There are cats on every surface. Whenever I enter a room, they look up and inquire, "what's for dinner? is it now? why not?" I have rearranged my room so the meditation altar no longer faces the window, way too distracting. Dogs in coats, chickens in the road, neighbors in jogging/rain/baby wearing clothes. I begin a story about them and off I go, no more meditation.

I went to Ikea today and I will not go back. The layout is henious. You have to walk through every square foot in order to get out. I had to pee and I became more and more irritated while walking by SVEN and LISSOT, geegaws I surely do not need and they are manufactured in China or Micronesia or the Antarctic besides. When I started to eye any wastebasket in a dimly lit area, I knew I needed to GET OUT NOW. Argg. I have bought stuff there you are supposed to assemble at home, ha! The directions are cruely wrong and you need to use power tools and you usually put some holes (inadvertantly, of course) in your floor or table because the drill bit you chose was too long or zipped through the fiberboard of the cd holder you thought looked "cute". And you put the shelves in backward.

Today I bought a rug, no assembly required.

It is raining just enough so I don't have to garden but the plants are happy. Especially the lettuce. I planted the varigated stuff, so pretty, almost too pretty to eat. Only 2 weeks left until the garden tour. Please let something be in bloom.

froth you said wait for the right
stretch the inner arms in shuvasana
bend at the ankle
put your paws against my chest
can you hear the sound of the floor
as we float among the revolutionaries
their impossible lairs
red mountains
sartorial mouths
can you understand reluctance
lightening perks up the remaining elephant
holly trees are a nuisance
I left your pockets full of pricks

Tonight Bev and I went to the Korean spa where the ladies scrubbed off all out skin. They make us sit in the sauna until we were delirious and then they lead us to the curtained area where they are all dressed in black underwear. They stood by white covered tables and up you go! they began attacking us with scratchy mitts until I start thinking I might be bleeding. The result is skin that feels like a baby butt. Then we went to the salt room and lay there until we were purified and angels began appearing on the backs of my eyelids ( or maybe I was dehydrated). We staggered out into the night air at the end and believed that gas prices would go down, world peace had been achieved and we had personally lost 10# and all our bodily imperfections had been forcibly scraped off us. Now to bed and no skin cells will be lost this night.

I cried a lot today and in front of people. I hate that. I just can't help it. I went for a run and it helped, wait that was before I cried a lot. The suicide walk people sent a long email about the walk, where, what time and so on. The closing ceremony is at 5AM. I don't think I will be inviting anyone to come on down and see me cross the finish line or whatever. Oh, I'm supposed to bring extra socks and a headlamp, such a lovely hair ornament. And a camel back water thing.

I called my friend Victoria today and told her I am not a nice person anymore. She said that was OK, she would still like me anyway. She believes there is life after suicide. She should know. She even has a house full of boys and she has a sense of humor. Her house is always full of noise and a big dog. They don't really have furniture arrangements, more like corridors for running around yelling and brandishing various implements. It is invigorating to go there, like being in a wind tunnel and your hairpiece has been sucked up the vent. You have that surprised look on your face. One of the wolverines in a purple and yellow letter jacket. Plush.

This morning Wishbone was flipping around the room at 5AM so I woke up and thought about some animal or bird he was torturing. He was only dancing on my pajama bottoms and watching a robin outside the window. I fell back to sleep for a time and in my dream he ran in with a baby mouse in his mouth followed by the mouse mother except that it wasn't a mouse, it was a NAKED MOLE RAT, ug, with buck teeth and hairless, yuck. The mother rat got her baby away from Wishbone and she ran down the stairs with her baby in her mouth. I woke up thinking, crap, now we have an infestation of naked mole rats, what next?

suspended animation. I kept waking up in a sweat, turned on the fan, then had to get the blanket, but didn't turn off the fan until morning. Watched West Side Story last night. Wow. I must have been 14 or so when I saw it for the first time. I think I went with my dad. It was/is incredible. Just the opening prelude, the Manhattan skyline in different colors, that lush Leonard Bernstein score and Jerome Robbins choreography--wow, wow, the first scene, there is no talking for 5 minutes or so, just dancing and finger snapping. I found myself grinning even tho I knew Natalie Wood can't really sing and it isn't her voice.

Today, I'm waiting for a baby.

My yoga teacher sings to us and puts scented eye pillows on our eyes when we are relaxing at the end of class. I want to stay in the studio all day. It feels safe there and I don't have to talk to anyone. She had us do a reverse twist triangle pose today and I almost fell over--ha, not quite.

My garden is busting at the seams. Busting, I tell you.

I walked around my entire garden this morning and it is bee-utiful. The weeds are quiescent for the moment. Of course the garden tour isn't for another 3 weeks and nothing will be blooming then. The clematis are out NOW and the hyssop won't quit. I just hope the people (read garden geeks) will forgive me when I say, uh, I don't know what that plant is, pretty ain't it?

