* * *

Meandering mornings, full of net surfing. I sip tea and answer personal email. I browse through house listings, looking at houses in the cities where we’re hoping to live someday very soon. I look at my hands, and realize I’m desperate for a manicure. We do not discuss the state of my toes.

Music from Fuzzy’s bathroom, made too loud and indistinct by the shape and size of the room, and the ceramic tiles on the walls, assaults my ears. I could turn on my own music, drown his out, but the volume this would require would distress the dogs.

My mother, distracted, frenetic, generous, but often self-absorbed. There are qualities she has which I lack, and long for, and others that I’m developing against my will. Isn’t that normal with all mothers and daughters. If I ever have a daughter, will she one day feel the same?

Mini-mansions on the brain, these oversized lofty Texas houses that are so intriguing. Fuzzy loves them, and I like the light, the kitchens, but they seem so cold, so austere, so formal, and while I like small doses of foofyness, I also think houses should be comfortable and lived-in. The house that strikes me most is older, more traditional, with a corner lot and dormer windows. Funky, but functional. How to convince him?

Mowers, on every lawn but ours, as Fuzzy hasn’t yet begun weekend chores. I like the way their sound embodies peaceful domesticity.

Monthly dinner, with friends who live not two exits away, but whom we communicate with via email and instant messaging. I’m equally at fault in this distanced connecting. Still, the gatherings are fun, comfortable. I’m even beginning to talk more.

Musing…my head is filled with possibilities. My parents think I should focus my writing, and submit stuff to magazines. I think they’re being less than objective, much as I want to try.

Mocha. I think I’ll get one now.

Clay posted this in his LiveJournal account, so I had to check it out.

OneWord is a 60-second writing exercise. They post a new word each day, and you have 60 seconds to write about whatever that word inspires. It’s very cool.

Today’s word was “home”.
Here’s what I posted:

Home is the place, they say, where people have to take you in, but for me, home isn’t a physical location, it’s the sense of well-being, of total safety and contentment I get when everyone I know and love, those I consider my family, are close by, and safe, and in harmony with each other. It’s a day at the beach with husband and dogs.

This post is taken from Wil Wheaton’s weblog

support our troops — send them your GMail invites!

I keep reading about how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are having their tours extended long beyond when they expected to come home, and their morale is suffering as a result. Thankfully, many of our soldiers are able to stay in touch with friends and family via the Internet, but their e-mail access is often very limited.

Post continues here

* * *

There’s a slight breeze licking around my heels as I pad across the yard, and around the edge of the pool to the ladder. My bare feet make a light slapping sound on the pavement, but otherwise the only noise is the faint gurgling of the filter, and the soft liquid murmur of the water lapping at the edges of its confinement.

At the water’s edge, I lean on the two handles of the ladder, lifting first one foot, then the other, dipping each into the foot bath that prevents little specks of sand and grit from hitching a ride into the pool on the soles of my feet. Then, I look down at the top run of the ladder, before beginning my descent.

There are only three steps from the top rung to the low end of the pool, but I enter the water almost languorously, revelling in the sensations of cool water against too-hot flesh.

My feet touch the bottom of the pool, and my toes flex into the liner. Sometimes I think I can feel things moving in the earth far below the bottom, but I usually realize it’s just wishful thinking.

A song lyric floats into my head, as I lunge toward the deep end of the pool, my legs scissoring, my arms holding a float. Later, I’ll do real strokes, but this moment is for long glides from end to end, with the small styrofoam float as a toy, not a support.

For a moment, I’m a child again, lost in memories of days spent lingering in the water long past the time my grandmother wanted me out. “Your lips are blue,” she’d call. I’d always wanted a mirror, to see if she meant it.

I spend a luxurious hour splashing and swimming, laughing at my dog when she barks at the sound of my kicking, and lobbing (or attempting to) fistfuls of water at her. She looks so silly, trying to catch the droplets raining down on her fluffy white head.

Later, showered, and dressed in soft cotton loungewear, I’ll smooth on some lilac-scented hand lotion, and let my thoughts loose in the past, remembering the lavender wallpaper in the middle bedroom in my grandmother’s house, and how much I always longed to have a room that color.

* * *

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that you said?

I love alliteration, and I’ve been having fun with this meme, but this letter, J, is difficult for me.

