functionally ill 7

Functionally ill 7 is now available for trade. I'll start mailing copies out tomorrow.

small crow

Today at the park I saw a cute little crow. It was the smallest crow I'd ever seen.

lunch, more work, collage cover

Lunch with M was fun though odd. Someone who was one of the closest people to me for five formative years and then off and on for longer and then nothing at all for six years--seeing her again was sort of a shock. But we did great. Park, Indian food, tea.

I was looking forward to a lot of time off coming up, but today I was offered work on another online scoring project. Sad face! So I won't have all that freedom I dreamed of, but it's better for our pocketbook.

Still, today I got in the mail what I was waiting for--the collage for the cover of functionally ill 7. It's beautiful. So soon I want to go to a copy place and mess around with that and get my originals all ready for the real copying later this week in Berkeley.

reason x that being vegan is great

You don't have to worry about breaking the eggs.

new again

I just finished addressing all the envelopes for fi 7--I'm afraid the permanent marker I use makes me feel dizzy and weird because I feel dizzy and weird and did last night too when I was working on it. About 60 go out in the mail initially, a handful get hand-delivered locally, and lots go out in the mail later.

When I make copies this week I need to make more of issue 6 too because I'm out, somehow.

Now I get to write the notes and letters to go with the zines. I'm on top of things. Kitty was racing around the apartment howling. Now he's settled in my lap, which makes it hard to type.

Scoring day 11--gah! Often it doesn't go this long. Erik's back to 10 hour days.

Tomorrow my ex-bestie is coming for lunch--she has to be home by 3, so we're limited. That might be good for me because I can only take so much, especially of a new person, and though she's old, she's new again.

trouble solved

Erik's having trouble with his computer. Or maybe the router? I have internet just fine, but he doesn't. It's really a pain for him. Meanwhile, scoring is supposed to go through Tuesday, so he really needs to be able to do that. I guess he can use mine.

The neighbors have set up camp on the stairs, and we took the truck to the post office and library. I sent a book to S in Santa Maria (which was f-ing expensive--should have forgone the note and sent it media mail), a card to N in Austin, a letter to A in Northville, and six zines to that library in Olympia.

At the library I had about 11 things waiting for me including a Tegan & Sara CD--a friend in the Netherlands was telling me to listen to them, so I will. Our friend P told us to read this book called Amazon Beaming that's about someone's adventures in the Amazon, so I requested it for Erik. And I got Dearest Creature which is Amy Gerstler's most recent book of poems, I think. (She was our teacher at UCI.) I guess I'm most excited by a comic book about prison reform, The Real Cost of Prisons, which was put out by the same press who did My Baby Rides the Short Bus.

Erik's computer has internet again.

day 10

Sometimes I get too excited and need to go for a walk. That's what happened this morning after listening to the podcast reviewing functionally ill 6. Did you hear it? I nearly cried.

Erik and I went to our closest park, and I walked through neighborhoods while Erik wrote poems by the creek. Then I wrote two letters on pink paper and enjoyed the wind.

For lunch I made guacamole but put in too much raw onion. I thought it tasted great that way, but my stomach isn't amused.

Erik's gone to get an oil change. We were supposed to have one done mid-December--oops. Overdue. Usually scoring is over by now, so I'm dragging my feet: day 10.

fi review

Here's a podcast review of functionally ill 6. It's done by A World Beyond Capitalism Team Radio.

http://awbcradionews.blogspot.com/2010/03/audio-moblog.html

oh yeah

And a library in Washington contacted me wanting to get functionally ills. That always makes me feel good. She's going to send postage money too.

new journal etc

Today Erik was working outside the home, so it was quiet around here. I scored SAT, washed dishes, wrote three poems in the series I'm working on (two of which I like), reread the whole functionally ill 7 and decided I like it all and the order is okay, spoke with Erik on the phone at lunchtime, and checked the mail. He got off work early, so soon we'll go to the park.

Also I listened to Andrew Jackson Jihad songs over and over again. I used to like only two, "Unicron" and "Power Plant," but now I like them all.

