That post below was written several weeks ago, and I thought it would keep the original date, but it did not.  Anyway, in the meantime we discovered that Jack's well child exam was improperly billed, and that my prenatal care costs a global fee for all visits except the first, so we won't be suffering quite as much as we though in the bank department.  Canceling the ultrasound probably saved us fifty bucks, so it was a good choice nonetheless.  But it was a bummer.

This second pregnancy is very different the first thus far.  First of all, morning sickness has not been nearly as bad.  I get nauseous in waves, occasionally, throughout the day, and maybe half the nights/mornings.  Otherwise, nothin' but a mildly tender stomach.  Second of all, I have that "lots of spit" problem, which I didn't have at all the first time around.  It's very weird.  Thirdly, mentally I'm in a different place.  I'm no longer the center of my universe, and thus have less time to feel sorry for myself.  I'm also much less delicate this time around.  Last time I was mildly nervous when lifting anything heavier than a pencil, scared of eating the wrong thing, convinced that activity could somehow shake the baby out.  I wasn't a total princess, or anything, but I was mostly expecting to miscarry for probably the first half of the pregnancy.  This time, I am not a delicate flower.  I ride my bike to school every day, sling around my toddler, work out at the gym, and pretty much am convinced we'll have a baby in June.  I'm hoping this confidence translates to the second round of newborn days.  I'm very nervous about doing another year of sleepless nights, with a toddler to chase after, no less.

I could feel the baby move in as soon as three weeks.  I felt Jack at 18 weeks, I just checked, and usually it's earlier for #2.  In nine weeks, we'll know whether we've got a he or a she.  In twenty nine or so - she'll be in our arms.  :)  The wonder of THAT doesn't get any less exciting the second time around!

I had to cancel my first trimester ultrasound today, and it hit me harder than makes sense.  I was startled by my tears.  I felt like an idiot standing outside the doors of my law school, sniffling into a Kleenex as I call three places to assure it's canceled.  I canceled it because my insurance sucks bilgewater, because we are poor people who are getting old and decided to plan our babies around our biological clocks rather than our bank accounts, and because we can't throw hundreds of dollars out the door just so I can see my baby girl when she's still a tadpole.

Surprisingly, I really really really was looking forward to this, and really wanted to meet her.  We call her "her" even though we can't possibly know.  If she's a he, I'll be just as thrilled, as I've adored my boy so far.  Until I hit 20 weeks, we can only guess, and we've decided to guess girl.  Anyway, I was really thrilled about seeing her little blobby self on a screen.  I haven't heard her heartbeat or anything yet, and I couldn't wait to see proof (beyond the mild morning sickness and the greasy hair) that our next sweetie was in there and doing well.  Then we got a couple of bills for Jack's well child exam and my well-prenatal care visit, and realized the depths of my student health insurance's suckiness, and now we realize how much we have to pare down.  I'm half convinced I should just have the baby at home, for God's sake.  It's not good news when you're calculating how many prenatal visits you can safely skip.  Preventative care should not run in the thousands, not when you've paid thousands in premiums already.

So now I'm back in the library, reading about products liability and wiping away tears, and hoping that nobody I know walks by because nobody I know even knows I'm pregnant.  I like our life here, but I am wearier than ever of being a poor person that nobody in the government, the insurance industry, or anywhere else seems to care about.  We need money.  I'm too old for this.

This morning, I am thankful for:

• Black Friday shopping - on my couch, in my slippers, with a cup of tea and my laptop, yesterday's blueberry muffins warmed and sweet.
  
• A healthy boy, after a long croupy night.  He seems much better this morning, though we are all weary from spending the night in the bathroom with the hot shower running, humming lullabies.
• Bruce Cockburn's Christmas album, playing softly now.
• Garlands and ribbons and lights, which we will pull out today, even though there are many other things to do.
• The dog, who ran away twice this morning and nearly killed himself in traffic.  He is a pain, but I'm thankful we have him.  Sometimes I have to say this out loud to remember it.  :)
  
• A wonderful holiday with lots of family and a very successful Thanksgiving meal.  A golden, juicy turkey; dried cherry and sausage stuffing; mashed butternut squash; brussels sprouts and cauliflower; garlic and Parmesan green beans; mashed potatoes with homemade gravy; dinner rolls; and four kinds of pie.  We pulled out Patrick's great grandmother's silver plate cutlery, our wedding china, a beautiful cutwork tablecloth my mother in law brought from home.  My sister in law bought roses.  It was a feast for all senses, and I'll remember it a long time.
  
