chilly today, but these socks help a lot. going to make dinner tonight. i suppose i miss cooking too... when you are visiting someone else, suddenly you arent the one making the dinner decisions. not that em and chris wouldnt have let me cook before now... so i guess ive been lazy in that regard too.

the pile of goods acquired on this trip are stacked near the door leading to the driveway and it grows ever larger. one more store to go to and ill be set.

gotta get to the store.

on trips...

its partly good and partly bad that im up here in TN, when FL is experiencing wilma. my parents got home just in time for her outlying wrath, but are doing okay. im here, freezing in the artic breezes of TN. this morning it was a mere 46. robbie, is iowa colder than that? if so, it might be risky for me to visit, since my blood might turn to crystals.

i am having a great time here, though. spending time with my sister, chris and zeph has been a lot of fun. plus, my cousin was beautiful at her wedding and her husband really seems to be a nice guy. the family really loves him, too. my youngest cousins suckered me out of some change when they walked around selling "souvenirs", which were really just napkins with the bride and groom's names on it. such busy little entreprenuers.

but as in all visits, i miss my bed and my cats. there are still more trips on the horizon - IA and CA, potentially. though, people, i should really get serious about finding a job, dont you think? perhaps when i get tired of being a guest.

summer of the nephews

and so, here i am again, on the verge of another trip and again, just completely ignoring my to-do list. well, not totally - i did get together some pc games i would like to have in case chris tries to make me do chores. i leave in 2 days for TN, the 2nd part of a 2-part caravan heading north. i hope to catch the leaves changing; robbie says they have already started in iowa so i might be just in time for TN. im going to be an aunt again and because of the little "bean", my sister has been very tired. so i hope not to be a burden, but to take zeph off her hands, at least enough for her to get more sleep in the morning.

today the weather is breezy and mild, and only feels like 86. i have the windows open to disperse the paint smell from yesterday. of course, these walls are half finished and tomorrow looks to be another day full of rollers and paint trays and squinting eyes, trying to make a straight line without painters tape. already though, the transformation is dramatic. the color, flax, can look olive in some light, and grey in others. it compliments my electic style very well.

i have a style?

ill write more when im bored of "packing".

compositions of a young girl

i suppose i havent had too many interesting things to post in the last month, since the only thing i have posted was an exerpt of something i didnt even write. however, i came across an old school composition book of mine, with my name and the date of september 9, 1986, carefully penciled on the cover. this is the first "story" the book opened to. keep in mind, i filled in some words that i surely meant to include, words like 'and' and 'of' and i also corrected some mispellings. but it made me smile to read it and if anyone remembers V32, let me know. i have a feeling it was sort of like a poor man's MTV.

uninvited guest

it was 12 o'clock midnight and a full moon. i was watching V32. they were showing michael jackson's video thriller. all of a sudden, michael jumped out of the tv. so did the dead people.

i ran up the stairs into my room. they followed me.

i jumped out the window, the spooks followed. i thought this was a job for ghostbusters. i went to my neighbors and called them. lynn, my neighbor, asked why i couldnt use my phone. for an answer, i pulled one of her curlers out. they came and that was the end of them. and me too, because i died of fright, but i still watch V32.

the end

'the greenlanders'

"now he and the servingman looked frantically among the birch and willow scrub and paused from time to time to listen for cries or moans, but at first they saw nothing and heard nothing. soon enough, they had a view of the fjord, where white icebergs floated silently in the dark water, and then they had a view of the remains of Ketil's Stead, and still they saw nothing, and Gunnar was tempted to have hope, and he sent the servingman back to Gunnar's Stead to see if Margret had returned. but, indeed, there was her cloak, dark in the gathering dusk, and beneath was her corpus, and much had been done to it in the way of hacking and poking. even so, her head was still upon her neck, and her face was whole and recognizable, and her long braids coiled about her in the grass. now he knelt down in the grass and willow scrub, and he wept as only old men weep who have no hope left.

and it was the case that in his weeping, he cursed the hearts of the Bristol men, that gave them to do such injury. and after that he cursed his own heart, for he, too, had turned his mind and his strength to such killing as this. eight men had fallen by his hand, and through his enmity, and he made himself think carefully upon their names: Skuli Gudmundsson, Ketil the Unlucky, Hallvard Erlendsson, Bjorn Bollason, Sigurd Bjornsson, Hoskuld Bjornsoon and Arni Bjornsson, and then he fell upon his face in the grass, and he wept for these eight men, all of them his enemies, all of them who had done him injury, but all of them men. and then he saw what he was, an old man, ready to die, pressed against the Greenland earth, as small as an ash berry on the face of a mountain, and he did the only thing that men can do when they know themselves, which was to weep and weep and weep.'