Willow is in the hospital with anemia, and they're trying to figure out why. I'll post more when we have some answers and we're less busy. I will say that she's in good spirits and doesn't act sick - it's pretty evident that this has been a long-term, gradual sort of problem. We discovered it only because a doctor pointed out that she looked a little pale, which led us to get her tested.

In a room in an apartment building on my route there is an alarm clock that has been beeping for at least five days now. The window is open, letting the sound float out into the night. I wonder if the inhabitants of this apartment are away on business, or perhaps on vacation. Perhaps they are all dead in bed, although after five days or more there would probably be an accompanying odor. Maybe somebody is just really sleepy, and can't seem to manage to get up for work. If this is the case, this unknown person has my sympathy. I have always hated alarm clocks, and wish we lived in a society where they weren't necessary. If you have to be awakened by one, then you haven't gotten enough sleep. I use mine less than most - only tuesday through friday. Even this leaves me tired by the weekend. I always have more energy on sunday night than any other night of the week, no doubt due to the fact that I can sleep in on saturday and sunday. As the week progresses, I get slower and slower. I am reminded of a headline I read the other day on the Yahoo news page. It was something like, "lack of sleep impairs creativity". No shit. Lack of sleep impairs everything. Why do they even have to do studies like this? That said, here I am typing away at 2:45 in the morning, and after I finish I'm going to go read, not sleep.

The moon was a smiling crescent tonight, and the forecasters promise rain later on this week. Hooray!

cds I listened to while being smiled at by the moon: Varttina "Iki", DD Synthesis "s/t", Sixteen Horsepower "Folklore", Amebix "Make Some Fucking Noise!", Circle "Alotus", and Songs: Ohia "Ghost Tropic"

Whose turn was it to take out the garbage this week? Or... whose turn was it to be the garbage this week? I think I've never quite gotten over my childhood tendency to try my best to upset people. Sorry.

Another week has blurred by. The weather has been cool and sunny for the last couple of days, and I find myself looking forward to the next rainstorm.

I've been juggling employment ideas around in my head again, since new rumors have surfaced about the possible demise of my nocturnal livelihood. The monolithic distribution system of the local paper has been gobbling up every other publication over the last year or two. There's no way I'd work for them though, since it would mean working seven days a week and delivering eighty seven different publications (okay, I pulled that number out of my hat, but you get the idea...). Our little group of carriers is pretty much the last holdout. It will be strange not working at night, if that indeed happens. I'm looking forward to being able to spend more time with Jen in the evenings, instead of having to leave just as she's getting the kids to sleep (although it's rare that all of them are asleep at once - I think they believe that somebody always has to be awake in order to stand guard against the possibility of silence). We'll see what happens, won't we?

cds I listened to while wondering what else I could be doing: Calexico "Feast of Wire", Urna "Hodood", Culper Ring "355", Bug Guts "Big Bowl of Warm Fur", and Low "Trust"

I want my mummy!

The papers were on time tonight. The truck was being unloaded as I arrived at work, which is nice because my work day was extended by the inclusion of a training meeting at the museum. It would be no fun extending it further by waiting around in the cold for hours like we had to do last night.
I barely had time to see Jen and the kids today. During the brief time I was here, The Dickens terrorized the boys in various ways, including but not limited to throwing things at their heads and pinching. She's a tough little girl, but she needs to learn some restraint so nobody gets seriously hurt.

Jen got to hang out with the neighbor today, who has a little one-year-old named Sophie (just like The Dickens). We usually see each other as we're coming and going, so it's nice that they got to spend some time just hanging out.

I'm gonna go read now.

cds I listened to while delivering papers in a more timely fashion: Mariza "Fado Curvo", Nurse With Wound "The Musty Odour of Pierced Rectums", Arvo Part/Philip Glass/Vladimir Martynov "Silencio", Stille Volk "Maudat", Calexico "Quattro", and Bee and Flower "What's Mine is Yours"

Two more story illustrations - a grim little vignette about incarceration, and an updating of the will-0-the-wisp legend.

