Topic: Personal
We went out this morning for a long walkie around the Poole's neighborhood. Milly wanted to run, so Sheven drew her a map of a route, then we decided to follow her in a walk. Getch decided to come with us, so we all piled out of the house and went into the crisp early afternoon. Sheven and Getch took me through their town and showed me where they went to school, and where they went sledding in the snow and biking in the summer.  Getch hit me with a snowball twice (it was the same snowball but it was so packed that it survived two hits on me and one on Sheven until she stomped on it).  The first hit was a glancing blow on my right earI did start the snowfight though, I decided this would be a great place to live and raise children, with the added bonus that they'd be so bored that they'd run away from home as soon as they turn eighteen.

It started to snow again as we were walking back, and now everything is white again and the yard looks covered in confectioner's sugar.

Pullman really is such a neat town, it has the quaint characteristics of a country village, but with the university nearby, it hosts a highly diverse and educated population with a far more sophisticated world view than you'd expect in a country town. No hicks here. Sheven wanted me to add that this is the liberal bastion of Eastern Washington. The presence of the lifelong townspeople support the little local shops, and the students keep the funky coffee shops and bookstore in business. The town ordinance prevents big box stores from moving into downtown, and even the fast-food joints are only allowed on the edges.

And it snows, it snows!

Topic: Personal
I tasted falling snow for the first time today. And walked on freshly fallen snow (it wasn't very much, I could still see the grass beneath it) and it's crunchy! 

All four kids were sitting in the living room eating chocolate and talking very animatedly about something (probably politics), which is great fun because as Sheven is passionate to the point of histrionics, her brother is dry to the point of laconic, yet they share the same world view and are perfect foils for each other. Suddenly their mom comes running down the stairs to tell us to look out the window - and it was white! Bare winter trees frosted with white, and when I slammed open the front door to run out, it was into a flurry of silence. Snowfall is silent. I never knew that.

Sheven's dad got such a kick out of my excitement over my first snow, that he took out the video camera and took footage of me running around their yard with my face to the sky, laughing and spinning with my hands out and trying to catch snowflakes on my tongue. Even their arthritic elderly cat came out to see what the fuss was all about. Sheven's mom threw a snowball at me and it went down my collar. When I came back inside, I couldn't feel my hands and my boots were wet.  I've never had such a good time while so bloody cold.

I never knew snow melted when it touched skin, but would stay in one's eyelashes, blurring the world beneath yellow streetlights into a series of prismatic halos.

Topic: Personal

We went shopping today. I caved in and bought replacement clothes. I'm leaving the jeans I wore here in her mother's Goodwill bag, because since I lost the surgery weight they no longer fit.  I had forgotten how much better jeans feel when they're the right size! 

Sheven's dad and I spent a good 45 minutes this afternoon talking about American conservatism, Libertarians, and Labor union politics, and I told him all about San Diego's pension/SEC woes.  It was an interesting conversation!

Milly wants to go out bar hopping, although this being Pullman, we would only be able to do it once, hopping from the one bar to the other in town. I'm trying to convince everyone that they want to watch Elizabethtown instead. I really like that movie, it's so quirky! And I love the sound-track.  The driving soundtrack Claire made for Drew's road-trip is exactly something I would do! It was well received here too - even Getch, who had resigned himself to watching a chick-flick with his sister's friends, said it was 'actually tolerable."

Topic: Personal

I took this photo today from the top of the Kamiak Butte, a 'quartzite steptoe 1,000 feet above the Palouse'.  The area in view is a part of the Palouse Prairie; undulating hills, lots of dryland farming, wheat, soybeans and lentils. In fact, Pullman has an annual Lentil Festival every August.  The concept of winter wheat was explained to me for the first time. We practically ran up the trail to stay warm, although the air was so cold I started to wheeze; not wanting to fall behind, I pounded up the final switchback and stood gasping at the top for a minute before I was able to straighten up again. There were patches of snow lacing the mossy branches along the trail, and a strong wind whipped through the treetops making a sound like a waterfall.

 

We've had our turkey dinner, and we sat around the table afterwards and just talked over homemade pumpkin pie.  The idea of illegal immigration came up and just about everyone in the room had a slightly different opinion on it, and of course as the representative colored immigrant in the room, I had to put in my buck twenty (more than 2 cents) on the issue too. It was wonderful to be able to talk about immigration policy, with people who have relatively informed opinions, with my experience as an naturalized immigrant, Milly's as someone working in the US on work visa and is considering going for a greencard, and then to find out what Americans (Sheven and her family), even liberal ones, know and/or feel about the issue.  Sheven was raised atheist by her hippy parents. Isn't that interesting? Most people who are atheist aren't raised in the non-faith, they turn that way,

It Hurts!
Topic: Personal

OW OW OW OW OW OW OW

Just home from the hospital. I had my surgery on Monday morning, and it turned out that I had 21 - yes, twenty-one - tumors in my uterus that had to come out. The smallest of the bastards was the size of a marble, and the largest like a computer mouse.  I also found out later that I bled so severely that my surgeons were moving towards a transfusion.  Having 21 tumors cut from my body through a 5 inch gash is really, really, really painful. I woke up in the recovery room in more pain that I'd ever imagined possible being in while still alive. I thought my body would just kill itself by that point. I was attached to a PCA of hydromorphone for a day and half, and now I'm home with vicodin.