I started a new journal. My brown one was filled. I will miss it. I always have journal starting from the front and notes and stuff starting in the back. The back always gets some important info in it. The brown one in the back has a list of my whole zine mailing list, which has a lot of overlap with my Christmas card list.... It also has phone call notes. When I'm going to make a phone call I'm nervous about, I make notes about what I want to say and ideas for what to bring up in silences. When a friend was in the hospital I called her every few days, and there's a bunch of notes for phone calls to her.

Anyway, the new journal is blue with silver little vine things all over it. The paper is white and blank, of course--I require no lines. I don't know how I feel about the white yet, but we'll see. Hopefully it's thick enough.

my day: an overview

Today I messed around with a black and white printout of a picture of the collage I'm using for the cover of functionally ill 7.

I wrote another few pages of functionally ill 7 that I'm not sure about--need to look at it fresh in a few days.

I scored SAT, sometimes with ease, other times with profound boredom.

I walked in the neighborhood, looking at trees, feeling the wind, and listening to the Cure.

I chatted hours with loved friends.

I washed dishes quickly.

new chia pudding

I made chia pudding with chocolate soymilk instead of regular, and it was really good.

Oh, here's the recipe. Mix a fourth a cup chia seeds with a cup of chocolate soymilk. Let it sit on the kitchen counter for 20 minutes. Stir and share with your cranky SAT scoring husband.

one key to a happy marriage

Knowing where socks belong.

magic bag

Today when I was getting ready to go to the park, I was choosing which books to bring with me, and I found myself wishing I had a magic bag that wouldn't get heavy no matter what I put in it. I guess it would be like Santa's toy bag?

If you were given wishes, what would the second wish be?

Around my wish number 53 would be "magic bag."

covered

I have a volunteer and a back-up for making functionally ill 7's cover--thanks, friends.

functionally ill 7

I may be done writing functionally ill 7 and am looking for someone to make the cover for me. Please let me know if you're interested.

anniv

Yesterday was our eight-year wedding anniversary. We went out to lunch but otherwise didn't celebrate much--Erik was glued to the internet because of health care reform, and I was scoring SAT, writing, chatting. But we went to our favorite park so Erik could run, and it was nice to be out, get some sun, and walk. And I bought some delicious foods at the co-op. I like spending my money local. Kitty let us sleep a lot last night, so I'm feeling rested.

probably

I always thought in an Of Montreal song the singer was saying "Because the girl of my dreams is probably God" and I just looked it up and evidently he really is saying that. Which is very funny. It's a religious album, that Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

ex-bestie

The other day I was on facebook (I'm back on facebook but have hidden most of my "friends" so I won't see their status updates, which simplifies things for me), and facebook suggested I add someone, and that someone was my best friend in jr high and high school, the venerable M.

She was extroverted, and I was introverted. We were both readers. She was an athlete, and I was an anti-athlete. Or maybe an aesthete! She was in AP classes--I had been kicked out of honors English as a freshman and booted off that track. And I failed Algebra II three times. But I was a poet who went to summer art programs. We were both passionate about the things we did. I was a zinester even then. Anyway, we had things in common and at the same time were very different, and we're even differenter now, it seems. She is fiery as ever, and I'm more like a turtle.

So we're in touch again! Last night we chatted for a long time, and we caught up, and she's coming to see me next week. She lives my side of the Bay Area. I hadn't heard from her in more than five years and thought she'd Quit Speaking To Me. But I guess it wasn't like that.

tradeoff

Today we went to the park so Erik could run, which means he won't be done working until 9:30 tonight. At the park I walked only 20 min because my legs were giving me pains. Then I sat at my favorite picnic table and worked on a couple letters and wrote in my journal--this one's almost full.

I adjusted the height of my computer chair--I sit higher now, which I like very much, and it's better for my neck.

today

Today nothing happened, really. Well, a few things happened. All of them good.

fantastic stamps

hoodie etc

I went to the bookstore at my place of worship to see if they had any more OM bags. Mine is fraying. I knew my friend V would be working--Thursdays are her days. They didn't have any bags, but she said she'd order some and I should try back in a month.

