1) It's lunchtime at the Best Job Ever. I love it when my boss is here, but I love it in a different way when she's working at home (as she is today) because I can just put my head down and get caught up on things that I need to do.

2) The kid, apparently, would be allowed to stay on my (very cheap-to-me, very good and comprehensive) insurance until age 23 if she were my natural or adopted child. Since she's my legal ward, she appears to be ineligible when she turns 18, which she does in January. Eep!

3) Would any locals be willing to come Friday the 30th and/or Saturday the 31st and help me spruce up the kid's room? We never really finished cleaning and painting it, and I need to repair some holes in the wall that were there before she moved in, and so on. She doesn't really complain about it, but I'm tired of her living someplace that's not quite habitable. I'd also like to deep-clean the floor and put down the rug we bought. I could really use company/help, and I'll feed you really well.

4) The menu for the cookalong on the 1st is as follows: fried meatballs, brown gravy, parmesan-prosciutto mashed potatoes, a vegetable of some sort, and chocolate icebox cake. If you want to join us in San Leandro for some of that stuff, let me know.

A difficult day, in which our narrator faces her parenting fail, a teenager has a lot of hard decisions to make, a friend deals with the death of his husband, another friend deals with her mother's increasing illness, and Microsoft Word just will not cooperate. Still, there's a lot to be grateful for, and the fact that I've been on the verge of tears all day doesn't diminish that:

1) Lunch with folks from work and the surrounding disability-advocacy community, all of whom give a damn about doing good in the world, and all of whom are fun to talk to.

2) The Best Job Ever, where I get to read and write and help people, all for money.

3) Nasoya Silken Creations Vanilla, the best soy pudding I've ever had, ever.

4) The lovely way my tummy feels when I eat soy pudding instead of milk pudding. ;-)

I'm sure there's more, but eesh, I really need to get to bed. 6am comes early. G'night, my lovelies.

Have to have a talk with the Munchkin between now and Monday because she's not doing the things she's supposed to be doing. The Fun Aunt wants to just let her continue to slide, because really, it's not fun to make someone do school when they don't want to, or to enforce that they have to clean up their own messes, or shit like that. It's one reason I avoided the roommate thing for so long. It's one reason there are so few people I'm willing to live with. But I just can't be a flophouse matron for someone who shows up at dinnertime for food, and otherwise does nothing all day. And at this rate, she'll be 27 before she finishes high school. It's not healthy for her, and it's building serious resentment in me. (Plus, if she's not going to take school seriously, she should just go get a job and contribute to the household in that way instead. She's almost 18; no one's going to force her to finish high school if she'd rather work.)

I wrote her a letter, because sometimes it helps us to communicate in writing. We'll see how it goes.

Best line on my reading page today:

"...wash my dick for me, m'kay?"


Sunday, I managed (with someotherguy's help) to transform the house from a health hazard to just a pit. Today and tomorrow, I hope to get it a little more habitable, because my mom is going to be here tomorrow night! She will totally not care if it's a mess, but I can relax more when things are clean and tidy.

Also on Sunday, had a blast with aquenigmatic. I basically just read school scenarios and watched aquenimatic work out the answers with giantbrainpower, but it was fun. And we ate cherries and warm bread and butter, and gathered plums from inflectionpoint and worthyadvisor's tree (well, it's their neighbor's tree, but a lot of it hangs over their fence) and held them in our shirts. I love having cool people in my neighborhood.

Had a nice time at stonebender's yesterday, watching Buffy and eating watermelon. Had a little fight with the teenager -- yelled at her for the first time since she came to live here, which of course made me feel awful about myself, but really did impress her about the strength of that particular boundary that she crossed. She apologized. We had pizza. All is well. (I know several of you, including simplykimberly, will understand the thought process I went through, which progressed from "Damn, that was sucky parenting" to "Not as sucky as her actual parents would do -- hey, I wasn't even tempted to hit her" to "Okay, time to stop comparing myself to the Mommymonster and just do my best to relate to this kid as a person, with love.")

And today, I get to read lots of magazine submissions, reject most of them, and accept some really lovely work. I'm already working on filling up Winter. This is the fun part.

Mom gets here tomorrow night and leaves Sunday morning. I've missed her so much!

Really difficult day. I recommend against taking an angry, frightened teenager who's had zero hours of sleep to the podiatrist. Really. Skip it if you can. (She did the best she could, but between exhaustion and anxiety, she had very little in the way of emotional resources. I stayed calm and reminded her to point her grumpiness elsewhere; she mostly complied. We got Subway on the way home, which helped matters some. For both of us.)

Fortunately, we have an agreement that if there's ever going to be any non-emergency medical procedure, she has the option of going home and deciding about (and/or preparing for) it free from the pressure of medical personnel and parents, so the doctor didn't have to try to perform surgery on a truly out-of-it seventeen-year-old. AND, bless his pea-pickin' heart, he gave the kid some valium for before and after the procedure, as well as all the pain meds and antibiotics she'd need afterwards, so we won't have to stop by the pharmacy on the way home. She still doesn't want to have foot surgery, and who could blame her, but unfortunately, I can't make this one optional. Heck, then she really might get the dread Meebo virus, and we can't have that!

