Because I love you.

The pork:
One picnic butt, sprinkle generously with garlic salt and black pepper, then slather with high end bbq sauce and put in the crock pot on low for 9 hours.
Shred after cooking by pulling with two forks in opposite directions.

The slaw:
One bag of packaged cole slaw
One freshly squeezed lime
1/4 c. mayo
1/4 c. sugar (in the raw)
1/4 c. cider vinegar (or a little less depending on how much you get out of the lime)
1/4 c. diced pickled jalapeños (jarred, with juicy goodness)
Mix sugar and wet ingredients until sugar dissolves, then mix in slaw and jalapeños.
Let it get happy in the fridge for at least 30 mins.

The tacos:
Soft taco shells
Dampen paper towel, put on plate, layer damp towel per taco shell with one damp towel on top.
Nuke for approx 20 seconds.

Optional:
Fresh cilantro, finely chopped
Drizzling of bbq sauce not used in cooking

Assemble, devour, send me a thank you gift.

Back in July I blah blah blah’ed about trying some big things – there were two I didn’t mention.

- I applied for an internship with Leah and Mark, and I got it.
- I applied for a program at work. I was accepted (found out last Thursday).

Holy shitake mushrooms.

The internship with Leah and Mark has been rewarding so far, challenging me to think more and shoot less, not to mention the technical additions to my arsenal. It runs through October, with a week of vacation in late September being dedicated to strengthening my brain and my trigger finger.

The program at work is (get ready for the elevator pitch) an “intense, internal baby MBA program” and begins in mid-September, running through mid-November.

It’s certainly a case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for but more than that, it’s a reminder to both of us that good things happen…but they only happen of you make something happen first.

Let’s just hope my head doesn’t explode.

N: But Mama, how does the baby get out?

A: Out of her yoni. She pushes it out her yoni.

N: Ow! Gross!

A: Here, I'll show you a video of it on the internet.

...

R: Mommy, that lady's yoni looks like a snake mouth before it eats a mouse.

Cross posted from my intern blog over at LeahandMark.com

To make up for my lack of shooting during my vacation last week, I decided that I would be my own punishment.

I’m not the easiest subject – I hate being on that side of the camera, have very few good angles and a lot of bad ones, salt and pepper hair, uneven skin tone, my nostrils that don’t match (size or shape) and I have scars from a smooching incident with a Pekingese when I was 5. All this, with the addition of trying to light myself and focus when not behind the camera made for a perfectly painful challenge.

I was probably at it for 45 minutes before I tweeted:

Trying to do something and sucking wildly at it.

I kept at it. Moved the flash closer, leaned in, turtled my neck, stared at the lens, *click click click*.

Eventually, I arrived at these, which I’m pretty happy with. It’s not every day a picture of me is taken that doesn’t make me shudder, and this alone is one of the reasons I love photography and want to learn from Leah and Mark. That feeling? I want other people to have it, and I want to be the one who gives it to them.

We all deserve to feel beautiful.

Time lapse. 37 years and the blink of an eye.

Go here. Somehow, her lack of desktop photo manipulation equals me being a breast nazi. Well said, Amy. Well said.

No, not the Sarah Palin who rolls her eyes at teachers or concerns herself with poor President Obama's lack of top-notch advisors but the woman from Minnesota who is unfortunate enough to share her name.Do yourself a favor and subscribe to @SarahPalin's Twitter feed. I love this woman.

It's funny, really, how the combination of watching the government and the histrionics of "the people," coupled with the insider experience of working for two large organizations doing work with the public (where a horde of shrieking whiners will attack every action you take, no matter what it is), has made me feel pretty relaxed about the state of the state.

Every year, the government will do stupid things. It will do smart things. Sometimes, twenty years of orbiting through a cloud of stupid will make you want to give up hope, then things will change around. Or not. Or maybe. What year is it again? But, heck, the country never ever got really bad, and unfair, and messed up, and then got better again, right?

Regardless of what the government does, some group will say "Hitler," fascism, communism, evil, handbasket, or something. Another group will defend their hypocritical gasbag leader on every unethical, idiotic, or inexplicable thing they do, while the opposing group will claim every move the gasbag leader makes is aimed at putting us all in death camps.