I guess any day that starts off with the sad spectacle of a man nonchalantly pissing on the shoulder of a busy freeway during the morning commute has to end with the papers being three damn hours late. We all just sat around at work watching our breath float away in little puffs as our extremities grew numb from a combination of cold and inactivity. Oh well, I'm home now. Time for bed.

cds I listened to while thawing: Rondellus "Sabbatum", Alemu Aga (beguena) "The Harp of King David" (Ethiopiques 11), CMX "Aion", Calexico "Aerocalexico", Pharaoh Overlord "II", and In Gowan Ring "Hazel Steps Through A Weathered Home"

It's misting again tonight. One driver even decided to add to it by taking out a fire hydrant with the front end of his car. The resulting spray resembled Old Faithful, and no doubt could be seen quite clearly from the windows of the fire station across the street. I'm sure those on duty were more than a little upset by the abuse their hydrant had receieved. The police on scene also looked a bit put out, and made me detour around the whole mess.

cds I listened to while detouring: Throwing Muses "s/t", Silent Stream of Godless Elegy "Themes", Joseph Spence "Happy All The Time", and Voivod "s/t"

It's misting outside tonight, just enough to turn all of my windshield dust to a thin layer of mud, which my windshield wipers do their best to smear evenly across my field of vision. Oh, woe. Actually, I quite like the atmosphere created by this kind of weather...

The Dickens was quite active in creating havoc this weekend. We all went to one of the local chain bookstores (because there don't seem to be any local non-chain bookstores left) to pick up some books for the book exchange birthday party that the boys were going to the next day. For some reason, I ended up on the stairs with The Dickens. She didn't want to go upstairs. She didn't want to go downstairs. Okay, she did go upstairs just long enough to snatch an Elmo doll from a shelf. That poor Elmo was soon suffering the indignity of being repeatedly flung down the stairs, his furry little body bouncing off the risers and coming to rest on the landing, again and again. Every time I tried to redirect her attention elsewhere, The Dickens let out a high pitched shriek that probably set dogs to howling for blocks around. I wouldn't know, my ears were ringing. I finally put a stop to this nefarious muppet torture when it became apparent that The Dickens was intent on pushing the hapless doll through the railing and onto the heads of unsuspecting first floor patrons. She was extremely unhappy with me, and let everybody in the bookstore know it. You'd have thought I was attempting to abduct her the way she carried on.

The next day, at the aforementioned party, she was nicely playing with bubbles in the backyard when a bigger boy decided that it would be funny to roar at her through the glass of the sliding door. The Dickens, an old pro at this kind of behavior, roared back. The boy, not realizing who he was messing with, opened the door and tried to intimidate her by roaring in her face. The Dickens swiftly stuck the bubble wand in his eye, thus winning the contest. The boy retreated, tears and bubble solution running down his face.

cds I listened to while peering through mud: Paul Chain/Johar "Split", Ida Kelarova "My Home is Where I Am...", Legend "Still Screaming", and Kristin Hersh "Sunny Border Blue"

For some reason, the air smelled nice tonight, reminding me of childhood. The fog that I've been enjoying the last few nights has lifted, and is hovering high enough off the ground to gain the status of cloud. The smell of fog still lingers, and is mixed with the faint scent of blooming flowers. I'm not sure what kind of tree it is that blooms in January.

I go back to Hidden Villa in the morning, to lead a farm tour. Afterwards, I plan to take Lexy for a hike. Just the two of us, since I think that all of the kids need more one-on-one time. This is really hard to do with four small children who all cling to us like limpets along the waterline of a freighter. Maybe if Jen and I cloned ourselves so that each of the kids had an assigned parent. Yeah, right. They'd all fixate on one. Most likely Jen. She's just the sort of person that people like to be around. I know I do.

cds I listened to while breathing in the night: Current Ninety Three "A Little Menstrual Night Music" and "Hypnagogue", Nurse With Wound "Chance Meeting of a Defective Tape Machine and a Migraine", Backworld "The Orchids", Dead Raven Choir/Furisuba/Timothy the Revelator "s/t", Skyclad "Live at the Dynamo", and Pantaleimon "Change My World"

How not to quit your job:

Hmmm... There's an italian EBay. How many EBays are there? Does every country have one? For instance, is there a Kenyan EBay? I was good though. I didn't bid on anything.

