Tomorrow I get to take care of the three older kids while Jen takes Willow and goes with her mom to get her hair cut. I'm glad that she'll get a little time away from the relative chaos that permeates our day to day existence here. She has more than earned it.
I can't remember the last time I got a haircut, which is annoying because people always seem to be asking me about it. I think it was while I was in college. I still remember quite clearly preparing to go into the bathroom on campus one day, only to hear a professor across the hall tell me, "that's the men's bathroom." I turned around and he gave a little jump when he saw that I was indeed a man.
My hair has been long ever since I could get away with having it long. I don't think about it much. It's more of a habit than anything else. People always ask me why it's long, to which I reply, "think of the money I've saved on haircuts." Of course, I've probably wasted an equal or greater amount of money on shampoo and conditioner. I never mention that. The real reason it's long is because, at an impressionable young age, I decided that long hair looked cool. Pretty boring reason. Now, I just can't picture myself with short hair, so it stays long. It's easier to ignore it than to figure out something new to do with it.
I'm excited to see what kind of haircut Jen will come home with tomorrow. Now I'm going to bed so I can be well rested. Otherwise I won't be able to keep up with The Dickens.

cds I listened to through my hair: Vig Mihaly "Filmzenek - Tarr Bela filmjeihez", Diamanda Galas "La Serpenta Canta", Rosebud "Thundermug Honeypot", Finntroll "Visor Om Slutet", and Bee and Flower "What's Mine is Yours"

it's quiet, except for some crickets singing in the scorpion cage. The scorpions appear to be sleeping, so the songs go on. One cage over, the millipede is silently crawling around. Oh, and now I can hear Willow in the next room. Never mind, it's not quiet.

A small amount of time passes...

Nate's awake too, because The Dickens kicked him in the face in her sleep. She's a twenty-four hour troublemaker, that girl. Everybody is settled back in, but it's only a matter of time before somebody else wakes up. The crickets, oblivious, sing on.

I think that the reason time goes by so quickly is because we compartmentalize it into years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. As I type this, countless second hands are sweeping around the faces of countless clocks, chewing up the present and spitting it into the past. It never stops. This is why all of a sudden it's thursday. This is why I've only done a fraction of the things I planned to accomplish this week. Oh well, at least I'm not scorpion food.

cds I listened to while trying to ignore the clock but noticing that everything I listened to tonight is from Israel: Meira Asher "Dissected" and "Spears Into Hooks", Meira Asher & Guy Harries "Infantry", and Orphaned Land "Mabool"

Today was hotter, but the night was colder. Rumors have started up again that my night job isn't long for the world. This time it was the boss who voiced this - something he heard on the phone. He says that our jobs most likely won't last through the summer. This time I have the feeling that there's some substance to the rumor. It's kind of exciting, really. I'm going to be working at Youth Science Institute during the summer, which will forestall any immediate need for alternate employment. I'm also looking at a job in Santa Cruz that has a start date in September. I need to get off my butt and collect some reference letters so I can apply for it. I've still got several weeks until the closing date, but as usual there are multiple things competing for my attention. Multiple people too, come to think of it. It's always hard to get anything done around here with a house full of kids who need juice.

cds I listened to while realizing that not many jobs can be done while listening to cds: Cordelia's Dad "Spine", Sainkho Namtchylak "Who Stole the Sky?", Nurse With Wound/Aranos "Acts of Senseless Beauty", Wakeford - Stapleton "Revenge of the Selfish Shellfish", and Tenhi "Kauan" and "Airut:ciwi"

Willow said "Sophie" today. Actually, it sounded more like "Bapee", but we know what she means. She also knows where to find belly buttons. These are important things to know.