So the moral of this story is, try never to grow any tumors in your uterus.

The incision is HUGE and RED with a big row of staples. It's so long that it practically reaches from leg to leg across my lower abdomen. It hurts abominably - and abdominally too.  I can only have 1 Vicodin 5/500 every 4 hours, and I can't sleep through the night yet - I woke up last night after about 6 hours, the painkiller had wore off but the pain hasn't.  Stupid tumors.

It's nice to be home, to be able to wash my hair, and get some peace and quiet too. The hospital has got to be the worst place for people who needs rest - people coming and going, machines beeping and wheezing, squalling children visiting next door, etc. Why do people bring toddlers along to hospital visits for 3 hours? Surely even grandma's had enough of him by the end of the visit.

I'm paranoiacally checking the incision every few hours for sign of infection, which scares me more than anything. 

It hurts - had I mentioned that already?

 

Whoa Nelly
Topic: Personal

Spent the weekend shopping at various San Diego county alls for a new, professional wardrobe to go with my ew, professional job. I think I must have spent quite early a thousand dollars in two days, and am a little breathless at my own extravagance. I came away from it ll with four new suits, the highest two pairs of eels I've ever owned, and a new, ginormous purse eavy enough when filled to knock out an importunate mugger.

Breaking out of my usual Hot-Topic and The Express shopping destinations, I actually ventured into the rown-up world of Macy's and its environs to look for rown-up clothes. I briefly visited Neiman-Marcus and
Nordstroms, but even with the Annual Sale their fare were far too dear for me. Who pays $500 for a pair of Manolo Blahnick shoes, or $700 for a Louis Vuitton handbag, anyways? No one I know. And for $700, that handbag better purify my drinking water and improve my complexion. What? It doesn't? Well then forget it.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen
Topic: Personal
...and San Diegans, go out in the midday sun.

La Mesa tied an all-time record of 109 (Fahrenheit, for you foreigners), Escondido 112 (114 at the Wild Animal Park), and even Oceanside topped out at 79, right there on the coast. Anyone sensible would be lying low, staying indoors, in the shade, with a tall, beaded glass of water and nothing more strenuous to tackle than a frothy bodice-ripper or a tale of international intrigue.

Not San Diegans, though - people were out attending firefighting exhibitions at the football stadium, going to the Wild Animal Park, and the maddest of them all were out hiking in Ramona and had to be rescued - to no one's surprise but their own I'm sure. Compared with these neighbors, we were positively prescient to spend the day in the shade of the Del Mar Racetrack grand-stands.

The temperature was still stunning between here and there - I opened the door in the morning to a wall of impenetrable, stifling heat and light - like first being hit in the face with a hot towel and then smothered with it by an angry man. Rob and I met two of our guests for lunch in a Mexican restaurant, and all I could do was ask for an iced tea and a salad - just reading the rest of the menu - cheese, chili sauce, sizzling meat platters - made me slightly ill.

Things only improved after we found our seats with the rest of the Otay Water District group, and even then I was getting a little dizzy, having walked through the big parking lot. I had on sunscreen and carried a parasol, but after 10 minutes of milling about near the gates looking for our guests (we had their tickets), the pavement reflecting more heat and light up under my parasol, a panic started to rise in my throat and if Rob hadn't noticed my distress and fetched me a iced tea, things would have gone unpleasant very quickly. And by unpleasant, I mean unpleasant for everyone, not just me; no one wants to watch someone else dry-retch.

The grandstands were very nice though, the shade was cool, the breeze from the sea occasionally moved a hair off my neck or a hem of my new red polka-dot dress, the nearly-awful moment on the pavement receded into the bottom of my cold drink, and I started to take an interest in the horses. We lost every pick, of course; even Rob who spent hours studying the racing forms. But that is not the point, is it? In the shade, a good time was had by all, our guests enjoyed a little excitement, and there was not a single horse-wreck on the tracks all day; which, considering the speed at which they travel and the fact that thoroughbred horses are all a bit insane and unpredictable to begin with, not having a horse-wreck every time defies probability improbably.