I'm drained already. Wish me luck.

1) The plan for Friday was full of productivity. Instead, I spent the day doing energy-conservation stuff with the electric company, which had the joint draining effects of "three hours with houseguests" and "three more hours with bureaucracy". Net effect: not much done.

2) The plan for Saturday was full of productivity. Instead, I spent the first half of the day waiting to hear from someone I had plans with, and the second half of the day in the ER with the kid, who is medical-stuff-phobic. Her feet look scary-bad, but it's just severely ingrown toenails, and I have to make an appointment with a podiatrist for this week. I did get to spend three hours assuring her that she wouldn't have to get her feet cut off, or die of the dread Meebo virus (what we decided the rare virus that eats feet was called). Net effect: not much done, and dude, it's draining to be the calm, parental one all the time.

3) The plan for today is full of productivity, and dammit, I'm gonna do it. I'm heading out to the grocery store to buy a bunch of food, and then over to stonebender's to cook up a bunch of casseroles, both for his house and ours. We both want to eat more homemade food, save some money, and have some meals in the freezer for when people are too tired to cook. Today's plan: lasagne, enchiladas, and my mom's chicken and rice casserole. Wish us luck.

When I say my kid's a wonderful artist, I'm not kidding.

(She knocked that out from scratch in a couple of hours yesterday and complained about it taking her too long. She'll be putting more art up there; isn't she great?)

1) Plugging subscriber info into my database in preparation for making labels for Monday's mailing. Very exciting. Also, they're gonna let me sell copies at the women's open mic. I'm also going to go around and put copies into the local bookstores that'll let me, now that I'll have an actual magazine to show them. And I'm working on not-for-profit status. And getting ISSN/barcodes for next issue. And so on. I really like this project a lot, in case you couldn't tell.

2) Haagen-Dazs has a new line called "five" -- five ingredients and that's all. This one, brown sugar flavor, has milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, and brown sugar. It's odd but very good. I'm going to try the other flavors.

3) Feeling so good, physically and mentally. I mean, so good.

4) inflectionpoint and worthyadvisor are moving in. Yay, friendly neighbors!

5) wtfpotatoes cooked bacon today. I made someotherguy a grilled bacon and cheddar sandwich and some homemade tomato soup for lunch. My house smells good.

6) Speaking of the magazine (I was, wasn't I? aren't I always?), I've got some really good content for fall's multimedia CD so far. A flash "zen garden" game; a music video; some music; a cartoon. If you have art that doesn't suit a black-and-white-printed medium, but would do well in electronic format, PLEASE submit some! (I'm looking at you, video artists, animators, musicians, game writers, crafters, color photographers, etc. Also, if you've already got written work in the magazine and would be willing to either read it or let me read it to add to the CD, please let me know (I'll probably also ask you this individually in email).

Sandwich of love I have a really good kid. She made me pasta for lunch, and this is my dinner. I don't actually need people to cook for me (I just can't cook for others), but it sure is nice being taken care of anyway. :-)

The best kid ever: "I may not be the comforting type, but, like, this is my way of telling you it's all gonna be okay."



How fucking great is that? (By the way, that's me. Looks like me, doesn't it?)

Stuff:

1) Is it my imagination, or does that whole family just get more repulsive as the years go by?

2) They used the proper size blood-pressure cuff on me yesterday, and my pressure was 119/79. Fat arms. That's my life-threatening health condition.

3) People around me are more worried than I am about my impending surgery, but it's rubbing off a little, so I'm getting a tiny bit anxious. Being aware of it, though, means it's not causing me too much distress.

4) Super-busy at the Best Job Ever, because school just started. It'll slow down, but meantime, I'm working my big tushy off, and loving it.

5) The magazine is going to be good. I'm very excited about it. The thing I'm most nervous about is making it LOOK good, because I'm not visually oriented, but I expect I'll get some help with that.

6) Oh. Em. Gee. The landlady and the people upstairs have gotten together and figured out a solution that gets the Munchkin her own room. For only an extra $100 or so a month.


Nonsense:

( Long survey nicked from firecat, along with at least one of her answers )

Yesterday was a really good day with the teenager. We were both in good moods, and unbeknownst to her, I decided to spend a whole day without criticizing her, which probably helped us both STAY in good moods.

Anyway, we went to the store to spend some of her birthday gift certificates. loracs's household had bought her a gift card for Artist and Craftsman in Berkeley, and they were having a sale on stretched canvas, so the kid bought four or five canvasses (canvases?), a charcoal pencil, and a paintbrush. Then we ate Thai food and went home and raided sogwife's considerable stash of acrylic paints. Here are the results:

	Yay! Inspired by the "Serene" painting intenselaura got me when she visited, wtfpotatoes created one for me in flame and/or chili-pepper motif.
	Sun moon stars I myself, being not much of a visual artist, stuck with simple shapes that I wouldn't be too disappointed in if they didn't work. I'm happy with them, though the sun didn't turn out the way I'd envisioned it.

Really good day.