• Our rotten cat, who has been plotting ways to devour the roses ever since my sister in law brought them home for us.  They're on the mantel.  I can see her working out a plan to get up there.
• My brother in law, who, when sieving the gravy, poured almost all of it down the drain, providing us with hours of entertainment at his expense.
  
• My niece, who learned about ten new words during the week-long visit.  She is a smart, adventurous little peanut, and I love her.
• My husband, putting away dishes and stripping beds in the back rooms, while I sit out here and have some computer time.  I love him, too.
  
• My babies.  One, chasing the cat around the dining room table, picking up his slippered feet and slapping them on the ground, because he likes the sound.  And number two, a little tadpole doing flips in my belly, her heartbeat strong on the doppler last Tuesday.  We'll meet him next June.
  

The wind howled through the night, and when it woke me at 3am I composed a brilliant post in my head.  The wind blew it away.

Jack was in it.  Of that I'm sure.  3 am wakeups these days generally lend themselves to worries about my boy.  Usually there are no genuine worries about him, so I make some up and stew over those for a while.  I generally then have to get up and peek in through the door that separates our bedrooms, and stare in the direction of his crib until I can make out his form.  I like knowing he is there, and of course I know he's there without checking, but I check nonetheless.

The wind figured prominently as well.  I dreamed of it all night - in my dreams it blew out windows, tossed papers, scared the dog.  In reality, it blew in a delicious chilly weather, perfect for this time of year, and that is all it did.  We are well sheltered in our city apartment.

I threw in a metaphor: I remember something about bones, though I've lost the other half.  3am and howling wind lend themselves to spooky writing.  Wind stripping a tree of leaves, bare branches, moonlight . . .

We took Jack to play basketball this afternoon at the gym.  He loved loved loved it.  He threw the ball, chased the ball, ran and giggled and laughed this deep and almost evil chuckle that he's trotted out lately.  He knows it tickles us to hear him laugh so mischievously.  We are a wholesome family.

Thanksgiving soon.  Class sooner - in five minutes - so I'll end this odd ramble now.

My daily cycling commute takes me about ten blocks west to the park, then about a mile north along the park trails to school.  The road we live on is bumpy.  It's a one way.  I don't often see many cars.  I cross three big two way streets, and always with great caution.

Always, that is, until yesterday . . .
(wavery flasback sequence)

Two feet on the pedals.  Running late for class, hurried, a little chilled by the wind.  Pedaling slowly through the treacherous parking area behind the nearby grocery store, where people drive like maniacs.  A car pulls up behind, hovers behind, clearly also in a hurry.  I also have a right to be on the road.  Car, you can wait.  Car is riding my back wheel, and I turn my head to see how close it is.  Turn back in time to see that I have approached an intersection more quickly than I judged.  Look right - no traffic.  Look left - and a car is upon me, honking, squealing brakes.  Car behind me, also squealing brakes.  Me, squealing brakes.  I stop in time, but the force of my sudden stop lifts me off the seat.  And down.  Onto the bar.  Hard.

OH MY GOD OUCH.  OUCHOUCHOUCH car waves me through OUCHOUCHOUCH other car turns off road OUCH CHRIST OUCH and it's just me.  I slip off my bike, jelly.  Argh.  In my head I hear, over and over - you broke your hoo ha.  Your hoo ha.  It's BROKEN.  You BROKE it.

After several minutes, I climbed onto the bike, winced, pedaled.  Limped into class five minutes late.  Told my neighbor that I just fell off my bike and broke my girl parts.  She laughed, and then awwed, and patted my shoulder.  Later that day, my left foot decided it also hadn't liked the force of that stop, and thus was I totally hobbled.

This morning, I'm still hobbling.  Good god.

Jack fell off a dining room chair right onto his face this morning, bending his neck funny.  He's fine - a little headache, a little goose egg, but fine.  I think someone must have sprinkled our food with clumsy dust.