The newspapers were two hours late tonight. Imagine showing up to work and not being able to actually work for two whole hours. That's one of the drawbacks of this job. When I finally got to work, a duck quacked at me. That's just insult to injury.

My route is growing a bit as well. I have gained about thirty customers in the space of a week. Most of these are probably freebies so that potential advertisers think lots of people are actually reading the paper. In fact, there are already newspapers piling up in front of some doorways. It makes me feel like I'm littering.

It's still foggy out too, but it seemed like all of the really dense stuff was perpetually hovering on the horizon, or retreating as I advanced.

cds I listened to while littering: The Does/Breathe Stone "Sleep Deprivation Blues/Crow Omens", Breathe Stone "Hex Thistle", Rainywood "s/t", John Murphy "28 Days Later" sndtrk, Myshkin "Why do all the Country Girls Leave?", and Annbjorg Lien "Aliens Alive"

Three more story illustrations:

A man looking for Kevin, since deceased:




A story inspired by a surreal statement on a magnetic poetry board:



Don't ask. It's bad enough that I wrote the story...

For Tuesday's BioSITE lesson, we took the kids out to do a bit of bird watching, and fortunately saw some interesting birds. There were some Cedar Waxwings in a tree above the river, which most of the kids in my group missed because they had trained their binoculars on a squirrel in an entirely different tree. They all saw the ducks - mallards and canvasbacks, and were much more impressed than you'd think anybody would be while observing ducks. The coolest thing we saw was a Cooper's Hawk, which was partially obscured by its nest high in a tree. A smaller bird, taking issue with the hawk, hounded it out of the tree and the minor avian drama continued elsewhere out of sight.

The fog was nowhere near as thick tonight as it was last night, which is a shame.

cds I listened to while wishing the fog would come back: Shinjuku Thief "Medea", Mecca Normal "Janis Zeppelin", Set Fire To Flames "Telegraphs in Negative/Mouths Trapped in Static", Frankie Sparo "Welcome Crummy Mystics", and Six Organs of Admittance "s/t"

You are being stalked.

The fog rolled in at about 1:00 am tonight, making boring old Silicon Valley appear a bit more interesting by obscuring just how mundane it really is. I love it when it gets so foggy that you can only see ten feet or so in front of the car. It should happen more often.

It was shortly thereafter that I discovered that my train of thought has at least one prescient passenger. I was thinking about the Tintin DVD box set I got for the boys, and how the voice actor who plays Captain Haddock on the movie sounds a bit like Tom Waits at his gargliest. I proceeded to sing a Tom Waits song (Clap Hands) in my best Captain Haddock voice - "Sane sane we're all insane...". Then the cd I was listening to ended, and I put in the next one, without looking to see what it was. Of course, the first song on it was a cover version of "Clap Hands", which I had forgotten was on the cd. Strange coincidence.

cds I listened to while wandering around in the fog: Patti Smith "Land" disc 2, The Gathering "Monsters", Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "Nocturama", OP8 "Slush", and Eric Mcfadden "The Un-official Non-Japanese Import of the Not So Secret Northwest Club Shows"

All of a sudden it's monday morning again. Somebody pulled the weekend out from under us so quickly that we didn't even fall over. It's not that I live for the weekend, really. I don't mind any of my various obligations during the week - it's just that the weekend is pretty much the only time Jen and I can spend an extended amount of time together. And on sunday, when the three older kids are at their dad's, we can even have a conversation that lasts for more than half a minute. That's nice.

Time to go read.

cds I listened to while being stalked by monday: Kolrassa Krokridandi "Kold Eru Kvennarad", The Third and the Mortal "Memoirs", Unto Ashes "Empty Into White", and Patti Smith "Land" disc one

Beware of cat.

