The Laursonian Institute

Oh blog.  I’m not doing a very good job with writing in you lately.  It feels like my time is all busy doing nothing, and trying not to stress out about getting anything done.  Of course, I’m getting all kinds of work done, but blogging has apparently fallen by the wayside.

Some important stuff has happened lately.  Yesterday Mom had to put Socks to sleep.  She called me all in tears, and it was really sad.  I’m feeling a little bummed, but on the other hand a little relieved that she doesn’t have any suffering left.  She wasn’t doing too hot when we saw her last month, and she’s been sort of touch-and-go for what feels like the last year.  It was harder seeing her fading out than letting her go.  It sure is strange to think she’s gone though – she was 16 years old.  I got her in 4th grade, I think, and it seems like she’s always been there.  Silly as it is, there are a few things from my childhood I feel a really deep connection with, some part of my spiritual formation I guess, and Socks was definitely a part of that.  Seems like she always knew what I was thinking.   Sigh.  Anyway.  She was a good cat, and a great friend, and I wish her well.

Not much else has been going on.  The usual school schedule – getting up early, hitting up class, reading, reading, reading, sinking into my post-reading daze and getting nothing else done.  We’re doing a decent job of eating this week, as I managed to actually plan ahead of time and hit up the Co-op for proper ingredients.  Made jerk chicken today, from one of our favorite recipes.  Lewis grilled it outside, as it’s been super hot here lately.  So good!  Weather seems to be turning tonight – it’s supposed to be something like 20 degrees cooler tomorrow, which is great.  I wasn’t ready for our near-100s weather yet!

April 22nd, 2009 | Tags: cooking, pets, socks, weather | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Urgh, I’m having one of those gloomy sidekick kind of days.  I woke up with “Blue Christmas” stuck in my head.  Subtract out the holiday-ness of it, and you’ve sort of got my soundtrack of the day.  “I’ll have a blue, blue, blue, blue…” … day.  Sigh.

I don’t even think there’s anything amiss, other than it’s been raining for a solid week.  Maybe that’s enough to bring a girl down in this land of bright sunshine and relative warmth.  Partially I know it’s because I’m stressed out about the semantics presentation I have to give next week, though that in itself isn’t either very important or very difficult.  Maybe it’s just the only thing I have to stress about?  I’m feeling underworked again.  Like my quarter is filled with people who have low expectations of me.   This makes me tired, and perpetuates this feeling that I have nothing to give.  I’m not a person who can run with an idea very long without guidance or support or counsil.  I have to monkey-bar my way up the ladder, I don’t sail on my own.  And I’m lacking those in-between-y grips.

I guess when it comes right down to it, I’m always just me, swinging into the unknown again and again.  And there are a lot of days I don’t feel like I have anything worth sharing.  And lonely on these bars without someone on the ground watching.  All I can do is keep swinging, and wondering where these bars lead, and how soon and how far I’m going to fall.

February 17th, 2009 | Tags: ennui, hopeless, metaphor, rain, weather | Category: life | Comments Off

Stalwart Elmside

Didn’t sleep well last night, the wind here was really howling. We have a very nice house for wind storms. Wind (and storms, together and separate) always keep me up at night. In LA it was never an issue for whatever reason. Cambridge had quite a lot of blustery nights, and being in an old creaky house surrounded by huge old trees (see illustration at right… trees not pictured).  I used to stay up all night listening to our house groan and those trees swaying and creaking.  The one solice I had there was that those trees were so old and our house had obviously been there long enough that it felt like nothing could really go that wrong or it would have done so long before we got there.

In El Cerrito we also had a fair amount of windy nights, and we were also in a bit of an old house.  The windows never sealed particularly well, so when the wind would come in off the Bay it would slip right through our West-facing window and rattle our blinds.  That was a surefire way to keep me up, but the plus side of both places was that we never really had any thunderstorms, and at worst we had wind blowing rain onto our windowpanes.  The new house seems to bypass all these problems.  New construction, well sealing windows, few tall trees.  So the wind blew pretty hard here tonight, and the worst we seem to get is that Davis has a lot of trees, generally speaking.  It’s loud, but not creaky.  And I’m not concerned anything is going to crash through the roof.  Though even then, we have quite an extensive attic, which makes me feel like we’ve got some cushion.  We do have one rather large palm tree on the side of our living room, but the landlords are having that chopped down fairly soon, so I don’t even really have that to bother about.

Anyway,  bad sleep always screws my day up, so I spent all day trying to catch up to myself it felt.  Did get a few things done;  we went to the Co-op and got the last of our supplies, and we also hit up the bookstore next door for some train reading.  The wind blew pretty steady all day as well – I couldn’t even top 9 mph on my bike going downhill off the overpass because we had such a serious headwind.  It was only 85 or so today though, which was a really nice break from the steady over-90 we’ve had since we moved here.  I don’t expect anything different from Davis, but a breath of relatively cool air is always welcome.  Oh, and I got laundry done!  It’s pretty fantastic to be able to do laundry while doing other stuff as well so it feels like I’m not wasting my day, even though it takes me at least twice as long as going to the laundromat.

Tomorrow all we’ve got to do is pack and get this place ready for Ben, who is really nicely going to house-sit for us.  May mow the lawn as well.  At any rate, I don’t expect the train until midnight-ish, so we’ve got plenty of time to get ourselves sorted tomorrow.  I really am looking forward to the trip, though I feel like I’m only seeing dollar signs at the moment.  Anyway, the trip is going to be great and I’ll remember all the excellent times I’m sure to have, and not so much how much my hotel and rental car cost.   I hope I can keep up on the blog while we’re out.  I’m bringing the lappy, but who knows about the posting possibilities.

Woot.

September 1st, 2008 | Tags: sleeplessness, trains, travel, weather, wind | Category: home, life | Comments Off