I had big plans to write a big response post to my guest blogger, whose dilemma I think we ALL understand.  But I can barely manage these few boring sentences.  Dear anonymous blogger, if you ever return to see this - date the guy!  As long as "different from other guys" isn't a euphemism for "inconsiderate," "bad news," "lazy," or any other negative trait - heck yeah!  Dive in, sweetie.  Interesting, heartstopping potential mates are thin on the ground, especially ones who treat you right.  :)

Now, some unimaginative bullet points.

• Law school is gearing up, what with job searching now being added to the load.  Patrick is working on getting published again before this round of applications goes out.  We have got to get a babysitter for this kid. . . ah, the trials of a dual career family.
• There is a small contingent of law students who are bugging the hell out of me right now.  Complaining about being asked to write up a resume while we have so much reading to do . . . complaining (in an anonymous, schoolwide posting on the intranet, no less!) about a teacher talking about a case that wasn't assigned for the day . . . complaining about all of this stupid nonsense that makes me think, over and over - Helicopter generation, Helicopter generation.  Gah.  It's only a small number of people, but today they were irritating me to no end.  I want to shake them and tell them to grow up, for godsake.
• Our health plan is SO BAD.  Preventative care is SO EXPENSIVE.  God help us if one of us actually gets ill.  We are one illness away from complete ruin, and we have health insurance!  Congress, get your butts in gear.  Political, partisan posturing is not helpful, and I wish I could say I expect better of you.
  
• A hurricane's a comin'.  It just means our parking space will flood and we'll have to park down the street at Winn Dixie.  Pain.
• Wonder Pets and Dora the Explorer are tied for my two least favorite kid's shows ever.  That voice.  My eardrums.  Argh.  But Jack loves 'em.  He's talking to Wonder Pets right now, excitedly instructing them on how to save the kitten on the driftwood in Venice.  Yeah.  I don't get it either.
  
• So, it goes without saying that I'm in a mood today.  Even grilled cheese for dinner couldn't help.
• I won my fantasy football game, though!  Thanks to the great coaching of my co football leaguer, who would rather I win than his brother.  :)
• I want to marry Tina Fey.  If she offered to leave Jeff Richmond for me, I think Patrick would be toast.  (I think he may say the same for Salma Hayek, though, so we're even.)
• This is the end of this uninspired post.
  

The below is a guest post by a . . . TOTAL . . . STRANGER . . . BWAA HAA HAAAAAA.  As part of Blog Share 2009, we each submitted anonymous blogs round the rosie, as they say.  Mine is out there on someone else's blog, anonymous.  Below the post is a list of all participants, should you fancy a stroll around what people write when they have the words "anonymous" to protect them.

I'm at a crossroads.

Until now, everyone I've ever had a relationship with, every guy who I thought might possibly be "the one," was always like me.  We shared the same interests and hobbies.  We liked the same kind of stupid movies.  If I watched a TV show, I could be pretty sure they'd like it too, because we just liked the same sort of stuff.  I'd get along well with their friends and family; they'd get along well with mine.  We fit perfectly in each other's lives. 

Couldn't have been that perfectly, since none of those relationships lasted.

And now I've started dating someone who is different in every way.  He doesn't share my interests.  He'll sit through a stupid movie with me because I like it, but I know he thinks it's stupid.  I can't imagine introducing him to my friends and family.  I know that the longer I spend with him, the more I'll end up less interested in what I currently like.

Normally, with so little common ground, I'd just give up and look for someone I'm a better fit with.  But it isn't working.  Every time I go out with someone else, someone I have more in common with, I end up thinking about this guy, and that he's just better than them.

He's a smart man.  He's a good man.  And there's this part of me that's curious about who I'll turn into if I spend more time with him.  I'm comfortable with who I am now, but I think I might like being her better.