The other side is always wrecking the whole world, whereas our side is fighting the good fight. Direct democracy is the only answer...until the masses vote against your right to get married, or against your green policy, or for imposing religion on the people. Direct democracy is the only answer...until the masses vote for healthcare, or against your war, or for taxes to pay for services we need or want.

The president can only be a magical wizard or a devil. Never mind that the Executive Branch is only a third of our government, and not even a particularly dynamic or important third. When our party is in power, it's scandalous how the rest of the government runs over our president like a steamroller, stopping them from fighting the good fight. When their party is in power, we are headed for THE END OF EVERYTHING THAT WAS EVER GOOD ABOUT AMERICA!!!

Our party likes posters that show off our president in stylized color, looking boldly into the future. Their party likes pictures that show their president pretending to be a crusading warrior on an aircraft carrier, because they're wicked, jingoistic monsters. We're about HOPE and UNITING and AMERICA and THE PEOPLE. They're about TAKING AWAY OUR RIGHTS!!!

There is no middle ground.

You can only be liberal OR conservative, unless you're a libertarian, in which case you're still a conservative, or green, in which case you're still a liberal. There's no chance that some problems in our country call for liberal solutions, while some call for conservative solutions. That's not how it works, okay? You have to join every piece of wood using a screwdriver, whether you're using screws, nails, mortise & tenon, or glue. You may only have one tool in your political toolbox, and it must work perfectly for all problems. Besides, you're not ideological. You'd vote for someone from that other party. You haven't ever voted for someone from that other party, but you would, you know, and it's just because you haven't ever had the right candidate come along. You are smarter, politically, than almost anyone you know.

It all about identity, isn't it?

You cannot be a gay person and own a gun. You cannot believe that Jesus was the light of the world and your personal savior and still support government-supplied healthcare for all people. You cannot own a successful business and believe that taxes are important to provide for the infrastructure needed to run your business.

Consensus is impossible these days.

It only really happened in the good old days. My good old days were the brief stretch between when they added "God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and when social experimenters ruined the country with integration. Your good old days were the brief stretch between when FDR was elected and when Truman dropped the bomb. I hate to say that the world's getting worse, but just look at kids these days. You hate to say the world's getting worse, but look at parents these days.

You're broken-hearted that your president is failing to live up to the things you thought he or she was saying or promising back when you hated the other guy so much you chose not to pay attention to what he or she was actually saying and doing. You're sad that kids today won't have the kind of life you had, growing up. You're angry that people just won't see see the forest for the trees. When did everyone get so dumb?

It'll all end in tears. You just know it. The world will end with global warming. The world will end with a trumpet and a horseman. The world will end with a tilted Statue of Liberty stuck in the sand, or if Christopher Walken doesn't shoot that crazy warmonger.

Nothing will ever get any better. We should all just give up. It's all our fault. It's THAT guy's fault. It's the banking industry. It's the unions. It's the corporate media. It's lazy welfare mothers. It's oil companies. It's the Kyoto Protocol. It's those undereducated idiots. It's those overeducated flakes. It's because people have forgotten to love each other. It's because people aren't patriotic any more.

It's all hopeless. We're all gonna die.

And yet, the world keeps on spinning, and the government does stupid things. The sun rises every morning, and the government does smart things. The moon hangs heavy over the horizon, and the day gets started, and people remember that they're still angry, and still unsatisfied, and still frustrated, and that's the way it goes.

Meanwhile...

I won shot of the week again with APG, this time for this picture of Cassie. Better stand back, pretty sure my head is on the verge of exploding.

This week, my Boy BFF (he LOVES being called that), and Hubby asked what was going ON with my breastfeeding fixation.

My excuses were in this order:

1. Hey, it's World Breastfeeding Week, Mofos!

2. Recent events involving breastfeeding harassment in Boston, our new home, and during our road trip b/w Arizona and Massachusetts.

3. Soren has to wean SOMEDAY, right? So it's only natural that I'm already mourning this beautiful arrangement that allows me to cuddle The UnCuddleable.

4. I know what you're thinking..."she's gone all apeshit Lactivist on us." But it's not paranoia if the formula companies really are trying to sabotage nursing moms. Thanks, Elita from Blacktating.

5. And finally...the unending examples of frustrating breastfeeding experiences suffered by moms just trying to feed (or in my case, shut up) their kids, for Chrissakes! Like this latest display of brilliance on the part of some buttsore Southwestern Airlines flight attendant who insisted that a nursing mom needed to cover up since there were "other people on the plane."

