So much, hey. The weather is gorgeous. One could almost accomplish anything. This weekend we cleaned house, Squire under threat of "If you can't clean your room I'll be forced to clean it for you!" –this is adolescence, I guess, when that sounds like a threat instead of a treat. And how interesting that there's just the one letter "h" between the two, and yet a vast difference. A vas deferens. Oh, health class, I remember you so well. I remember everything.

Today I saw an older man wearing what maybe was supposed to be a hipster ironic shirt, or maybe it was truly vintage. "Boogie till you drop!" it said. Okay, mister. But he had varicose veins and had to walk down the hill sideways so it was a different kind of irony. Maybe he needs a trucker cap.

I like it when I exercise and an hour later my arms are all "HI! WE ARE YOUR ARMS! REMEMBER US!" trembling like a girl in the Twilight books with their newfound power. I haven't actually read any of the Twilight books; I like my romance a little pornier I think. One year for Christmas I gave people Harlequins with the interesting bits highlighted (interesting bits being both spelling errors, egregious dialogue, and stuff like "She felt his masculine desire against her." I don't wish I were poor again but it does seem that I used to be a little more creative with gifts. Now I'm all HERE'S A BOOK YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO READ, YO. HAVE SOME FLOWERS.

Ah, spring. Reevaluating the wardrobe and the self. I cleaned out the drawers, and got all ready to go through the closet and finally burn some skeletons but then it rained and snowed at the same time and I went back to bed. The time of Dramatic Sleeping seems to have passed but I still need a nap every day or I'm facedesk by 8 pm. The body and I had a long talk about the kind of old lady I want to be, which is the old lady who goes to bed after everybody and gets up before everybody. This is actually pretty much who I was until the Great Narcolepsy took over. What's better, Dramatic Sleeping or Great Narcolepsy? In either case you must picture me helpless on my back, arms flung over my head, like in Fuseli's Nightmare, only let's put a garden gnome or something on my chest, just to keep things funny. A very heavy garden gnome, nevertheless.

I've had a cold for two weeks, can you imagine? I have managed it very sensibly by alternately cancelling social engagements and then sitting in a bar next to an open door until 1 a.m. So clever. 

When I switch over the closet for the season, I find there are clothes that don't fit anymore, or things I didn't even wear last year so they might as well go. I found some hair clips in the back of a drawer, which is pretty funny. There's nothing wrong with them, but what would I keep those for? And I also find things that I'd forgotten about during the winter – a pretty shirt, a light sweater. What I wish for this year is the continued easy dismissal of things that do not work, the ability to forgive myself for letting these things go simply because I do not want them, and hoping that another person will find them useful but not caring if nobody does. And I also want to always have the same happy gratitude to realize that there is still so much that does fit, that is right. I'm not so much talking about clothes, or not only. 

Rubber cement is maybe not the best medium but I like the way it strands, small gossamer spiderwebs to sweep up in the morning. And I like feeling like something is secure when it is fixed in place with these spiderwebs. Last night I woke up at 3 a.m. with the sentence "In the European Union, old money is useless" and I thought about nouveau riche and and oyster forks and it was words but also images. Oh, brain, you are so full of surprises.

Lately my primary word thoughts have come in the form of a quiz, mostly multiple choice with one answer a blank for the thing I didn't think of, and discussion questions for extra credit. I feel like I'm generating no new thoughts, just questions about how other people think about what I think. Or what they think about what I haven't thought of yet.

I have lost my voice as of this morning and it is funny how this is so unimportant. "What could they speak of — anyway?" Though I have suffered no cruelty. It is crazy how much I need to insist on perspective. Like you wanted nothing, and then you got something, and then that something was gone. Is it not stupid to mourn that absence, rather than celebrate its brief presence? Is it not wiser, better for everybody especially you, to say: what a wonderful gift that was. And yet I find myself, the one who has pushed away in "do it myself" independence forever, surrounded by tea, cough drops, a pyramid of mandarin oranges, tissues, all beautifully arranged by myself because I do it best, crying not a little bit because I was once cared for, and now I am not again. Never mind, never never mind.

It's international women's day, apparently. I have never felt so entirely hated by the United States as I have lately. Okay, I have, but I've felt hated on the basis of my beliefs, not on the basis of how I was born. It is strange to feel so … not hated so much as vaguely distasteful, entirely disposable. I feel like I'm one chapter away from having my bank accounts frozen, straight to the colonies with the other unwomen. Well maybe it will be safer there.

