If you have to climb into bed alone, it's wonderful to get late-evening reminders that someone is thinking of you and missing you.

First, let me make a confession: Avid quilters do not make quilts to give as gifts; they give quilts as gifts in order to have an excuse to make them. It would be 10 times easier and considerably less expensive to just buy something off the shelf. But then we wouldn't have a reason to play with fabric.

This observation comes by way of my fabric orgy of two nights ago. As I was pulling fabric out of the dryer I thought, I should take a look at the pattern again. I pulled out the book. I found the picture.

I discovered that I didn't like the pattern at all anymore.

Actually, that's a misstatement. I still liked the pattern's basic concept. But in the months of gathering fabric, that concept evolved in my head. I remembered it as being far less symmetrical, far more whimsical, and involving a much broader color palette.

When I looked at the original again, it was just not as visually exciting as the one my brain had conflated. And the one I want to make is the one in my brain.

The problem with the one in my brain, though, is that while I had this abstract idea of it, I didn't really have a clear picture. I'd left it to broad brush strokes, because I thought I had a pattern to rely on. So now I was looking at piles of fabrics that I love, but lacked the "engineering" to begin putting it together. My right brain had a pretty, but abstract, picture. Now my left brain had to kick in to figure out the math of it.

The original pattern idea was quite simple: Squares of bright novelty fabrics broken up by lines of smaller, black-and-white checkerboard "trails" across the quilt. In my mind those trails were an irregular pattern that strayed around the quilt. In the pattern, they are just 3 or 4 sets of very regular "steps" starting high on the left side of the quilt and ending lower on the right. In my mind, the color palette of the brights was extremely broad. In the pattern, it's limited to the red/yellow spectrum of colors.

What I want is the checkerboard trail moving irregularly through the quilt, and the many bright fabrics. I am not worried about using the fabrics to create specific shapes (the stars, houses, baskets, etc. that so many quilt patterns are about). I want this quilt to be a treasure hunt: there will be cats and dogs and fire engines and princesses and chop sticks and dinosaurs and cars and trains and many, many other fun bits. I want this to be the kind of quilt that a child can look at in a "Where's Waldo" fashion, where she will have favorite blocks and ones she doesn't like. That is the point of the quilt. So I am retaining the simple square structure, though in some places a single piece of fabric will span the space of two squares because the picture on the fabric requires more room.

In the original, the checkerboard squares, which are half the size of the others, are the only uses of black and white fabrics. But I have a bunch of bright designs on black backgrounds that are too large to really be seen in such small squares. So I will be adding a border that is a larger checkerboard, which will allow me to use those larger patterns.

And of course since I'm working across the whole color palette now, I will have to cut out all the fabric squares and put them on a design board in order to arrange them in a manner that doesn't muddy the checkerboard and is pleasing to the eye.

It's a good thing this baby arrived in the summer. It's going to take a while for me to finish this, but she's not going to need the quilt for a while.

So that's it: the tale of how I went from copying someone else's pattern to using it as an inspiration. It's more a variation on a theme than an original, but I feel good about it. Pictures as soon as it's a physical reality and not just a more wholly formed idea in my head.

Whenever I have been seriously ill, my first acts upon achieving any level of recovery inevitably involve some sort of insanely giant project. This has been the case since I was in high school. I remember being just home from the hospital after fighting off spinal meningitis. I could only stand up long enough to go to the bathroom, but I realized that it was my brother's birthday, and everyone had pretty much forgotten about it. It suddenly became very important to me that he have a cake. We didn't have any cake mix.

I made a cake from scratch, sitting on the floor. I pulled the Sunbeam mixer off the counter, and crawled from cabinet to cabinet, gathering ingredients. I even made frosting. Because being sick getting well makes me crazy.

With that in mind, I think it's clear that fountain was enough to establish that I was, in fact, sick as hell. But I was not done, oh no. I still had crazy energy stored someplace in my body.

I opened the Big Box o' Fabric.

Now, that probably doesn't seem like an undertaking, but in order to make that fabric - and other fabrics I've been gathering for a project - actually usable in a quilt that's to be washable, they all need to be washed thoroughly in hot water to remove any excess dye and then dried on hot to take care of any shrinking. And in order to accomplish that, each piece of fabric has to be separated and unfolded so there aren't any unexposed clumps.

