Seems a long time since I've posted. Forgive me, neighbors, and please come back! I've been busy with graduations and travelling and pets with pet issues and, oh yeah, work! Swamped, I tell you, just swamped.

But I'm glad to be home and even though I'm still super busy and have lots to do even as we speak, I decided I needed to stop and update before I accidentally find myself completely out of the habit. So forgive the quality if it's lacking--I'm just going to spit it all out.

Last weekend was my sis' boyfriend's grad. I also consider him a friend of my own now. In addition, he's been a great help and definitely part of my support system over the last year; he's been a go-to petsitter and occasional help with larger than one person jobs around the house. So I was very glad to be included in the weekend festivities--and I took on the unofficial role of photographer, taking tons of pics of the sis, the boyfriend, and my sis' best friend from home who was also graduating. We went to my favorite local haunt, Trattoria Lisina at the Mandola Winery in Driftwood, for a late lunch with family and friends, and had a great time eating, drinking, and taking lots of photos.

Throughout all this was pet insanity--Frankie Fat Butt now has Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disorder and he needed a stay at the vet, followed by more meds, and then boarding when I went to Nashville for my sis' graduation. The vet costs killed my ability to rationalize buying a new bike, so I thought hopes for tri-training were lost. As luck and fate would have it my neighbors had an old bike still in decent condition that just needed new tires, tubes, and grips, and a tune-up. So, practically free, I will soon have a bike that's at least good enough to use for training.

I also had my first adult swim start lesson with the tri group's trainer. I can't remember if I've already talked about this...last month I showed up to the pool for the first day of a swim clinic expecting to be able to jump right in and get working on my technique. Instead I had a totally bizarre panic reaction and could not force myself to get in the water. So after talking with the trainer, and several other folks, I learned that (a) the freeze-up reaction is rather common and can happen anywhere to even the most experience swimmers and (b) the trainer could give me a 4 session swim-start to help get comfortable in the water again. I had a great, but difficult, first session. She concentrated on just helping me figure out what was going on--ultimately, concentrating on my breathing helped tremendously since the panic reaction was making me hold my breath indefinitely. [Over the weekend at the hotel in Nashville I hit the pool again and had a great experience! I feel I'm well on my way to being a strong swimmer again and am really look forward to my next session tomorrow.]

I flew to Nashville for my sis' grad from Vanderbilt and met up with the family for four long days of fun, laughter, shopping, and eating. And yes, they were long days. Three days would probably have been best, still we had a good time and I only occasionally thought about my husband...dammit, ex-husband...who was with us when my brother graduated from the same school two years ago. It was a great weekend...but that last thought did leave me a bit out of sorts at times. I think I weathered it pretty well though, and I'm not sure anyone noticed...I was a little crankier than I have been lately.

The graduation was on Friday and despite a cloudy start it turned out to be a beautiful day. I took more great photos and even made it into a few this time. On Saturday we went to the Vandy baseball game courtesy of one of Bri's friends who plays on the team. (Unfortunately, they lost.) And Sunday, we had Mother's Day lunch at J. Alexander's--a niceish chain--after checking out of the hotel and rushing around a bit so that my grandma could get to mass.

My folks and grandmother then left for the airport and my sis, her boyfriend, and I all went to the Frist to see the Monet to Dail exhibit and the exhibit on Tiffany lamps. Both were beautiful and the Frist is a very nice venue, though the gallery size is smaller than I expected it to be. Walking around, it was wonderful to be suddenly struck with a lightning bolt of recognition and the strangest bittersweet sense of familiarity when I saw certain paintings. I recognized many artists by style, and their works took me back to the long day we spent wandering the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice last year. [I love that I can say that now...I'm not name dropping, exactly, it's just that the experience was so much more special than I had imagined it. If you've read my old posts, you know how special the whole trip was to me, and why...]

Ultimately, I was glad to have been gone--glad that I left the house to the elements and the care of the pets to others, that I didn't quite obsess about their well-being and didn't panic on the plane when turbulence hit, that I was mostly able to brush off the occasional cruel words of family members who don't mean to be cruel, and that I made it through what was, in retrospect, a very lonely weekend surrounded by people. So strange, so strange...

Oh, and I almost forgot. For an extra dash of adventure, my sister's roommate's family's dog bit me when we went back to their apartment after the graduation. It was not a bad bite--it's totally tiny--and was more surprising than anything else, but I did have to get a tetanus shot today since it's been more than 10 years since my last.

And that's my update. Here are pics from the second grad just to balance out those from the first...only bigger, 'cause it was my sister after all.

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It's been about three hours since the last time I coughed. It's a nice change. I feel like I might be turning the corner, physically anyway.

But a cloudy day spent mostly indoors, other than a dog walk in the light rain, seems to have left me rather blue.