Now, at 2:45 in the morning, the temperature is just about right. During the day, the news people on the radio gleefully reported that "temperature records are being shattered!". All I know is that it's too damn hot for my liking.

cds I listened to while sweating: V/A "Sol Lucet Omnibus - A Tribute to Sol Invictus" disc two, Manilla Road "Mystification", Firewater "Get Off the Cross... We Need the Wood for the Fire", and The Fixtures "One Crisis Short of Chaos"

The turtle at Hidden Villa is getting used to people. I led a group of quieter than usual pre-schoolers down to the pond, and we all crouched down and spied on the turtle as he basked on his board. This is the first time a whole tour group has gotten to see him. Usually there's nothing left but an expanding ripple to mark the spot where he hit the water. Of course the moment didn't last too long. A girl saw a butterfly in the pond, and as I leaned slightly forward to help identify it, the turtle splashed into the green water.
Elsewhere on the farm, Jen was wandering with Willow, Nate, and The Dickens, with the latter two wanting to wander in opposite directions. The direction The Dickens chose was into the creek.

The rest of the weekend passed in a blur of small errands, Picking up, and cleaning. Nate and Lexy went to different birthday parties. The Dickens spent time anticipating her own upcoming birthday - the day when she magically turns from two-and-a-half to three. We saw a couple of movies after the kids were in bed - Master and Commander, which was a decent historical maritime adventure yarn, complete with Marine iguanas and dismemberment, and Ginger Snaps 2, which was a decent low budget werewolf film, which also contained more than a bit of dismemberment. A thematic link! And no, I don't rent films just because there's dismemberment in them. In fact, most of my favorite films have absolutely no dismemberment in them whatsoever.

I see from the direction that this post is taking that it's time for bed.

cds I listened to while finally not really limping and avoiding all of the extra cops that were driving around with their damn headlights off: V/A "A Tribute to Abba", Yat-Kha "Dalai Beldiri", Circle "Prospekt", Ex-Girl "Endangered Species", C.O.B. "Spirit of Love", and V/A "Sol Lucet Omnibus - A tribute to Sol Invictus" disc one

I've ranted a few times about boorish people who toss still smoldering cigarette butts out of car windows, and for good reason. Cigarettes start fires like the one I saw tonight on the side of an off ramp. I called 911 to report it, as did many other people. There are probably firemen stomping around in the dark as I type this, and they're probably wishing they could find the person responsible and make him eat his cigarettes. Of course, I suppose the fire could have been started some other way. But I doubt it.

Earlier, The Dickens put a Q-tip in each of her ears and said, "Lookit me, I'm an alien!". Then, when she got bored of this game, she whipped one out of her ear and put it in her mouth, earwax and all. You gotta love that.

cds I listened to while watching the flames rise: Nature and Organisation "Death In A Snow Leopard Winter", Coil "Live in NYC August 18, 2001", Chu Ishikawa "Bullet Ballet" soundtrack, V/A "Nordic Roots 3", and V/A "A Tribute to Accept Vol.II"

I love it when something happens that makes you feel young again. Jen, Willow, and I stopped at the crafts store to get some pencils of various types and some fixitive so my charcoal drawings don't smudge. You could hear Willow throughout the store as she decided that she wanted stuff. While we were in line I noticed that the elderly lady running the register next to us was giving me the hairy eyeball. I figure it was because I was wearing a shirt depicting a couple sitting on the ground, with the woman telling the man, "actually, I like crap." Perhaps the social commentary there was lost on her. Or maybe she figured I was one of them pot smoking hippy types. Who knows. I just know that when you can get people older than yourself to glare at you for the way you look, it makes you feel young again.

The moon was a thin crescent tonight, and I saw a cat sitting on top of a fire hydrant. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

cds I listened to while looking somewhat offensive: Tara Jane ONeil "Bones", Sol Invictus "All Things Strange and Rare", Electro Hippies "The Only Good Punk...", Stone Breath "A Silver Thread to Weave the Seasons", and Steven Stapleton - David Tibet "The Sadness of Things"

I pass this apartment every night on my route. It is appears uninhabited, but through the curtain-less, lit window there is a small picnic blanket on the floor. Perched on top of this are a pair of large mugs with neatly folded cloth napkins jutting out of them. It is probably some sort of weird welcome wagon type thing. Either that or people actually do live there, but have managed to renounce clutter in such a profound way that all they're left with is the little blanket, mugs, and cloth napkins. This got me to thinking about the clutter that surrounds us here at home. We often pay lip service to the need to get rid of things. Occasionally we actually do get rid of things. I sell cds, and Jen donates clothes, to name the first couple of things that come to mind. The fact remains though, more stuff stays than goes. Every available surface has something on it. Every available bit of wall space has a piece of furniture against it. There are things crammed between the pieces of furniture, and no doubt things shoved beneath them, courtesy of the kids. Sometimes my brain feels like that too.