Between the Big Box and other fabrics I'd picked up on sale, I had a lot:


The picture really doesn't convey how much fabric is there. It reminded me of a pile of fall leaves:


I told myself that my back is messed up. I told myself that it was silly. But in the end, I had to do it. Yes, I got down on the floor and rolled in my fabric. Yes, I giggled.

And yes, I even took a picture:


gieves? My contribution to Craft Night tomorrow may be bringing bags of fabric and borrowing your iron....

So, what does the convalescing woman, who is still a bit shaky from food poisoning, who has found the need to go lie down a couple of times today, and whose brain is still feeling foggy, DO with her late afternoon and early evening?

Why, go out into the 80 degree sun and completely clean and rehabilitate the garden fountain, of course.

In my defense, it was so close to empty that it needed to be refilled or turned off, and the bugs are bad enough this year without turning it off. And it was not only in dire need of cleaning, to the point that the waterfall was barely more than a dribble, it was leaking someplace (hence the quickly empty). So I thought, well, I can at least get it started.

This is how I lie to myself. Because of course once I'd dragged out the ShopVac and gotten started, of course I wasn't going to want to have to come back to it tomorrow.

It's a 9-gallon ShopVac. 9 gallons of water weighs ~72 pounds. I filled and emptied it at least 12 times.

My back is not happy with me.

I do think I finally and permanently solved our slow leak problem. With the gunk all cleared out, the pump puts out a much livelier flow. It became almost instantly apparent that one corner of the upper pool has settled lower than the rest of it - water was cascading out the back side. Once I had determined that, it was a matter of removing the top stones and pulling out lower stones in order to lower the lip of the upper pool at the front of the fountain, and then retuck all the liner and replace the stones.

This required leaning out over the fountain, stiff-legged to keep my balance back, while picking up 8-12 pound rocks and manipulating them at arms length.

My back is REALLY not happy with me.

But it's done. Time for a nice, hot bath....

EDIT: The mosquito bites on my arms and legs I kind of expected. But the one on my butt? No. Just...no.

EDIT II, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: A "nice hot soak in the tub" works a lot better if you actually flip up the stopper and don't send all the hot water down the pipes before realizing it. Grr.

Finally feeling human again. Even if it took getting up this morning, working a little while, and then collapsing for an hour's nap. It was quite strange: I can only describe it as my body shaking off the last of the sickness like a dog shaking water from its fur. Now all I have is that post-illness, quiet feeling. The one that says, don't get all carried away, bucko, and you'll be fine.

I had a strange dream last night. Actually, most of the dream was the standard sort of "aliens invading the world, try to find someplace safe to hide." fare. But all my allies were strangers to me, a group of doubters in a world otherwise enthusiastically welcoming the aliens. And the first place we found to hide was discovered by other humans whose eyes were opened by the actual raid. But when I found a second, more secure hiding place, I was determined only to share it with the original group and to leave the late arrivals to their fate. I thought they were stupid and didn't deserve to be saved.

This seems a rather strange attitude for someone who fashions herself compassionate toward the underprivileged. And yet when I think about it, it's not really contradictory. I am concerned with the growing education gap. I think it is the job of society to do what it can to give people an opportunity to get on the playing field, even though it will never be level. I believe that regulation is necessary to prevent upstream producers from dumping their cost of doing business on the little guy downstream.

But once people have the same information and the ability to process it, if they are going to continue being stupid and ignoring consequences, well then my compassion dries up and they're on their own.

You can believe in both social and personal responsibility. If one accepts that, then we are just discussing matters of degree.

(Yeah, that kind of rambled all over the place. Blame it on post-infirmity brain.)

I was going to bed early. Honest.

My body has other ideas. Or rather, other plans for extracting as many fluids as possible.

At least I am now keeping down the fluids I'm drinking. But between the shaking sweats triggered by exertion as minimal as walking around, and that lovely, non-vomitous method of violent alimentary extraction [*ahem*], I am finding no horizontal refuge.

And my skin itches like a bitch - the joys of mild dehydration. My piteous contortionary moves are no match for that irritated patch of skin in the middle of my back, despite all my attempts to apply moisturizer.

I am scheduled to join friends in wedding site reconnaissance tomorrow morning. I cavalierly assured one of them that surely I would be up to meadow tromping and building inspection by morning.