I'm rather stressed over my consulting gig. I'm behind on my work for them since I've been so damn tired and sick.  On top of that they apparently had a couple of minor crises yesterday and I couldn't be available to help troubleshoot. I feel badly that I wasn't available for them, but I'm also really frustrated at how quickly my contract manager moved to extremes; at least one of the crises could have been avoided with just a little less, um, "freak out". I feel loyal to them for keeping me on full-time while I was going through really hard times, and while I need the money I know I can get another gig, even if it's just temp work from time to time, to help make up the difference. Bottom line is that I'm seriously considering canceling my contract. I just don't think it's worth the stress, but I'm worried about damaging my karma by "bailing" out on these folks earlier than I said I would.

Luckily, my full-time job is still going well. Some of my co-workers feel like it's a crazy environment, but it's nothing like the level of craziness I've dealt with in previous jobs (including the current consulting work). There are no personal attacks, no invasions of privacy, and generally few expectations of selling your soul to the company store.

On the personal side, there are also little threads of stress weaving in and out. There's the usual 'my-divorce-still-isn't-final' and 'I-still-can't-believe-i'm-getting-divorced' stress, and that's definitely weighing on me tonight. But since that's well-trodden subject matter, I'm going to skip the details and move to something I've alluded to for a little while: my grandma.

My grandma Alice, my mother's mother, is 80+ years old and is currently convalescing in San Antonio at a rehab/assisted living center. She broke her hip back in January and has been on the mend ever since. There was some thought, initially, that some other medical complications meant she was just weeks from death, but tough to the end, she is hanging in there and, frankly, making life hell for lots of folks from time to time.

Among other complications, grandma's care is causing major strife among the sibings. The issue is that the youngest kids, led by my aunt Deb/godmother, and to a certain extent, most of the oldest, are fully dedicated to grandma's care, meaning that someone must visit her in the rehab center every day, and when she is released, each sibling with a home will be responsible for housing and caring for her for a shift of a few months in that home. However, my mother and her oldest sister, who are 55 and 65 respectively, have made it known that they do not want their mother living with them. My mother has also been reluctant to visit grandma out in San Antonio as well.

You see, grandma isn't exactly grateful or happy when people come to see her or try to do things for her. Before she broke her hip, she stayed with my oldest aunt in El Paso for about 6 months and did her best to be miserable and to make my aunt miserable the entire time. That experience is what, I think, led both my mom and aunt to decide that grandma would not be welcome in their homes.

Naturally, the other siblings are pretty pissed about this. They feel that even if my mom doesn't support the decision to care for grandma in this way, she should still be willing to support the other siblings in that decision and therefore take part in grandma's care. I see both sides of this argument. My mom doesn't have a very close relationship with her mother, but she does have close relationships with her siblings, and in order to preserve those relationships, the sibs feel that mom should still take care of grandma, if for no other reason that the fact that they 'say so'. But mom and her oldest sis disagree, so now there is not so subtle retaliation going on--the younger sibs are no longer allowing the non-participants to use the family vacation timeshare which was left to them by their father--my mom's step-dad, my grandma's second husband. It's petty, but it is what it is, and I'm in the middle.

I've visited grandma in San Antonio a couple of times because my aunt Deb has asked me to fill in while she was out of town. I went because of my relationship with Deb and not because of my relationship with my grandma, which is pretty nonexistent. Deb has always supported me, and particularly so over the last year of this divorce evil, helping me out financially and using her connections to hook me up with a lawyer, not to mention putting me up on the weekend whenever I needed some human contact and family around me. I'm there if she asks me to be there. But I hate that she is giving my mom so much grief. I hate that they're at odds with eachother. My mom has her reasons, believe me, beyond that my grandma is being a pain now. (I'll deal with those reasons another time.)

It's late and I'm tired and stressed and a bit depressed and not getting to a point anytime soon. I hope that the family can weather the drama and come out as close as before. And I hope I can turn off my mind tonight and get some sleep. The Democratic county convention is tomorrow and I'm supposed to be there at 9. Don't know how I'm going to do it.

Damn. I just coughed. Guess it's time for my next dose of medicine. Good night, all.

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Photos from Obama for President Rally, Austin TX, February 22, 2008

Just came back from Sen. Obama's rally in downtown Austin. I hadn't planned to go, but with my 15 year-old cousin-godson staying the night with me, I realized this would be a cool thing to take him to experience. So I checked for parental approval and off we went, rather on a whim, driving into town. We were only about 20 minutes late--which was pretty good time since we had to get through traffic from an accident on the highway, as well as walk about 10 blocks from where we parked to the capitol.

Anyhow, I'll have more on the evening later perhaps. I just thought I'd post some links to the rally tonight.(These are from the Austin-American Statesman; I only had my cell phone camera.)

