stuff

i give J2 two trash bags one bag for donation items one box for her memories and send her to sort her room out. 

the effort gets derailed by the memories and her closet.

house hunters 2

he wants big. she wants cozy. i want less housework. he wants a fenced yard. i want cheap. she just wants to move. the market's hot. how do you find a good unit? i ask HOM. type desperate into the search box, he says.

it's getting crazy.

house hunters

here's our wish list:

compacter - newer - cheaper - nicer.

as HOM says, it's about time. 3 years and 10 months in one home

is already longer than we've ever been in any home

since we got married.

and, as J2 says, woo hoo!

the sale worth waiting for?

memorial day - outlet shopping appears to be a matched pair in our family. other people have bbq's and parades and go to the beach.

in any case, i tell J2, now that the logistics are about settled for college, the shopping can begin.

missing the point

a robot might be able to apply relevant algorithms to decipher this.

but humans are stuck, you know? how do you decide between

grree gmee and grnee?

grrrr.

saltatory conduction

five years after i capitulate to the u.s. english spellchecker my system no longer recognizes honour or labour as valid. analogue looks medieval. also, this being the land of freedom, i no longer know how to use the hyphen. i am a hair's breadth (hairsbreadth?) from alot, although perhaps this transgression should be laid at another door.

it is amazing how thoroughly one's entire philological ideology can be patiently shaped over forty odd years and then resoundingly upturned in half a decade. 

the size of thoughts - nicholson baker

mr baker is delightful. he writes about the most mundane subjects (fingernail clippings! punctuation!) and, with a few deft descriptions, makes you look at them from an utterly unexpected and yet totally familiar angle, and you think, why didn't i think of this first? his humor is sneaky and dry and catches you when you are looking the other way. his metaphors are funky apt. his problem is his propensity for extremely extended sentences which demand of the reader mental assiduousness of contortionist proportions and to which this sentence does not even begin to approximate. what i say is, only st. paul is allowed to write a sentence that becomes a paragraph.

it's a sparkly little book. the question is, can i finish it? or will long distance fatigue set in first?

growing pain 2

i see a photo of someone's twelve year old son. he's a skinny earnest-looking bespectacled fellow, eating at the table with his elbows propped up and his nose in a paperback. i had a little boy like that once, i think, with a sudden sharp pain that makes me gasp. he's older now. he reads differently. he thinks differently. wit sharpens. innocence darkens. i won't have the gift of that boy again, me with the hopefulness of young motherhood and he with the uncomplicatedness of childhood. 

what i have is older and more damaged. there are depths that you will not know if you do not plumb them in pain, i tell him over the years. i am older and more damaged too. that cheerful sun-drenched path leads unrelentingly to the land of shadows on the way to those depths.

growing pain

here's what J2 will wear for her high school graduation.

in a way that is exciting perturbing and inexorable

my little girl is growing up.

long road to freedom

bathroom remodel, day 2 today.

what you see is day 1, which drove me close to noise-induced madness.

Dog isn't too happy either.

speedy g

HOM upgrades our router to some new standard. not ferrari, he tells me. but it's like you're driving your corolla on country roads and we finally get a pass to use the paved road. zoom zoom. iLike.

date night

HOM drags me to best buy. he wants to browse the modem-routers. i find myself agreeably entertained by the section that sells ipod accessories and ipad smart-covers and i am about to start on the screen protectors when he fortunately comes to whisk me off. he wants to visit the apple store next.

what i say is, a man's got to keep busy but a girl needs her bling.

cause and effect

well, since i cannot tell J2 why she has to turn up at school,

only that she has to, so she does, in shorts. rather shorts ones too.

the answer is no

J2 and i go to another embassy today.

there is a line to get through the bullet proof doors. we sit according to the order we arrive. a strange hush pervades the place. suddenly, a deviously cheerful fellow appears. what are you here for? visitor's visa? we do not accept those applications in the afternoon. 9 am tomorrow please. what about you sir? let me see your application. you need to go and re-do the forms we do not accept a hand-filled form. yes i'm afraid your entire family has to go and re-do the forms too. and you? you came to sak questions? we do not take any questions here. all the questions you may have are answered on our website. 

pouf! half the waiting room is cleared, like chaff swept by the wind. which is how J2 and i escape a parking fine today.

reading comprehension

i'm guessing it says to cook the noodles

in 550 ml of water for 3 to 4 minutes?

adios!