Not the Daddy: http://notthedaddy.blogspot.com
O is for Olson: http://oisforolson.wordpress.com
Red Red Whine: http://redredwhine.com
Rediscovering Me: http://leavingthecocoon.blogspot.com
Reflections in the Snow-covered Hills: http://snowcoveredhills.com
The Reluctant Grownup: http://gilliangaladriel.spaces.live.com/
Sauntering Soul:http://saunteringsoul.blogspot.com
Serendipity Now: http://serendipitynow.wordpress.com
Snarke: http://snarke.net
So, This Is a Treadmill: http://sothisisatreadmill.blogspot.com
Thinking Some More: http://3carnations.blogspot.com
Time for Change: http://ngradstudent.blogspot.com
Together They Come: http://togethertheycome.wordpress.com
Wondering and Pondering: http://wonderingandpondering.wordpress.com
And You Know What Else: http://andyouknow.wordpress.com
Andrea Unplugged: http://andreaunplugged.wordpress.com
Arctic-ulate: http://arctic-ulate.blogspot.com
Bright Yellow World: http://brightyellowworld.com
Bwildered: http://bbwilder.blogspot.com
Catheroominations: http://catheroo.com
Did I Say That Outloud?: http://tracyoutloud.blogspot.com
Dispatches from the Failed Mommy Club: http://failedmommy.com
Full of Snark: http://fullofsnark.com
Heidikins: http://heidikins.com
Hot Chicks Dig Smart Men: http://hotchicksdigsmartmen.com
Just Below 63: http://littlepieceoftexas2.blogspot.com
The Little Goat: http://thelittlegoat.com

We walked down the solid half mile of block party, witches and warlocks, pirates and princesses, a Campbell's soup can, and (my favorite) the Easter Bunny.  Jack, the big black spider, learned quickly to march up to the porch, maneuver himself up the steps, and dig right down into the candy.  He grabbed armfuls of chocolate and suckers and popcorn, and usually put it all right back in the bowl.  In and out are a big deal these days.  I reveled in people telling me my spider was soo cute, just happy they could tell his amateurly homemade costume was a spider.  Even had we the money to buy him a costume, I probably still would have made it.  It's not Halloween without mom bug-eyed and frantically sewing.  I was a sort of ghost - a sort of ghost chasing a marching black spider as it careened down the street, squeezing a Reese's cup with vigor.

There were dozens of wonderfully dressed people, and virtually every one of them over the age of 21 was carrying a glass of wine or a beer.  Adults were dressed, too, and mostly drunk.  Tables were set out in the front yards, most with mini bars - some also had food.  A zombie mother pedalled around a rickshaw in which rode two pretty princesses, sitting on their zombie dad's lap.  A cat-eared woman, swarming with tiny little circus dogs dressed in jester necklaces and doing tricks, poured chocolate into Jack's webby sack (I spent most of Halloween day stitching on the spider webs as we watched The Shining and Jack napped.)  My spider strode down the street with determination, barely noticing the somewhat heavy spider legs that pulled down on his real arms.  He wore the arms and the knit cap all night, though very early in the evening one of its googly eyes went astray.  A one-eyed spider with a sort-of-ghost mom and a dad in a Halloween t shirt - this is the picture we made at dusk on Halloween in the heart of uptown New Orleans.

Home early, Jack tasted the delights of Hershey's chocolate while we sat on our own porch and passed out candy to a handful of trick or treating children.  He was so cute.  I was pleasantly exhausted.

We watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving today.  The season rumbles on.

My non-babysitting time is so limited, I find it hard to justify blogs these days.  I miss writing, but since I only have about 30-35 daylight hours a week to work on schoolwork, and about 50-60-100 hours of schoolwork to do in that time (really you could work all day and night and still have more to do, were you a masochist), I have forced myself to stay away.  This bites.  Now we're trying to get Jack into daycare, and just as I thought may happen, everywhere has a year waiting list (or rather - there are 14 two year olds in front of yours on the list, we may have space in a year when they all turn three, and then we'll have to tell you about the space we have for three year olds, so call us back in 2011!  Bye now!)  And I'm like - screw law school!  Clearly what this city needs is more childcare centers.  There is money to be made in New Orleans, friends, you heard it from me.