The moon was beautiful tonight, rising in a golden misty glow. We saw it as we escaped from most of the kids and went out to dinner. Dinner was good, with none of the usual fussing and grabbing. Of course, the last thing I did before we left home was mop up a puddle that The Dickens had made on the kitchen floor. She claimed it was poop, but fortunately it was not. Just pee. The funny thing is that after she does this sort of thing, she runs into the bathroom and wants to sit on the toilet. I think she has things a little out of order. Tonight, I found her outside the closed bathroom door asking, "now where did that toilet go?" Someday she will learn to ask this before she no longer has an immediate need for it. Someday.

Here's another picture:



cds I listened to while being happy that it's friday: Enteli "Live", Do Make Say Think "& Yet & Yet", Magga Stina "An Album", Elise Einarsdotter Ensemble w/ Lena Willemark "Senses", and V/A "Beyond the Realm of Death SS" - a tribute to Death SS

The moon is full. Full of what I'm not sure.

Speaking of full, we thought we'd try to entice Willow with some yummy baby pears. She had fun flailing about with the spoon, but as soon as the pears touched her mouth, her expression turned to one of dismay. You'd have thought we were trying to feed her dirty socks. I think we have tarnished her perfect little world forever. Perfect little worlds, evidently, do not contain baby pears.
The same thing happened when we tried to feed her a smidgeon of one of the melt-in-your-mouth maple candies that Jen got me for Christmas. Judging by her expression, we might as well have been trying to feed her something that we had gotten out of the back end of a dog.
Someday she will eat, but not today.

There were cops out tonight, but again they were distracted. This time they were trying to figure out how a little sports car had smashed through a fence and stopped partway up an embankment. What a puzzler. Better call the inspector.

cds I listened to while not being pulled over because police can't do two things at once: Finntroll "Visor Om Slutet", V/A "Phases: The Dark Side of Music", Ilgi "Agrie Gadi", and Hamlet Gonashvili "Hamlet"

This humble drawing marks the beginning of a project that will take quite some time. Over the last few years, I have written well over a hundred very short stories, mostly while at work. I have now decided to illustrate all of them. My esteemed colleagues at the OAC have also amassed a similar quantity of stories, and they are in the process of illustrating all of theirs as well. You'd think we had time for such frivolity!




Actually, this came about because now I don't have to waste time thinking about what to draw next.

It's cloudy and rainy again, which is good because rain makes the grass grow.

Jen discovered that Willow can stand up if she's holding on to something. She looks darn proud while she's doing it too. Soon she's going to be zipping all over the house and destroying all of the stuff that The Dickens has missed. We have too much stuff anyway. We keep finding things that we'd forgotten we have. And for some reason, once you've got stuff, it's really hard to just get rid of it. Of course it's even harder to get rid of stuff that you've forgotten about. First you have to remember it.

Okay, it's a slow news day around here, so I think I'll go read. 'night.

cds I listened to while being misted with moisture: Ani Difranco "Evolve" (funny that the last cd I listened to yesterday was called "primal"...), Bathory "Nordland II", V/A "Voggesanger fra Ondskapens Akse" (five lullabies from the axis of evil), Woven Hand "s/t", Carla Kihlstedt "2 Foot Yard", and Barbez "s/t"

How not to hold crayfish:

There are basically two kinds of cops. I had the good fortune to get pulled over by the good kind tonight - the kind who looks inside the car, sees the newspapers, and says, "oh, that explains it. Have a nice night... and oh, by the way, you have a brake light out."
The other kind, of course, is the guy who pulls you over, demands fifteen different types of identification, the names of all of your ancestors going back three generations, and a DNA sample. And after he gets all of this, he still acts like you're the most suspicious character he's ever come across and is probably wondering how you managed to ditch the guns and drugs while he was pulling you over.