Now I'm exhausted.
What was the question again?

Oh, and when I asked Christian how he felt about me posting a breastfeeding picture, his response:

"You mean an old picture? Not NOW. I mean he's practically got a mustache." Then, in a gruff manly voice: "Hey Mom, I'm gonna borrow the car, and how 'bout some milk?"

Before:



During (which is how it looks now):

Mothering.Com's forum posted this 1977 Sesame Street video of Buffy explaining breastfeeding to Big Bird. My second favorite quote in this video is the mom saying, "and I get to hug him when I do it." Personally, that's my favorite part, too.

Happy World Breastfeeding Week!

I really dug this piece, "How To Be Alone" by Tanya Davis that I found on Maureen Simpson's blog.

Perhaps it seemed delicious to me since we rarely get alone time, thanks to this beautiful creature...

Soren, June '10 @ Oma & Opa's house by Christian Yates

What a cheap excuse to post a picture of my spawn.

But I still enjoyed the piece by Tanya Davis. Thanks, Maureen!

She wakes me with a wheezy whine and a well-placed paw, an insistent jab jab jab with a single toenail raked down the back of my neck. I roll, yawn, and squint at her.

"Where's your snooze button, dog?"

Her head tilts, a little gesture of "what?" coupled with a barely-audible trill that turns into a yodel.

"C'mon, baby," I say, and set the old bones in motion, rolling out of bed in much the way an old fire tower would collapse, rusty joints shrieking and buckling as the sturdy struts of its aging frame start rolling down a hillside, picking up speed in a silent film breakdown until it crashes into a heap at the bottom of the slope.

My feet crash to the floor, one after another. The dog dances, her too-long claws skittering on the floor and reminding me of another chore that lies ahead in the list of things to do.

"Let's get some breakfast, huh?"

---

I pull off Route 1 with a trunkload of Swedish housewares, bed linens, and sundries, a run for booty on the last day before I knuckle down for a stretch. The sky is lush and expansive, a perfect canvas for the last of a summer day that has inexplicably failed to be another in a seemingly interminable series of sweltering nightmares here below the Mason-Dixon. I've got the top down and my new glasses on, the reward of clarity neatly counterbalanced by the frustrations of artificial refraction, where the ground is always moving, shifting in subtle ways as I step forward.

In the clear twilight, the clouds are all strings and filaments, threads strung out on the loom where the world faces its weaver. I have a small, delicious milkshake wedged between the seats and a roast beef sandwich in a bag, waiting for a moment when I can find a place to pull over and eat. I am on the right way home, but I pull off the main road and disappear down the rabbit hole that leads down, down into the immense peaceful labyrinth of the agricultural research center.

The roads get smaller and older and the built landscape falls away, all the strip malls and gas stations and business parks and servicenters and everything, just wiped out in one perfect wash of green—first the trees in a band of woods along the creek, then the road dives into the unlimited farmland of the center, concealed so perfectly in all this modern mess.

I pass the last private house holding out in the middle of the center, cruise through the wheat fields where the landscape dips to meet a little creek, and the sky is turning colors, going from blue to blue to violet to gold. I turn on my headlights, which open like demure eyes showing surprise, and as I round a bend into a straight stretch where the old NASA antenna test range used to be, a pair a lights bob at the edge of the road.

The fox is delicate and sleek, his tail slung low and swinging gently in pace with his relaxed canter. He's in the other lane, coming my way, undisturbed by the sudden appearance of a little red roadster, and something in me slows as I watch him. I let off the gas and he does the same, and the two of us slow down, effortlessly shedding momentum, until we settle to a silent stop, right there in the middle of the way.

He looks up. There's something miraculous in these animals, something deep and vivid and present that spoke to us all those millennia ago, and they wrote themselves into all our histories, the trickster gods stealing the stars from the skies.

Hi there, guy.

I stay. He stays, too. The passage of time is overrated.

This is the inherent problem with how we live now, the lack of these meetings, and the way we fade away into the wash of blue-white glare from countless monitors. These moments start to fade, the sight of something so rare and fine without the mediation of cages or videotape, the thought that you could just reach out and stroke the fur along his back, and we become something lesser, poisoned by convenience.

This is your game, little guy.