I begin to have my doubts. A fact that fills me with dismay.

It's a pity that dismay lacks nutritive substance, as I no doubt would not be filled with it for long this evening.

I'm going to try again to sleep.

I seem to have picked up a case of food poisoning. I am writing this between lengthy sessions of far too cozy an acquaintance with my bathroom.

It doesn't really make it worse that there is no one here with me - I certainly would not keep Ferrett up in the night to keep me company. But it is lonelier.

Never go to Trader Joe's when you haven't eaten all day.

...

Yeah.

Unless you live under a rock, you have probably already seen the report that the US Department of Health and Human Services is internally circulating drafts of new proposed rules to let HHS withhold funding from hospitals and clinics unless they agree to hire and respect the actions of staff members who are against abortion.

The new regulation proposes defining abortion to include any artificial means of preventing implantation. This would technically only include the IUD, but because so many people believe that hormonal birth control methods merely prevent implantation, would undoubtedly lead to people refusing to fill orders for birth control pills, the morning after pill, and any other hormonal methods such as Norplant.

Essentially, the effect would be to limit us to sterilization, condoms, diaphragms and foam. And don't think they wouldn't attack those if they could just find an angle.

This is a potential headache for many women, but a serious hazard to low-income women and families who may not be able to obtain birth control if their community clinic refuses to prescribe it.

My favorite quote on this matter? The regulations are are allegedly "needed to ensure that federal money does not 'support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.'"

Because refusing to provide birth control is in no way a morally coercive practice, right?

The DHHS is making policy based on poll data that 49% of Americans believe that life begins at conception. First of all, it's bad medicine to base regulation on policy, and secondly it's not even half the population. It's time we made our voices heard.

We can spend a lot of time being angry about this, or we can do something. Call. Write. Send a deluge of faxes. Keep them short and civil, but send them.

This is the information for DHHS:

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt
Office Phone: 202-690-7000 or 202-205-4708
Outside of the DC/metro area: 877-696-6775 toll-free
Email: mike.leavitt@hhs.gov
Fax: 202-690-7203
Correspondence Secretary: 202-690-6392

And write your Senators and Congressman. You can locate your Representative's contact information here and your Senators' here.

And there's always 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Fax is best: they don't involve envelopes, but they do involve paper. Calls are next, then emails - written in your own words from your own address. Don't just sign onto a petition; it lets them ignore you as one of the rabble.

Someone in DHHS was brave enough to leak this information so that we could use it. Don't just get angry and then move onto the thing. Take some time to express that anger. Do it now.

(Feel free to link, or copy and paste - attribution appreciated but not required. Thanks to sos_usa for the HHS addresses, and to jajy1979 for pointing me in that direction.)

Both last week's and this week's gifts arrived on my doorstep this morning. Such fun to get prezzies!

Week 2 was a sweet reminder of my honey:


This piece was done by naamah_darling, whose other beautiful work can be seen at her website, Morningstar Hall. It's so cute! I put it up right next to my computer.

Week 3's is a little different form of art, but definitely a lot of fun:



The Infusions of Grandeur guys are at it again. I'm personally terrified of the garlic one. But there will be tastings - for science!!!

Thank you, honey, and thank you to the wonderful people conspiring with him to make this awesome!

I found my sunglasses!!!

Now, to most people a lost pair of sunglasses is an irritating but trivial event. I know people who go through several pairs a season.

Not me. I've had the same sunglasses since before my elder daughter was born.

That's right: I've owned the same shades for about 23 years now.

They aren't anything special. They are, in fact, a pair of Uvex safety glasses with tinted, UV protective lenses. They are not pretty.

What they are is phenomenally protective. I have lots of allergy problems and very sensitive eyes, and if I get anything in them it's hell. These lenses hug close to my face and wrap around the side rather like glacier glasses. I've worn them for biking, canoeing, skiing, camping, and just driving for all these years.

Not having my glasses was one of the reasons I haven't had my bike out this summer (I know - the horror!!). So today I dragged it out, pumped up the tires and went for a ride: 6 miles round trip to my doctor's to pick up a prescription. It kicked my ass pretty well. But I rode, dammit, and I have my glasses. Yay!

Man, I am completely chewed up, just covered in bites. It was worth it, though.