It is one of those days when the sun lies on the leaves just enough to make you think life is a bit safe and the sun won't turn everything into a fiery ball and you will lie gasping in the brown and brittle grass, gasp, gasp. Even the turtles were lying on the rocks by the lake. Roxie, the bichon, had trouble with the distance we covered today but she made it.

the writers all ate a flourless chocolate cake with strawberries in vanilla rose sauce. They actually didn't speak for a while because they were having taste bud orgasms. A friend gave Ramey a week of her personal chef and the fridge is stuffed with deelicious food. I mean, oh g-d, we will never be hungry again. and that's where the chocolate cake came from. it was enormous and it could not live here, it really couldn't so I lavished it on the writers and eventually the neighbors.

when I listen to any music with words I get sad. especially Cat Stevens. And a lot of other artists. John Coltrane is perfect, complicated, smokey and sinuous. And no words.

Lola is snoring. I think the cats and I should have a spa day. They can get groomed and I can have all my skin cells scrubbed off. Then I'll lie in the salt room and bake. Then I will gas up the car and begin driving. I think Utah would be nice this time of year. Not too many people and the Great Salt Lake. I would be sure to bring binoculars and a bird book. And a few peices of flourless chocolate cake. with strawberries. I could change my name and disappear. It would piss off my kids. But I could write a buttload of poems and become posthumously famous. I'd live in a little cabin beside a marsh, cattails waving with redwing blackbirds, smell of bubbly muck. Waldenesque. I wouldn't go into town for dinner however when I was tired of the country life. I might have a few goats too. I could cultivate vertical eye slits and the townsfolk would leave me the fuck alone.

uh-oh

I have my writers group tomorrow and I have nothing to read. It's like having nothing to wear only worse. I can only write crap when I write at all. Weird suicide/hit and run accident/cat abcess shit. For some reason.

My brother was here last weekend, my living brother. Well, I have an older brother too but I never speak to him. Anyway my California brother was here and I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to talk at all. It's like a locked up kind of box, a darkroom with the red light on and papers floating in developer only the images never show up. The paper stays blank. And there is water coming in under the door.

Maybe I can find a poem to bring to group from my secret blog which Rebecca found somehow. She is a genius, I think.

The time has come to move the rest of the compost. This is to avoid preparing for two classes I am teaching in the next two months. In my new career as a misanthrope, it is very difficult to imagine classes of students all looking at me expectantly, as if I have anything interesting or intelligible to say. and me coming up with some wise and profound BS. to tell them the truth...I attended a meeting last week and all the people there were many years younger than I. Windbags, all. I am judgmental too, by the way. I can't figure out how to be graceful with my current life so I am cranky and angry and sad. And poetry sucks too.

I told my therapist I can't abide falsehood, I can't bear it. Not anywhere. This becomes a problem because so much discourse IS crap. I hear nonsense coming out of someone and I have to leave, like literally get up and leave before I say something impolite, so not good girl behavior. I've taken to spending more and more time by myself so I don't inflict much damage.

Someone will ask how I am, all solicitous, and my body starts to vibrate, the evil comments begin to spin in my head and before I say something I might regret, like, I feel crazy and murderous, and you? I extricate myself and leave the room. The cats and I get along just fine. They are unpredictable and so am I. Watch it, I might take out your eye.

Wishbone got his tubes taken out of his face yesterday. And he lost the cone, thank g-d. he looks like a feline John McCain, one side of his face all shaved with holes in it. Pretty.

more cat adventures

ramey is in my office in a hospital bed with her leg in a giant cast and a table with hundreds of pill bottles on it so wishbone, my big guy decided to get an abcess on his face, a HUGE ONE. in depair, we went to the vet so he could be knocked out and they could deal with his icky wound. now, of course, he is home with a cone around his neck and a tube sticking out of his face, yeah!! I'm supposed to give him medicine twice a day. meanwhile, he bangs around the house with his tail twitching. he even managed to get through the cat door to the basement. I have no idea how he did it. pure will.

I haven't written anything coherent for weeks. I wake up in the morning and cry for while. it is all too much, it really is. i just looked up my brother's obit. he 'died suddenly' at 51. Right. suicide is pretty sudden I guess.

i actually watered tonight. it got hot. tomorrow it should snow. I started to buy a watermelon at the coop and it was 4.95 a pound-worked out to a 25 dollar watermelon. Nope, I don't really need it after all.

I'm gonna go to a vedic astrologer. maybe he can help make sense of things. no more disasters, ok?

my cat is doing that thing where she kneads the fuzzy blanket she is on and she puts her lips on the edge like she is 'nursing'-clearly a case of premature weaning. this is why she is demented and horrible. she actually growls at me WHEN I FEED HER. then she hisses. she is also bipolar and not in a cute way. the sad fact is that cats will never leave home, they will never 'outgrow' their little pecadillos, they will never even vacuum!!! what the heck, I ask you. and we tolerate this. we indulge them with kitty treats and catnip.

mr cat, may he rest in peace, once found an entire bag of catnip in a partially opened kitchen drawer. in the morning, there was catnip EVERYWHERE, countertops, all over the floor, in the sink and in the drawers. AND there were long slide marks through the floor catnip, he had obviously been sliding through the rye and having a monster party.