It's amazing to think I lived in toasty Riverside for 4 years, walked everywhere that was within walking distance, in the Summer, during the day, worked at an outdoor turf research station, not only survived the baking but enjoyed myself immensely. It seems that San Diego's mildness, the air-conditioned desk-jobs I've had since Fallbrook, learning to take care of Rob, have all served to turn a brown, tough, strident and jeans/T-shirt kind of girl to a cossetted, coddled, and perhaps more agreeable version who favors perfume and black-lace, and carries a parasol in the sun.

Still, only mad dogs and Englishmen...

.................................................................

Topic: Personal
I took these at a Chinese Opera ("Peking Opera") production in LA a few weeks ago, my mother and her group of college friends were extras on stage. It was a full-scale production, which is a rare treat to the expatriot community. Although, due to the age of the key performers, it was a maudlin literary drama, and there were no acrobatics or fight scenes which I prefer. Still, the colors and images were very interesting.

The most unfruitful morning
Topic: Personal
NMA was participating in the annual community cleanup event in Encanto, and as the official chapter photographer I planned to take some photos of the event. The kickoff is usually around 8am, but I was out late last night and wasn't going to make it so early, so I figured I'd drive directly to their assigned cleanup site at about 9.30ish. Sounds like a good plan, yah? I've done this the past two years and it's always worked out well - I show up, round the crew together around a stop-sign and a NMA banner, and have a great photo for the newsletter and the annual dinner.

I drive to the address given to me by the volunteer team captain, and sure enough, there was a group of people in matching t-shirts cleaning up this yard, but wait! They're far to young and lissome to be City employees! In fact, they were UCSD students. So, where is my group?

Off I drive back to the non-profit that was hosting the event, and had to go through 5 people in 'staff' t-shirts before someone can figure out where the volunteer assignments were. I was a little annoyed by that. On the one hand, I'm used to working with people who are organized and know what they're doing - sure, the UT'd probably dispute that view of City employees, but I digress - so I expected the organizers to be much better organized than they were, but on the other hand, it is a meagerly funded non-profit, and while I was trying to get the information I need, a guy on their staff had a heart attack. The ambulance and firetruck came for him, and while the medics were strapping him to the gurney, another guy comes tearing, breathlessly, into the building, and yells, "there's a terrible car-crash down the block!"

Turned out that a car had driven into the strip mall on the other side of the parking lot and plowed straight into a shop, through the plate-glass window, taking out all the shop furniture and lights (but oddly enough not the shop door, which stood unharmed and not even moved), and almost wholly disappearing into the shop itself, leaving only a morose set of tail-lights winking through the demolished frontage. [I read later that three people were hurt in the crash, one seriously. It was not clear whether they were all in the car or if there was anyone in the shop; but looking at the photo, it's pretty damned shocking that the driver managed to get the car so deeply and neatly into what really is a small space.]

So there I was, standing on the sidewalk on Imperial Avenue, with a fire-rescue unit in action in the parking lot on my right, and another unit in action the parking lot on my left. Which to photograph? Would I get in trouble if I took photos? And where is my group? 'Cause, you know, I came here this morning to take their photos, not to gawk ghoulishly at heart attacks or car wrecks.

I eventually completely failed to find the people I was supposed to photograph (either I was too late and they'd finished, or I was given bad directions, which was more probable), but ended up with a bunch of random pics of other volunteers and of course the crash. I'm going to have to have some 'splainin' to do for the team captain on Monday, but I really felt as though I was thwarted at every turn today in my attempt to complete my mission...

Topic: Personal
I almost got kicked out of the Mingei Museum again on this past Sunday. If they didn't want people touching the exhibits there should be signage. It wasn't behind glass cases, or velvet ropes, it was furniture (okay, artisanal furniture, but still, it's table and chairs and cabinets); nonetheless I nearly gave the docent a heart attack - "Stop that! Stop! Just stop touching it! Aaaaarrgh!" This is not the first time I've gotten into trouble at the Mingei, but probably not the last time either - their exhibits frequently are characterized by beautiful textures that frankly invite further tactile investigation. They had finally done away with the creepy Japanese dolls and now have an exhibit of Jewelry from Five Continents, including the extravagant silverworks of the Miao people, an ethnic minority group of Southeastern China, as well as pieces from their permenant China collection. It was very neat to see jewelry pieces in display cases that resembles pieces that I own - "Hey, I have a silver hairpin like that!" - although of course museum pieces are much more delicately made and better cared for than mine, which gets used and abused.

There were what felt like thousands of people in the park today, it's like half of San Diego brought their out-of-town friends to the park. Even the Japanese Friendship Garden, which normally is tres, tres tranquille, nigh on bustled with people. I thought the koi fish in the pond might die from a surfeit of surreptitious bread crumbs.The plant house had really been spruced up for spring and their carnivorous plants are coming along nicely, although I can't for the life of me figure out what they get to eat. I had a Venus Flytrap plant once but it starved. My apartment was just too clean. No flies on us.