I haven't experienced mosquitoes and no-see-ums the likes of those I encountered in Michigan since I lived in Alaska. My ankles and the backs of my arms are chewed up. We won't even talk about my shoulders and neck. Who knew you guys were host to so many critters that take delight in biting the daylights out of me?

It's one of the things you never see in movies: the heroine and her True Love come together in the misty dawn and stand in a lush green landscape - and neither of them is swatting at the bugs hovering around them.

All that aside, it was a lovely weekend in Michigan. I was kindly hosted by Steve (delosd), who has the perfect place for me to crash: he, too, is allergic to animals so his house is dander-free. I got to have dinner with him and dawnwolf Thursday night, then spend Friday hanging out with good friends, and Saturday I got to see even more of them at aeila's graduation party. Both these events involved many LJ people, to whom I am just not going to link for the sake of readability. But it was wonderful seeing all of you.

On at least a couple occasions, Steve remarked to others that Ferrett's and my social schedule was something amazing. I demurred at the notion: we don't have that much going on. And, honestly, on Thursday last when I arrived there, I really didn't have much going on. But another friend to whom I suggested getting together some night this week, since it was mostly empty, texted me this morning asking when we can get together.

Hmm.

Turns out that every night this week had somehow filled up. She's penciled in for Friday, pending a check of her calendar.

Okay, so yeah. We are blessed with many good friends and plenty going on.

But I only have one night scheduled for next week!

Just now, at least....

yuki_onna is sitting in my living room right now, where she composed her awesome rant about music snobbery and invented the best new swear word evar.

After reading it, I had observations to make about it. So I typed them into a comment.

While she is sitting right here with me, in my living room.

Because if I just told her what I was thinking, my insights would not be trapped in the electronic amber of the intarwebs, preserved for the elucidation of others.

I only hope, as she is silently tapping away at her keyboard, that she is responding in same fashion. Because that would just increase the awesome geekery of the moment.

EDIT: Yes, she did!!!!

Happiness is: a long phone conversation with your sweetie, ranging over a variety of topics political, philosophical, and silly.

I took this weekend off. Isolated myself, hibernated, enforced rest. And while I know the physical part of me really, really needed it, the social part of me was pretty blue by Sunday.

And then.

And then.

I swear every time I learn this lesson, it is going to stay learned. But it doesn't. I'm currently debating whether that is completely a handicap or rather a minor miracle, considering the wonder I feel every time I relearn it.

I worked out.

With the Project of Doom and all my other work, that had taken a back seat. I made myself get on the NordicTrack, even though I didn't think I wanted to.

The difference it made is just staggering. I felt human again.

Yesterday it was belly dancing lesson with bec76. Today it was yoga, and more bellydancing (plans to bike were interrupted by a storm that left me scurrying around the house, pulling plugs on electronics and squeaking in slight terror - yes, it was striking power lines around us). Tomorrow? Tomorrow will be some workout, plus time with yuki_onna and then a weekend with friends.

And we will be through week 2.

Yay.

The ugly stereotype for lesbians is a homely, brittle woman whose neuroses and bitterness prevent her from having any lasting relationships.

I can report that, three episodes in, The L Word has effaced only the first in that long list of descriptors.

Not quite getting why this is a hit yet - is it only because of the hot soft core lesbian action? Or do the characters actually become compelling at some point? It's sure as heck not for the humor.

The mail came late yesterday, so I didn't get it until this morning. In it, I found a package sent by earthenwood. It contained a small box and a note from Ferrett instructing me to retrieve a letter hidden in the house.

The letter left me with tears streaming down my face. It explained that during each of the six weeks he is gone, a beautiful piece of art will arrive in the mail. It's a token of his love, a reminder of how much I mean to him during this time when he is so busy and expanding his horizons so vastly.

Within the box was this goddess elemental tile:


It's beautiful, and I'm already considering how to mount it. Of the goddess elemental tiles Melanie makes, he chose air because of the wings. He gives me wings so I can fly.

The ribbon tying the box is a work of art itself:


The ribbon is a lovely green and brown cording, and the pendant is a spiral goddess:


I am wearing it now, a reminder of the love that my sweet weasel has for me. I am a lucky, lucky woman.

