bookish dreamer

My maternal Grandfather passed away last week Sunday after celebrating his 98th birthday in April. His passing wasn't entirely a surprise, because he'd been having circulation trouble (specifically in his legs and feet) for two years or so, ( cut for medical stuff ), so when he elected to move to the full-care hospice on the Friday after Thanksgiving (or the Wednesday before? something like that), we kind of guessed. He passed away in his sleep, pretty peacefully as far as we know.

( I didn't know him very well. )

want to see a slideshow about his life? click me

The Horseman
(a poem by my Grandfather Lee F. Page)

( The big percherons go with patient tread )

Dear Cousin,

I'm defriending you on facebook. Not because I think you're a bad person - I think you have good intentions and those come from someone with a good heart. Not because you comment on my posts with different opinions - I actually like talking to people with opinions different than mine, especially when they are well read, and you seem to do a lot of reading.

But every time you comment on something I post you're aggressive and you level personal attacks at me. You told me I had no right to my opinions because I wasn't a mother. You told me it was no wonder your mom stopped talking to mine because I was just terrible as she was. Today you are telling me I'm being argumentative and I think you're also accusing me of being fat when I was trying to tell you "hey, you have your opinion and I have mine, and this is why I have mine."

I friended you because I'm not close to you and you're my cousin. And I remembered you from when we were kids. I wanted to get to know you. But when you comment so aggressively to my posts, when you tell me I can't have an opinion different than yours, when you call me ignorant, or terrible, when you attack me? It makes me feel bad, and sick, and angry. Maybe that's what you mean to do. If so, that's pretty toxic, because you don't know me either.

It seems like you're pretty happy with your life. I'm glad. I'm pretty happy with my life too. And one of the ways I try to draw boundaries in my life is to stop accepting abuse in the name of family or friends. I hope you have a good life. If I see you at a family thing I'll be happy to have a conversation with you - again I wish you well and happy. But I don't actually need to be attacked online.

Be well,
Katekat1010

I kept telling people that I was heading to Kansas for my Grandfather's 97th birthday, and they'd get this precious look on their faces like, "awww, family, yay!" Each time I'd have to pause and correct them. Not all family birthdays are joyful occasions. ( the long and the short of it is )

See the image of my Grandfather shaking noisemakers as proof.

Since then I've felt like I was in recovery from the slew of events and visits and trips and airplane flights. I've had low-grade depression making certain types of motivation, including writing motivation, very difficult. I think part of it has been that I haven't had weekly place to be/things to do (either social or school-related) and have been largely lonely. I've mostly puttered around the house and watched a lot of TV.

And cleaned every day or every other day trying to get rid of a flea problem - apparently the fleas in my area over the last several years have developed immunity to the normal flea prevention drugs that I have the dog on. According to the vet, they've developed immunity to Frontline and Revolution both. And I had to have the "are you cleaning enough?" conversation with three vet techs, a vet, and two different pet supply store workers/owners. It reached ridiculous levels after the second conversation. Because apparently what you're supposed to do to get rid of fleas is clean ALL THE THINGS ALL THE TIME: your dog. And any loose cloths that can be washed should be. And vacuum your couches (under cushions and everything). And mop your floors. And clean your drapes. And baseboards. And do it every day so that the eggs that can stay live up to two months will be picked up as they hatch. And spray with anti-flea spray. And spray your dog with organic anti-flea spray. So I've tried to do that, mostly. Washed every scrap of cloth that could be taken down at the laundromat. Cleaned every day, when usually I only do that once a week. It only takes a couple of hours, but it's ridiculously tiring to do it every day.

It's made it hard to motivate about a lot of things, one of which is Summer of Giles, which is celebrating it's 10th frigging year. And sadly right now needs sign ups like crazy.

These last couple of days I've been able to start the day with translating, which is so so good. And do other things.

But I have been walking the dog, despite her itchy problem. That's the best part of my day as of late - getting out into the sunlight and walking the dog. The tough part is that every day it's a little bit of a mental struggle to get myself together and do it, but every time I'm glad I do.

I'm in the middle of a two-week visit to family in N. California.

It's a family immersion! This week I've spent the days chatting with my stepmom (on everything from porn to my dog's digestive situation), the evenings taking short dog walks with my dad and getting to hear him talk through his current trial (he's a defense attorney), gotten to hang out with my little sister two days running, and my elder sister for a couple of hours. I've burbled at (and been burbled at by) two grand-nephews (yes, my nephews are old enough to have their own babies). I helped my nephew fill out his divorce papers yesterday, had lunch with him and his brother and his brother's girlfriend and their little boy, and dinner with one of my other nephews and his wife and their little boy. Saturday is an afternoon picnic (or maybe early dinner) with another nephew's girlfriend and her family (and our family). Oh, and Dad and I washed cars on Sunday, a weekend activity we've been doing together for like 20 years.

