I remember he had sweet snakes and the most amazing wall of orchids I’ve ever seen, still. It seems like there must have been hundreds of them. I started trying to keep orchids this past year (just the easily available, relatively inexpensive ones), I even got one to start new little buds up the flowering stalk (while the main plant got sadder & sadder), but I’m far from mastering it yet & I keep doing something wrong & they slip through my fingers. I haven’t had the nerve yet to try again & it may be some more time yet before I try again now… or maybe not. I just hate knowing I’m doing something wrong, but not knowing what (probably multiple things on both sides of too wet, too dry, too much attention, too much attempted benign neglect)…

And of course then I remember jumping over bonfires & poking geoducks & full moon walks & so much more. His passion for *being* and loving whole-y left a deep impression on my college self that has really stuck with me all these years. He’s one of my very favorite Greenmen *ever*. I may not be able to keep orchids alive but I had black pansies All Summer Long last year & I intend to again this summer. My first black pansies were from him, of course. OH! And I have a little lemon plant. Because it lives inside right now (winter & all), I’ve been hand pollinating the flowers. Yes! That’s right. I’ve been helping flowers fuck! He always said, “I think it’s really quite appropriate yet strange that we express love by tearing the sexual organs from plants and presenting one another with them.” I have a bunch of sweet little green lemons growing. And of course every time I help the flowers fuck, I think of him too, because how can one not? :) I always think of him when I hear Crazy Man Michael by Fairport Convention, too.

Michael he whistles the simplest of tunes
And asks the wild wolves their pardon
For his true love has flown into every flower grown
And he must be keeper of the garden

And now the keeper of the garden has flown too.

The little girls stashed all kinds of things away, my little magpies. Some how I ended up with extra sugar & creamer sets & tatted lace & vases & little glass & porcelain birds & (on & on & on). M1 scored a red wool crusher hat, M2 got an *adorable* purple hat & I got a big ol’ school farm hat (bonus: inscribed with the great-uncle my mom is named after). I’ll have to take pictures of them all. They’re pretty sweet hats. We also got one of the old irons you heat up on the cast iron stove, a cylinder stove to go with it (!), a milk bucket, a washboard & various & sundry other things. Oh! And a little fish tank (half gallon?) with a mermaid holder that’s also very sweet. Too small for any fish, but my grandparents used to collect seashells & I’m betting I can totally get a couple cups of little seashells for it.

It was odd picking through things. My mom was sure I’d take the tea cups, but the fact of the matter is, I have *so* many tea cups at this point that I just can’t take in any more orphans. Not until I have a place to put what I’ve got & figure out how many I have — I’ve lost track, I have so many. I think I only have 9 in the house right now — possibly up to 15, I have more…

So I escaped so far with no new tea cups… for now…

The service itself was nice. My parents’ longtime friend & former pastor did the service, the same fellow who married us, so of course it was nice. The veteran’s part of the service, gun salute/Taps & presenting of the flag to the family was oddly touching for such a highly ritualized ceremony. And Amazing Grace is increasingly a song that I really love. I don’t know why.

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Yesterday I got a rise & shine with, “ZOMG! WE HAVE A SHOWING IN 45 MINUTES!” That was 8:45. They showed up at 9:10 which is a short 45 minutes, if you ask me. They circled the culdesac like vultures, paused in front of the house & peered in as I yelled, ‘They’re here! WTFOMGBBQ!’ Then they drove off. We left on time & they were kind enough to leave a card unlike the other two realtors who wanted to show the house this weekend. We worked in the yard a good chunk of the day, then I went and found birthday presents for my dad.

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This morning there was supposed to be a showing between 10 & 11. They didn’t leave a card, so I don’t know if they bothered to come by even though we scrambled this morning to make sure everything was suitable for showing and managed to get everyone out of the house before 10. And in doing so, we spend a ridiculous amount of money at the local bookstore. Alarming almost, except for the 40% off all used books. Perhaps alarming anyway as we walked away with a shopping bag full of books and… our shelves are in storage. Then someone was supposed to come by with their clients during our open house. Of course, just as I was getting out of the shower around noon they called and said they were five minutes away & could they stop by NOW? Um. How about no? Come on, people! I know my house is for sale, but you’re still freaking guests. If they dropped by when they said they would, they didn’t leave their card either.

This whole house thing is incredibly, stupifyingly, exhaustingly depressing. All the feedback we get is, “oh gosh, that cute little house hasn’t sold yet? < expressions of amazement >” Frustrating. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that one yet. It’s probably obvious though. It’s really sapping my energy. Meh. Stupid house.

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During the open house today P and The Girls went with my parents & aunt & uncle & my cousin’s daughter to the Museum of Flight. M2 was transfixed & fascinated. She even went in the flight simulator & thought that was pretty much The Best Thing Ever. P stayed out with M1 who has occasional bouts of motion sickness. Apparently my mom said something to the effect that M2 has no fear. I frequently think that might be true, except that as mommy, I’m privy to such conversations as her deep & abiding fear of smoker’s lung, dying, and the occasional statement when I say we should go bike riding that ‘what if I fall?’ Like that’s ever stopped her from doing anything else. Anyway — they all had a grand time.

