My Move

We spend a lot of time looking for houses. Online. Driving around. Just looking. Sometimes it's just a form of retail therapy; the shopping. Sometimes I am ambiguous about moving, though I know it must happen fairly soon. Sometimes I feel I cannot spend another night in that house. Lately, it's not so much disliking where we are, rather, it is an intense desire to be elsewhere. Where we are is not bad, but it is not where I want to be. I have taken everything from the city that it can offer me. I think. Now my whole soul screams for days spent gardening and the sounds of children and crickets playing in backyards in the evening. I don't remember a "nesting" phase while I was pregnant. Maybe this feeling is that phase, belated. (Why is every phase in my life "belated"?)

I had the opportunity, over the summer, to revisit my former self. I made a cd in September and and spent quite a few hours rehearsing in practice rooms at the NE Conservatory (not my conservatory, but close enough). Sometimes the best part was simply getting to and from my rehearsals. It was a feeling of freedom I once took for granted, but had long forgotten. Just me. Doing my thing. But of course, each rehearsal ended up with me at home, in this new life... which is a good life... but a stunningly different life from the one I had before... and the contrast has made me more aware than ever of this nagging feeling of being in the wrong place. Where we are doesn't match the life we're living. I feel like I can't be happy in this life unless I am also happy where I am living it. Maybe. Maybe I just feel like I'm performing a play on the wrong set.

Of course this is all wound up with my job. Which will take me slowly nowhere.

Time is wasting.

Released

Stingy New England April has finally managed to give up a couple of warmish days and we've been able to take K to the playground.

She explodes onto the playground, shrieking and laughing, climbing everything in sight as fast as she can; hurling herself down the slides. You'd think she had been released from 10 years in a dungeon!

"You can't get me..."

I've caught some of the smaller kids watching her with a fascinated admiration... "Look, Mommy... Look what that kid can do!" Then I watch the mommy in question swallow hard and hope that her kid doesn't try to follow K's lead... but they always do. :-)

She's like a flame, this little girl. She grabs your attention and you can't look away.

Bad Lamb

So, I'm putting Kassia to bed last night and we're reading stories and being silly... the usual stuff :-)

She reaches for a stuffed lamb that she's had forever, but never paid much attention to, holds him up and says "He's a bad lamb."

I say "A bad lamb? Why?"

And with an evil little grin, she says in a deep voice...

(are you ready for this?)

BAAA HA HA HA HA..!

Laughed so hard, I nearly choked.

Blue Monday

Damn! I knew I should have taken that picture when I had a chance... But I couldn't bring myself to look like a tourist on the T by digging out the cell phone camera..!

I was on the train, on my way into work. The "red line" comes above ground long enough to cross the Charles River from Cambridge into Boston. (The view is a favorite with tourists... hence my reluctance to break out the camera...) Anyway... it was about 7:15, and the sun may have been up, but through the blizzard that was Boston's morning, you couldn't see it. You couldn't see Boston for that matter... or Cambridge... or even the river! Everything beyond the bridge was completey obscured by the snow. What you could see was blue. That's it... just blue.

Kinda like the background color here... but mistier.

A little creepy actually... but very, very cool. Usually nobody even looks up from their "Metro" when the train comes above ground. But this morning, a whole car load of jaded commuters sat staring out the windows with their mouths half open. And that, in itself, is something to write about!

Dialog

The scene opens on Kassia experimenting with centrifugal forces by spinning her macaroni and cheese bowl around on the counter with her fork... Mom watches dubiously.

Mom: Be careful with that... it's going to go flying.

Kassia: (starts singing to herself; continues spinning bowl which does, of course, go flying...)

Mom: (getting down on hands and knees to clean up the macaroni and cheese) Grrr. Are you a menace??

Kassia: Yep. That's ok. That's my job! (resumes singing)

End scene

November Haiku

acrid tomato-
smell of dry vines uprooted
autumn's desolation

a few rasping leaves;
a snail's green shell, abandoned
whisper in the chill

Friday. In a BIG Way.

OK. This week has been a complete nightmare.

No, my house didn't burn down... nothing was stolen... no accidents or illness (well, not for me and mine anyway, but more on that momentarily), or marital strife. This week was simply a stress-fest. A shining example of how cutting too many corners always leaves somebody painted into one.

(Warning... this journal is about to get all tech-y and work-related. If you're still here, you might want to have a comfy pillow handy since it's probably not of much interest to anybody but my stressed out self... lol!)

I work for a small IT company. Did I say small? That's much too generous. Let's try..... tiny. No... not quite. microscopic! Yes, that's the word I'm looking for. I say I work for the company, but I'm actually part owner... albeit a pretty small part. At present, there are exactly two of us here on a full time basis with a constantly rotating retinue of contractors doing everything from design, to development to network stuff. Contractors are good. They are very helpful when you're stuck for someone to do a given task. They are absolutely worthless when you need someone to "remember that project we were working on last spring?" That said, usually things run pretty smoothly. I handle all things development. My partner handles all things network-business-y. It works. He's a great schmoozer. He makes the best first impression you'll ever get (the French accent helps). He's also pretty good in that tangle of wires and menacing blinking boxes that populate our server room.

Network... LAN, WAN, IP, DNS, reverse DNS, A record, MX record, start this service, stop that service, open this port, close that port...

AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate it! I don't want to know!!!! I just want to come in and hide in my cluttered office and write my if...then loops!

Last Friday, with the help of some of the aforementioned contractors, we did a major network overhaul. Without getting too tech-y, this involved a whole new batch of IP addresses for all of our clients and us. Ugly under the best of circumstances. Again. I don't get it. I don't want to get it. I already know more than I ever wanted to! I can feel bits of useful information dropping out of the back of my head every time I learn more about it!

I came in on Monday morning to a voice mail message from my partner. He's got pneumonia. O.M.G. I get to work at 7:30. By 8:01 the phones were ringing off the hook.

"I can't send/receive email."
"I can't see my website."
"I can't ftp into my site."

WTF??! This was supposed to be DONE! I get on the phone with the consulting company and it takes me an hour just to get in touch with one of the guys who was actually here! Nobody knows nuthin'. They don't want to come back. God forbid they finish what they started! They'd rather walk ME through their diagnostics and repairs on the phone!!

This has gone on ALL WEEK. It's Friday and I have got NONE of my own work done, plus I've made myself look like an inept idiot for 5 days as I BS clients trying to sound like I know what the *)*&^^! is wrong with their email. Have I mentioned the boat-loads of verbal abuse heaped on me by those clients? That's been especially nice.

It's going to be even nicer next Monday when I have to explain to all my development clients (you know, the ones whose projects have been in the drawer all week?) why their projects are now a week behind!! I'd say I'll have to work from home all weekend, but...

I CAN'T CONNECT TO THE NETWORK!!!