It sounds exceedingly busy but it's also been a lot of hanging out, drinking coffee, watching the dogs, and eating.

Sunday I head to my mom's house, where I assume there will be gardening, and more talking, hanging out, watching (my) dog.

I love these visits. I suppose for some people this kind of summer vacation would be weird, or filled with conflict, and I'm really grateful that I have a family that (while dear god we definitely have plenty of conflict) is happy to see me and have me as a lounger in their house when I can.

i guess nobody but me still uses yahoo!mail? anyway, mine's been out for three days (for "system maintenance") and so i've felt a little (or a lot) disconnected. i'm in the process of moving all my notifications to gmail (it's not like i haven't had an account there, but it was largely used for filtering spam). thoroughly disappointed in yahoo though.

i have a paper due on the 13th that i'm madly, crazily, belatedly trying to work through (i have to read a lot of complex theory in Japanese to get to it - that's on the menu today).

new housemate moved in on the 1st of Dec and we get a long pretty great. she's a chatterbox, which fills the house in a way i haven't been used to for a while, but it's nice. we spent Saturday rearranging the living room into a new formation and putting up christmas decorations (bonding!!)

( other things - like turkey day, family stuff, state of me )

so maybe if i get the chance picspam soon. well, not today. today i have to work. really, i'm going to work. you see me going, right?

Ok, so, I have to say at the outset that this is all me meandering because Mom has all the pictures from the first half of our trip. My camera battery died and I didn't nab a new one until we got back to Yokohama.

( so, the word for 'lake' in Japanese is 'ko' when appended to a name like Kawaguchi )

Next up: Karoke and Kyoto!

I spent a wonderful week at my Dad's, though it was a bit more of a marathon than a relaxing week (since apparently my idea of relaxing does not necessarily include getting up at 7:30 am to make an 8:30 am water aerobics class - but I did, every week day I was there!). I had a ton of fun, and for the first time in a while both my parents there were in really good spaces and so we had the kind of talks I've come to treasure deeply where we don't shy away from the scary stuff. These conversations are good, like lancing a boil or something, even though a little painful having to admit things hurt or things weren't fun, or whatever, still feeling better after working through it. Oh dear gods, sorry, hopefully that was slightly articulate. Anyway, I got to have those one on one conversations with both my dad and my stepmom at different times, but on the back porch of the house in the quiet when voices go a little meditative. My stepmom and I are pretty emotionally similar in a lot of ways, and really this time for me the best part was getting to tell her that I was worried when I went to visit earlier in the summer about her not being particularly happy, and that I was relieved that essential spark that so delights me about her was back (she's gone vegan and done some other things and she's feeling a thousand times better, and it shows with both her and my dad). And I never want to forget being out on that same porch in the evening having a much shorter (but no less meaningful) conversation with my father, who in his own way was telling me he's proud of me. He talked about how what I'm doing is something no one else in our family really has - the getting of the phd - and that mentioning of the difference is his way of pointing out that i'm doing something good in his eyes. Made me happy.

Also me and my stepmom managed to do our part for the failing american economy (or, as gray_ghost put it, 'they probably took pity on you since you don't have any money') and i was taking new clothes shopping, to get my hair cut, and my toes and nails done. I put on one of my new dresses the next day and my dad grunted (such is his way) that he liked this new one. When I asked how he knew it was new, he pointed out with a sardonic laugh that he'd seen all my other clothes so many times he could recognize what was in my closet and what had just been added to it.

So, after that, normally I'd drive back to LA and turn into a closeted pumpkin for a couple of days - reading old fanfic, watching some bad tv, and taking the dog on a walk, but not much else.

Instead, though, a friend of mine was in town doing some consulting work on a site and so she came to visit the same night I got back! We went to dinner that first night, then came back home and caught up with the first couple of episodes of True Blood. Friday she was back out at her work site, while I ran errands and got some of the tasks on my mental to do list finished; we saw Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (which was its own brand of hilarious) that night. And then yesterday spent the day watching the first season of Spartacus while preparing for a party since some of my friends who were out of town when I ABD'd wanted to celebrate since they were back. Thus, well, Saturday night = party. Today we went to the Getty and wandered around the gardens and a couple of wings, and now, well, frankly, I'm pooped.

We were talking about going up to Griffith Park tonight to do the planetarium (because planetariums are awesome, hello!) but since she's taking a nap right now I may suggest postponing that until tomorrow night.

Oh gods, tomorrow. Tomorrow I start summer school and oh dear gods i really wish i didn't have to. but, i do, so today is my last day for having to moan about *having to go* (i make no promises about not moaning about things like the damn workload, because it's not going to be light). It's a rotten schedule since it takes about an hour to get across town, i'm going to be carpooling with co-student, and i have to talk to her at 7:45 am.