still, the way they hook your lower lip in the morning while you are still sleeping, it's just so adorable. especially when you wonder where the blood on your sheets has come from. oh.

the lady that owns the goats says they slurp up blackberry canes "like spagetti". If I did that it would hurt extremely much. Barbs down the esophagus, ouch.

the ruminants are still at it. families are bringing their kids to watch. In my whole dreadful days, goats on the hill eating english ivy makes me delighted, makes me happy. Ramey comes home tomorrow. So does a hospital bed. Way fun. Frankenleg, part deux. In 6 months, she'll be good as new, yeah!

just drove home along 31st ave south and on the hillside, 'rental ruminants' were hard at work, a herd of about 30 goats. I am not lying, honest. I stopped and watched 'em for a while. they were munching on english ivy, not indigenous. All hail, goats.

I'm on the deck and the apple tree, the wisteria, the dogwoods are all going crazy. I feel a little drunk on the fragrance. The sun is out, which, if you are a Seattlite is a minor miracle. We write about our non-weather because we have many much grayness. So sun startles us and makes us think we are overdosing on Vitamin D. Run for the sun screen! Get out the shades, help!

Ramey got a rod in her leg so in 3 months, she can walk!! Whoa, modern medicine. I think in the old days they would have sawn it off. There will be many screws and plates and groovy scars and a wheely thingie she can motor around on. Plus the sexy hospital bed in the house, yea! and the walker and the crutches. The CSI detectives actually tracked down the type of car that hit her by matching the paint and figuring out what kind of car it was. Then they looked up all cars sold in WA to which people, a hopeless task. It is a felony, apparently to hit and run. Just don't do it, I say.

The sparrows in the stove vent in our neighbor's house is right across from the kitchen window. The birds fly in and out industriously with nest stuff and then eventually you can hear the baby birds. They show up on the roof when they are fledging, all wobbly. Imagine learning to fly, opening your wings and taking off. Hopefully the bad cat Lupine won't get any this year. natural selection, whatever.

Last night was writing night with Rebecca. her new book is beautiful, awesome and the cover is soooo creepy and perfect. I'm so pleased for her. She should win awards and someone should give her a bunch of money so she could write and not work at her 'other job'. Her book is called Cadaver Dogs and it is a rare and wonderful thing.

I am not letting any of my icky emotions get the better of me today. I had therapy yesterday and it felt like someone took the steam valve off the pressure cooker. I an so emotionally labile, almost anything sets me off. When I said I felt angry, she said, 'but you don't sound angry...' ooo, I hate that, when they try to get to you by being all nice. So I started talking and then I was weeping, then sobbing and gulping and blowing my nose on my hands. Definitely un-pretty but I felt cleansed later. There is just too much suicide and injury and bad diagnoses and pain in the world and it sucks to witness and not be able to DO anything about it. I can sit here in this splendor and write poems, my poems in all their terrible and flawed beauty, I can do that much.

in my last suicide group, I uttered blasphemy. People were going on and on about their beloved whoever and I blurted out, "but my brother was a shit". I don' t have fond memories of him, no I don't. He abused his stepkids, he broke his wife's nose, he was a drunk for most of his life. I can still be sad. I can still mourn him. But I don't have to make up some story about his wonderful life or what a great guy he was. He wasn't a great guy. He was a tortured guy who figured out the only way to stop feeling the pain was to hang himself and let the kids find him. And leave a 5 page suicide f-u note. Maybe I'm a little angry. Maybe I'm being truthful because there is no other way. To live.

I am grateful other people are coming over and taking care of Ramey. I would just like to go somewhere and be alone. Like on an island. Where there are no people. Like Alaska. Me and the bears.

today I have to make recordings of my voice (don't ask). I have to find a place where the phone won't ring....and I have been procrastinating by reading old blog posts and generally messing around. I'm gonna pack a little bag and RUN AWAY FROM HOME.

I want to run awayyyyyyyyyyyyy. I am so sick of the sick house, a million people call on the house phone which makes a gawdawful noise when it rings. Everyone want to help out so the fridge is crammed with food, giant vats of soup we will never eat and the like. When I escape, I come home and someone else is here. I think I have become a misathrope. My office is now the sick room so I can't even go in there to write. And I think I am a b.i.t.c.h. Ungrateful. Crabby. Bitter. etc. I get up and the whole day is devoted to going to the hospital, getting prescriptions filled, wating on Ramey, laundry, cooking, cleaning, bla, bla, bla. How the hell do caregivers do this, day after day? It is inconceivable. Impossible. I sit in my therapist's office and shred an entire box of kleenex.

And some day, I may be all crippled up and needing the same things. And someone else will be all cranky because of my incessant demands.

For now so I don't kill anyone, I work in the garden. Pulling weeds has never been so satisfying. Die, you stupid dandelions, die.

I totally fell apart writing a poem a day. I don't think my fellow poets care. I had an Acme safe fall on my head. And the roadrunner got away. He ALWAYS gets away.