I bought some beautiful notecards and Ayurvedic soap, vanilla scented, but when I got it home I read the paper inside the box and learned it's good for people with a certain disposition, and I don't know my disposition, so if this magic works, I might be tampering with my subtle body or something. Oops.

Then I went to the post office and spent a small fortune on stamps.

Then I went to University Art which is having a sale. There are frames outside, and when a big gust of wind came up, one of the big frames on which little frames were resting moved a lot, and I thought it would fall. It was making me nervous--thoughts of shattered glass.

So I went indoors and told the worker, and he checked it out and decided there was no need for concern. But he wasn't seeing it during a big gust. So I was kind of embarrassed, and then part of me wanted the frames to all fall and the glass to shatter so I would be right. Sad, self!

Then I looked at stuff indoors--Erik sent me with instructions to buy him certain types of Moleskines. I examined notecards and picked up a couple ultra fine point Sharpies, purple and pale blue. I have never tried the pale blue.

Then I went to pay, and it was the same guy I'd talked to about the frames. He had dark hair and was wearing a certain type of Mexican article of clothing--I don't know what they're called--not a poncho, but they were really popular when I was in high school.

I gave him my card to pay, and he called me Laura by reading my name off the card. He called me Laura a total of three times by the time I left the store. When I got home I told Erik, "I don't know if he was flirting with me or teasing me." Maybe just being weird. Of course, I was embarrassed again, to be called the wrong thing and not wanting to correct him with my obstreperousness of insisting on being called by two names.

Well, I looked it up. They're called Baja hoodies. But I don't know if the word hoodie existed when I was in high school, so maybe we called them something else, but I don't remember. His didn't look like the one I've pasted here--his was very pale, earthy colors.

perfect perfect perfect

vegan sweet potato pecan bread

3 tbs ground flaxseed
1/2 cup water

1 1/2 cups vegan sugar
1/2 cup mashed overripe banana
1/2 cup canola oil
2 cups fresh mashed sweet potato

3 cups white whole wheat flour
1 tsp each cinnamon, fresh nutmeg, and ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1 cup broken up pecans

Mix together the flaxseed and water and let sit five minutes, until thickened.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Scrub five sweet potatoes and prick them with a fork. Microwave until done. Cut them in half and scoop out the flesh. Mash.

Oil two regular 8 inch loaf pans.

Combine flax mixture in a large bowl with sugar, banana, oil, and mashed sweet potato. Dump flour, spices, baking soda, baking powder, and salt on top. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet. 

Fold in the walnuts.  Pour batter into pans. It may be very thick, and that's okay.

Bake the loaves for about 50 minutes--they're done with the inserted knife comes clean. Share freely.

sweet potato bread experiment

In the past I've had success substituting sweet potato for pumpkin, so I decided to make some sweet potato pecan bread using my pumpkin spice bread recipe. The batter turned out thicker than I expected, and I hope they cook up okay. Two loaves in the oven.

misheard

I always thought in the Bauhaus song "Bela Lugosi's Dead" that the chorus was going "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead," but when I look up the lyrics it says, "undead, undead, undead." Erik thought the same thing.

happy Berkeley day

Yesterday morning I packed lunch, and we went to Berkeley. First we went to the small beach near the marina. Someone at a picnic table was playing flute. We sat in the shade and wrote. It was so nice to be near the water.

Then we went to Tilden Park and wrote there too. Then we went to Little Farm and pet animals. I bought two postcards depicting a large oak called Sunset Tree. I liked the goats best. The cows were pretty great too. Pigs not so much. Beautiful brown turkeys. The sheep seemed pissed off.

Then we walked to a lake called Jewel Lake. Some parts of the trail were very muddy and my shoes got caked with mud. The lake was okay. Erik liked it more than I did. We saw beautiful flowers whose names I don't know.