In time, an ear flicks around with the perfect precision of a rotating radar dish, and something is on, something that requires eventual, if not immediate, attention. The fox strides into a new canter, but stays right in the lane, trotting away westward in the fading sunlight.

I put the car back into gear and go.

---

"Catch it!"

I throw the toy, which is nothing more than a thick rope, tied into a hard knot at each end. Daisy bounds off the bed and intercepts it neatly in mid-air, then brings it back, turning away with the ridiculously oversized toy in her mouth every time I reach out.

"Drop it!"

She's getting the idea on that one, on the meaning of that turn of phrase, but she's young and filled with contrarian teenage energy, ready for a fight for ownership of the toy, even when I really don't want it. I've got my headphones on, the big ones that look like tuna cans on my ears, and I'm enjoying a nice butt-moving groove to start off a morning of golden sun and cool, fragrant breezes drifting in through every window. I snatch the toy and run for it, with Daisy at my heels.

"Ha!"

---

There's a single cicada on my window screen.

I take a moment to sit there, right next to the window, just watching.

There's a click, a little squonky buzzzzzt, and he starts to sing there, calling out in the zzz-ZZZ-zzz of zipper love songs, so loud it's just impossible—so much sound coming out of something roughly the size of a peanut.

I think of TV Cowboy calling me in a panic in the middle of the emergence of Brood X back in '04.

"Joe, there's one of those things on my window screen! It's up here on the tenth floor!"

"It can't get in. Just enjoy it."

"You're an ass, man. It's making that noise!"

"Neat."

Perhaps I should have been a little more supportive, but it's a cicada for pete's sake, even if there's a great story behind why TV Cowboy was petrified of the little things.

I sit back and I smile in the way you do when you can either smile or wince—the way you remember funny things that get lost when life turns sad—and listen to the cicada singing, hanging from my window screen and looking for a date, the way his species has done it for more years than I could ever imagine.

---

The aroma of my sandwich finally gets to me and I pull off in the abandoned parking lot, deep in the Center, where there used to be a path down to a pond, labeled carefully with signs explaining the plants and trees there. The path is overgrown now, and the signs are gone, victims of budget cuts and the paroxysm of governmental paranoia that killed off all the best little-known places to go, but the gravel parking lot is still there. I pull in and turn off my headlights, which flip down obediently into the smooth line of the hood.

I unwrap my sandwich and take a long drag off my milkshake, enjoying the sounds of birds and insects and the nearby highway, which sings its own song of progress, a drone of tires on asphalt that rises and falls like something natural because it is as natural as the rest of the world, despite our unyielding propaganda to the contrary. The roast beef is rich and tasty, with that tang of au jus that's like meat tea, perfectly set off by the right selection of spices, and it's perched in the cradle of a sub roll from H&S—all told, a cheap delight for an era of expensive everything.

While I'm sit there, I hear heavy footsteps behind me, and I freeze, with a mouthful of half-chewed meat. The grass bristles, then the gravel crunches, and the footsteps multiply, coming closer in the near-darkness.

As a lifelong Marylander, the old stupid stories come back to me, the hoary tales of goatman breathlessly told by any teenager who ever lived within the orbit of Prince George's County, and even though I'm a grown man, I have a moment of paralyzing doubt. After all, construction workers and the police reported seeing a sasquatch at the nearby megamall just a few year s back, and…

Shit, it's goatman and I'm in a convertible!

I look into the rear-view mirror, and something large, brown, and furry is moving behind me.

Goatman!

I actually feel hot breath on my neck and that's it. I holler like a little girl the second I hear the loud snort and turn to face a full-grown deer, standing placidly next to the car and regarding the whole scene with a kind of contented interest. Two others flank the car on the right side, I exhale and laugh, which only disturbs the group a little bit, and finish my sandwich while the trio wander around the parking lot, only leaving when my headlights flip back up as I get ready to continue on.

Kids these days.

---

The coyote runs past as TV Cowboy navigates the DC gridwork. It's not a dog, or a deer, and has that low, lean, wild look that you just don't find in domesticated animals.

"Wow, a coyote just ran past us!" I remarked.

"What?"

"A coyote. You didn't see that?"

"No. What are you talking about, now?"

"It was a coyote. There are coyotes all over Eastern cities these days. I think I read that there's a pack of them living in Rock Creek Park. They catch rats."