Since finishing my big project, and completely exhausting myself in the process, my sleep pattern has been totally whacked. I slept all day Friday, slept in late yesterday, and then collapsed yesterday afternoon and slept into the evening. So now I've been up all night because I couldn't sleep. Despite the vague tug of sleepiness now, I'm staying up all day and getting to bed at a decent hour so I can get myself back on schedule.

I also have to confess a serious fall off the bandwagon. I discovered the free games on yahoo, and they have been eating my life. I am such a junkie. Oy. Must stop playing them as of today. I have no self control.

So, on my feet to do something productive, like clean up around the house. I must get back on schedule of being my usual organized self as of tomorrow, and that will be easier with a clean house.

Many of you have probably already heard about the remark that Kathie Lee Gifford made regarding pagans. But her "apology" is even more appalling. The program segment in which the apology occurs is a painfully trite 11+ minutes of babbling, within which there are two "apologies," each one more insulting than the one before. If you can tolerate watching it all the way to the end, her final remarks are incredibly insulting, remarks that demonstrate an arrogant disregard for anyone who would object to the words tripping from her golden tongue.

If you wish to make your voice heard on this issue, you can call the Today show producer at (212) 664-4249, press 1, and then ask to speak to Jim Bell. Or you can email Today@NBC.com. My only request is that you express your anger in intelligent and polite terms - do not fall to their level of discourse because it only gives them an excuse to disregard our complaints.

Here is the YouTube link to the remarks by Kathie Lee Gifford regarding pagans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZm3IGFPLyk

Here is the MSNBC link to the apology:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/2541106825411068#25411068

Feel free to copy and paste this entry to anyone or any group you wish. Attribution appreciated but not required.

It's staggering to me to think that there is even a chance that the average adult has only read six of these books! But on to the meme:

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read only six and force books upon them.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read a lot of them, but not every play.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Just dropped Ferrett off at the airprt. Six weeks without my sweetie. I feel sort of ridiculous, complaining about it - after all, it's not like he's going off to war for an eighteen month stint. He'll be having fun and learning new skills and it will be awesome.

But I'm gonna miss him. Even though I have plenty to do and lots of friends eager to keep me company, life's just not the same when your honey isn't around.

Jersey Boys - If you like the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, you should see this show. Very high-energy, very good production, and the actor who plays Valli does a creditable job of singing the music. Interestingly, he is completely on for the falsetto parts; the regular singing is where he doesn't quite come up to the quality of that voice. But honestly, there is a reason that Valli was the success that he was, and if you have to choose one strength or the other in your lead, you're gonna cast the guy who can nail the falsetto parts, because if you don't get those, you just aren't going to sell the role.

And since we got out of the theater just in time to hit the midnight premier:

Wall-E - Wow. This is what all animation should strive for. Lots of fun, great character development, a compelling story, and terrific animation. Some people are calling it the best science fiction movie in years; it's certainly one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. My only quibbles had to do with me stretching scientific believability with a couple small things, quibbles I would never have experienced if it were a lesser animated feature. Really, you need to go see this one.

Now, it's late and I must sleep.

1. Knowing that if you told your hubby that you needed him to go to the store in the pouring rain and acquire Doritos and chocolate so you can slog on into the night on The Neverending Project, he would take you at your word that you needed them that badly and he would make that trip to the store.

2. Not making him go.

Edit: 3. When he reads this entry, he goes anyway.

The French Quarter of New Orleans is more than the drunks, beads and boobs of Bourbon Street. It is also many streets of boutique shopping aimed at tourists. And being a good and generous tourist determined to pump cash into the ailing NOLA economy, I shouldered the challenge, supplementing my summer wardrobe with six new skirts of the hippie/gypsy variety that I have always loved but never really owned.

The one other thing I was on the lookout for was a dress to wear to upcoming wedding of khiron1416 and tiffania007. It was an evening wedding, which to me says "formal" - and I didn't really have anything that fit the bill of formal. So when we went into a boutique of lovely clothing for zaftig goddesses, I had my eye open. With the help of katspaw156 and jennb45, I picked out a couple dresses to try on and headed toward the dressing room to try them on. On the way there, I spotted this black evening gown and grabbed it.

The first two dresses were just not what I was looking for - a red dress that fit nicely but was too orange of a red for my skin, and another that was so forgettable that I can't even describe it now.