Then we went to Erik's favorite tea shop. I got strawberry kiwi, which was like kool-aide. He got jasmine brocade.

Then we met my friend K for dinner. It was only the second time I'd ever had an actual conversation with her, but she's in my women's religious group. We had a great time eating vegan Japanese at Cha Ya. I had sushi.

Then we came home, and I slept in the car while Erik drove, as I am wont to do.

Why all this fun? Tomorrow work starts. Boo!

pre-sleep note

Today we had a blast in Berkeley. I will tell you about it tomorrow. Also in the news, our census came in the mail.

rules

Last night after the sit and talk, at the very end, Ed Brown had us chant "ho" which means "dharma" in Japanese, he said. We chanted for about a minute, everyone taking a breath and restarting when we needed to. Beforehand he said we could dedicate the merit to whoever we wanted, including people who are no longer living.

Ed Brown, SBMG, chia pudding

Tonight we went to Sac Buddhist Meditation Group. There was a talk by Ed Espe Brown. So we went, and it was great. I survived the 30 min sit excellently. And the talk was really good--funny and inspiring. He told a story about going to a Mac store, and about his girlfriend, and about the documentary he was in. He talked about listening to your heart, being present.

Whenever I go to SBMG I feel class issues like I'm sitting with a bunch of rich people who have their heads up their asses. Also, I feel really detached because I'm not a Buddhist--I'm just visiting. But my husband's a Buddhist, so I get a special deal of being sort of Buddhist by association. I mean, I have to put up with a lot of Buddhist stuff, like all his meditating, so I deserve a consolation prize.

I put cinnamon in tonight's chia pudding, and it's even better that way.

Getting to Know You

My friend Amanda Laughtland's got a poem here.

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpissue31/amanda-laughtland

yesterday

We went to delicious lunch at Thai Basil, and then we went to Art Ellis. I talked to the woman who runs the place who I took a one-day bookmaking class from at the library. We talked about thread. It was nice to talk about thread with someone who knows a lot about it. The color kelly green I was looking for before doesn't seem to exist. So I would need to get green cotton thread and wax it myself with paraffin--she said she's done it before.

Anyway, I bought some beautiful papers from her--I want to make the next ELM very zine-like visually, like I did about 20 issues ago. So I'll cheat with some paper that's probably meant for scrapbooking. But it's so pretty.

Then we went to Book Collector. I know I'm really late, but I got Noam Chomsky's little book on 9-11. Actually, it's interviews with him. And I got a book of poems by Marilyn Krysl called Warscape with Lovers that I had been looking for for many years. They didn't even have any Marilyn Krysl at Powell's (my reason for not moving to Portland--just kidding).

Then we went to Temple and I wrote in my journal and read.

Oh, I forgot to say we went to the library too. There I got The Dream of Water, a memoir by a Japanese-American woman whose mother kills herself. And I got some Gabriel Garcia Marquez stories too.

my new favorite song

"Everyday is Like Sunday" by Morrissey covered by 10,000 Maniacs.

ful resolution

It turned out perfect! We ate it just with salt last night--putting in garlic today.

ful day

Yesterday when it was raining, Erik drove me around places. We went to a Mediterranean market, and I found some shelled fava beans there--they were $1.39 per 12 ounce bag, so very inexpensive. They looked old, though--the bags seemed old and the beans seemed dusty, like if you put dusty rocks in a ziplock and left them there for a long time and the inside of the bag would get dusty.

Anyway, getting them home I realized there was a "best by" date, and it wasn't until September of this year! So they should be good. I'm cooking them up right now to make some tasty ful.

Three 12 ounce bags was kind of ambitious, though. I soaked them overnight and half the day. I've got them in two pots. The beans seem to be falling apart like they're supposed to.

my desktop Jelly Fish

DSC24242, Jelly Fish, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, California, USA, originally uploaded by jimg944.

nice rainy day

Today we went to this Japanese store downtown that Erik likes. We had to push a doorbell to get let in. Erik wanted a matcha whisk and found one for $10, good price. I bought some beautiful cards. Two are timely, with cherry blossoms.

