not enough hours in the day

just realized that if i were suddenly to become rich and i could spend the next six months doing nothing but reading.......i would still be behind 6 months from now.

bereft but peaceful

i've been gone.......but i never really left.  my dad went into decline and being the primary caregiver became the center of everything......the blog fell away...friends, too.  my vast family....strangely absent.  anyhoo.....we weren't as prepared as we thought we were for end-of-life issues.....it's been more than a year, now.  i've been thinking very hard about what things, and which people i allow back into my life....some things and people being not here was in its way peaceful.  still thinking it over.........

b.

time escapes me

"It's almost as if the desire for community is a nostalgic one; and the reality, with time's winged chariot hurrying near, is that one longs increasingly for simple affections, for space, and calm, and time to work. What contradictory beings humans are."  Novelist Claire Messud to Boris Kachka. 

 

sometimes i think it is like having to shift a pile of sand....one......grain.....of.......sand.....at.......a.......time.

"time to work" is what i never have enough of....i work from task lists and sometimes i worry that i'm more consumed with the maintenance of these lists than with getting anything done.  for every item falling from the list, three more join my personal topos of inevitibility.    it's a classic over-scheduling.  but, somehow i get tons of shit done and the boss-types like it and the church-folk like it.....but i can't help noticing that if i did less then what would be done would be more complete.  i cannot overlook the corner cut by necessity (time's running out!).  it's a faint, nagging voice kind of thing. 

 

recently cut corners:

• delegated the production of graphs for a report to a subordinate---the graphs are accurate BUT needed refining....taking advantage of the fact that the report was for someone(s) who are math-averse and math-weak i simply said,"good enough!"
• scrubbed the floors of my house but pretended the baseboards didn't exist....any attention they received was coincidental.
• sent a specimen to an outside laboratory since i was short-staffed and didn't have time for doing an elution study.
• used a form-letter to send to some cousins....i wrote one letter then edited the headers to produce three letters.  i justified this by considering that these cousins i don't really like so much.
• i've not ironed the first shirt or uniform in more than 90 days.
• switched to skimming-mode when reading a book for the BookEnds book club....i could get away with it because that group doesn't tend to do any "deep" reading.  no one would notice my lack of attention.

lately, i find i'm staring at the calendar and wondering if someone is playing a cruel joke on me....i used to wile away an hour or two.  now, i seem to wile away weeks and months.  yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent.  21 days-ish 'til Crimmus!  then a new year, too!  crap. 
i've not much to report...i'm barely keeping up with correspondence.  work has been the usual bucket of Hell.  my work schedule and Ben's doesn't synch very well so i only get to see him a couple of hours here and there.....so when i do see him i'm giddy and silly.  it just feels too good to be hugging him.  it is what it is.  i cannot think of any folks who deserve to be ridiculously rich than me and my friends.  heh.  wish in one hand and shit in the other, as "they" say.........

ah well.

much to do.  and Ben and i will be able to have dinner together, tonight.

y'all be good.

 

spider in drag

Behold the mating dance of Marotus speciosus, the Coastal Peacock  Spider!!  film is by Jurgen Otto and the music is by Graham Pagano and David Anstey.

this reminds me of one of my favorite drag queens, the late, great Foxy Fontaine who is in heaven now.

That was so awesome, here's another with a more "disco" kind of feel.....

it's that time of year.....

finally, it feels somewhat "Autumn-ish" with the nights getting enough crispness that it causes a pagan  urge for gratuitous nudity.....i'm not particularly pagan but a night with just a hint of chill or the first warm spring rain are somethings that bare skin is required for the proper enjoyment.  nights here in the summer are "sultry" at best...hot, sticky, and very close; they are often suffocating.  the first hint of the autumn chill and i want to try to soak in it....of course, then it's desirable and perhaps necessary to warm up by the snugglings with an appropriately fuzzed guy.  (the better of the two straight boyfriends comes to mind).

the nights are noticeably longer and i think that's why i usually pull out old poetry books and revisit with some old 'acquaintances' like Carl Sandburg's "Fog:"

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

somewhere, there's a pic of Birdie the cat watching the fog through my window.  probably on the drive of one of those dead laptops in the back of the hall closet (one day i'm going to de-crap my closets, drawers, and filing cabinets...a week or so ago, i stumbled on the masters for tests for a split 486/586 analytical biochem class i taught years ago).  

the better of the two straight boyfriends and i went to the movie theater and saw Insidious 2....neither of us saw Insidious 1 but it didn't seem necessary.  of course, i'm loving on the old houses and the wall-paper and not understanding why the folks in the film cannot figure out that when you're beating on someone possessed by the spirit of a serial-killer's mama you just don't stop in the middle of it....you keep beating that ass until your baseball bat; your hot, greasy skillet; or your 2x4 with a bent rusty nail in it breaks and  your target is a greasy spot on the floor......then you get the hell out of there.   these kind of confrontations are not to be executed in half-steps.

.

frontpage of NY Daily News just about says it all......