My quest to be more like Mister Rogers continues with varying success. Maybe I should get some goldfish to go with my picture picture. Won't you be my neighbor? 

So I am drinking a glass of beet juice and vinegar because it is delicious. Remind me later when I'm doubled over in pain that I did this to myself and that I'm perfectly fine.

Being back from Costa Rica is still difficult. It is so, so cold here. Why are there countries that are so cold, and why do people continue to live in them? And why do we make them so pretty? I bet if there was less beautiful architecture we'd come to our senses and run to the equator, en masse. Well, I'd still live here March through October I expect. They put on a good summer here. On the plus side, there is work to do and so a reason to stay in, most days. Though I've been out most days, as I am very popular, as I'm sure you know. Well not really but I did go out every night last week, and several nights this week. So: demented and sad, but social.

What's to say. There's not much. We get up, we eat breakfast, then Squire goes to school and I work in friendly bursts and try to catch up with my reading, though I am so behind. I think about art, which I have not done since… well, maybe never. I dated a guy in college who helpfully pointed out that I can't even doodle. This was very good for my self-confidence as an artist. Well whatever: I gave paid poetry readings so I wasn't really destroyed or anything, just much less inclined to the visual arts. But anyway that seems to be changing, which is a fun thing to watch myself in. So working and reading and thinking. And then school is over and sometimes he studies or we bury ourselves in our online social lives and have something good for dinner and then sometimes I go out and he goes to bed, and sometimes someone comes over, and sometimes we watch a movie or glut ourselves on television. And sometimes other things. It is quiet and good, this life.

I am rethinking a quiz that I started to write a few years ago that started "Can you name all 12 Supreme Court Justices?" I abandoned it because I thought it was useless except for my own amusement, and now I think: Are there more important goals, really? It is not that I lack free time, or rather it is not as if I spend all my time wisely in the first place. 

Getting older is kind of weird. Middle aged. I like it. I feel like I am young enough to still learn stuff, and old enough to know what I'm learning it for. Young enough to have people older and wiser than I am, but old enough to feel justified in being bossy. It's kind of magical.

Squire and I are in Costa Rica this month. Our friends were here with us for two weeks and that was a great bit of fun, and we are sad they left. On the plus side, we like hanging out with each other a lot. We rented a house near the beach, bordering a smallish jungle. The monkeys wake us up sometimes and that is nice. There are also lots of lizards of varying sizes. Also chickens who roost in the branches of palm trees, which is interesting, though it is not nice when they wake us up. We work and play games and read Orwell and Huxley, catalog the animals we see, eat our body weight in gallo de pinto, jump around in the ocean and turn pink, peel, fade to freckles, and turn pink again. We have experienced ziplining, kayaking, and snorkeling, all of which are splendid activities and more so when I remember that at home I would currently require several layers of clothing just to take out the trash. The last time I went grocery shopping in Brno, it was so cold I cried and the tears froze on my face. So Costa Rica is a very welcome change. Also salt water has magical healing properties, which I mean literally and metaphorically. 

Happy new year, by the way. I have made ambitious resolutions for the first time I can remember, and a revised five year plan. My main goal is that 2011 be better than 2010. So far signs point to yes.

Yesterday we went to the Frida Kahlo exhibit in Vienna, because hey, we live in Europe and they have museums and stuff. As preparation we watched Julie Taymor's Frida, which turns out to be a bit more sexytimes than I remember, and that was sort of awkward and funny. Hey, thirteen-year-old son, come sit down with mama and watch fiery Mexicans getting it on. Whourps. The movie was good, though, and I think it helped Squire with appreciating the art a bit more. I do wish that museums were more like IKEA, where you have to walk up and down every aisle but then you see everything. I mean, go faster or slower if stuff interests you or doesn't, but I like that you have to walk by everything. I feel like the standard model of a bunch of rooms, where you walk through some rooms multiple times and others you can miss, is not effective. Particularly not when there are crowds that are coming in bunches – some people are like me, and want to go "in order" (I assume the museum curators did put it in some kind of order, right?) and others dart from picture to picture. So I got shoved some, and spent some time having the back of someone's head put itself in front of the painting, and also there were children touching the art, which is like: wow, parents. This is not an interactive exhibit. BUT the show itself was well arranged for the space, I thought, and I liked seeing her early drawings, so rough, and then you sort of watch her come into herself, and then there's a sort of deterioration at the end that is understandable but sad. Drugs, you are not actually a friend to art, despite how it sometimes feels like you are at the time. Also they had films and photographs and some of her actual dresses. Also I really liked the explanations, even though it meant I spent at least half the time reading instead of absorbing the visuals, but that is the curse of being me. I did think they went a little far with some of the explanations on the still lifes, but otherwise I came out feeling quite a lot better informed and even a bit more in love than I was, which was a lot. My goodness, are you still reading this? Let's move on, shall we.