I baked sweet potato biscuits, baked banana bread, made pasta sauce--we had pasta for dinner, with buttered breadcrumbs on top. But using Earth Balance instead of butter, of course.

Erik read me the film noir graphic novel we're reading, and we watched part of the Noam Chomsy movie Manufacturing Consent. We looked for jelly fish wallpaper for me for my computer.

another

Also finished Mommy's Little Girl by Susie Bright. Wrote a review for the next ELM.

good book

Finally finished reading My Baby Rides the Short Bus. (Not one person remarked that it was odd for me to be reading this book--I thought someone might because of how I'm an avowed no-child-haver.)

baking tofu

Today Erik is hiking. I surprised myself by going out. I drove to the post office and Trader Joe's for the first time in quite a while, maybe a year. I was motivated by boredom, the need to mail some stuff for my women's religious group, and the need for tortillas and sweet potatoes. Well, those are more wants than needs.

I got some tofu too. And for a long time I'd been wanting to marinade some tofu and bake it, so I have tofu that I marinaded in the oven right now. I used soy sauce, water, fresh garlic and ginger, and sesame oil as the marinade.

My cookie sheet isn't flat--it's shaped sort of like a smile, and the two slabs of tofu at the dip in the smile don't seem to be cooking. I guess I should have shifted the slabs around so they would bake evenly. I will be sure to do that next time?

shell

This morning I was eating a cookie when I bit something hard, and it was some walnut shell. I don't know how that got through--I broke up the nutmeats myself, with my own hands. Kinda weird. I hope no shell fragments are in the cookies I gave to writers group friends last night.

Umbrian Cicerchia

These are definitely not fava beans but not chickpeas either--they're evidently their own thing. I cooked them up this afternoon, and the recipe on the back of the bag says garlic and salt pork, so I just did garlic with olive oil and a lot of salt. They're pretty good.

I also baked some Mexican wedding cakes from my writers group friends. They're great!

cold

It's 54.9 degrees in here! (Our clock says the temp.) So I asked Erik to light the pilot so we could turn on the heater. But then I found the lighter (I still have lighters from when I smoked though it's been about nine years!) and did it myself. So the heater's on now.

ps I decided on chocolate chips.

vegan pumpkin bread recipe by request

I think this is a pumpkin bread recipe I used, only I used mashed overripe banana instead of applesauce (which worked great). Yeah, I'm nearly certain this is the recipe I used. But I didn't decorate the top with any oatmeal flakes. And I used canned pumpkin rather than fresh.

http://www.nomeatathlete.com/vegan-pumpkin-bread/

bean error

I thought Umbrian Cicerchia was little fava beans, but I guess it's little chickpeas. Doh! I'm making them anyway.

my eternal question

Should the banana bread have chocolate chips or no chocolate chips?

Kitty pic

And a Kitty pic while we're at it--photo by Erik.

ninja pic

Finally here are the ninjas sent by the ButterSwords. Photo by Erik.

Verve of Verge

My best friend Ellen Redbird is putting on a play.

http://sites.google.com/site/verveofverge/home

trip to Davis

We had been thinking about what to do today. A few days ago I had wanted to go to lunch at Kaveri, and then Erik said why don't we go to Thai Basil, so we were maybe going to Thai Basil, but then he suggested Katmandu Kitchen in Davis, which I love, and then we could go to the Davis co-op, my favorite.

So we made a list of all these options, and we researched this tea place I noticed in Carmichael when I was driving to P's place yesterday for the bored meeting (I made a funny), but it seems like an English tea kind of place, and I am not into the lace, gloves, and fake roses thing at this point.

Anyway, we did the Davis plan, visiting the arboretum first. We were up pretty early. We went to sleep last night, and then I woke up this morning and the sun was shining--it was 6:30. I was shocked because usually Kitty wakes us up a lot in the night, and it was the first time I remembered sleeping the night through in a long time.