Then I put on the black evening gown. It was a knit jersey with a ruched crisscross of fabric for the bodice, a wide neckline just this side of off-the-shoulder, and a slit to mid-thigh. It fit perfectly and looked fabulous - down to the waist. Unfortunately, the drape of the fabric clung to my rather lumpy hipline in an unattractive manner.

The shop owner was standing behind me, looking in the mirror over my shoulder. "It looks great, honey!" she drawled.

"Yeah, but the hips..."

She patted me on the shoulder. "That's not a problem! All you need is a spank!!"

I kind of blinked and almost began to say well, thank you for the offer, but my dance card is already full when I realized that she wasn't talking about BDSM in the back room; she was referring to an article of clothing.

Spanx is a company that makes a foundation garment knows as a "body shaper." "Body shaper" is a euphemistic term for the foundation garment your grandmother called a "girdle."

"Girdle" is a euphemistic term for "torture device that would not be allowed by the Geneva Convention." It's astounding what we women will put ourselves through in the name of beauty.

The dress shop in NOLA did not sell Spanx, so I visited my local Lane Bryant. The sales girl there led me straight to the Spanx collection - I had no idea at the time that there would be choices. Once I'd determined the style that I needed, she gave me her sage advice: "Look at the height/weight chart, then buy one size smaller. That will give you the line you want under jersey."

I bought the innocent-looking blue package and brought it home. My sister happened to be here, so I thought I'd try on the dress to show her and see if the Spanx did the job.

I went in the bedroom, closed the door, and pulled my Higher Power Mid-Thigh Shaper out of its package. It felt a bit like a pair of nylons, not terribly substantial, but I slipped it on. Wriggling a bit, I had the top of the garment at my waist in no time.

Problem is, the top of this garment is meant to reach to just under one's bra. The crotch was still in the vicinity of my knees. And I'd already broken a sweat just getting that far into the thing.

I've discovered a third thing, after laws and sausages, that people don't want to see made: chunky women into smoothed-out women. But at least now I understand why Queen Latifah always looks like she's built of brick and completely unjiggly.

Eventually, with enough tugging and shimmying, I was all the way into my Spanx. And when I put the dress on over it, it did indeed look fabulous. After strutting around for a few minutes, I slipped back out of the dress and peeled myself out of the Spanx. My flesh went "sprong!" and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Putting on the Spanx for strutting around the house is one thing. You can take as long as you need to wriggle into the thing when you're at home, but you don't want to be repeating this exercise throughout an evening. And the Spanx people recognize this fact.

That's why Spanx are crotchless. Yes, like 18th century women's pantaloons, you don't have to take them down to take a pee. So the night of the wedding, I dressed accordingly: Spanx first, then my fine mesh pantyhose.

I thought about underwear, but it would have felt weirdly like dressing as Superman.

We went to the wedding, which was fabulous - the couple chose an Indian theme and dressed in beautiful saris and kurtas. We were seated with friends and circulated among the crowd, greeting other friends, talking and laughing, and enjoying the fabulous Indian cuisine that was served. I looked great, and several people complimented me on the fabulous dress.

And then came the time. I had to go to the bathroom. I ensconced myself in a stall, flipped the skirt of my dress, with its slight train, over my shoulder, and got myself situated. I checked and rechecked that all fabric was clear and everything was properly aimed.

And then I sat there. Mortified. There have been studies that show that some people who have been made to drink a lot of fluids until they need to go to the bathroom really badly simply cannot allow themselves to wet their pants. (I want to see the research grant proposal for that one, I really do.) And for all my knowledge that there was nothing but air between me and the toilet bowl, the fact that my lower body was still encased in clothing made my mind refuse to believe this could be so.

I finally managed to go. But the whole time I was terrified that I would find a pee-sopped disaster in the end. Not so, though. Everything worked fine and my Spanx was still clean and safe.

I, on the other hand, was still traumatized.

We stayed until about 11:15 that night, talking and laughing and dancing to the reggae band. And then we made our goodbyes to our hosts and went home. Partially, it was because I had a terrible headache. Partially, it was because it was incredibly hot.

But a big part of it was that I had to pee again, and I was not going through that a second time.