TV Cowboy just rolled his eyes. When we got back, I triumphantly thrust my laptop in his direction, with data to show that it was not, as usual, just me.

---

I turned up my music to that point where you can start to feel it, a little funk for a Sunday morning, and I bopped around the apartment in my headphones, just enjoying the groove. The dog followed me around, giving me that vaguely disapproving look that she always gives me when I've got my dancing shoes on, but I decided to bring her into the fun, so I grabbed her rope toy and took off for the back room with her at my heels.

I'd throw the toy so she could catch it, then approach her in that slow, taunting way that would get her in paws-out mode, squinting at me and then launching away in a giddy run. My place is just two rooms, so it's a limited game of chase, but she doesn't seem to care, and wags her tail hard enough that her whole body's swinging each way, with that absurd giant rope in her mouth.

I snatch it and toss it into the other room, and there's an immediate mechanical roar. Daisy charges back in, running between my legs, and looks up with her brows up.

That thing I don't like is making a noise!

With her hiding behind me, I find the rope toy next to the vacuum, which is running in place after I'd neatly hit the on-switch with my blind throw. With a toe, I click the switch again and the roar stops. Daisy trots over to make sure the big blue carcass isn't moving.

That oughta show you, stupid thing I don't like!

She wears me out, but something's got me laughing this morning, and we just stop for a second to sit, panting, on the sofa. I scratch her behind her ears and she rolls over, presenting her pink belly for a scritch. She's just so new and so energetic and fresh in the world, a little ball of curiosity and trouble, and for just a moment, I think of Rose and that day when she reached the end of the road, and I look back at Daisy, into those bright eyes, and it's just so wrong that one day, she'll be on that stainless steel table, all scruffy and worn out and tired, and it'll be the end of the line.

What are you thinking about?

Daisy tips her head, tucking her ludicrous ears back in a now familiar gesture of thoughtful surrender as I reach out to give her a scratch.

"Nothing, little girl," I say, as if I'm answering that imaginary question.

Her ears snap back to attention, and she hops down from the sofa, retrieves the rope toy, and brings it back to me.

"You're wearing me out, dog," I say, but I throw it anyway, and haul myself back off the couch for another trip around the apartment, and then another, and another, until it's time to settle down and wash the dishes.

You don't need any commentary from me on this one. Just go here. Thanks, Kate!

What a great way to start the day - seeing this Boston.Com article on how the YMCA vows to teach its employees that you can't boot a nursing momma from the premises, even if it means the other kiddies might have to see some NIP (Nursing In Public, pervs!). Click here to read the Boston Globe article online.

If you're one of my Facebook friends or follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed I've got something up my butt about public breastfeeding right now.

Ironically, I personally do not enjoy publicly
breastfeeding my kid. At least not now that he's almost 2 years old and
people look at me like we belong in the pages of the National Geographic.

I got to experience this again and again during our move from Arizona to Massachusetts with a cranky toddler who, after being sufficiently pissed off by the packing up of his toys, rediscovered the wonder of nursing. In every. single. public. venue. possible. And lemme tell y'all, those Kansas oldsters in the McDonald's were not keen to it.

Frannie to Zelda: "Well, she's STILL NURSING HIM."
Zelda to Frannie: "He's gotta be EIGHTEEN MONTHS OLD."

Actually, Ladies, he was 19 months at the time, but very astute (and loud) observations you made while dipping your apple pies into your ice cream cones. Stay classy, Kansas.

It seems odd that in 2010, folks are still harassing women who are simply trying to feed their kids, even if that means *gasp* it has to be done in public every now and then.

I found it even odder that in a metro area as supposedly enlightened as Boston, a mom was recently kicked out of a Woburn, MA YMCA for nursing her three-month-old baby.

What the Fresh Fuck (to use one of my favorite blogger's phrases), People? Really???

Here's an open letter to the YMCA from that mom, which she has asked folks to forward widely:

Open letter to YMCA re: Breasfeeding. Please forward widely

Posted by: "liz and ricky"

Thu Jul 29, 2010 5:33 am (PDT)

To Whom it May Concern,

I am writing this letter to follow up on a conversation I had yesterday with
Amy Turner regarding my legal right to breastfeed in the Child Watch daycare
portion of the North Suburban YMCA in Woburn, MA. My overall goal in
addressing this issue is a peaceful resolution, but staff education on the
local level, and attention brought to this issue within the
regional/national structure of the YMCA, are also extremely important to
me. Upon researching this issue over the last day, I have come across
numerous incidents that have made the news regarding the YMCA and
breastfeeding in recent years. It is clear to me that a national policy
needs to be established. Though I am aware that this is not within your
control on the local level, it is within your power to educate your own
employees, and to post signs within your establishment that support and
encourage breastfeeding in all areas where mothers and children are
otherwise allowed to be.