The arboretum was beautiful, and I wrote a letter to my friend person in Mexico City, read some Susie Bright, listened to music, and wrote in my journal.

Then at Katmandu Kitchen--I get the feeling I'm leaving out an h, like maybe it's Kathmandu Kitchen?--our food was great, and we got rasmalai because I really wanted Erik to try it, but it turns out he had had it before, probably at Vedanta. God, it's delicious.

Then we went to this store of Tibetan stuff, and that was fun. I almost bought a necklace--I wanted one of a vajra, for some reason. Maybe I should have gone with it--it was only about $8. I ended up getting a new Ganesha card for the car and two postcards.

Then at the co-op I shopped for cards, got some mushrooms and mandarins, looked for white whole wheat flour (which they didn't have), looked for plain soy yogurt (which they didn't have either).

Oh, I forgot to say we went to Border's too, earlier, and I got some cute happy birthday postcards with Smarties on them, which are like M&Ms but British and come in a tube.

Sorry so much about buying stuff lately--I will not buy anything for a while.

carbophilic

Recently we got some perfectly excellent organic potatoes at the co-op for cheap--they were in the "produce about to go bad" area for 99 cents for about three and a half or four pounds. I have been making fried potatoes out of them. Today's batch I put in some garlic toward the end, which was nice, Erik's suggestion. I am not really a potato person--I would like to be, but I just don't think to make them. I'm definitely carb-loving, though.

vegan peanut butter cups completed

I forgot to report that I made the vegan peanut butter cups a few days ago. I melted some Dagoba* dark chocolate in the microwave and put a little in the bottoms of four paper muffin thingies. Then I heated some peanut butter in the microwave with a little nutritional yeast and some agave nectar and put that on there. Then I melted more chocolate and put that on top. Then I chilled all in the freezer, and we ate them.

It was really good, but next time I want to use rice milk chocolate because I want them to taste like Reese's.

*Not to be confused with Dagobah, the planet Yoda comes from.

neat $5 movies in Sacramento

http://www.moviesonabigscreen.com/

buying stuff

Yesterday we went to the co-op, but it was a special day! Anti-depression Friday--everything's 10% off. So the place was packed, but we lucked out and got an easy parking place and got in and out of there. I bought kale chips and lots of other delicious noms.

Then we went to the park and talked and did park stuff, like I walked and Erik ran, and I wrote two letters.

Then in the evening, we did something very unusual. We went to Ross. I got a teeshirt with very small gray and white stripes. It seems comfortable. Erik got a pair of tennies, badly needed--his old ones were falling apart, and if it rained, his feet got soaked. They were $23. Oh, and I got some headbands. One is destined to be my favorite headband, I can already tell.

Then we went to buy my medication, and the man in line behind us asked Erik is an intense way, "Do you know about spiders? Do you know about spiders?" Erik said no, which I think was the right answer.

my breakfast

This morning I made tofu scramble for breakfast. Usually I make breakfast for lunch or dinner--usually I'm too hungry in the morning to make something very actual. Anyway, I hadn't made it in a week or something, and we were getting a surplus of tofu. So I made it this morning, with two roma tomatoes as the variation, and it was superb.

Then I was craving that pumpkin bread I made a few weeks ago and put in the freezer, so I had some of that too.

Exciting, yes?

multiple choice blogpost

I bought some measuring cups at the dollar store.

a. I lost them before getting them home.
b. The measurements were obviously wrong.
c. They were too ugly and I decided to give them to Goodwill.
d. One of them broke almost right away.

friend

Yesterday, what did we do? Oh, we went to the park in the morning and wrote there before Erik ran and I walked.

In the afternoon, my friend K came to see me. We went to my place of worship, and I gave her the grand tour. It was fun to show her around and show her the harmonium. She played the first few notes of "Ode to Joy." We smelled cherry blossoms, and we looked at statues and the brown pods of dead lotus flowers. And we smelled the leaves of a chocolate mint plant. Then we walked a little in the nearby neighborhood and spoke of Burning Man. We saw a tulip magnolia tree with white flowers instead of pink, which made her happy.