cds I listened to so that I could bring them back home to fill the spaces that they had recently vacated: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "Murder Ballads", Sol Invictus "Hill of Crosses", Nausea "The Punk Terrorist Anthology Vol. 1", and Kalenda Maya "Pilegrimsreiser"

I can walk a little bit better now, but my foot is still colorful. It's windy outside, with occasional bursts of rain.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has just had his credit card interest rate jacked up. One of my co-workers told me tonight that the same thing just happened to him. His credit card company told him it was because he's occasionally late with payments or some such rot. Did some law allowing this kind of white collar robbery just go into effect? I guess it will all be answered in the mailing they supposedly sent out in january and are now sending again. I forgot to ask my co-worker what credit card company issued his card. I hope that this isn't some sort of universal plot to suck away all of our money.

cds I listened to while trying not to think about all of the free money my credit card company is getting from me: Sol Invictus "The Blade", Deep Turtle "Turkele!!", "Tutina!", and "John Peel Session", V/A "Tutti A Casa! - Ain Soph Tribute", and Yat-Kha "Aldyn Dashka"

I spent the weekend lounging around with my feet up. Did I have stuff to do and places to go? Yes, but portions of my left foot had turned an alarming shade of purple, so I figured I'd better elevate it. I used this time to draw lots of little pictures. My foot is slightly less purplish now. It does make me wonder though... Perhaps I broke something. There's lots of little bones in feet. It will heal in time. Until then, I will hobble.

It rained today, quite hard at times. Nice.

My main credit card jacked my APR up to 24.99%. Not nice. I wish I could corner the person responsible for this outrage and and return the card to him through an orifice usually used for traffic going the other way. The soulless scumsucking impersonal nature of this kind of thing just gets to me. Time to think of ways to save money and earn more. I did get a letter from Youth Science Institute this weekend, and am going to work for them again this summer. I'm juggling jobs a little differently this year though, in an effort to make more money.

cds I listened to while slightly purple and more than a little irritated by corporate greed: Andrew Chalk "Over the Edges", Iron Maiden "s/t", Coil "June 17, 2000, at the Chapel, The Sonar Festival, Barcelona, Spain", and Woven Hand "s/t"

At one end of Hidden Villa, a goat was being born. We were at the other end. I thought about walking down to see the spectacle of goat birth, but my sprained ankle makes walking a bit of a chore.
Instead, I hobbled after The Dickens and the boys as they explored around the outside of the visitor's center. The view from the back porch is breathtaking - a grassy field surrounded on three sides by green hills. The farm proper is at the far end of the field and across the parking lot, nestled in the shadows of the oncoming night. Willow was delighted to be back at Hidden Villa as well, emitting her quavery chuckling noise as she looked around. Somewhere up in a looming tree, a raven croaked at me. A skink, disturbed when I lifted its hiding place, shot off into a bush. Inside, a man was giving a talk, with slides, on the subject of astronomy. The loudness of a couple of small girls prevented us from hearing most of it. Jen had contributed a yummy lentil, tomato, and feta salad, and a tupperware container full of brownies to the proceedings. There was also much fruit on hand, as well as tea and (unfortunately) decaf coffee. We spent some time pretending we lived there.
Later, when it got darker and colder, we looked through a telescope at the planets. I got to see Jupiter and the little pinpoints of light that were its moons, Saturn with its perfect rings, and Venus. Nearby, people were playing frisbee in the dark with a glowing red frisbee. We joined them for awhile. The Dickens decided that we needed to take the frisbee home with us.
Then it was time for Jen to get the kids home and for me to go to work. The fun always seems to end too quickly. I'm glad that we all made it to this particular gathering though, because we all had more than a moderate amount of fun. It's good to expose the kids to this kind of thing too.