*I* went and did my ladies’ thing. We sat around and ate cookies and strawberries and strawberries mostly. It was a very laid back, low key thing today. It was lovely to get away from the house & listen to people talk about things that were mostly not work & mostly not home. Very, very lovely. There was some talk about kids & birth as there was a pregnant lady there, but I’m finally well enough socialized to know that I should just not talk about my experience of having two very non-eventive (except for the length of the first) home births. It just gets everyone’s judgmental panties in a twist and I’m too tired right now to feel like explaining & it’s just so easy to say nothing at all. So I didn’t say anything at all. And it made me kind of sad because diversity of experience is what makes us all interesting, but… apparently I wasn’t interested in being interesting in that way today. I was having a lovely afternoon & I just didn’t want to go there. The very nice pregnant lady’s first pregnancy was, as I understand it, supposed to be a home birth, but she ended up transported, rightly, to the hospital. I tend to think the midwifery model worked as perfectly in her situation as it did in mine — the midwife recognized a situation that required transporting & did so, everyone came out alive & stuff. Ok. Good. It all worked out — right? Right! And anymore than that & I have to start qualifying & justifying & explaining & beating back strawmen & meh.

There seems to be no tack I can take that doesn’t make me come off like some kind of defensive wacko unless the people I’m talking with are already predisposed to accept home birth as within the norm of acceptable birthing situations. So, slowly, I’m learning to hold what’s precious to me a little closer to my heart (shush that part about wearing my heart not on my sleeve as a parent, but two unshielded bundles of girl running about frequently outside of my protection). I had my births, they were what they were & they were lovely & I wouldn’t trade them in for the world. I can’t condense the discussion into a nice tidy sound bite that comes across nicely in a casual social situation. Not yet anyway.

I think that might be a personality defect on my part. I spend so much time so very deep in the gory details of things, making very fine distinctions, and when I miss a fine distinction here or a qualification there, sometimes it doesn’t matter, but sometimes it does, very much so, so I’m sensitive to making sure I cover all those qualifications, and the fine distinctions and it makes it very hard to speak from a… overview point of view? Um… what is it when people pull back and look at the forest? Whatever it is, I don’t do it very well & it’s not that I can’t see the forest for the trees, but that I note that not only is there this forest, but there are also these trees, and these plants, and these animals, which break out into mammals, birds, and insects, and insects aren’t really part of the animal kingdom but part of the insect kingdom and that’s different from the animal kingdom in these ways, and then the interaction between these plants & animals & stuff & the local weather & geographical topology… uh. Yeah. So… It’s a huge asset for what I actually do, not so much in the explaining it all to people…

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I have to give a presentation at work about what it is I do. I hope to have it ready by this Thursday, but… see, there’s this forest? And it has these trees? And some plants? And these animals, and… I know the people I’m presenting to are only really interested in the mammals (user experience) and not so much the birds (standards-based controlled vocab/authority lists), but the birds are really a very, very important part of what I do in conjunction with all these other things & I have to figure out how to make this all relevant to them, help them understand when it would be advantageous to use the corporate taxonomy for this particular company (and sometimes it isn’t). Urgh. My dream next week would involve me, a long list of terms to research, rationalize, a big huge complex import spreadsheet to create, & an unlimited budget.

There. Multiple plates of beans: terribly, terribly over-thought. I go from not saying anything at all about what’s going on in my life to the forest, trees, plants, animals, stuff, local weather, geographical topology, and in general probably TMI. And not even the *interesting* TMI! Yeh, no, there isn’t really any interesting TMI to speak of, no sin of omission.

Yes. I think I’m done now. I mean, I’m not, but enough has probably been said for now. It was a surprisingly pleasant long weekend, only the last few hours have been so angst-y. I’m blaming ALL of it on the fact that I’m tired of having the house for sale & I’m fretting about my work presentation. I will now resist the urge to play tetris & sudoku until I fall asleep on the couch in an effort to escape my own brain. Wheeeeee!

Folk music is boring. “Black fall, the die doe, blow ye winds, high ho,” hell, that’s boring, but I am a folksinger. This is a folk music organization. You are ostensibly the folk, nest pas? That means we own this song together, right? We have thereby incurred certain social obligation which we will faithfully discharge, right? We’re gonna sing this damn song together, boring or not!

I’ll sing to that…

There’ll be pie in the sky when we die! That’s a lie!

I hope you got enough pie before Friday &… I hope there’s pie where ever you are now, sir.

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Here’s a pic I took of her on Monday getting in what turned out to be some last snuggles.

In better, happier days, doing one of her favorite things: spelunking a new box.

We’ll get the ashes back sometime next week & when we find a more permanent place, we’ll bury them there.