I'm so sunburned (and dehydrated, and day-at-the-beach-tired)! But wtfpotatoes put lotion on my ouchies, and we registered 35 voters today, and gave out 40 more forms for people to mail themselves later. (I saw 4 of those people complete theirs.)

Not bad for a day's work.

Three FOUR! bits of good news, all so excellent they probably don't need much elaboration:

1) My hips don't hurt.

2) I got my first choice of public high schools for wtfpotatoes, and she's gonna look into starting internet high school.

3) I got a job offer today from The Best Temp Permanent Job Ever, and I said yes. A little more money per hour, flexible hours, lots of time off, and full benefits.

4) Mom's biopsy came back, and she's fine. Nothing's wrong.

Stuff I haven't thought to mention lately:

1) Last week, I began volunteering on the phone line at the Women's Cancer Resource Center. So far, so good.

2) I am ONE document away from having everything I need to enroll wtfpotatoes in school. Yay!

3) I may have an interview on Monday for a part-time-with-full-benefits gig working for my two favorite bosses at The Best Temp Job Ever.

4) My mom still hasn't gotten her biopsy results yet. She's worried; I'm saving worry for if it's needed.

5) My brother (the middle one, the one with 8 kids) was in town last night, and he took me and wtfpotatoes to dinner near SFO. It was nice to see him, and I got to use my Zipcar for the first time. It was really fun, but of course, going to the city and stuff kinda wore me out.

6) I know I recommend this on a regular basis, but if you can get yourself a family just like mine, you should do it. They've been SO great to me while I've been dealing with the hip pain. They move furniture for me, get me food, and don't make me feel bad about how little I get done when it really hurts. I really am lucky. (I'm also on the mend, I think. The pain is a lot less today than the few days previous.)

So obviously, I have a teenager now. She's a great kid, and very helpful around the house. (The other day, she woke up and did the dishes before starting her game, without being asked, so she wouldn't have to worry about chores while she played. Stuff like that.)

Anyway, she's looking for paid work. As soon as we get her ID sorted out, she's going to put in applications at the local businesses that are appropriate, but she'd also be happy to help out any of you who need her to do stuff.

If you have any work for wtfpotatoes that you think would be appropriate (yard work, housework, basic office admin stuff, etc.), please let one of us know. Her email address is her user ID without the e, at aim.com.

1) I'm enjoying having the Munchkin here. She a good source of affection for me, and I do like her a lot. Also, she's not surly or uncooperative, the way I know teenagers can be. She sometimes has to remind me not to treat her like a younger child, but she's very good-natured about it, and she really is willing to give respect, not just demand it. Also, while I really wish we had a separate room for her, she's taken the whole living-on-our-couch thing in stride. (And she still wants her aunt to tuck her in from time to time, which makes me very happy. I love this kid a lot.) I do wish things had gone better for her at her previous home, but I'm so glad I'm able to offer her someplace stable and full of love.

2) Still addicted to WordTwist. Spending way too much time on the game.

3) Really liking Ubuntu. Sure enough of its relative permanence in my life that I'm ripping all my CDs to that partition, and looking for an invoice software that will run on Linux so that my last ties to Windows will be gone.

4) Just in case I haven't made it abundantly clear, someotherguy didn't have to agree to have a teenager invade his home for the long (or even medium) haul. The fact that he agreed with me that it was the right thing to do makes me love him even more. In fact, the same can be said of stonebender and sogwife and loracs -- when they heard what the situation was, they all said some variation of "Yep, gotta do what we gotta do -- how can I help?" My family is the bestest family I could ever have imagined.

So I was freaking out a little because I farted away the whole day and didn't clean in preparation for wtfpotatoes's arrival, and then I realized why I was freaking out, really -- I don't want her to land in another place of chaos.

Then I realized how silly that is.

Our home is peaceful and happy and not chaotic. No one will scream at her or subject her to scary mind games. No one will make her feel bad for spending her time the way she chooses. No one will shame her or use the withdrawal of love as a weapon.

Yeah, this is all gonna be okay, even if my house is kinda messy right now.

On a logistical note, we're gonna buy her a bus pass and a library card right away, and look into classes at Studio One, etc. There's a lot to do in this part of town that's easily walkable/busable, and I know that no one wants for the three of us to be stuck in this house together 24/7. ;-)

To do before the kid arrives:

Clear some space
Rearrange the computer setup
Put away the laundry
Clean the kitchen

To do soon after the kid arrives:

Buy a dresser or get one on freecycle
Sign the kid up for school
Get the kid a bus pass
Have a welcome-to-the-bay-area party for the kid?

And I'm sure there are a million other things, but that's the most pressing stuff right now.

Um, so apparently the Universe has a sense of humor. You know how I've been gently lamenting the fact that I'm never going to have kids?

Right soon now, I'm getting one. Of course, she's 16 1/2 years old, so I don't have to stay up all night feeding her or anything...

I won't lie and say it was my plan to be the parent of a teenager at this stage of my life, and it's going to mean some big changes around here (including my needing to find lodging for me and a teenager beginning soon), but I think it's a chance for a really cool kid to get a new start, and that part, I'm really excited about.

Plus, I really like this kid, so there's that.