The night before... Well, Faun Fables stole the show, as they often do. The first band was so boring that I got fidgety. Fishing around in my pockets, I discovered an owl pellet left over from BioSITE. I carefully pulled it apart and, one by one, dropped tiny rodent bones into the liquid wax of the votive candle that served as the centerpiece of our table. The bones weren't the first things to be dropped into the wax either. M. had already snapped the thorns off of the rose some thoughtful employee had graced our table with, and dropped them in the wax. I'm sure whoever cleaned up after the show did a double take. That's the only problem with these sorts of pranks - I never get to stick around and witness the discovery.
We did get to stick around to talk to Rose Mcdowall, who we had met previously in other cities and countries, but due to the loud goth music blasting from the speakers, combined with her scottish accent, we couldn't understand anything she said to us. Waily waily waily.

cds I listened to while still limping: Victims Family "Apocalicious", V/A "The Poor Minstrels of Song II", Iva Bittova "Kolednice", Bonfire Madigan "Plays for Change", Mirror "Eye of the Storm", Strebers "Meningslost Liv(e)", and Sixteen Horsepower "Sackcloth 'n' Ashes

I managed to twist my ankle and get pulled over by yet another unobservant cop while delivering papers tonight. I always seem to get the non-Mensa cops. This one peered inside my car, and with the aid of his little cop flashlight came to the conclusion that, "ah! You're the paper guy!". If I was a little more reckless with my smart mouth, I would have told him that I was actually stealing papers to re-sell. It's probably just as well that I held my tongue.

I hope I can walk okay tomorrow. I'm going to skip work and go see a concert - a happy little band called Sorrow. Faun Fables is supporting. Should be fun.

cds I listened to while limping: V/A "Orang-utan", Ani Difranco "So Much Shouting/So Much Laughter", and Sofa Head "Pre Marital Predicament"

Willow has a new game she enjoys - chasing the older kids. Since she can't run, let alone walk, she enlists my aid. I end up running around the yard with Willow flailing and laughing in my arms as the three older kids scream and run in all directions. Whenever Willow catches somebody, they get a smack on the head. This game could go on for hours, but doesn't because it's really hard for a grown-up to run around like that for any length of time.

She's also working on the word, "cat", with the help of the framed Louis Wain prints in the hallway. She looks at the pictures and whacks them as she repeats "gat"... "dat"... Someday soon she'll get it right.

cds I listened to while being glad I was driving instead of running: Ex-Girl "Big When Far, Small When Close", Goblin "Nonhosonno", Silent Stream of Godless Elegy "Themes", Mimir "s/t", Skyclad "Swords of a Thousand Men", Arco "Transparency", and Vixen "The Works"

A lull in the chaos...

We took Willow on a hike at Hidden Villa on saturday, which gave us a much needed respite from the usual nonstop parade of birthday parties and soiled heinies. We looked at the new baby lambs on the way towards the trail. I had been in the pen with a school group the day before, but we're not letting anybody touch the lambs just yet, due to their newness.
Willow is an enthusiastic hiker, mostly because she doesn't have to do any actual hiking. She likes being held in front of me, facing out so she can kick her little legs and reach for trees. Speaking of trees, I was reminded anew that there really are a lot of them up there in the hills. They seem to stretch on forever if you look in the right direction and ignore your peripheral vision. And down by our feet, little star-like wildflowers dotted the greenery. Lizards scuttled this way and that - mostly bluebellies, but also a few skinks and one whiptail. No horned lizards though, which is what we were particularly hoping to see. Oh well, Willow didn't care. She had a blast. She's really developing into a little outdoorswoman. We'll always encourage that.

cds I listened to while being back in the valley and noticing how ugly most of it is: The Bevis Frond "New River Head", Six Organs of Admittance "Compathia" and "Dark Noontide", and Oidupaa Vladimir Oiun "Divine Music From A Jail"

I finally ate the lollipop I got for Christmas. I'd been carrying it around in my backpack for awhile, occasionally taking it out and showing it to people. They always asked the same questions - "is that a real cricket?" The cricket, like a fly in green amber, was frozen in place near the lollipop stick. I was showing the lollipop to some kids at the museum because we had the resident toad out, and we were discussing what kinds of things toads eat. I told them that the toad was probably going to be mad that I was eating his lollipop. It took me awhile to lick my way down to the cricket. It was easy to tell when I got there because there's a big textural difference between lollipop and cricket. Crickets are much rougher on the tongue. Like I usually do when I'm sucking on a lollipop, I grew impatient and bit a chunk off, noticing afterwards that the chunk included the cricket's head. Pretty gruesome, finding headless bugs in your food. I did the only thing I could at that point. I quickly crunched up the rest and swallowed it. The kids in the room were looking at me like I was crazy.