I have a lot to think about in the meantime. I wish a win for Hillary could be a clear-cut, feminist victory and a victory for the country; I wish she wasn't Bill's wife (I liked him, really, but I just don't like that she's the wife of a former president), I wish she had had the chance to become President before him; I wish I didn't worry that she could polarize the right against the Democrats and risk losing the general election; I wish she didn't come with that baggage; and I wish she was speaking to me more than she is, connecting with the country more than she is doing. She would make a good president. I just don't know if, even after so many years, this is really her time. She just seems to have lost momentum...more on that later.

The crowd was probably the most striking part of the evening...young, old, families, couples, all ethnicities...they were there. His is a mobilizing effort I haven't seen before in my adult life; I've only seen it on TV, in film, in old footage of JFK. It's true; I'm not exagerrating--that's what the crowd felt like. That alone is certainly powerful.

I don't know, folks...I don't know what's going to happen, but I understand either way.

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even in my own family! A relative forwarded me an email about Barack Obama today that I just couldn't ignore. I normally just shrug off this kind of ridiculous stuff, but...from a family member, whose husband is a deacon in a Catholic parish? I just couldn't let it go. Below is my response, and below that is the original email forward.

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I recommend that anyone who was inclined to take the previous email forward (see below) at face value also take it upon themselves to research Senator Obama through other news and academic sources and to read his autobiography. Much of what is listed in the email forward as "uncovered facts" are written about in plain sight, and have been covered by mainstream media long before this.

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i've been busy...stay busy everyone says...and i do, i am, but it's not that i'm really trying, it's just that there's so much to do.

i went to nashville, to the mercy lounge...

...then came home and bought a fabulous dress, had dinner with friends, and found a new place to worship...

...i saw a grown ass man happily wear a balloon hat on his fiftieth birthday...

...and then i took a picture of the kind of clouds i like, oh yeah, and a watertower too

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i picked up my better-than-new pathfinder today and had the best pedicure of my entire life courtesy of my aunt debbie. i will be getting a haircut and a massage at the same salon next week. what the hell is going on? part of me instinctively wants to view these luxuries as preparation/compensation for some horror that lies ahead. and the other part of me just wants to say yippee! keep it coming!

and in the moment, part of me wants to say, "deb, i really appreciate it, but i can't accept anything else. i'm 28 and a half for goodness sake." and the other part of me is just so grateful that i say, "really? you mean it? gee thanks!" and boy do i mean it.

(am i too old for such hand-outs? probably. am i just obsessing to ease my guilt? yup. so this is the last you'll hear of it.)

watching all that jazz again. probably one of the best films ever made with one of the most interesting back stories. at the least it's one of my favorites. an autobiographical pic about bob fosse by bob fosse. what a prick. what a guy. it's just occurred to me on this viewing that, aside from the dancing, it's akin to the life the husband would wish for. hell, it's akin to the life i would wish for too. (by the way, some people think this movie is totally bizarre. you are forewarned.)

and, tada, ora parlo italiano (which i hope means "now i speak italian"). ok not really, but i am studying it. using an audio program that is sinking in surprisingly well. i have another for french i hope to start in a week, and if those go well enough, i'm going to look into a spanish one too but only after i come back from my trip. i only have so much confidence in my ability to retain new vocabulary, let alone vocabulary from two languages i've never looked at before. i'm just trying to pick up enough of each that i can get by with child-like conversation.

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there's a tradition in my family started by my late grandfather who was, among other things, extremely generous. the tradition is called bailing out the children even when they've ceased to be children.

i am twenty-eight and a half years old. every car i have ever owned has been purchased in whole or in part by my parents, my late grandfather, or my aunt debbie. (my uncle joseph also gets credit for underselling me a bad-ass beast during college, an 85 cadillac deville i nicknamed the gravedigger.)

my most recent vehicle, and one of my favorites, is a 1993 nissan pathfinder. dark blue. 4WD. my folks bought it for me. it's the one that died on me while i was staying with my cousins last week. a dealership quoted me $4300 to have it repaired. my aunt directed me to her mechanic in san antonio (wynn's automotive) who in turn directed me to their transmission guys (access transmission). today they estimated the work at $1795. quite a difference.

unfortunately, still out of my realm of reality, especially figuring that some other thing would surely go wrong in no time. then my aunt debbie called to say that she spoke with both wynn and daryl at access and asked them, "if this were your daughter's car..." (why didn't I think of asking something like that?) a full check-up was executed and the pathfinder deemed worth saving. so debbie decided to save it. end of story.

it's the kind of thing i will be expected to do for her kids someday. i just hope i'm in the position to be able to do it. the outlook isn't exactly favorable, but i'll do what i can.

so thanks to aunt deb and uncle howie...for saving the pathfinder. and my ass along with it.

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