Now we're looking at hiring an undergrad or somebody to supervise him for at least a few hours in the morning.  At ten bucks an hour, though, we'll be paying the same money as we would for full time care, and that BITES.  Plus he won't get interaction with other kids.  Plus we only have one laptop and we'd both have to leave and who gets the computer to work on?  And who has to (gasp!) write crap out by hand?  Sometimes thinking about all of this, and about how law school is getting more intense as the semester winds on, and about how Jack's naps are getting shorter and shorter and how the only person he wants these days is me me me - it makes me do a death spiral of despair.  Also I am thinking about getting a part time job, because our money is due to run out in approximately April, and I'd rather it, uh, not run out.  We have access to more loans, but, as you can imagine - we'd rather not.  But I won't work for some lousy seven buck an hour deal, because that ain't going to do us any good, and there aren't many jobs that pay  more than that, and I . . . am feeling the pressure, shall we say.

But, do note, I would rather be here floundering and losing my mind over deadlines than working at my previous job.  Nothing is worse than working there was, nothing.

We had practice exams last week, and I did well on a couple and poorly on a couple.  In the latter two classes I have some restructuring to do in the way I approach exams and study, because the profs have different ideas than I had thought they did.  Most profs like you to know basic rules of law and how to apply new fact patterns to those rules.  These profs also want you to cite authority for those rules, that is, to know the names and courts that cases were decided, know statutes and model codes that we've gone over, etc.  Every law school book I've read says not to worry about that stuff because that's not what profs are looking for on exams, but nobody told these two, so suddenly every 1L study group at my law school is scrambling to go back and write in all the stuff we didn't record because we didn't think it was important.  This makes my heart beat a little faster.  If I don't do better than most of my class on these exams (they are graded on a curve, and they are your only grade for the class), then I lose my scholarship, and then we're really up a creek.  Free law school is one thing, but law school that costs a bazillion more dollars in loans was not in our plan, and I wouldn't really know what to do if faced with that prospect.

Can you hear the desperation?  It's Halloween and I'm feeling spooked.

Anyway, as my title suggests, I'd better go start working on that memo I need to be drafting in the fifteen or so minutes I have before my kid wakes up and wants me to hold him all day.  I hope I can make it.  I hope I can do all of this.

And it was great.

Crescent City Blues and BBQ Festival.  A crowded streetcar ride, a short walk, lots of music and people and good food smells.  We ate hot dogs and burgers in the city park with hundreds of our fellows.  Jack washed the park sculpture with a wet wipe, and we tried not to cringe.  We wandered through vendors and stands.  We heard music.  Jack slept on my chest as we hiked to the streetcar stop, and further slept all the way home.  We crashed on the couch and ate frozen pizza for dinner, spent.

A glorious day in the city.

I put up a few pictures, at the end of the album above!

1)  You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It's up to you. What do you choose?

Samwise Gamgee is my companion.  But not as played by my buddy Sean Astin, who needed to tone down the melodrama a titch.  I'd like the time travel machine from . . . a Heinlein novel with a name I can't recall!  And for my tool, I'd take Glenda the Good Witch's wand because, y'know, wands are useful things when adventuring.

2)  You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?

The Moon's A Balloon by David Niven.  It's his memoirs, and dude was his life fun!  In the golden age of Hollywood!  He was quite a rake . . . and one I'm afraid I never would have heard of had I not picked up his book from the freebie shelf in a hostel in Sydney, Australia.

3)  You can bring one literary character into your current life. Who do you choose, and why?

Thursday Next, from the Jasper Fforde novels.  She can dive into books, and she could show me how!

4)  Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence is my go-to book. I could read that book fifty-seven times in a row without a break for food or a pee and not be remotely bored. In fact I’ve already done that but it wasn’t fifty-seven times. It was sixty-four.

5)  Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?

I always wanted to be one of the teenagers in a Christopher Pike horror teen fiction novel.  They seemed so free and cool.  I just gave all of my Christopher Pike to the goodwill, and even though they were trashy and I never re-read them I really think that was a mistake.  It makes me feel ill when I think about it.

6)  Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?

This is a tough question, I didn't scare much as a kid.  But I do remember a horror movie where a guy paints plaster over his victim's face, until all that's left is her nose for breathing, and then he sloooooowly covers that up, and she writhes and dies.  THAT haunted my dreams, and I don't even know how I was permitted to see it as a kid!

7)  Every time I read Unless, Carol Warner Shields, I see something in it that I haven’t seen before.

8)  It is imperative that Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott mystery novels (set in North Carolina!) be made into a movie. Now. I am already picketing Hollywood for this—but if they cast Sandra Bullock as Deborah, I will not be happy. I will, however, be appeased if they cast an unknown.

