This is how we’re spending Sunday evening:

Zorro is curled on Fuzzy’s pillow, watching me as I type while half-watching television. I put it on to watch Brothers and Sisters and let it run through the news and now Ebert and Roeper. We might get snow next week, we might not. None of the movies being reviewed are interesting me much, except for In the Shadow of the Moon, which will be out on DVD soon if it isn’t already.

MissCleo is devouring a bully ring chewy. This is essentially a bully stick formed into a ring. They last longer than actual bully sticks because she has to create a gap in the ring before she can really go to town on it. She talks to her chewies, growling and warbling. It’s very cute.

Fuzzy is upstairs blasting things on the playstation 3, or playstation 2, or one of the Xboxes. We don’t yet have a Wii. He’s SUPPOSED to be getting rid of the original Xbox since we have a 360 now, but it’s been two months and I’m not holding my breath.

I am curled up in bed, with my laptop, and a pile of books to catalog. I have the receipts for them, but spreadsheets are easier. I need this info for taxes. Since I keep a bookblog, and it’s monetized, any book I buy that I also review is a business expense. If the FLIP video camera that I’m looking at is used to make ads, it can be deducted too. How cool is that>?

Tomorrow will be a day of writing, and since it’s Monday it’s a weight day. I’m still a little sore from Friday - I think I pushed myself too hard.

But the weights make me feel so powerful.

And on that note, goodnight.

Cartons and boxes piled high
Former homes for routers and towers
used cisco servers
Liberated from the powers
that be

Tools hung haphazardly on the wall
A snow shovel kept just in case
(It never actually snows enough
to need such a thing in the place
we live)

Endless bits of cat-5 cable
In many different hues
Connectors and phone cords
USB dongles in boxes marked “shoes”
taped shut

Escaping leftover styrofoam
A jungle of bubble wrap
A bike unused since 2004
A dusty baseball cap
From Gateway

Missing it’s base,
The old Christmas tree
Meant to be left on the curb
I wanted to mark it “Free”
Last November

He said we couldn’t
Set it out
While still missing parts
Might be lying about
I gave up.

Next sunny day
The plan is to clean
And flatten the boxes
And sweep til things gleam.
One can dream.

Sitting in LAX last night, sipping a mocha frapp between planes, and taking a moment to catch my breath, I read a blog comment from my mother, and an email from her as well. I miss her already. The bond between mothers and daughters is an interesting one, rather like an elastic band. You stretch it thin, then let it snap back to its resting state, but you are always tethered, even when the connection is so thin you think it might break.

My mother and I have been through every stage: hero worship, worst enemy, best friend, close confidante, distant acquaintance, but always there is that connection. Where my mother is, is home, even if I didn’t grow up there. She has the knack of taking two pieces of fabric, pinning them to a wall and making a blank space into something warm and comfortable. We both have short tempers, and we sometimes don’t communicate well, but neither do we tend to hold grudges, and we eventually snap back into our own resting state of shared references and long memories, and similar, but not identical tastes and opinions. She shaped my perception of the world, of course, as do all parents, but she gave me the freedom to mold the window I look through to my own liking.

With my stepfather, it’s different. We don’t have that blood bond. We don’t have that instant connection. We had to forge our relationship in fire and ice, and it didn’t come easily. He wasn’t accustomed to children who fight back, who fight at ALL, and I didn’t trust him to stay. Our resting state is at a different vibration than that of my relationship with my mother. With Ira, it’s witty banter and affectionate teasing, and an evolution of language. He challenges me. I like to be challenged. It’s good.

They say that women marry their fathers. On the surface, my sweet geeky husband who looks like Steven Spielberg right now because his beard is trimmed short, and he has color on his cheeks, and has been wearing a baseball cap all week, is nothing like my stepfather. But then there are ways in which they are eerily alike: neither can complete a task without getting lost in minutia. My mother and I draw the world in broad strokes full of color and light, the men in our lives use finely-honed pencils and are detail oriented, not at all impressionistic. Both are inclined to curl up in corners with books or blankets rather than be outwardly social, but are delightful companions when in the mood.

I am writing from bed. My own bed. My normal weekend morning resting state: one husband, curled up with his face turned away from the light seeping in from the gaps between the blinds, two dogs, exhausted from their early morning welcoming of their people, many pillows, one laptop, total contentment.

I am rested.
I am home.
I have found my resting state.
For now.

I woke this morning at dawn, with my head spinning and my lips feeling parched, but I couldn’t sleep, so I got out of bed, showered, and joined my mother for coffee.

I went back to bed with Fuzzy around eleven and slept til one, then had lunch with my parents: a delightful salad of greens, tomatillo, red bell pepper, celery, onion, tuna, and tortellini with an olive oil and herb dressing. Tasty, fresh, and almost healthy.

Afterwards, Fuzzy and I went back to the casita where I tried to nap, but couldn’t school my mind to sleep, so I dragged him out to the beach.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Forward,” I said.

“And then what?”

“Turn right.”

And so we did, meandering down the beach toward the mangrove, watching shore birds play in the froth, and looking for shells. (We actually had a bag with us, so didn’t find any worth taking.)