I'm off to Hidden Villa again tomorrow, so goodnight to one and all.

cds I listened to while digesting the cricket: Epizod "The Bulgarian God", Tom Waits "Rain Dogs", The Black Heart Procession "Amore del Tropico", Antony & Current 93 "Live at St. Olave's Church", Current 93 "Some Soft Black Stars Seen Over London", and Sol Invictus "In Europa"

We're still getting some patchy overcast at night, thin enough for the moon to shine through. It's times like this that even the suburbs are beautiful. During the day, it's a different story. Everywhere I look I see the same ugly houses and the same ugly little shopping centers. Too many people drive SUVs or those big ugly steroid trucks. Too many people watch reality TV. Too many... well, you get the idea. It makes me think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where alien pods replicate human beings, killing off the originals in the process. I sometimes get the feeling that the suburbs kill off human beings and replace them with alien beings with nefarious agendas. I often feel out of place here. Jen says we should move over the hill and live by the ocean. I agree. Maybe the proximity of the ocean somehow arrests the growth cycle of the pod people. Maybe they can't stand salt. Maybe it's too far from the big malls.

Speaking of malls, a guy I work with, who also has a job that involves installing home entertainment centers, found out that apartments in San Jose's Santana Row (a high end apartment/mall community) go for approximately $5000/month. Sick. Daylight robbery. White collar crime.

Okay, enough griping.

cds I listened to while shaking my head at the state of things: Nurse With Wound "Salt Marie Celeste", David Tibet & Steven Stapleton "Octopus", Tom Waits "Franks Wild Years", and Stone Breath "Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis"

The Dickens says, "I like cockroaches and crickets and biders." She qualifies this statement with, "I 'fraid of the bider. He got a butt!"

I tell her that it's actually an abdomen.

"Oh," she replies. "Abumen."

I've noticed this before in people who are afraid of spiders. Something about their abdomens creeps people out. Go figure.

The big weapons-manufacturing company on my route has changed their security policy again. Now, apparently, everybody who wants to be allowed access to the property has to have a badge. I told them that I'm not going to get a badge, because in order to get one I'd have to go visit their visitors center in the middle of the day. So far they've been letting me in anyway, although tonight I had the misfortune to arrive during Slow Security Guard's shift. He's a great, bovine lump of a man, who moves about as quickly as roadkill. He had to call his supervisor to ask what he should do, then he spent some time hunting for his clipboard, all the while grumbling about the new policy. I'm sure that he's upset with this policy only because it requires him to leave his comfy chair inside his comfy little guard shack and flounder about seaching for the proper forms and the pen to fill them out with.

The fact that it's people like this who stand between dangerous weapons and anybody who might decide to liberate them sort of worries me.

cds I listened to while waiting for the security guard to find his pen: Leonard Cohen "Songs of Love and Hate", Current Ninety Three/Nurse With Wound "Bright Yellow Moon/Purtle", Aranos "Making Love in Small Spaces", and Sol Invictus "The Death of the West"

The full moon peers down upon us through a moving veil of clouds. It has been cool for the last couple of nights, and breezy during the day, which is just fine with me.

I made Willow laugh so hard today that she got the hiccups. There's not much better than listening to her laugh, although she was laughing so hard I thought she was going to barf.