9)  Ian McEwan's Atonement is a book that should never be made (or should have never been made) into a film.

10)  After all these years, the people-eating scene in the book/movie The Road still manages to give me the queebs. (not THAT many years, I guess, but still . . .)

11)  After all these years, the reconciliation scene between Lizzie and Mr. Darcy in the book/movie Pride and Prejudice still manages to give me a thrill.

12)  If I could corner the author Carol Warner Shields (alas, she has died and it can never happen!), here’s what I’d say to them one minute or less about their book, Unless:

I frequently think or say the phrase: the comfort of the perfectly chosen word.  And also: a watercolor blob that means mother.  And so many other gems.  This book is one of my life companions, and I am so glad you created it.

13)  The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is Having Faith, Sandra Steingraber. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to save the world from toxic wastes!

V. busy lately, but this old story popped in my head today so I thought I'd share.

My brother has four sisters.  Don't feel sorry for him, he was and continues to be much spoiled to make up for his position as the lone male.  Anyhow, one rainy day when we were all little, my mother made us chicken soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.  She passed a plate of grilled cheese to me, one to my sister Amanda, one to my sister Caki, one to my sister Corrie, and one to our brother Randy.  Randy looked around at all of us, scrunched up his nose, and said in his baby voice (which was stratospherically high) - Mommy?  Can I have a boy cheese sammitch instead?

Very dear friends of ours had their first baby today, and 8 hours later they are still having a hard time deciding her name.  As I was reading through their list of decisions and trying to think nostalgically about our own wonderful newborn days, my darling son was whacking the office door with his head.  Maybe it was my keys.  I don't know.  There was whacking, loud whacking going on, as there always seems to be these days.

"Ahhh, do you remember how long it took us to pick his middle name?"
"I do.  We had quite a list."
"We did.  It took hours."
"We chose Calum, because it meant dove, peace.  He was so [WHACK!] quiet and [BANG!] peaceful and swee-[BOOM!]-sweet."
"Had we only known.  He would've been Jack THE OPPOSITE OF CALUM Adams*."
"Jack Loud Adams."
"Jack Rambunctious Adams."
"Jack Stop Hitting That Adams."
"Jack He's All Boy Adams."
"Jack Please Quiet Down Adams."
"Jack Mommy's Getting Some Valium Now Adams."
"Jack . . . no seriously now, Jack, that basket is for Mommy's things, it's not for babies.  Stop that.  Get down.  Don't bang on that."
"Seriously.  And you think you want another one of these someday?"

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

*Not our real name, cuz I'm all anonymous and sneaky like that.

Legal citations ARE THE PITS.  Gawd, I thought the MLA Style Manual was bad.  Commas and spaces and underlining, oh my!

My very first legal memo is due on Wednesday, and I'm up entirely too late editing the thing.  I still have to read for class tomorrow.  Blargh.  Or, as my wife Tina Fey says in 30 Rock, Blerg.  With an umlaut, of course.  Alas, there are no umlauts in windows live crappy spaces we leak your password to the world msn thing.

My back is breaking, my eyes, are red, my body is saying IT'S TIME FOR BED!  Merry citing to all, and to all a good night.

I have pages and pages to read for my 8:30 Contracts class tomorrow.  But just now I am watching our cat sleep luxuriously on the dining room table, our short-legged dog fervently and persistently testing all vantage points around her to see if now can I reach? Here?  Can I reach here?  How about here?  Can I reach her now?  Cat cat cat cat cat cat reach the cat cat cat cat can I reach here?  Etc.

I am myself enjoying the heavy-limbed ache that is the fruit of a punishing gym routine.  I feel stretched out, well fed, and pleasantly exhausted.  Today has been a day well-lived.  The air conditioner next door loudly whirs.  A distant siren wails, tinny and removed from me.  My son snores, and the cat.    Contracts beckon, but I hold the subject off for a few more minutes, and paint in my mind's eye the memory of a Tuesday night in my first year of law school, mundane and yet lovely.  Few are the nights when I comfortably exist in my immediate circumstance, but this is one of them.

Watching the Ken Burns national parks doc with half an eye.  It's all about Yosemite at the moment, a place where I spent one heartening summer, teaching children how to keep brown bears out of their packs and flush grody camp toilets with your feet.