To restate the chain of events yesterday for anyone other than Amy who may
read this letter:

I returned to child watch to pick up my three children, Ricky, 5, Caroline,
2, and Christian, 3 months old. Christian was hungry so I sat down to nurse
him in the Child Watch area. I was told in no uncertain terms that I could
not feed him there. I informed the workers that what they were telling me
was illegal, and that I am allowed to breastfeed wherever I am able to be
lawfully present. They insisted that the "no eating within Child Watch"
policy included breastfeeding. She also stated that I would be "exposing
myself" and the "kids would see it." I again told them that they were being
discriminatory and that my right to breastfeed is protected by law. At this
point the other childcare worker stepped in and agreed with her coworker,
and they both told me that I must go into the hall in order to breastfeed,
and that I needed to take it up with the director if I had an issue with
this policy. At that point I left with my hungry baby to find another place
to nurse. It was safer to leave my two year old daughter screaming in Child
Watch than to try to chase her around the Y while nursing my baby. She was
obviously upset by this turn of events and was crying as I left.

When I spoke to the director about this issue, Amy Turner, she assured me
she would look into the issue for me, and she seemed to take my complaint
seriously. During our initial conversation, when I informed her that the
YMCA's actions were illegal, she also made it a point to tell me that my
"membership can be terminated at any time, for any reason." This statement
concerns me very much, because I value my YMCA membership, and do not want
my membership terminated. On the other hand, I do not want to be pressured
by the threat of losing my membership to not follow up on this violation of
my legal rights, and I feel strongly that staff education on this matter is
of the utmost importance.

The law that I referred to yesterday in my conversations with various YMCA
employees was passed recently in Massachusetts. It is MGL chapter 111,
section 221, and it states, "A mother may breastfeed her child in any
public place or establishment or place which is open to and accepts or
solicits the patronage of the general public* and where the mother and child
may otherwise be lawfully present. No person or entity shall "restrict,
harass, or penalize a mother" who is breastfeeding her child. *with the
exception of houses of worship or places of religious instruction." In my
conversation with Amy yesterday, I read the law to her, and she expressed
that it was possible the YMCA was covered under the religious exemption.
However, since no religious classes happen at the Woburn YMCA, and certainly
not in the Child Watch area, and it also cannot be considered a "place of
worship," the religious exemption under the law does not apply in this case.

Any private establishment that invites patronage, like the YMCA, is included
under this law. It is my greatest hope that this mistake can be rectified
by the YMCA, by first and foremost changing the policy on a local level in
the Child Watch center, by finding ways to educate all current and future
employees on the legality of this issue, and by posting signs which reassure
and encourage breastfeeding mothers so that they know the YMCA supports
breastfeeding within their establishment. On a national YMCA level, I would
like attention brought to this issue and my complaint copied and sent to all
relevant parties, so that the YMCA can work on its overall policies in order
to avoid this kind of situation in future interactions with mothers and
their children.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Gomez

I had the delightful, if somewhat disorienting, experience of having lunch with Joan Armatrading back in either '87 or '88. I was playing the serpent in the first scene of The Magic Flute at Wolf Trap, wearing a costume that was as big as a car, and built like one, with wheels and a fire extinguisher for smoke-snorting nostrils. In point of fact, the only part of me you could see under the costume was my legs, and I wore painfully tight green foam monster gams that were so difficult to get in and out of that I didn't even bother stripping them off on breaks between running the scene. For one thing, the act of peeling them off also peeled off my tights and underpants, without fail, leaving me buck naked in a shared dressing room, so it was just easier to lumber around backstage with giant monster feet and scaly monster legs and a t-shirt until the end of the day.

I was sitting in the crowded canteen there, having my lunch in my giant monster legs, when a lovely British voice asked if I would mind sharing my table. I smiled up and said "by all means," and suddenly I was EATING LUNCH WITH JOAN FREAKING ARMATRADING...in MONSTER LEGS.