HOM returns his on-trial-period chromebook. what i say is, about time. what he says is, he was persuaded by the panoply of purportedly possible functions offered by cloud computing without the need for software investment and maintenance. what i say is, you've got to be kidding right? what he says is, it doesn't dazzle as promised. what i say is, go get a macbook.

you aint seen nuthin yet

my young friend is deeply discomfited by the physical demands of her advanced pregnancy. i want to tell her, from eighteen plus years away, that i cannot empathize because i remember nothing of the physical  rigors of mine. in fact, what i want to tell her is, twenty years from now, you will realize that the physical pain is nothing compared to the emotional and spiritual pain you will know in time.

good ol' days

J2 and her friends paint the town red after their final paper today. which, as i recall, is exactly what we did back in the day. 

the difference is we took the bus and they drive themselves. sometimes nostalgia skips back a generation.

the art of conversation

J2 skips class today. the school gives me a call.

school (bright cheery voice): hi mrs -- how are you?

me (restrained tone): i'm fine thank you.

school (bright cheery voice): and J2 isn't in school today...!

me (cautiously): um. would you like me to say i know she's at home?

school (bright cheery voice): oh no! this call is about something entirely different! we need you to make sure she attends school on friday, for the award ceremony! but don't tell her why!

me (bright and cheery): how nice! thank you! i'll try!

what the dog saw - m gladwell (2009)

a pleasurable anthology of amazingly diverse proportions that is an enjoyment to read after his distinctly underwhelming outliers. not to mention blink. so yes, i am a fan again, after the fashion of the tipping point. 

the only problem is that the writings in this book mostly predate his two latter books. for someone whose mind creeps so effortlessly into so many fields, i totally hope he comes up with another like this - a big picture discourse to delight the hearts of generalists and put to shame the armchair philosophers of the age.

pmb

the biopsy comes back normal. no cancer no precancer hey no abnormality that they can find. which, truly, i expect anyway after the scan report comes out.

is a biopsy indicated? yes, by the standard clinical criteria of symptomatology and age. perhaps not, by a gut feeling secondary to personal knowledge and to a daringly objective interpretation of the scan report. which is to say that no physician in his right mind might defer a biopsy and sleep at night.

in any case, it's a relief. also, for the record, the pain was of vaso-vagal proportions.

glory and shame

... the image of Him who created him: where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.

- col 3:10-11

stripped bare of everything that man measures by

exposed to every unshielded writhing shame

stamped with the glory of God himself.

how can the God of glory place his glory in a seat of shame?

how can i greet my fellows with anything less than reverence?

that's my air you're breathing

today i crawl 0.9 miles into crazy traffic to collect the visa from the brutally efficient cattle ranch.

while standing in line, the gentleman of east asian extraction behind me stands sufficiently close to physically breathe down my neck. i understand that in some places respecting personal space is not exactly explicit. although i have always understood that a minimum-sized personal bubble is implicit. i have also always understood that this minimum includes the ether around my neck. perhaps i understood wrong.

what's missing?

apparently a third grade question, singapore edition:

if you ask me, the only relevant info i need to know are:

-any negative marking?

-any penalty for leaving questions blank?

because some questions may not be worth attempting.

trending

there are now two big groups of facebook users:
1. those who are on the old fb page and:

• intend to bury themselves there, or
• wish they knew how to get to (2).

2. those who have timeline-d and:

• don't know how they got there, or
• now have more photos than ever to feed.

anecdotally there is one main group of fb readers:

• those who are confused by timeline.

vocab lesson

crawl verb (of a body) move along laboriously, keeping the bulk close to the ground, not necessarily on hands or feet: 0.8 miles is a long way to crawl in stop-and-go one lane traffic.

crazy adj. (of roads and traffic) irritating and inconsistent: the roads in d.c. are crazy, especially after you crawl for a long time to get to them.

cattle ranch, brutally efficient noun, adj. (of government offices) chinese embassy in d.c., visa section.

cattle ranch, period noun (of government bodies) malaysian high commission in singapore, passport section.

today

tired.

pleasant shock

i turn up for my 9 am appointment at 8:45 am. it takes me ten minutes of driving around the business park to find the place. i am out and driving home at 9:20 am. how much do i pay? we'll send it to your insurance, they tell me.

well, there's plenty wrong with the albatross-behemoth that is the u.s. healthcare system, but i have never had such a smoothly seamlessly pleasant experience in any country.

dyspraxia

the the the the the THE

gotta stop typing teh

argh.

abdication

not my will, but thine, be done.

- lk 22:42

the old hopes

expectations and constructs

mine, all mine!

carefully erected upon my dreams!

to surrender them finally

and finally drink from the cup

to its dregs.

how utterly frightening

and how it restores.

countdown

coming up this month:

the AP exams,

after which twelve years of basic education twice over 

will quickly wind down to an official end.

already?

blank check

fear not... be not dismayed...

i will strengthen...  i will help... i will uphold

- isa 41:10

i fear what i know

i dismay at what i see and foresee.

he promises all -

the fullness of presence and strength and help.

infinite riches supply my circumscribed needs.

lift thou my eyes.