Okay, so maybe there is something to this whole "full moon plus solstice = freakass energy" thing I've heard from a few people. Driving home from my friends' home, I saw a full-on street fight between a group of men and women, some of whom were armed with canes and what looked like lengths of rebar. Then at the full moon meditation at temple tonight, J told us that he had been assaulted on the street - he was walking along when a soda can thrown by a gang of 20-somethings hit him in the back of the head. They were screaming at him to bring his "fag ass" over so they could pound it. That shook him up more than the fact that someone had been murdered in the apartment across the hall from his last night.

AS for the meditation, for now I'll just say that I got my spiritual ass kicked. I think it's time for me to start a spirituality filter. If you're interested in being on it, let me know.

But all that aside, I did get to go and cuddle Rebecca today. She is such a sweet-tempered and mellow little thing. Once she had a late lunch in her tummy, we had almost half an hour of just looking at each other and having a nice long chat. Then she cuddled down on my shoulder and fell asleep. There is nothing quite as amazing as the feel of a newborn baby snuggled up against you, sleeping peacefully.

Now, of course, I have to make up for it by working late. But the price of baby cuddles? Totally worth it.

Love, death, birth, and sex. Who but my husband could cover the bingo card o' life so thoroughly in a 24-hour period.

In other news, I am suffering an ocular migraine, leaving me partially blind and moving toward the pain part. This is especially bad because I set this day aside for a research project. I apologize for not being able to respnd to all your lovely congrats comments, but I am currently typing with my eyes shut in order to get this up and say a blanket thank you to everyone who said congratulations.

Man, I hope this thing passes quickly. I suck at touch typing.

The call came when we were walking back from eating lunch at the local Lebanese place.

"I need you to do me a favor, and not ask any questions. Pick Carolyn up after preschool, and then stay at our house until we get home."

I conveyed the message to Ferrett, and we exchanged a look pregnant with meaning. Of course, we both knew what it meant.

But the last time, it all fell apart in the end. The last time, there was heartbreak. And so we kept silent.

We picked up 4-year-old Carolyn around 5:30. She hadn't known we were coming for her that day. It was a fun surprise, Aunt Gini and Uncle Ferrett picking her up. And Uncle Jim would be joining us for dinner at her house. For the waiting.

We didn't know, at that time, that Carolyn had talked out loud to God in the backseat of her mother's car that very morning on the way to preschool. "God," she had said, "please send me a little brother or sister. And please make it today."

Carolyn is going to believe that God takes orders like a waitress. Because her request was filled.

After so many months of waiting and frustration and heartache, the best parents in the world brought home a nine-day-old baby girl. She is a beautiful baby, with a head full of dark hair.

And we are proud and honored to be part of her adoption story, as we are proud and honored to be a part of Carolyn's.

Breathless with excitement, her baby sister laid gently in her lap, Carolyn told me that when we picked her up she thought that maybe it was because Mom and Dad had gone to get a baby brother or sister to bring home. She held that hope in her heart through the evening, and it was richly rewarded. She was there for the bitter disappointment of the baby brother who didn't happen, so it's understandable that she, the most trusting and open of children, didn't want to give voice to her fondest hope. Just as we had not spoken of it. But there, at the end of the evening, was the baby sister she wanted so badly. She didn't want to share her; she didn't want to go to sleep. She reminded me of her mother, Kat, when Carolyn first came home - almost afraid to close her eyes for fear that it would not be true after all. She finally fell asleep, against protests of not being tired, at 10:30.

In the morning, her baby sister will still be there. Her dreams and prayers, like the dreams and prayers of Kat and Eric, have finally come true. Congratulations, and I love you all.

We are fortunate enough to have Erin here in Ohio with us for Father's Day this year. But she is not here with us during the day today. She has gone a county or two south of here to spend some time with her paternal grandpa.

And my honey, who has been stepfather to my kids for almost a decade now, sent her off with blessings and no fuss. Because he understands about sharing the love, and the importance of extended family.

Babe, you have been the most awesome of step-dads to our girls. Early in our marriage, when the girls were still struggling with their relationship with their dad, you never used it as an opportunity to ingratiate yourself. Instead, you made his arguments for him, stood up for him when lesser men might have scored points. And now, both girls have an excellent relationship with both their dad and you.

You stood up to them when I was consumed by guilt over the divorce. You took some hits for me that I should have taken myself. You taught them both important lessons about being their own person, and about being responsible for their actions.

You stepped into a tough situation, and you rose to the challenge like a champ. You're an awesome dad, and I love you.

