nina turns 40

cB has another opening on Saturday at Aurafice on Capitol Hill. Not only will he be showing some of my favorite fotos, but there will be music and delicious food made by none other than nina herself. What better way to spend an inevitably rainy saturday evening in Seattle than noshing, drinking, and checking out the hottest thing in botanicals since the greenhouse?

I'm still riding on the hormonal bus from hell, seems like every little thing is having an emotional impact much greater than it ought to. One advantage to being overwrought is that it often leads to interesting insights, like this one that occurred to me this morning as I was walking in the rain: maybe when you're feeling neglected by someone else, it's really because you're neglecting yourself.

I mentioned earlier how I'm reading a bunch of NYC blogs, and one of my favorites, Uffish Thoughts is participating in Blogwhore 2: Revenge of Blogwhore. Since you get all out of proportion cuddly feeling towards the writers of your favorite blogs, I would love to see Chris take the big prize, so check out her blog, and the contest, and have yourself a nice day.

what a horrible f'd up PMS grumpy ass day it's been. a rainy seattle in january day. the job sucks, cB's too busy to see me, my housing situation is totally up in the air, I'll have no time off from the kidlet this week, crappy whiny day. aren't you glad I'm sharing it with you?

I'm turning into my mother department...

I always swore that I would never dye my hair. That was, of course, before I had any gray hair to speak of. When mine started turning, it was kind of fun, it was coming in the beautiful silvery white that the women in my family are known for. But it started changing a little bit faster than my self image wanted to deal with, so I started playing around with store bought dyes, with good results. Fast forward a couple of years, and now, for various reasons (OK, OK, a man might have a little something to do with it) I'm letting it go natural. Whoa! I don't know if I can take this. The white hair is pretty, but it sure ages you, even in this salt and pepper stage I'm returning to.

Through the wonders of blog, I've been following (why does it still feel like snooping in on?) the lives of a couple of new yorkers. One of whom, Glennalicious sent me to the Ukes of Hazzard's Gay Boyfriend video. Since I have a slow modem connection, the only way the clip would come across was in 2 or 3 second intervals. You'd play up to a point, then a coupla seconds more would come on. Then you'd have to hit play again, which would start the whole thing from the start again, and then add a couple more seconds. Since I can't resist a girl band that plays ukelele, I stuck with it, kidlet on my knee, watching it over and over just to get it all loaded onto my machine. Then, once we had the whole thing, we had to watch it in its entirety a coupla times, too. The result being that now my almost 4 year old son is walking around singing the chorus. I'm expecting a call from the pre-school any second now...

Stayed home today with the kidlet, who has a cold. I must confess it was wonderful to have an excuse not to go into the office. We hung out, played, took a nap, watched Blue's Clues: the perfect three year old day. I'm glad I don't have to do it all the time, though. I like being able to have something separate from him as well. Just wish I could find a better balance between the two. I miss the days when I first went back to work and only put in 25 hrs. a week.

I'm not overly nostalgic about my childhood, it always seemed the most mundane suburban upbringing imaginable, but lately things in my adult life are triggering a wave of fond memories: my son's method of holding my hand as we walk, gripping my index finger just as I used to do with my father's, the heavy old Hoover vacuum that my housemates have which is exactly like the one I used to vacuum our shag rug with, the fact that I now carry a thermos to work, just as my father did--all these little details fill me with tenderness for the girl that I was and for my parents' younger selves who seemed so invulnerable at the time.

Can you say "global warming"?

We're having one of the nicest springs we've ever had in Seattle, clear days, no rain, and temperatures in the 50's. Hey, wait a minute, isn't it January?

Well, I used to be disgusted...

I bought a pair of red shoes the other day. Don't know why, wasn't particularly interested in having a pair of red shoes, they're not exactly practical or anything, but at the shoe store the only shoes that looked the least bit interesting to me were red. So I bought a pair (along with a nice ordinary black pair to show that I can be practical as well as fun), and ever since then, I can't get Elvis Costello out of my head. So besides evading angels out to get my new footware, I'm also reminded of one of my all time favorite lyrics: I said I'm so happy I could die, she said, "drop dead" then left with another guy...
There's nothing quite like the soundtrack to your youth.

One more thing I love about cB: he is so happy and steady and content with who he is.

In contrast, I feel like I'm struggling all the time--not only just to survive, to try and find my place in the world, but also to keep from letting depression get the better of me. I love all that happy, vibrant energy that he has--it feeds me--but I fear he will grow weary of me and my struggles. I did choose a harder path for myself than I had to. I could have stayed married to my first husband and had the comfortable life of a professor's wife, but I knew I didn't want to have my ease and contentment via someone else, I wanted to find my own way. So here I am with a life far different than I could have imagined then (a single mom? that was not the plan), a life that has been harder than I thought it would be, but certainly it has had all the independence and freedom and openness to experience that I sought when I decided to go. Looks like more big changes are in store, too. And I thought turning 40 was going to be blase.

cB has an opening for a show of his orchid fotos this friday. I'm so excited for him and proud, and--I must confess--envious. I've been to friends' art openings and friends' plays and I've read friends' articles in national magazines and I'm sitting here wondering when the heck am I going to get my act together and put something out into the world? Sounds like a good new year's resolution to me.

Holiday Highs and Lows

getting filmed by not one but two security cameras as I bought a cup of coffee at the Starbucks at the ferry terminal, talking about buying land with cB, singing jazz songs with my family in a post-carolling jam, driving back and forth to Sequim with my car so misaligned that the steering wheel wobbles, having time to go out to dinner and see a movie, kissing under the mistletoe at midnight on new year's eve, sitting here now with contented kidlet, glad to be home.