I'm back at BioSITE tomorrow, so I'd better get to bed because I have to get up in a few hours.

cds I listened to while getting pulled over by the good cop: CMX "Puuveriaus" and "Melankolia", T.A.C. "Waiting for the Twilight", Epizod "The Time Has Come", and Holocaust "Primal"

I saw a perfect double rainbow while walking down the street to mail the rent on friday. I don't think I've ever seen one of those before. The light was beautiful too.

On saturday, we took all of the kids for a walk in the foothills. Predictably, The Dickens splashed in every puddle she could find. The boys were having a good time looking for animal tracks in the mud. We mostly found dog prints, but also evidence of deer. Due to the volume that the boys maintained while searching, we didn't actually see any deer, or anything else either. Willow surveyed the scene from her vantage point in the baby backpack on Jen's back, dressed in her little blue gnome outfit. All was well until we started back and it became apparent that The Dickens was distressed. She had gotten her feet and legs pretty wet, and we realized that since I had been carrying her for most of the walk, she must be pretty damn cold. I wrapped her inside my flannel shirt as best I could. Willow, who was likewise expending no energy of her own, was also getting pretty cold. It was late afternoon, so most of the trail was in shadow, which meant no place to sit in the sun. We marched back to the van, loaded the kids in, and hurried home. The Dickens didn't admit to being okay again until she was in a warm bath. Those sneaky darn puddles, ambushing unwary little girls who are in tennis shoes because none of their rain boots fit properly... Next time we'll dress the girls even more warmly, or make them carry us. But then I guess we'd be cold. Oh well, life is so tricky sometimes.

cds I listened to while realizing that the holidays are over because the tree is gone: Swans "Forever Burned", Tin Hat Trio "The Rodeo Eroded", Lhasa "La Llorona", and Jan Garbarek "Visible World"

Our New Year's plans didn't quite come to fruition. I ended up in the City with the usual crowd, but the show we wanted to see was sold out. This came as a bit of a surprise because the venue has never sold advance tickets before (as far as we know). Being friends with the band didn't help either, because their guest list was already full and the club was being very firm about the rules because a visit from the fire marshal was expected (although that might have been a line, because he was probably helping oversee the fireworks...)
So instead, we stayed outside for a bit, visiting with Dawn McCarthy, who informed us that it was the twelfth day of Yule, a day upon which oaths are traditionally made. Faced with the sudden need for oaths, we all thought quickly. The first thing that popped into my head was that I need a job that is full time, pays at least $15 an hour, and has health benefits attached to it. It also has to be something that I will enjoy doing. My oath is that I will have such a job before the year is out. M's oath was that he would also have a new job. G's oath was that he would help M find a new job. D wants to be out of debt. Dawn is swearing off white sugar. There's lots of other things I want to work my way towards as well. I want to take more care of myself and my loved ones. I want to be more organized. I want to draw and write more. I also want to be out of debt.
Then, with our oaths made, we drove to the far end of Golden Gate Park, near the beach, and wandered into the darkness beneath an old windmill that looms there. We got out little musical instruments and improvised for nearly an hour. Some other people walked into this section of the park towards the end, but were quickly scared off by the unexpected noises emanating from the shadows.
Then we went back to the venue where we were once more denied entrance. Behind and above us the fireworks exploded in the sky above the Bay Bridge. Drunken shouting surrounded us. For better or for worse, 2004 is here. Kind of arbitrary isn't it?

Tonight, I witnessed something that was sad. It may have a happy ending, but in real life we don't always get to stick around for the story to play out. As I delivered papers in the last apartment complex of the evening, I saw a couple walking disconsolately along. The woman dangled a cat toy from one hand. As I approached, the man asked me if I had seen a little cat anywhere nearby. I responded that I hadn't, but asked for a description and promised to keep an eye out.

I hope they find the cat.

cds I listened to while realizing that "oath" is a much stronger word than "resolution": G.I.S.M. "SoniCRIME TheRapy", DD Synthesis "Swinging Macedonia", and Strebers "Blod Svet & Tarar - 85 - 92"

Here's a New Year's Day photo from 1999/2000, far from civilization. Like I always say, we need more civility, but less civilization. Happy new year. Use it well.