Monday, November 28, 2005

Thanksgiving



I actually gave Thanks on thanksgiving. See me here shoveling turkey into my mouth next to the big old jug o gravy.
Not pictured are My lovely hostess Ms. serena and her mom and Gail, with whom I shared this gorgeous meal.

Admire the lovely green beans with panchetta and pinenuts.

The rest of the weekend was not so relaxing.

First of all I mixed the grape with the grain and was not feeling so fine Friday.

In any case the house is mostly empty and we are shooting for a closing tomorrow at 8:00 am. Empty house photos to follow.

Ciao for now.

:)

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Life for Sale


The big garage sales was yesterday and I got rid of a ton of stuff. I still feel like I have a huge sorting job ahead of me, but then I think I am really doing okay.
M. even though he is incredibly busy with school, was a TON of help helping me drag everything out of the house and then drag it back into the house when it was all over.


Sleeping on the floor on a funton last night (all the furtniture is mostly sold and gone) I woke up every hour on the hour last night-- and today I mostly feel like not having to look at the huge changes I have begun.


Some days this feels clean and brave and exciting and right, today I am feeling scared and can't stop thinking about what would happen if something went wrong.

Good thing I have good friends and a good dog to keep an eye on me.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

How am I?


It kind of feels like this....

A really big balancing act....

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

I think I have no time..


And then I spend oh.. an hour playing with Google Earth. I took a virtual drive through the Anderson Valley, found my Mom's house and my cousin Trishka's farm (no pool -- picture was old).

Bad, very bad program
http://earth.google.com/

The good news is..

... that I caught myself before I put my underwear in the kitchen rag drawer and the rags god knows where. I spend my days and most of my nights making lists constantly about what I have done and what I have yet to do.
Here are some of the highlights:
The sale of my house (god willing) closes a week from today
I am having a garage sale Saturday
I have to have the house emptied, cleaned and buttoned up by a week from Sunday-- when I move into a motel room (Must remember to re-confirm with said hotel)
I am having surgery two weeks from tomorrow
I am still working 40 hours + a week
I am still teaching three classes
I am still taking 7 units -- a half time course load
I still commute 110 miles round trip 5 days a week
I need to pick up my vaccination records from my doc
I need to get tested for TB, get Hep A & B Vaccines
My house is still a construction zone and not ready to close
All my summer pants have holes in the ass I I don't own a pair of shorts
I need to call SGU to see if I can skip the NY orientation--which is scheduled the same day as my surgery
I can't get folks who have promised to buy some of my stuff to pick it up
I don't know anyone with a pickup large enough to take my bookcase to my storage unit
Oh yeah, and this wacky day known as thanksgiving is happening sometime soon

And for right now.. no I do not have time to be particularly excited....
but I will be I promise

Friday, November 11, 2005

My future was waiting


Here is a fortune teller in either Hong Kong or Singapore reading me my fortune when I was 17 or 18. Or maybe it was Japan. Anyway.. I remember a particularly unintelligible translation—so he no doubt is telling me
“You will decide to go to medical school in your late 30s but it will take you until age 42 to get there, you will run off to the West Indies to go to medical school where….”

When it rains...

As some of you may or may not know, I have fairly severe varicose veins in my left leg for someone so young. I have minor surgery scheduled for November 30 and will be out on sick leave for about a week. Any thoughts, prayers or meditations for a speedy recovery are greatly appreciated.

The Secret Life of Shade the Dog

As you may imagine, my life has gotten very hectic. I spend my days making endless mental lists about what I need to do to decamp to the West Indies in a little less than two months. So yesterday, I did what distracted people do. I locked up my house with my car/house keys in it. I realized what I did right away. I could look in through my back window and SEE my keys sitting on the dining table.
And so I called the folks who had keys to the house to come and let me in, while my little dog repeated poked her nose out the dog door to see what the heck I was doing. Getting no one, I left messages and walked to the free wi-fi friendly cafe 6 blocks away.

When I came back an hour or so latter, I noticed some dog on my block was barking incessantly and I though “Thank god Shade isn’t a barker” yet the closer I got the more that dog sounded like Shade. I walked up the driveway and peaked in at her through a gap in the fence and She was sitting on the couch on the back porch with her front half propped up on a bolster barking her little fool head off. When I walked in though the gate she looked up at me and instead of greeting me as she usually does.. ran inside the house and hid under the couch.
My dog—she has a secret life as a badass barker that I never knew about.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Lattice o' coinky dink

So I expound.. and I post my Repo man centric post last night. And I go home to watch my beloved Veronica Mars, and who is a notable guest star? None other than Tracey Walter, the actor who played Miller who uttered the now imfamous speach above.

Collective unconscious indeed.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005


So here it is—my brand spankin new blog named plate o’ shrimp.
Which I imagine to those of you who are not devotees of the 80’s cult movie classic Repo Man registers as just odd. Yet as the quote at the top of the page illustrates, that strange little movie had embedded in it a pretty nifty idea about the interconnectedness of things that has kept that movie in my memory for a good long time.

Yet many strange, sad, and wonderful things have happened to me between my earlier 20s when I first saw Repo Man and today—chief among them was loosing too many people I love to cancer. Now granted that loosing anyone to cancer counts as too many, yet watching people I loved fight and struggle for even their last painful limited days has changed me fundamentally. Phrases like “It’s all good” “everything that is supposed to happen will happen” and “it is a blessing “ no longer tumble from my lips as easily as they used to. If there is anything I have learned from catastrophic illness it’s that death isn’t picky. Good people with steely resolves to live can die as easily as anyone else, and a strong will alone will ensure none of ours survival.
I used to think that the interconnectedness of things meant that there was some reason of larger purpose for the things that happened in my life that were beyond my control, now I know there is no higher purpose. Yet I do believe myself and everything and everyone around me to be connected by their existence in a kind of holy chaos. For me the idea that no matter bow hard I try and how well I plan that my life could go catastrophically wrong and end abruptly provides me with a rigor in my self-examinations that I find comforting. It makes the sorting process so much easier. I was happiest in a house most of my family felt should be bulldozed. Studying hard is fun. The thought of professionally pursuing my considerable talents for academic administration fills me with a profound melancholy.

Sell all my belongings? Okay… I sold the last of my books today but one box. Sell my house, quit my job, move half way around the world, spend any retirement I have accumulated and go into deep debt in pursuit of a second career? Scary?.. yeah a little. But not as scary as facing my own unhappiness if I continue down a “safer” more sober path. Bring on the change.
I am actually proud that I am a little scared. Time was that I wouldn’t entertain such feelings, but I am feeling every inch of this change. I cried when S. took my fiestaware away to store at her house. It is scary because this might not all work out, because it might, and because I am leaving all those notions of being able to control the outcome more and more firmly behind.

So where is the lattice o’ coincidence in all this. I went to Grenada for my 30th birthday 12 years ago and fell in love with the place, and think at least once every winter that I would like to spend a year or two there.
Deanna Martin, the creator of Supplemental Instruction-- the program I run at SFCC, told me two years ago at a conference that she thought that SGU would be a good fit for me.
And as I recall the seafood is amazing in that part of the world. Shrimp plate anyone?

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Yup It's me

Here is my Blog. More to come soon.
:)