"Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." That's the
Elegant
Loving way the Puritans put it -
Elongating the praise,
Not eliminating it:
That's the
Least
Effortful way to say: I love you;
See me; save me;
Sojourn with me.

I
Need to hear that
Caring, to catch the edge of that
Remote, peace-filled regard: it gives me hope: it
Enables
Me to think that there is love - there IS -
Even though I sometimes forget that fact. It armors me. Especially
Now, these particular days,
Thinking my way up to the October
Anniversary of that singular, unrecognized
Loss.
I confess: despite the expectation that grief should obey a timeclock, I
Still miss her: irreplaceable, unforgettable:
Mom.

As y'all may remember, my amazing mom, Peggy Wirtz, died of Alzheimer's (inter alia, as we lawyers rather stuffily say) on 10 October 2008.

This weekend, the SG and I are walking in the Alzheimer's Association's Workville 2010 Memory Walk on 9 October 2010, just one day before Mom's yahrzeit.

I would be most grateful if y'all would consider supporting us in that endeavor by clicking through to my walk donation page and tossing a little money towards the Association's many, varied, and valorous endeavors. I do know times are tight for many folks (what I do for a living makes that fact inescapable), so please, please do not feel compelled to do this (or to apologize if you can't - trust me, that is way past unnecessary). But if you can donate even a dollar, that would be marvelous and much appreciated.

Google's confusion about who said this (Margaret Mead? Macchiavelli?) doesn't alter its essential truth: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Join my corner of the vital citizenry?

Go, PP&M. My childhood musical heroes keep on keeping on (see: Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and so on).

Thanks to brooklinegirl for calling my attention to this.

I keep thinking of posts and then not making them, because I don't have the time to be eloquent and I don't have the creativity to be effectively precise and I feel like it's not worth it otherwise.

Tonight, as I was breaking up cauliflower for one of my favorite veggie dishes, Roast Cauliflower With Olive Oil, Sea Salt, Fresh-Ground Pepper, And Nothing Much Else, it occurred to me that that's silly.

So here. Have a few bullet-pointed plusses (and the odd minus) in lieu of eloquent and/or efficient content.

+ Ian, my next-door neighbors'/landlords' three-year-old son, who is beyond adorable, came running around their back-yard garden towards me tonight when I got out of my car after bell practice. Usually this is because he wants to give me a flower or tell me I'm getting home too late for dinner. Tonight, it was because he wanted to give me a hug. <3...! I have known this child since he was a literal babe in literal arms, and I tend generally to treat him as a valued and curious tiny semi-adult - and he still likes me. Go figure.

+ ...bell practice? Oh, right: I joined the bell choir at the Episcopal church I've been attending off and on for about a year. Never done the bell thing before, except very very occasionally when one or another of the choirs in which I sang needed a handbell accent. But I am - still - a musician, and also a percussionist and pianist, and as it turns out? I can do this. So after six years of silence, I'm making music at last.

+ One of the things I've been most dreading - digging and shoveling and researching and writing in order to read one of the boards I'm on the well-informed riot act about, inter alia, trust - is about three-quarters over.

+ I got a reasonably good start this weekend on all three of the major things I have to do in the next ten days: an IEP meeting with a client that promises to be more contentious than the time will hold; preparation for a five-day intensive training on trial advocacy; and the third issue this year of the one journal I still copyedit.

- The IEP client, whom I liked and respected, turns out to be a xenophobic, judgmental, right-wing, closeted racist who finds offensive the fact that someone decided to translate popcorn ads into Spanish (with English subtitles) during the AMLAs. This will have no effect on my ability to represent them - or, more accurately, their child - but it saddens me nonetheless.

+ Tomato season is not quite over.

+ And squash season has already started.

+ The catboys are still awesome. And silvery grey. And tabby. And softly purring.

+ There is really rather a lot of nifty television out there right now. (Even if most of the women in the shows in question ARE too fucking skinny for words.)

+ In the first episode of Mercy, a nurse gets a cop to take her home for hot sex and an orderly provides an experienced comic-relief Greek chorus for his friends' dramatic maneuverings. Oh - did I mention that (as far as this reasonably experienced watcher can tell) the nurse is African-American/Hispanic, the cop is Italian-American (aka, in some quarters, white), and the orderly is (1) Hispanic and (2) gay?

- Between 2 October and 6 November, I'm going to three professional conferences and two intense family events. I'm pre-emptively exhausted.