About an eighth of a mile into the mangrove, there is a stream that flows from the desert to the sea, creating a miniature delta, and also creating a sandbar, upon which sits a single lone tree, much like a lone cypress. We waded - I waded - he jumped - across the stream, and found ourselves in a magical forest with singing birds, and the soft whisper of the waves, with the stream merrily flowing, and shells strewn around.

I watched two crabs dance around a third, and saw sand worms spit water at my toes. I wanted to go back for the camera, to capture this magical section of beach on film, but Fuzzy didn’t want to go back alone, and the tide was rising. Had we both gone back to the house, a return trip would have been impossible. Indeed, this is the first time in the week I’ve been here that this sandbar has not been submerged.

And so we captured it with our minds and hearts instead: watched gulls racing along the coast, heard the cries of frigate birds, saw a pelican dive for fish. At one point, seeing one, I said, “Duck.” Just as Fuzzy turned to look at it, the orange-headed creature looked at me, then ducked beneath the waves, coming up just a few inches from us, in shallow water. We stayed there, still and quiet, for several minutes, then turned back for home.

This has not been a warm December in La Paz. Indeed, it’s been abnormally cold, with temperatures in the low seventies, and high winds. The locals, Mexicans and American and Canadian ex-pats alike, are bundled in sweaters and long pants and SOCKS, while I’ve been scampering around in capris and tevas. Tomorrow is our last night here, and then on Friday night/Saturday morning, we’ll be home with our dogs and our soft bed (Mexican mattresses are distressingly rigid), and as much as I love living on the beach, I’m ready for winter and cozy evenings piled with quilts and blankets, and noise.

Almost.

But I’m taking a piece of La Paz back home with me: the brilliant moonrise we saw on Christmas Eve, breathtakingly beautiful; the still picture of the moonlight beaming down, cutting a swathe of warm light across the midnight sea, the sounds of gulls and pelicans and owls, the joyous spiralling of the local hawks, and the sunset I’m watching as I write this, facing out to the bay, with the lights of La Paz winking into view across the water.

And of course, I will take home my afternoon in the enchanted mangrove forest.

My neighborhood is lit up like a Las Vegas hotel, and the house is decorated, and I have seventeen thousand things left to complete for work, and - how pathetic is this? - all I can think about is that tomorrow night - one more sleep from now - Fuzzy will be home.

Teasing, I asked if he missed me, and he allowed that, “The bed is too big, and there’s no Lovey in it.” But then work called him and the dogs needed to go out, and there wasn’t much to say that can’t wait til tomorrow anyway.

Most times, I don’t mind it when he has to travel on business. Most times, I use the time to indulge in endless bubble baths and eat froufrou foods he doesn’t like and write all hours of the night, but so close to Christmas, I resent this trip. We should have been spending this week wrapping presents and curling up by the fire, and watching cheesy Christmas movies, and instead, I’ve been alternately hot and freezing, and completely unfocused and stressed about our upcoming trip.

But one more sleep will bring him home, and one more sleep will find me refreshed and ready to face all the tasks as yet undone.

Last night, Fuzzy went grocery shopping without me, because he is a kind soul, and because I was tired and cranky and would not have been very good company. I called him just as he was loading the bags into the car and said, “Remember that I said I knew I was forgetting something? It’s eggs. I only have four left.”

He sweetly volunteered to go back inside the store, and get eggs. I asked for 18. He brought me twice that. “They were two for one,” he said. “The manager said, ‘tell your wife to bake a lot of cookies’.” I’ve just baked eight dozen, mind you.

So here’s my question today: I can’t possibly use 36 eggs in 16 days, even if I do another batch or two of snickerdoodles. Got any egg-heavy recipes to share? I mean, I’m all for quiche, but it’s awfully fattening, and I’m not the best at making meringue. Why 16 days? Because we leave for Mexico on the 19th, and I really don’t want eggs sitting in my fridge for the two weeks we’re gone. .

Help?

Fuzzy, I realize you don’t often have time to read blogs, even mine, but I hope you read this because I desperately want - no, NEED - a jewelry box. Christmas is coming in just under two months. Marking the occasion with a jewelry box would not be out of place.

When I was nine, I saved all summer and bought my mother a jewelry box with drawers and a ring-holder section and red velvet linings, and she’s still using it. I like that box, but I’m not into white embossed exteriors, I prefer dark wood, clean lines. Velvet’s essential, but it doesn’t have to be read.

Now, most of my jewelry is just funky costume stuff, but I do have a few really good pieces. I mean, I don’t have a Audemars Piguet watch - mine are merely from Fossil - but I have some semi-precious stone necklaces from Lucia at Faire, and some pieces from a livejournal friend who does amazing work, and right now they’re all in a tangle in the central drawer of my dresser, which, while lined in velvet, isn’t really meant to hold a jewelry collection, just one or two pieces. A hand mirror, perhaps, and a comb. Stuff like that.

So, I need a jewelry box.

For that matter, I really want a couple more of these red leather stationery boxes from the bookstore, because they’d be great for storing my growing collection of perfumes…

Someone make Fuzzy read this, please.