from inside and outside my life

the old days

so, we did go to the splash pad after all, it was fun. we took emily from down the street. but I had these weird flashbacks from my childhood. Getting there was not easy. first the bridge was out, so we had to take this funky detour. then we caught a train. then the train stopped. then it went backwards. then it went forwards. it was really really hot. I just saw the inconceivable truth so I turned the car off and opened the windows.

I remembered sitting as a child in a car, next to the window. it's hot, unbelievably hot. I'm crammed back there with my brother and sister. the windows are open. the train is stopped. we sit and sit. my mom sits in front and smokes. everything feels old and smells old, read: smoky. It takes forever and everything sort of is wavy with the heat. We'll never get anywhere.

it's the back of the cars I remember. We never once had a car with air conditioning. The seats would scorch your ass when you sat down. Your sweat would make you slide around on the vinyl. Your butt stuck to the seat when you stood up and left red marks. I also remember these stinky musty cars in winter: trapped in the back and smoke everywhere, feeling suffocated. My mom in the front, and my aunt, smoking away, and us little people, pinned in the back.

here is a photo of booker since I only ever seem to post photos of stella.



I got a little bonkers yesterday. there was so much running in and out of the house and they would get all excited to go swimming and then only swim for five minutes and then want to change their clothes and there is mud all over the place and sand... booker needs to have his shoes on if he is going to ride his bike. he is yelling at me. stella wants onto a website she's been playing games on. I am only wanting to get my parched flowers watered, is that so much? Here is what I know. If I walk away and put booker's shoes on, and then get stella onto her website, my flowers will die. How do I know that? Experience. I will then be sidetracked by some dishes or somebody will need lemonade or I'll have to pee or the phone will ring. I know better. I tell the kids: I'm watering the plants. There are wet bathing suits all over the floors inside and some damp, sandy towels, I can't get to that just yet.

One girl gets mad and goes home and within minutes another one is over here playing. I make them clean up as they roam from room to room. Earlier today I got a call from a producer asking me to direct a play for him next season. I couldn't talk. My son was having a temper tantrum. Do you know why? Because there are bugs outside and the pool is "dirty". It's a hectic kind of peaceful day. Rife with tantrums, girl-drama (our next door neighbor has no sense of humor, I talk to her about this and she drolly replies, "yeah, it's true. so?"), pony strife, broken mermaid heads, outdoor battles over chalk and hopscotch layouts. Really they should be outside, and they are as much as I can make them.

What do you think about serbia?

I just directed a play that takes place in Zrenjanin. It really blew my mind. At the end of the play I have the performers do something that doesn't usually happen at the end of the play. The responses to this are wild and interesting, some feel it is degrading, some feel it is hopeless, some feel it is hopeful. I just know that the energy of what happens at the end of this play matches the energy of the play itself. I do think it works, but it is so complicated as to why it works. I'm still processing much of this work, which seems to me to be more psychic than anything else. Weird, right, who thinks of directing a play as a psychic experience. But how else could I envisage this?





it's not just about those two guys, I swear... those are just some photos that I like.

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my daughter tried to spend the night tonight at a friends. she is 6yo. I was on a business call when she ran up to me and begged to spend the night. I needed to finish the call. But I did agree it would be fun. She would be at a neighbors house right down the street. While I was on the phone, she packed and took off. I didn't get a chance to talk to her! There are different rules at people's houses, different beds, different routines, etc. It was her first time spending the night anywhere other than her grandmother's house...

anyway, on a walk back from walgreen's with my 3yo we stopped and talked to the neighbors where she was spending the night... they were on the porch, it was a beautiful night...
and suddenly she was crying, and we were taking her home, I don't know if she heard our voices or just was suddenly homesick. I felt so bad for her, she was so disappointed in herself... but I felt like I had let her down as well but not talking with her about this milestone event. Her first sleep over! Oh she was upset, crying, carrying on. I made her a warm vanilla and my husband played the guitar for her and she went to sleep.

She seems so mature in other areas. As sad as her dejection was, I felt an odd happiness in bringing her home and putting her to bed the way she loves to be put to bed. I was also glad that this didn't happen at 3am. But I never thought for a moment that she wouldn't be able to spend the night away from us, even down the street.



here's my little snowflake.
that's at her recital. what a whirlwind getting out of school was. she went to her school picnic, then a small break before her recital (I got her and her brother to fall asleep in the car... hoo boy SCORE!) Then the recital which her grandparents from CA made it just in time for her to dance! And the music stopped and she was so confused. What a great dancer though. She's such a leader. She gets herself set up then all the other girls sort of arrange themselves around her. Nice. Then the rest of her weekend and beyond was visiting and traveling with her grandparents and her little brother and other extended family. Zoo. Picnic. Brunch. Then, suddenly, after being here since friday, they leave and BAM: It's SUMMER. And boy howdy is it. The phone starts ringing at 8:30 am!

solstice eve

this is my first day and night off in a long time. I'm sort of freaked out. what should I do? I want to take the kids to the splash park but my daughter has a friend over and I'm afraid she'll be real mad at me if I send her home. Why don't I just take her with? I guess I could.

tomorrow is the summer solstice. why is it so much easier when everything around me is living, not dying. half -- more than half the year here in this part of the country, it feels like things are dead.

so many things are falling into place now, I feel like this

I sort of don't like this solstice. even though summer is beginning here in the midwest, now the earth turns toward the decline and why does that bother me so much? I don't like it that on the first day of summer, the days actually grow shorter. Maybe because Spring in the midwest is sort of a rip off, fleeting and ingenuous. Mostly cold and muddy and shitty out and then a few things sprout, then it snows again and you gotta start all over. And the ingracious wind. Making everyone stay inside all damn April.

Then everything blooms, all at once, and everything is that shimmering magical green color for only a few days, and if you do not appreciate it on those very few days, you are fucked until next year. Not like the fall, where things decay and turn color for months on end. More wind, more slush. Some drama. At least fall is dramatic, even if it goes on forever.

I would like it if the days grew longer until august, when summer seems to hit the ceiling. What part of the world do I need to live in for that to happen?