For the second night in a row, it got too late to eat something before I actually managed to eat something.

I need to sleep now. Urf.

When I was a kid, one of my father's favorite activities was "ghost hunting." This consisted of piling all of us into a car and heading out into the mostly-desolate farm country of eastern Oregon, where he would keep making turns onto narrower and bumpier country roads and we kids would keep our eyes peeled for abandoned properties. The trips weren't always successful, but every once in a while we would find ourselves wandering through an old house, climbing up stairs that my mother fretted would splinter beneath us, ripping open a vein and leaving her managing a tourniquet while dad desperately tried to get us unlost and to a hospital. Nothing like that ever happened. I remember us finding an old school house in the middle of a cow pasture. The windows were still intact, and there were desks and slates and even a small bell sitting on the teacher's desk inside. It was locked, so we could only peer through the windows, but it was a thrilling find. We were undoubtedly trespassing like hell every time we did it, but for us it was an exciting hunt with rewards infrequent enough to make each of them special.

Driving through the Lower Ninth Ward or New Orleans was a grotesque parody of that game.

We were fortunate enough to share part of our New Orleans visit with docbrite, who is local to the area. She took us to a favorite seafood spot on the West End, a place that was clearly a haunt of the locals, and we enjoyed much crawfish and good conversation. She drove us past the lovely riverside parks draining into Lake Ponchatrain, and we were happy to see a part of New Orleans that carless tourists funneled into the French Quarter rarely see.

And then she took us to see the still beating, still bleeding heart of NOLA. We drove past the point where the levee broke. You can't tell where the break was; it's been repaired, and grass has grown back up over the spot, camouflaging and blending it back in to the rest of the hillock that holds back the water.

Things grow fast in the warm, humid climate here. And so it was that we drove past several hundred feet of open field with four foot weeds before it became apparent that those weeds were hiding the foundations of houses that simply don't exist anymore.

Then we came to the houses that were still there. Holes knocked in walls, caved-in roofs, boarded-up and fenced properties. Some looking utterly abandoned, some tragically showing signs of work underfunded and Sisyphean in nature: grass cut back and away from a building that's clearly not keeping the rain out; shattered drywall removed and piled on the driveway but showing smoothed edges that bespeak the erosion of water over time.

Finding the ghosts of buildings wasn't the challenge; finding rebuilt properties was. It didn't even occur to me to ask to get out of the car. These are not the skeletons of lives long past; the people who lived here are still out there in limbo, many of them, living in a small trailer or crammed into motel rooms, struggling to find a way to rebuild their lives. It would not be respectful to peer into their windows. The ghosts here are not at peace.

And gods bless those people who are rebuilding: the houses are painted bright, happy colors as if they are saying, "I'm here, dammit. There is happy to be had."

I hope that those bright yellow, firetruck red houses serve as catalyst. I hope they are the speck in the center of the snowflake, the grit that's the basis of the pearl. I hope the neighbors come back, and build the neighborhood again. They are pioneers, these rebuilders. They are how a way of life restarts.

I will write later about the fun of the trip, and it was fun. New Orleans is not dead by any stretch of the imagination. It is struggling back from a crippling blow, but the city will survive. But I stand in respect and awe of those who are fighting to make it home again.

So, it turns out that Barack Obama is the newest candidate for antichrist. And clearly they've got it right this time.

Nevermind that Reagan was clearly the antichrist because his three names (Ronald Wilson Reagan) all have 6 letters, and he was shot but recovered. (I shit you not; people were all terrified of this.)

The best part of the whole thing is here, where commenters try to find scriptural parallels proving he's the antichrist. The best is, "With one letter purposely wrong, MABUS. can be anagramed (jumbled) to produce OBAMA." Not only s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g, but wrong.

And maybe I've got it all wrong, but if they are so certain that he's the antichrist, and bringing on the rapture is the professed goal of the fundies, shouldn't they be supporting him in droves?

There is no end to the gullibility of people, I swear.

Iam posting this from my new Blackberry. I got the Blackberry to better manage my schedule and make my work more efficient.

So far I've lost two hours to purchase, another to set up, and about 20 minutes to figuring out how to get my voicemail. Now I'm learnihg to type with two thumbs to make an entry using a very slow connection.

Technology is *awesome*!!