Then we went to Whole Foods and looked at things. She bought some vegan cheese. It was fun.

I gave her a vegan cookzine and stuff to deliver to two other friends. She invited me to birthday festivities on Saturday, including a visit to a special Easy Bay restaurant for vegan Cajun soul food! I was really interested, but when I got home I remembered I have a board meeting tomorrow, so I can't go.

music machine

I have a mp3 player that is beginning to die. Sometimes it shuts off for no apparent reason and I can't make it turn on again. But then if I try the next day it works again but the battery's dead, so I have to charge it.

I have a special fondness for this mp3 player and am sad.

My cell phone, on the other hand, is awesome--I've had it for a long time--maybe four years? and it still works perfectly.

marriage quote of the day

I'm not in the mood to deal with the thing you're making me deal with right now.

oh

I tried the sprouted peas, and they're okay. I'd read somewhere that they were stupendous, but I still like lentils best.

an altercation

I woke up wanting a cheese omelet for breakfast, so I made the next best thing--mushrooms on toast with tarragon and salt. So so so so good.

I'm concerned that people who read the cookzine will think all I eat is heavy and complicated things, but I figure everyone knows how to make salad, stir fry, asparagus, mushrooms on toast. But maybe I should have said something about that in the intro? I wanted the intro really short.

Yesterday afternoon my friend A was in town. She knocked on my door at ten to 2. We sat on the living room floor of my very messy apartment and talked. Then we went to her husband's workplace to get her kids. I hadn't seen them in a long time and was shocked to see that the older kid is as tall as A. Last time I saw her, she was a little kid. It was strange, but growing up in not strange. So it was not strange.

We went to the co-op and shopped for a long time. I got some sesame candy I like, cheesecloth which I hope is much better than dollar store cheesecloth, a bottle of water because I forgot water and was really thirsty, and maybe something else I can't recall.

Then we went to the huge pet store across the street from my apartment and shopped there for a long time too. I have never had a dog, myself, so there are lots of dog things I didn't know a person could buy.

Then she dropped me off, and it was raining. We didn't go up to my apartment, which made things easier for Erik. I was really worn out.

Oh, I forgot to say the weird thing that happened at the co-op. We were getting out of the truck, and it's the kind of truck with a backseat. So I had my door open, and the door to the backseat behind me was open, and the little child was trying to get out of her car seat and into her jacket. So we were trying to do these things, and all of a sudden someone starts yelling at us! "I'm getting wet!" he yells. "What the hell are you doing, lady!? Son of a bitch! I'm getting wet!" He was an older person in an electric wheelchair, and he wanted to get through the passageway I was blocking with the open doors of the truck.

It freaked me out a little, and at first I was wondering if the little one and I should get back into the truck so we could close the doors and this unhinged guy could get through. But we were almost done. But I was worried that the little one was getting freaked out by this scary guy yelling profanities. She seemed sort of oblivious, but I don't know if that's really true. The guy yelled like this for about 30 seconds and then yelled something like, "Fine, I'll go around!" That was a relief. I had been just about to start yelling back at him, "I've got a kid here, and we'll be just a minute."

So then A got to our side of the truck, to me and the little one, and she asked, "Did he go around?" and I looked and he was gone.

So then we were going to the co-op, heading for the front door, and the mean guy was right by the entrance, talking to a co-op employee. I was scared like he would start yelling at me again. But he looked up at us as we walked by and then looked down, silent. I thought he was embarrassed at acting like such a jackass, but when I told Erik this story, Erik said he thought the guy realized the holdup was about the little kid and realized what an asshat he was.

If only all asshats would realize their asshatness. Maybe next time he will be nice. Or maybe he just needs a med adjustment and can't afford it, which I would understand.

At any rate, tonight's writers group, and I should bring an activity.

yes!

Peas are sprouting.

peas

I've been trying to sprout the dried whole peas I got at Ikeda's--no luck so far.