found

i keep things. handwritten notes, cards from friends and relatives, ticket stubs, flight itineraries.

for some reason i'm going through a box of this sort of ephemera, just to see if i can glean the pile down a little. so far:

i'm keeping all the cards and letters from my granny, who really can't write anymore.
wedding invitations for friends
birth announcements
'goodbye and good luck' and group-signed birthday cards from workplaces
ticket stubs to see they might be giants, several times
ticket stub to cocteau twins, 1990
cards for my bat mitzvah (at age 26)
all 11 valentines from the year my husband made it into a treasure hunt
mother's day cards from the cat
mother's day cards from 'your most bonky boo' in husband's handwriting

darned if i know how it works

but this....


especially in the spray form, has saved me from being a raving loon during the move process.

EXCEPT I LOST MY FRIGGIN' BOTTLE ARRRRGH WHERE WHERE NEED IT NOW

i'm openminded but i really have no idea how to attribute calmness to a blend of 38 floral essences sprayed in the mouth. i suspect it's more of a trained reaction (spray spray ahhhhh) than the homeopathic med it claims to be. but, i'm going to run to the health food store and get me another bottle.

down to one car

sold husband's car today. so happy to be moving to a place where we will only need one.

i visited my former coworkers today. i, um, don't miss working. i particularly don't miss having to accomodate people. it becomes too much of a habit and sometimes, frankly, some requests deserve a 'fuck off'. like, say... the solicitation from the RNC that came in the mail today. fuck off.

i said upside down you're turning me, i can't do math evidently

yesterday i had another moving company rep in to give an estimate. unlike the previous two, this guy did the math by hand, not with a laptop. since we are having a car transported to oregon, i asked if his company handled that and he said they subcontract that, and he happened to know the price because he had to inquire for another customer moving to oregon the previous day. so i'm watching him write down the figures, and he comes up with the total, and i'm trying to add the car transport fee to this. i'm reading the numbers upside down. for some reason, i can read upside down with no problem, and can write that way as well. but i couldn't add the number on the page to the number in my head. it was just too many processes, i guess.

boo had his annual checkup appointment today and he wrote his name upside down. he had been watching me write on packing boxes. i'm pretty amazed by this - he got his Ns inverted, but heck, a lot of grownups would have trouble with that too. makes me wonder how he's going to use his spatial reasoning skills in the future.

btw, w's favorite moving company sent a letter telling my husband how nice it was to meet him the other day. strike two, since they met me and only me. there was another company we got an estimate from, but details gleaned from movescam.com have ixnayed that company.

in two weeks our stuff will be in a van, holy huey.

wow. (my kid strikes again.)

"i don't know what i want to eat for dinner. i have eater's block."

wow. my kid has coined a phrase for a very familiar feeling.

jesus, jesus will tear us aparrrrt againnnn

i love you, bbc.

dear moving company

want to earn my business?

then don't feature this on your brochures and website.

and since i posted something literary, now this

this morning, my cat TJ jumped on the bed. i would like to think it was affection; it was probably just nagging me for breakfast. boo was already in the bed for his morning cuddle. i tried to lift TJ up from my feet to the top half of the bed. he didn't like this, and clawed me. on the nipple. and drew blood.

ow.

jane austen, i submit to thee....

packing the house has meant that most of my books have been squirreled into boxes, and all materials returned to the library for fear of packing them in a last-minute frenzy. thus, my choices of reading materials have been online or the few magazines to which i subscribe.

i finally realized it's causing me to spend a lot more time in front of the computer, searching for something to read. and since the board i've been on for eons is grinding to a slow death, euugh. (there will be another post about what i've been reading online, at some other time.)

one of the few books not yet in a box is jane austen's pride and prejudice. a nice hardback edition, no doubt the well-intentioned gift of an aunt while i was a teenager. i remember trying it and putting it down rather quickly. desperation makes you do things you usually wouldn't, though, so i picked it up this afternoon and spent a lovely little break from packing by reading through two chapters. maybe it's due to seeing several adaptations, maybe it's (gasp) some previously hidden font of maturity, maybe it's getting prepped for this by unexpectedly enjoying thomas hardy's tess of the d'urbervilles last year.

i wonder if a year from now i'll be one of those librarians hooked on austen.

sorry, kid post again

"mommy, why do andy and his mom speak in spanish?"

"no, honey, they speak in korean. master lee and mrs. lee grew up in a country called korea. it's far away, as far away as daddy's family. they're teaching andy to speak korean too."

"i want to speak korean, teach me korean."

"i don't know korean, i'm sorry but i can't teach it to you. why don't you ask master lee to teach you how to say 'hello' and 'goodbye' in korean? those would be good words to learn."

"nooooo. i want you to teach me."

sigh. poor kid, spanish, hindi, malayalam and hebrew aren't enough?

so hard to be creative

"mommy, you have to help me. i want to write a note to miss donna but i have writers block." - boo

passing over

this is the second year in a row in which i've done absolutely nada about passover.

i used to keep kosher for the whole week. i really loved it. i loved the seder, loved having guests for the seder, etc. but since quitting the congregation last year, i haven't felt like observing much of the holidays. sometimes on a friday i'll get a challah and light candles. my son really enjoys that, and like all little kids he loves hannukah.

there is a reconstructionist congregation in arlington, which is about 25 miles away. it is not possible to get there peacefully on a friday night. i have gone to a saturday shabbat service with kids' accomodation once, and would probably think about becoming more active there if we were staying in the area. there are a number of people there who have been to elat chayyim. this makes it feel somewhat safe, as their practice of judaism is about what i've come to as well.

but i am still so wary after ner shalom. i felt really, really burned. part of me wants to explore the congregations in portland - and there are a number of liberal ones, including a renewal group, reconstructionist, and i met someone in the reform one who said they were quite liberal too. mostly, i want my kid to have some sense of jewish identity, although i will also say that's something i felt that he would need as a defense mechanism when living here.

i did notice that the neighborhood (portland) grocery store has a kosher section, but did not have passover matzot. i asked a store employee if they were on display somewhere else, and he said no, and i explained that most of the types of matzot they had weren't useable for passover. he said it was something handled corporately and not by individual stores. i had flashbacks of south carolina, when congregation members would send out matzot-sighting emails. however, portland has several congregations of every stripe, two jewish day schools, and frankly we felt very accepted as a family - and since we're racially mixed, that can be a very strong reaction.

while stuck in the minneapolis airport overnight on the way home, basil mentioned that he had never felt so uncomfortable in the vibes people were giving us. he felt it was worse that south carolina, although i suspect that was spurred from being protective of boo as well. i just was very smoochy on him, both because we were both stressed and because it was fun to tweak the sensibilities of white midwestern assholes cluching 'i'm a supersuper christian' books while passing judgement on us. for comparison, total strangers would approach us in portland to tell us that our family is beautiful. the assumption i usually get here is that i'm a single parent, my kid is hispanic, and that i might have gotten knocked up but no way would i have married one of _those_ people. i've watched people talk to me in english and then turn and talk to my kid in spanish, and even people at my former congregation thought i wasn't married.

so maybe.... i'm getting out of the egypt/virginian desert, just a few weeks late.

i should be packing

the amount i still have to do is stunning me into a stupor.

house

pics uploaded for portland house:

http://flickr.com/photos/boomom