I thought about Jello. It’s not just a brand, it’s a symbol. Kathleen Norris, in her book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography suggests that the popularity of the Jello mold in midwestern cuisine has to do with the fact that the rural midwest was the last part of the continental USA to have refrigeration. Summers there can be brutal, so anything that is cool and fruity is worth celebrating, I guess.

Personally, I associate Jello with college parties: Jello shots and jungle juice (fruit juice mixed with everclear), jalapeno poppers, tequila shots, and conversations (and hangovers) that jangled in your head for days after.

Jingle and jangle. Can’t you hear keys clicking against each other, or a klaxon alarm when you read those words? I’ve never thought of them as examples of onomatopoeia before, but they demonstrate the concept well.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you.

Note: Song lyrics are from “The Windmills of Your Mind,” by Alan & Marilyn Bergman & Michel Legrand, and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” by Bob Dylan.

I say… And you think… ?

1. Colorblind:: casting
2. Shallow:: water
3. Erotica:: fiction
4. Figment:: imagination
5. Eviction:: notice
6. Composed:: entry
7. Chill:: out
8. Girl:: power
9. California:: burger
10. Bond:: stock

Like this meme?
Play along here.

* * *

Kitchens: People always say that the kitchen is the heart of the home. I hate mine. It’s too small, and there’s not enough counterspace, and there should be light switches at both ends of the room. Also, I hate my stove, but that’s a story in and of itself.

My dream kitchen is large, bright, tiled, and has double wall ovens and a gas range. It also has enough room for several cooks to work at once. It does NOT have a television.

Kites: It’s a warm but windy evening, so windy that the picnic awning in the yard on the other side of our back fence is threatening to take flight, like a giant blue kite. I’m remembering trips to the beach with paper kites when I was a kid, and feeling a little wistful.

Keds: I know there was a line of Keds canvas sneakers that was re-introduced a couple years ago – Keds for adults – and I’m wishing for a pair now. My favorite shoes EVER were my red Keds. Comfortable, durable, and colorful. My favorite sneakers now are a pair of red Keds-like canfas sneakers by Cloudwalkers, but it’s just not the same. The toes are just a little too pointy, and the arch isn’t right.

In my wind-borne fantasy I’m wearing Keds while flying a Kite, and afterward, I’ll nibble Key Lime Pie while sitting in a glorious Kitchen.

How kitschy. :)

Stole this from John who always finds good stuff to steal and/or share.

It’s the 2004 Summer Burn which is sort of like a chain letter, except you’re sending summer music.

It’s been a DAY, which, I suppose, is not unusual for a Monday, but today I’m in a funk, partly due to having my plans for yesterday killed by reformatting, and partly because things are tense here.

While multitasking (waiting for copies to print, waiting for a scan to finish) I checked a webmail account that I use for FanFiction.net, and found some lovely lovely feedback on the stuff I’d posted.

Feedback really is better than chocolate.

* * *

Indigo was still the color of the sky when Fuzzy and I tumbled into bed in the wee hours of Sunday morning, after a day of puttering and shopping for books, but only just barely, for it was 4:00 in the morning, and within minutes, it seemed, the sky was almost day-bright.

Illusions of houses un-visited, people not yet met, and gardens only wished for filled my dreams, as I slept, surrounded by the comforting sounds of Fuzzy’s breathing, and the dogs’ equally comforting weight, as they inched closer to my body heat with every unconscious movement I made.

Idiotic was how I felt when I realized I, who should know better, who is anal about updating her antivirus software, managed to trigger Erkez.b sent from her mother, who traced it back to a cousin (or some such) of the President of Mexico. Gotta love the way connections flow in our family.

Irritated, was my mood a bit later, when my headache made me snappish with Fuzzy, who was only trying to help, and when I realized I couldn’t do any of the supposedly easy fixes to get rid of the virus without reformatting. But, the end result was a cleaner, spiffier hard drive, even if I did forget to print the page that has ALL my affordablehost passwords.

Insanely happy, was how I felt when the day had gone full circle, improved in the late evening by comfort food from Taco Bell, and an episode of Smallville on the DVD. Tucked into bed, surrounded by Fuzzy’s arms, my dogs guarding against any night terrors, I fell back into sleep, cradled, in my imagination, by a soft indigo sky.