- I am also beyond overworked, to the point of spending every night and weekend day plowing through cases and trying like hell to get caught up.

- Needless to say, I'm a bit tired. (And also uncharacteristically silent.)

- The first of the family events - which comes, regrettably, immediately on the heels of the first of the conferences - is the first anniversary of La Mama's death.

+ I get to spend it with the sistergirl, who is prying herself away from the ABIL and coming to stay with me for the weekend.

+ I have an appointment with a sports orthopod this coming Friday to try to figure out

- why my right ankle is still not working properly.

+ Clyde the bionicized knee, however, is working just fine. And has this very sexy scar to boot.

- Still not king. Or even president.

And you? Give me a plus and minus for you, eh?

( 1) Technowoe. )

( 2) Craftiness. )

3), a brief open letter to the weather gods:
Dear Thundering Herds -

Spring rocks - not least because it is my birthday season and that of an awful lot of other nifty people. Please quit fucking with it. Workville does not lie in monsoon latitudes. Nor is it Florida. Some brief period of cool bearable prettiness seems requisite before we plunge right straight into hot wet heat, no?

--irritably, Q


4) I've returned to work this week, working 15-20 hours max from home. My goal is to ramp up to 40 hours/week by the end of May, and to return to my firm's physical plant on 1 June, by which time I should hopefully have been cleared to drive again. I am ... ambivalent about this. Bears thinking about, no?

01. Make a list of 5 things you can see:
The Terrible Towel the sistergirl got me when the Steelers won the 2009 Superbowl; the piles of please-please-do-me stuff occluding my desktop; the new wireless printer that won't print wirelessly GRRR ARGH ANYWAY; the bodhran I can't play yet; my collection of Qs, which the SG hung on the wall for me when she was here recently.

02. Would you ever get plastic surgery?
Unlikely in the extreme.

03. Is there anything in your fridge right now that you would never eat/drink?
Somewhere at the back there's a can of Bud Light, I think.

04. Do you drink coffee?
OH YES PLEASE. ...ahem.

05. Do you nap a lot?
I wish.

06. What was your first celebrity crush?
Duran Duran in toto, with an emphasis on Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes. *dates self liek wo*

07. What's your current fandom/obsession/addiction?
Insofar as I have one - I am a lousy fan, people - it's probably Southland, with a side order of Castle (in which I know I'm not alone) and Eleventh Hour (in which I'm probably sadly alone, but I'm okay with that). I'm slashfannish only about Southland; the other two I just love and want to keep watching.

08. What are you listening to right now?
The Barenaked Ladies singing "Maybe You're Right", courtesy of Omphale.

09. What was the last text message you received?
I don't have text enabled, because it makes me cranky. *is 97 years old*

10. What websites do you always visit when you go online?
The ones I have set as my home pages in Google: iGoogle, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Gmail, LexisNexis, a local grassroots news website for Workville, Ravelry, Livejournal, Dreamwidth, Facebook, Twitter, and Daily Mugshot. It's a rare day when I don't add something to my Netflix Q/ueue, too.

11. What was the last thing you bought?
A DVD boxed set containing the first volumes of Second Sight (Clive Owens FTW) and Touching Evil (Robson Greene ditto), about twelve minutes ago (post-op recuperation? v. hard on my willpower, it seems). Sadly, the first volume of the in-my-opinion execrable BBC Inspector Lynley adaptation comes with the desired items, but given the cost I'm okay with that.

12. What are you looking forward to this week?
Going back to work for a very limited number of hours; figuring out what fun physical activity I can use to carrot myself into rehabbing the BioniQ properly.

13. Does the weather affect your mood?
Holy hell, yes. O Seasonal Affective Disorder, how I love thee...NOT.

14. What is your zodiac sign?
Taurus. Shocking, I know. Please have the courtesy to at least act surprised.

15. Name a song that makes you think about a ship/character that you like lately.
Off the top of my head, "Another One Bites the Dust" says Coop/Ben to me.

16. Weird dreams?
All the time. Would that I could remember them.

17. Do you have any siblings?
One, known as the sistergirl herein.

18. What's something you'd like to say to someone right now?
Get a grip and admit it or lose her permanently: your choice.

19. What are your plans for next weekend?
Dunno. Wanna come visit?

20. Say something to the person who tagged you:
Wasn't tagged - I stole this meme wholesale - but SD: you are daily in my thoughts and heart, my dear.