What a lovely, charming woman. I'd run into a lot of celebrities, and they were often exactly like you'd expect them to be--sort of preoccupied and disconnected. Ms. Armatrading, on the other hand, was just sweet and friendly and we talked about all sorts of things. I'd only known her music by way of my sister before, but I started listening after that. The lady's a treasure.

As she picked up her tray, she smiled, and said "by the way, I love your pants!"

JOAN ARMATRADING LOVED MY GIANT GREEN MONSTER LEG PANTS!

It was one of those wonderful moments that makes me glad to be me. Now, the monster legs had one more celebrity moment left, towards the end of the run of Magic Flute, too--I did my serpent bit, got slain by powerful operatic types, and lumbered backstage to the empty rehearsal room I'd been using as a staging area to get out of my monster legs. I flopped onto the floor, peeled off twenty pounds of green foam, my tights, and my underpants, and darted to where I had a pair of shorts tucked away, only to realize that the room was occupied and that I'd just displayed my penis to the Kronos Quartet, who were in there, innocently rehearsing, when this weirdo in monster legs rushed in, stripped to his bare butt, and ran across the room.

There really isn't much to say in such situations.

But...well, JOAN ARMATRADING LOVED MY GIANT GREEN MONSTER LEG PANTS!

And so, I am 34 years old. I still feel like I was more adult at 28 than I am now, but mostly because when I was 28, jogging early in the morning made sense. My brother gets up at some ungodly early hour, like 4am, and he waters my mom's mesquite trees and drinks coffee and spends time watching the sun come up before he goes to work in the heat. I remember when I used to do that. I remember that I liked it, and I think it's probably a wonderfully different experience in the desert. Maybe it would be the same if I gave it more of a chance in Oregon. Here in my hometown, those early hours hang onto something wild. Coyotes are still out, still threatening from the washes, which in a few weeks will start to run with torrents running off from the flashfloods of the monsoon season. If you're going to see a wild burro, it'll be in the early morning when it's still cool (and by "cool" I mean about 95-100 degrees instead of 120).

If you talk to anyone who has lived here for less than ten years, they'll tell you that this town is dying. It's easy to believe that. Driving around, you'll see a whole lot of signs offering rental specials and short sales and empty buildings. Businesses that were here in my childhood have folded, but the new Big Lots does pretty well in the old JC Penny's building. Houses are back down to something more reasonable, and rent is pretty cheap again, so if you've got a job or a stable income, living here is easier than it was five years ago. The last house I lived in here was a three bedroom with a big yard that rented for $850 a month. The same house rents for $600 now. Some two bedroom apartments are advertised for $400. I haven't paid that little since I was a freshman in college. Families that have lived here as long as mine say that this is just like when the chainsaw plant went under in the early 1980s and it'll come back when the economy turns around. Besides, the lake needs a little time to recover from all those boats for all those years.

Last time the population took a dive like this and the town almost went under coincided with my parent's divorce and our eviction from the duplex my parents lived in when they moved here. Bad for everyone else, but not bad for us, because despite terrible credit and a part time minimum wage job, my mom could still swing a small apartment for us to live in. I remember when the population hit the 10,000 mark, we were excited because it meant that 1. we'd get a Burger King and 2. a stop light. Now, somewhere around 50,000 people live here, or lived here anyway, but I read something about only having jobs for a population of about 35,000. Thing is, there's no urb for the suburban feel of this place. So people have to move. Commuting means driving to Las Vegas two hours away.

This is the first time that I've come home that I haven't recognized at least one person wherever we've gone, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. The last graduating class is now legal to drink, but they're also legal to move, and the ones left here are in that wasteland of their early 20s, still living with their parents and likely drinking too much, and I remember that time too. I much prefer 34 years old to 22, but instead of the nudging I got back then to get off my ass and apply for any job whatsoever, my brother now reminds me that migraines indicate strokes, and we have a history of neurological disorders in my family and I need to lose some weight or I'm going to have diabetes and a stroke and then die early. My mom tells me that she no longer cares whom I'm in a relationshp with, she'd just like to see me get pregnant, please. It's weird and unsettling, and it shows me that I'm on the cusp of being middle aged.

Now, I'm going to get in the shower and wait for my retired mom to pick me up to take me shopping for my birthday present-- bras from the fat girl store.