Well, helLO there, soldier. Buy me a drink and I will tell you all about my summer vacation. Or anyway that's been my last week, minus the soldier part. Lots of drinks, lots of recaps, lots of how you doing no how you doing. And in the midst of this return there was a Rocky Horror party, and that was fun. And now I'm home, settled, checked in with my people, getting ready to get back to the business of, you know, life.

The summer was… well. Squire and I flew to California with his friend; Squire and Friend went to Grandparents, where it was believed to be more fun (and probably was: at Grandpa's they made bows and arrows and Grandma took them to a bunch of 3D movies; I wanted them to get up close and personal with the black widows in my sister's backyard while we cleaned it out, so). For three weeks the kids bounced back and forth between the lap of luxury and the school of hard knocks (though we also took them to Six Flags and stuffed them with hamburgers, so it wasn't all bad), and then Friend finally bounced back to the Czech Republic, where his parents that he basically hadn't bathed for three weeks and were quietly horrified. What? You try arguing hygiene with a teenager and tell me how it goes. We had a lot of visitors, which I enjoyed tremendously. Look, I flew eleventy thousand kilometers, and you can make me feel like a Special Guest Star by traveling a mere hour (and if you travel further? Then I am really really really happy). This is true. 

I did think a lot about how television shows work, and how normally it is My Show, the Anne In Brno Show, which is like a sit-dram, but this summer was totally sweeps week on other people's shows. I brought in viewership like whoa. I will so be getting an Emmy. Because you like me, you really like me.

I will NOT be collecting any awards for the Rocky Horror party (although I did absolutely win a costume contest, a hundred years ago, at a convention). Oh, my misspent youth. Remember when my editorial pointy-headedness was applied towards correctly quoting the movies I'd seen a hundred times? We had fun, though, throwing rice and confetti around the classroom with wild abandon, and then sweeping it up immediately afterwards like the good little adults we are now. Cards for sorrow+ water gun rain+ great scott toilet paper is kind of sticky, for future reference.

So now I'm home. Following the massive Summer Furniture Rearrangement of 2011, I felt pretty inspired to Change My Life, too. So I came home and got over the jet lag instantly (the trick: take short naps even if you can't sleep or if you want to sleep more, the whole day and the night before you travel; by the time you get where you're going you won't know which end is up, and you will sleep all night the first night = instant cure), so my body got a cold instead to make sure I was sufficiently miserable. I think I might have preferred the jet lag? Hard to say. Anyway. Got home, started working again, and in breaks dismantled my bed and made it into a new desk/office area. I kind of rock, with the hardware and stuff. It's a nice office. Maybe I'll take a picture.

Anyway, that was my summer. Photos are up here. I hope your summer was splendid too.

a sofa bed

a spare mattress

a bus

an airplane

Nell's bed

a bed in the garage

my sister's bed

the couch

pillows on the floor

the parking lot of a produce stand

behind a coffee shop

the riverbank

next to Suzanne's pool

a hotel room near you

So, California. Here we are. I am a bundle of confusion and yet clearer in my head in many ways than I have been in previous visits. Sometimes I think about moving here, because the houses are sweet and the weather is lovely and there are so many things that please me here and that are important. Family. Food. But then I remember that back home I have a job I love, and health insurance, and friends who make me laugh until it hurts. So I think this is tourist lust.

I like the signs I see everywhere that are certainly nouns but I pretend they are verbs because my mind is nothing if not amusing to me. Waste. Change. Produce. Dump. 

I've been thinking a lot about guests and hosts. "Looks like some kind of guest/host relationship to me." I want to be a good guest; I want to be a better hostess now that I've had some great modeling. I wonder how it is that some people are able to make others feel comfortable, valuable, and others seem to not even consider that important. Whether it's something that can be learned as an adult.

Also various forms of communication – how it is so easy to talk to some people and others require real Dale Carnegie skills.

I am strong in my likes and dislikes and yet hate to think anybody could ever dislike me. If you dislike me because I am fussy and clever and gorgeous, I guess I don't care, but it keeps me up nights wondering if I am being judged for something I didn't do, or didn't mean to. "I want all my hurts to be intentional."

There have been swirling sounds in my head regarding who needs what, who gets what. It is my own thing that I don't ask for what I want or even need because I am afraid I will not get it, and this convinces both me and everybody else that I don't need or want anything, and I get by just fine but sometimes I feel like I want it anyway. And then I get all tangled in wet hair and longing. It bothers me horribly to see my brain go traipsing down a road that I know ends in tears and yet be only able to control how little we cry. Like, couldn't we just focus on what we have, couldn't we just NOT DO THIS. Gack. 

I've been wine tasting twice, to amusement parks twice, rafting once. Got one massage so far and should get another. Got a tattoo. Painted my fingernails too many times to count and my toes twice. Painted half of a room. Rearranged furniture a few times. Went shopping for clothes a few times. Went shopping for house stuff also a few times and nearly sat in an aisle at one weeping because of what I could accomplish with so many things. Isn't it pretty to think so, that it is the availability of stuff, rather than my own lack of creativity, that stands between me and some sense of personal completion. See it doesn't take me very long to bring my empty hand around and slap my own face. 

Made the trip from Sonora to Sacramento with some old CDs I pilfered from my friend, Talking Heads and REM. What a pleasure to be on a road trip with Squire, listening to the music that I used to depend on for road trips 20 years ago. Driving up 108, God's country I told Squire, and I am still so satisfied by the sight of one lone tree on any horizon. Still pleased when hills make me think of a woman's body rolling itself out before me. Still glad to sing along, to know the words. I'm not supposed to be like this, but it's okay.

Or maybe that’s too much violence, I don’t know. I have so much anger, and like my other feelings it is cumulative. This one is to do with unawareness of others and I know that, but it feels so deliberate, it feels like “I know you’re there but I can’t be bothered to be courteous” and so wanting to call attention to my existence seems hopeless, because a blindered horse is not helped by being startled, and the fact that these blinders are self-imposed means nothing. So I curl my fingernails into my palms, spare the rod, and wish instead that you will be ignored, utterly ignored as you’re ignoring me, but that it will be something that counts. Yes, you there hugging the ticket punch so that nobody can use it, you with your dirty look when I ask you to step aside so I can stamp my ticket: I am ready to hope your heart gets horribly broken if it will teach you a little empathy. Failing that, I will hope the door closes on your fingers if it will teach you the courtesy of holding it open for others.

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.