It is not yet snowing here. I am going on a trip next week so I expect it will bust out the snow more or less on the very day I am leaving, to ensure some drama. Oh, drama, where would I be without you? I like to imagine I would be in a musical. I do so like it when people burst into song, as long as it is not me bursting, because nobody needs to hear that.

What else? Yesterday I ate a lunch so salty that my hands swelled and I thought I was having an allergic reaction to something. It is entertaining to think about the size of your tongue and whether it it is swelling. Mine was not, it turns out. Uh. Today I remembered to buy everything I needed at the grocery store without having remembered to take my shopping list. None of the eggs broke on the way home. So basically I rock. Except, all of my fingernails are splitting at the cuticles and it hurts. I painted them to try and cheer them up a little.

Workwise… I'm feeling a little challenged with work, but also enjoying a great deal of smug superiority over the Cooks Source editor. About fictional media, I know the more popular thing is to be mad as hell and not taking it anymore, but I feel more and more like Jane Craig in Broadcast News. I should watch that again; I have a feeling it influenced me more than just a little, and I don't mean just the baggy sweaters.

How are you doing? Things I thought were really terrible are turning out to be… not easy, but less difficult than I had imagined. I wish the same for you.

I got up at 6 this morning hoping to catch my sister in California to talk to but apparently people have better things to do on Friday night than park themselves on SKYPE. Last night was my Friday and I was also not wallflowering up the internet, so I understand. You know the horror movies -or like that one episode of Buffy, which we just started watching- when there's a demon in the computer? I sometimes think I AM that demon, because I am always on line. Not really. No, relax, come back. I only want to love you.

Last night we tried a different pub because our old favorite is under new ownership and the waiters are the precise combination of officious and cloying that I cannot stand. Uriah Heep with a tray of beer. So it is necessary to find a new place. The place we went to has an elaborate and noisy ventilation system, despite which they have to open the door to get the smoke out effectively, so we sat shivering in our coats while the people from one table shouted a conversation with the people at another table, over our heads, and thought: Well this is also not the place.

This weekend everybody goes back to where they came from and tidies up the graves of the people who have left that place even more permanently. I expect there will be pork and cabbage, traditional dishes, familial tensions. I don't have anybody dead here yet so we'll just stay home, watching more Buffy and possibly Starship Troopers, partly because it is sci-fi and partly because at this point we would both be happy to watch Neil Patrick Harris pick his nose.

What else? The book that I wrote with my own sweet hands (a textbook) is Zeno's-parodoxing itself towards completion. I'm meeting the publisher next week to hand it over so I sure hope it's done by then. Haha, that is a joke that I made; of course it will be done. What else? Oh, I got a giant book to edit on Energy Alternatives. It is more boring than you can possibly imagine, but I am going to learn so much about energy that it will be worth it. Also, this promises to keep me out of trouble until at least 2011. 

Sometimes I am so sad that I have to sit down with a box of tissues and let myself cry just until my brain is less soaked in tears and I can put together one or two thoughts. Sometimes it is more than I can bear. But then sometimes I laugh so hard I have to put my hand out for balance or I would flip onto my back like a cartoon character or I guess a bug. Hey maybe when you see a bug on its back with its legs twitching in the air, it isn't really trying to flip over; maybe it's convulsing with laughter, fully prepared to die laughing. That's not so bad a thought, is it? 

I am definitely having a damn humans get off my planet kind of week.

First
of all, problems with the computer, which, if you know me, you know that is Not Good. I concede that my relationship with the internet is a little like an addiction, except that I think junkies go through withdrawal more pleasantly. I must also add in my increasingly
shrill voice that I Need It For Work. Listen, YOU try editing a paper
about the isolation of ligands in a single step gradient elution without
the internet. I need it first so I can find out what ligand field theory
is, and second so I can rest my eyes on that pretty Gotye video.