I. am. not. good. with. mornings.

Actually, the truth is I'm great with mornings as long as I don't have to talk to people until at least an hour after I wake up. If I can get up, get some coffee, go outside, check email, get in the car, listen to the radio on my way to school, then I am GREAT after all that. But most of the summer, since the time I naturally tend to wake up is about 9 am, I'm going to be forcing myself to wake, but I will inevitably snooze until the last minute, and I will then be jamming what should be an hour's worth of waking up into something like 20 minutes of time, and be carpooling with this woman so we can save money and have to *blerg* talk to her *blerg*. I would be displeased if I was doing this with anyone, frankly. Even my mom learned not to talk to me in the mornings during highschool (and the lesson still hasn't worn off 20 years later).

school. oh well.

The menu worked out so amazing I want to go and do everything over again. But the fun of holiday cooking is getting to explore other things, so possibly not?

( all the dishes and links to the recipes )

(and then, when we had everything again the next day, we also did orange-cranberry sauce!)

And, a Turkey Day Picspam:


( the four ladies of thanksgiving invite you in )

As you may have noticed from the image up there (and the pics) I got to celebrate my turkey day with elizabuffy & my mom & amber! We had an amazing time - lots of eating, lots of (slightly unplanned) car riding, a planetarium show, an awesome silent movie, a bbc sherlock marathon, and seriously amazing company. Sadly EB & Amber took off this morning for other parts, but I get to keep mom for a couple more days. My brain is offline enough that I can't come up with the perfectest words to express how awesome the entire couple of days were, so you'll have to just take my word for it. For all this? I'm thankful.

*hugs you all*

What should have been a six hour car ride turned into a 9 hour car ride.  My body still thinks that I'm hurtling through the world in that steel contraption.  If someone told me right now that I had to get back in it, I would probably beat them in the face with a wet fish, screaming "no!" at the top of my lungs.

Unsurprisingly, that means no long post for me.  I wish I could write paragraphs extolling the joys of my turkey day visit with my families.  In the interest of time and my still slightly trembling arms, I give you instead the bullet points of paragraphs I would be composing:

• home made (from scratch) pumpkin biscuits, pear-jicama-pomegranate salad, succulent turkey breast, brussel sprouts, orange-cinnamon-cranberry sauce
• Pumpkin Soup cooked in the pumpkin (with goat cheese and cream)
• dog walking in freezing cold weather and the tree that lost it's leaves overnight
• fuzzy sheets!
• MOM!!
• little girls having tea parties
  
• Dog & Mom: fabulous.
  
• Dog & Dad/Nephews/Sisters: amazingly, surprisingly good.
• Saturday rain dog walking; dog deprivation; dog obsession; dog aggression
  
• rewriting mental images
• finally that random talk i was looking for
• pumpkin chunkin
• family history and women's suffrage
• my nephew(s)' drug use ... one lack, one obviously not
• smoking, the doing of, the discussion of, the companionship, the cheerful 'you know you'll die don't you, we just want to tell you an awful story' ribbing
  
• grandma, death, dying (but not dead yet)
• prosciutto wrapped dates stuffed with pecans and parmesian - harder to make than you think - salami stuffed with cream cheese, prosciutto feta basil pinwheels
• my expanding waist line
• new shoes, printer, wet jet, chinese stool, and sheets!

Oh my god even the bullets are too long! well, maybe that gives you an idea?  Glad to be home, but it was a great trip, not long enough at all (well, the drive home was too long, but the rest went by too quick)

In the best kind of 'when it rains it pours' kind of scenario, last night my journal got discovered by ask_captianjack , ask_aboutcoffee , ask_arealdoctor , timeagency , gwen_e_cooper , ask_janet , ask_exterminate , and ask_adeaddoctor ... and you were all AWESOME.  I looked up after a quiet day of cleaning to find my inbox filled with comments.  That had all come in in the space of 10 minutes.  The deluge!

I only wish I could have played longer, but sadly had to leave for a dinner with the boyfriend's parents. 

But, I tried to make this offer in the comments and I'll make it again here - for any in the Askworld who would like to read my paper on it, I'm happy to share!  Just PM me with your email, because I would absolutely adore comments, feedback, thoughts, discussion.  The only reason why I'm not posting it publicly to my journal is that I do hope to publish it at some point, and it's easier to do that if I don't post publicly here first.

and now, for the restaurant reviews?

( for tuesday at bacaro )

( for thursday at cobras y matadors )

( for friday at susan feniger's street )

And since then?  I've done absolutely nothing.  Ha.  It is really nice to finally be on vacation except for paper rewriting / reworking.