My husband is searing tuna steaks

 with a freshly squeezed orange sauce for dinner. I bought those expensive tuna steaks a long time ago and stuck them in the freezer and forgot all about them. How lovely! The Cowboy hasn't been happy this week. His long awaited wrestling show came and went. The show was wonderful, but it just wasn't promoted properly, and we didn't sell enough tickets. We had been so looking forward to a triumph, and now we are only further buried. His parents are travelling in Puerto Rico on vacation, visiting family. When he told his parents how the show went, his mother just passed the phone to someone else without saying a word.

I look at it like this. He made 99% great decisions. The ring looked great. It was set up and ready early. The venue was beautiful, nicer than any other place I've seen a show in. The talent was awesome. The show was safe. Everyone there had a great time. We didn't mess up any of our equipment. We only needed some more butts in the seats, and we know how to promote. Next time (if we make it to a next time!) we will promote about 25x harder. How we are going to make it to a next time without the necessary capital is the current puzzle. Microloan, anyone? If you buy us a goat, we can turn our lives around. :)

Meanwhile, life has been coming at me very, very fast. I'm stuck in some giant, cosmic wac-a-mole game, and those fuckers just keep popping up. There was a huge product recall at work, and we had to adapt from being open 10 hours a day to being open 24-7. I took some midnight to four am shifts. Cool. I can do that. It is refreshing to be out of the box sometimes.

I walk in stride with people

much taller than me

and partly it's the boots but

mostly it's my chi

and I'm becoming transfixed

with nature and my part in it

which I believe just signifies

I'm finally waking up

                          -Ani DiFranco, who else?

My in-laws went away for a week, so we pretty much moved into their house, only five blocks away, to take care of the dog and things. The kids' long golden-brown limbs hung off of the couches, wrapped in scratchy afghans, bathed in the blue light of The Covetted Cable TV til seriously late hours. We came to a happy medium with the tv. No Disney. Rare Nick. "Yes,Please!" to Bindi The Jungle Girl! I love her!

Then my best friend, Anna, dreadlocks to her knees, decended upon us with her husband, her son, and her two dogs. They are on a road trip and came ramblin' through. How many dogs are we up to now? Three? Right.

3 dogs
1 cat
1 giant bunny
Some fish
1 fulltime plus overtime job
3 kids
2 hippies
1 suicidal wrestling promoter
and MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
Yee-haw!

Man, I love these people. My friend and I are a little like country mouse and city mouse. She comes from the woods of vermont, but the poverty and the schools there are so bad that she and her family are shopping for a new place to live. They are heading towards Asheville, NC, and I wish I could go with them SO BAD! But, my life is in this post-industrial shithole, for better or for worse.

I took them to a municipal rose garden at dusk. Our children acted instantly related, and ran far ahead of us. I can't believe that we have been friends almost 25 years. I can't believe that we were children together, and now we have children. The kids climbed to the tops of trees. The dogs took long drinks from the creek. Anna, the naturalist, pointed out all the trees and told me which plants were safe to eat. She taught the kids to make salads out of tiger lilies and wood sorrel. Anna's husband almost wept from finding ripe mulberries, a thing from his childhood in Missouri that they just don't have in Vermont. When the fireflies came out from the fronds of the weeping willows, it just became completely perfect.

Then they were gone again, in a flash! I was back to work in the "wee smalls" in the call center, where all the supervisors were running around like chickens without heads, and there were gum-chewing temps with odd eyes all over the place.

The girls' paternal grandparents were here. They took the girls out for one day and the girls came back with new outfits and leftover pizza. They gave the girls expensive amusement park tickets. I felt hugely uncomfortable, not because they aren't nice, but because I feel like they only see me as the poor, abused, abandoned mother. It is at times like these that I would like very much not to be fat, and to give the appearance that I have it all together. Oh, bother. My ragged edges are what make me Me, right?

So, then... I am babysitting my friend's 17 year old dog. Yes, this is really my life. The dog is blind and deaf and doesn't really walk so good. He bonks into walls and his legs splay out too wide when he tries to walk on the tile floor. He kind of seems like a hairy reptile because he is all bones and leathery skin with occasional tufts of wirey grey hair. He's a looker, let me tell you. He can't figure out where he is, so he just topples over in the hall and the kids yell,"Mommy! Is Ivan dead!? No, he's breathing! Nevermind!" Somehow he got behind the dryer, though, and ate the attachment between the dryer hose and the wall. Surprising gumption, for a seventeeen year old canine.

Someone stole the stereo out of my truck this morning. On second thought, send a goat and a car stereo.

Thank you for your support.

love and light,
your friend,
Mountain