John Muir is such an interesting man, someone about whom I would love to read more.  I can remember telling the children I led through Yosemite that he died of a broken heart when they flooded Hetch Hetchy valley.  That was part of the standard speech on how the reservoir came to be.  I'm interested to see what Ken Burns has to say about that bit of melodrama.  Tuolumne Meadows is one of the quintessential places.  The hike to Yosemite Falls is one of the toughest this suburban chick has ever done.  They keep throwing these place names at me, and memories flood.  I feel guilty sitting here with a laptop.  Soft.  In those days I slept without a tent, just a sleeping bag under the stars.  I had a cheap plastic travel mug which served as cup, bowl, plate; wore sarongs and camis with Chaco sandals EVERY SINGLE DAY; and spent my bleary-eyed mornings French braiding middle school girls' hair while they gossiped to me about which boys were cute and who liked who.  It was a pretty much completely terrific. 

"Wildness is an essential part of ourselves that our ordinary lives tempt us to forget," says someone on the tv.  They talk of being nerve-shaken, and overcivilized.  High-flying rhetoric always gets my goat.

Anybody else feel like going camping this weekend?

Reading a case in crim about a little boy who was beaten by two adults and then died after they refused to take him to the hospital until it was too late.  The case became a contest of medical experts, each defendant trying to prove that the other's beating was the cause of the death.  You can only be found guilty of manslaughter if your vicious punch to the abdomen caused his internal bleeding.  If all your vicious punch did was badly bruise him, you're just guilty of being a horrific, pathetic mess of a human being (and maybe assault in the second degree.)

Oh man.  This crap is not easy to read.  He was 6 in 1984, making him my age.  Lord help me if I have to read about a 1-1/2 year old boy.

I hope she doesn't call on me in class for this one.

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/the-referendum/

(Found the link at another blogger's place.)

Today I made a comment in class that was refuted by a gentleman who declared that "some folks" don't understand what it's like in "the real world," but in his "extensive experience" in the working world, blah blah Gill you're an idiot.

I was like - Oh No He Dih-unt.  I wear the Crown for Queen of Too Old For This Shizz, and your early-twenties little butt ain't gonna unseat me.

If I have to put up with the crows feet and gray hairs encroaching on my youthful hotness, I also get the deference of old age.

Ah, it's my favorite month, this month of my anniversary (which approacheth post haste!)  Back when I was a pretentious and silly young thing, I collected quotes and poems about October in the back of a pink hardbound notebook, a notebook I still have even though I can hardly bear to read the pretentious, silly things I wrote in it.  The job I just left has changed me, no doubt, and sometimes I get angry at the Self I was before, the one who thought that being smart and hardworking was all you need to get by, baby.  Someday I'll have to deal with this anger I have at the professional world, and the way it handles (maims, crushes, diminishes) women and especially mothers, but it's almost October and October does not lend itself to angst and self loathing.  That's more of a February post, when the weather stinks and there are no fun holidays and everyone is depressed.  October posts should be about Halloween costumes and root vegetables.  October is a month in which I find myself more serene than the other eleven months of the year, and we won't be jacking ourselves up onto a soapbox today.

I do realize it's still September, by the by, but football has started and a harvest-y themed Southern Living has just arrived, so I'm in an early fall, October kinda mood.  This is the time of year that I make pot pies and beef stew and breads.  I've already begun thinking about what Jack will be for Halloween (hint - it has eight legs and it isn't a spider.)  I would love to convince my dad to come down here for the holiday.  He always did it up right when we were kids: every October 31, slapping face paint and fake blood on us from birth, playing Night on Bald Mountain as loud as the speakers would go, and scaring the crap out of neighborhood kids who came to collect their candy.  My sister is coming down just prior to the 31st, and we already have big plans for our annual traditional Scary Movie Night.  Young Frankenstein and The Shining are ALWAYS, ALWAYS on the menu on Scary Movie Night.  OMG I think we may have to have a Scary Movie Night Preview this week, I just can't wait.

Happy End of September, everyone.  I have lots to read for Contracts, but with football on in the background and a harvest pumpkin ale in hand.  Aaaaah, autumn!