them to her. I gave her a frog calendar this year. She has it hanging on the kitchen cabinet and she’s already filled in things like doctors appointments. On January 6, the day after I leave, she has drawn a bunch of tears. Makes me want to cry just thinking about it.
I went to Zeebatronic today and read the sad news of her Grandfather’s passing. I jumped to Gary Turner’s blog from a link on Mike’s. Gary has just had a daughter and lost his father. He’s written beautifully about both.
I feel like a sponge, soaking up sorrow.
Ken is better. But still not walking well. And Mom is anxious for things to get back to a normal that may never come again. And here’s the deal. Having aging parents means living with the ticking clock of their fragility. In truth, every time you say goodbye to someone you may not see them again. But saying goodbye on Monday will be different. And today, I can’t stop crying.

I remembered Rabbit Rabbit. Which is pretty good since I was woozy and nauseas from champagne and cheese at midnight. It was good. And dinner was great. I made a buerre blanc for the scallops. It’s such a classic sauce and so good.
I got to talk to Steve yesterday. A lovely long talk. We talked about his new disc, coming soon. It was just so good to talk to him
Right after our call I was in the office with Mom and she had lost a little thing for hanging a picture and she was pretty agitated while she was looking for it and she said, “Sometimes I think I don’t live right.” Kind of a drama queen. The idea that living right (whatever that means) might mean that you would never again loose a little bracket (which turned out to be stuck behind a piece of wood on the picture) is a little loopy.
The thing is … I’m the same way. I drop something and right away I think my day is going to shit. Steve and I were talking about how our Mom’s way of feeling in the world shaped some our own ways of feeling. When I’m watching Mom react with such extreme anxiety I think, “Chill out!” But I know I do the same thing.
So. More meditating.
I sat on the porch today and wrote in my other journal. It rained a lot last night and the world is shiny.
You know I always feel like, given the things that are going on in the world, being sad, mad, depressed, worried, anxious, is a sign that you’re paying attention. But people who can hold a sense of peace while being aware of all the problems seem to get more done. So I’m always trying to hold some inner thing, some place, some feeling of something like peace. Or acceptance. Or sumthin.