Second, I went to the equivalent of a book group meeting on the "What
About the Mens?!" article in the increasingly tree-wasting Atlantic
Monthly. Being a feminist is a lot like being an American, I am
realizing. You spend a lot of time splaining how things are not what
people think they are, and trying to get people to see both your own actual point of
view and further how other people in the group might have their points of view, etc., and
well mainly my conclusion is that a body cannot consume enough alcohol
to make the conversation go quickly enough. I did agree with the article
insofar as yes, it is neat how the ladies have been given the vote and
now even upgraded to second-class citizens, that sure is exciting
progress. Then the next day I went to Czech class and the
twenty-something teacher, you know, the beneficiary of the hard work of
my generation, made a rape joke and I am not entirely convinced I ought
not live in a cave somewhere.

Third, I have some massive issues with Other Parents. It is to do
with striking the balance between making sure your child knows about
unconditional love, and making sure your child does not expect the rest
of the world to give it. I maybe cannot explain it well. It is a thing I
think about a lot, the desire to armor your child for the world and the
desire to require them to forge their own armor. I feel like the parents who work hard for
their children to be cool, or have happy childhoods, or never worry
about adult problems, are in a way not helping the children or society
as a whole.

Basically this week I am thinking with great longing towards my future
in a nursing home for Victorian feminists, where I will needlepoint cushions that say IBtP. I hope they have a good
internet connection.

The paper I'm working on today is about "The Circle of Willis" which is a
real name for a real part of the brain. I keep muttering at the paper
"Whatchoooo talking 'bout?" but it does not answer me. Perhaps neurology
was not the field to pursue as a medical editor. Although, really, not
like I could do gynecology or anything else with greater ease, because I
am always able to find something that will make me laugh too hard to do
anything reasonable, like work. I mean, GONADS. You keep a straight face.

I find that I am taking my friend's recent death rather harder than I expected. I'm
taking it personally. I don't remember feeling that way before; most
people I loved who died were in pain, and so my selfish wishes to have
them around forever and ever were somewhat contained by the knowledge
that I did not want them to suffer anymore. This may be the first one
that doesn't feel that way. Maybe it's intimations of mortality, though I
really think it's not about my own death so much as the honest and absolute amount of loss I
feel with this one.

I really, really, really do not want to hear "Hallelujah" ever again. I
loved the song to pieces (the Cale version, as all discerning people
agree), and I'm not sure why it bothers me so particularly (I'm still
pretty happy to hear ABBA, and goodness knows that's overplayed to
bits), but it does. It makes me feel like when people play "Wrapped
Around Your Finger" at weddings. The song means something to me, and it
is not romantic or sweet, and every time it comes swooping onto a
soundtrack I think, "Oh, a complicated emotional scene, let's have that
complicated emotional song do the work for us" and yet I don't think
anybody's listening to the same words I am. And I am so fed up that I
would fast forward through movies, I would walk out of a store that played it, just to not have to hear it
again.

I haven't been to the cottage in WEEKS. Friar's been every weekend, so I know it's
still standing, but I feel like some of the joy has been punched out of
it by my annoyance with the neighbors. Well, I'm just going to get a
sour stomach thinking about that. NEXT!

I'm working for a new guy, a chemist, who advised me to take a valium before I edit his paper. That bodes well, doesn't it?

Squire seems to be doing well in school so far. He's so tall, it would
blow you away. We almost see eye to eye now. HA. He is honestly just a kick
to live with, so funny and so honest and so goofy. And the
self-awareness that has come with being older is also nice, like now he
can talk for five minutes about starships and weapons, but after five
minutes he says, "I'm kind of boring you, right?" YES YOU ARE. But he
knows he is adorable even when he's boring, and also doesn't hesitate to
tell me when I'm boring him, so there's that. Every year I think: This
is so much better than I ever expected having a kid to be, this is a
large as my heart has ever been, and it is okay if it is all downhill
from here because right now I am already happier and more loving than I
thought I could be. And then the next year I am blown away by how much
MORE love I feel, how much more I like him as a person. But really, if
he descends into the sassiest, most unpleasant adolescence after this, I
will not care, because he is just a goddamn delight right now. I am a
better person, and perceive the world as a better place, because he's in
it. True story.