The van is fixed. Let me modify that - the obvious problems are fixed, or at least most of them are. It is uncertain whether or not replacing the starter will have had any effect on the stalling problem. The only way to know for sure is to get on the freeway and drive for several hours and hope that when and if the van shuts itself off that it happens somewhere safe. Oh, the wonders of modern technology. It brings out the Luddite in me.

cds I listened to while realizing that Luddites probably don't have cd players: Nature & Organization "Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude", Comus "First Utterance", Amebix "Arise! + 2", Mari Boine Band "Balvvoslatjna (Room of Worship)", and Current 93 "Cats Drunk on Copper"

I was taking a shower the other day and admiring all of the nice spiders that live in the bathroom. Part of the shower ritual involves relocating the spiders who have situated themselves somewhere within range of the spray. During this particular shower, the only spider near enough to potentially be in danger was already heading upwards out of harms way. Unfortunately, he blundered into the web of a much bigger spider up in the corner near the ceiling. This second spider lost no time in wrapping him up tightly and commencing to drain him of fluid. It was kind of sad. I realized at that point that I wasn't sure what kind of spiders these were, so I did a little digging around online and discovered that they go by several different common names. Some people call them Daddy Longlegs, but I won't, because that's what I've always called Harvestmen, which are arachnids, but not spiders. Some people call them Cellar spiders, but I won't, because that's what I call those marbled, shiny spiders that somewhat resemble Black Widows. I'll stick with the third name, which is Vibrating spider, because they do indeed vibrate when disturbed. The one near the toilet paper dispenser has probably rattled its little spider brain loose by now. Unfortunate location, I guess.

The van died on Friday, just as I was about to drive the three older kids to the video store. We had it towed today, and we're hoping that this time we'll be able to get that recurring stalling problem resolved. There was a really dumb woman in the waiting room at the repair shop. She insisted on calling Willow a boy, even though Jen and I both corrected her more than once, and actually asked Jen to move aside so she could watch the commercials on the TV across the room. I heard her mutter, "I'll have to get one of those", as she intently watched an ad for an egg sheller. Just another daytime TV zombie slowly rotting away from the inside, who no doubt has a house full of items that seemed really cool at the time she saw the snazzy commercials for them, but not so cool once she actually got them.

Okay, I'm going to go read now. I'm just sitting here making fun of people, and that's not really very nice. It is kinda fun though.

cds I listened to while rushing around because the damn papers were late and really big to boot: Paul Chain "Emisphere" and "Master of all Times", Tanakh "Villa Claustrophobia", Molasses "trilogie: Toil & Peaceful Life" and "s/t", Shock Headed Peters "Tendercide", and Sol Invictus "Trees in Winter"

I got pulled over again tonight for being suspiciously near some suspicious activity. Belatedly, I thought of a good April Fool's Day joke - have a fake I.D. under the name Osama Bin Laden. Watch the cops all laugh! Watch them arrest you while laughing!

The mother duck nearly dive bombed me tonight, quacking loudly. The ducklings peeped plaintively.

And last, I was told a funny story at work today. Apparently, last autumn, an employee took it upon himself to put up a helpful sign in the garden. This sign was meant to entice people to smell the anise plants, which, as most people know, smell like licorice. Unfortunately, this employee was uncertain how to spell "anise", so he gave it his best shot. The resulting sign summoned people to "Come smell the sweet anus".

cds I listened to while being suspiciously suspicious: Paul Chain Violet Theatre "Opera 4th", Miranda Lee Richards "The Herethereafter", Current 93 "Halo", Paul Chain "Sign From Space", and Howden/Wakeford "Wormwood"

More of the same, different day. I'm such a creature of habit that I sit here typing when I don't really have anything to say. The days have been running together. We had a meeting at the museum earlier, and we all got to peek at some elements of the upcoming "Wonder Cabinet" exhibit. The exhibit is supposed to be similar to the original museums, which were known as "Cabinets of Curiosity", but for small children. So of course everything can be touched. It's not due to be finished for another year. Based on past experience, it will probably be done two years from now. I most likely won't be working there then, which is both bad and good. How vague of me.

Outside, in the garden, a lone frog sings, but only if people keep their distance.

cds I listened to while wondering what's in the cabinet: Lila Downs "Border", Legend "Still Screaming", Ilgi "Kaza Kapa Debesis", Current 93 "Sleep Has His House", and Iron & Wine "The Creek Drank the Cradle"