What's the criteria for hipsterdom? 

Vince and I went to our favorite pho place for dinner tonight. Toward the end of our meal, a young couple came in with their toddler daughter. They told the waiter they'd never had pho before. The woman said she hoped it had noodles. They were sitting behind me, so I couldn't see them. Later Vince referred to them as "that hipster couple." I scoffed and said we were way more hipster than they are. 

He said, "I don't know, the guy had a beard, funky glasses and an old man sweater, and she had tattoo sleeves." 

I said, "You're a musician, I'm a playwright, we have a podcast, and our dog is named after someone who tried to kill a sitting President. We're way more hipster." 

But now I wonder, what construes being a hipster after age 40? 

PS., I don't really think we're hipsters. 

Hi all!

We've been up at my folks' place since Sunday. We were eating dinner and I got a text from my dad that he had to call an ambulance to bring him to the hospital because he blew out his knee and couldn't put even a toe's worth of weight on his right leg.  I called him and he was TERRIFIED, and absolutely convinced this was "the fall," meaning the injury an old person has in their late 70s that begins the rapid decline to death.  I kept trying to tell him not to order the headstone quite yet, but he was really, really upset. By the time he got out of the ER and back home it was 11:30PM, so we all agreed Matt and I would get up to NJ on Monday (the 13th).

So, apart from snowcamming (which is now over), I have been almost entirely offline since we've been up here. I haven't read OPW or LJ; I've done maybe 10 mins max on Instagram and Twitter.  I'm sorry I haven't been more responsive.

So yep, we're still up at my folks' place taking care of them since my dad blew his knee out on Sunday.  Strangely, Mom seems to be doing MUCH better. I'm thinking with my Dad down for the count, Mom realizes she needs to step it up a bit, and she has! She isn't nearly as forgetful.  Maybe the extra responsibility is good for her.

Since we've been here, we let my folks handle their own breakfast as a test to see how their mobility is for the day... but then we wind up handling lunch and dinner plus all chores (laundry, cleaning Mom's bedroom commode, cleaning/prepping her CPAP, meal prep and serving/cleanup, shopping, snow removal, med checks, laundry, washing the kitchen floor, cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, etc.)

Yesterday (Thursday) I took my dad to the orthopedist to figure out what's broken on him and what the prognosis/path forward is.  Diagnosis: Torn meniscus, but luckily it's not an entirely fucked meniscus. It should heal with some PT and TLC in a few weeks... he's already markedly better yesterday than he was on Monday when we arrived, but he absolutely still needs a walker, which means he can't carry anything.  My mom can't carry anything either... so the small "care-related tasks" like dumping and cleaning my mom's bedside commode is impossible for either of them to do... let alone carrying food to the table. So as much as we want to get home and get our lives back, we need some kind of plan to have these small tasks handled. I cannot rely on my brother or sister-in-law, which is sometimes frustrating but understandable. My parents' neighbors have offered to help out, but cleaning a chunky pee-filled commode isn't something you ask a neighbor to do... that's a family job. (Sorry for that visual.)

Matt has been so good anxiety-wise lately... the CBD + Xanax combo has been working miracles. However, yesterday was a Very Bad Day and a reminder that he is not "cured," and a reminder he mustn't get cocky and not take his meds.  Caring for my mom, caring for my dad, and caring for plus worrying about Matt yesterday made me wonder how people with kids care for several people every day of their lives with no break whatsoever. I was wiped out. 

My parents have been very kind and appreciative this visit, and they keep telling me how truly grateful they are that we're up here and able/willing to help.  I'm very happy to have been up here, too.  In the evenings once we're done with dinner and all of our tasks are done, my dad and I (and sometimes Matt)  wind down by binge-watching Nurse Jackie.  I've been enjoying it. When I asked him why he chose that show as opposed to the other million things on Netflix, cable, Amazon, etc., he said, "I like Edie Falco, and I wanted to watch something without explosions for a change."  My dad? Watching something without fast cars or explosions? WEIRD. :-D

Selfishly, I'm also happy to have ridden out the storm up here with my folks because Delaware got a ton of ice and apparently Arden and north Wilmington lost power for a good long while... parts of which didn't get power back until yesterday (Thursday) with crews from North Carolina helping out the local power company workers. I know our house lost power at some point (even if just for a moment) because I tried remoting into my home computer yesterday and couldn't, which tells me it turned off unceremoniously. (My computer stays off if the power gets cut.)  So I have no way to know if we'll come home to a freezer full of warm, stinky food or what. (Though Joe Trainor just stopped by our house a few minutes ago to return a soprano sax we rented for the sold-out Billy Joel show we did on Saturday night down at the beach, and he was able to use the garage door OK, so the power's onbviously on now.)

Today is Friday, and I'm not sure when we're going back to DE. We really wanted to go to a concert on Saturday (tomorrow) night, and Matt has a final rehearsal on Sunday afternoon for an Able Arts skit they've asked him to be a part of for their show next week.  We may just go home for the weekend and come right back up here.

It's actually been pretty OK being up here. I feel very appreciated and useful. 

Anyway, I promise to be more present online when I can. I'm sorry that I can't be a better or more responsive friend now... right now I need to keep focusing on being a good daughter and a good partner. 

Love you all.

I taught from Monday through Thursday (today) at Wharton Business School (at Penn) this week. It felt good to get back in the saddle.  It's Penn's spring break this week, so we were able to snag one of the really nice classrooms in the basement of Vance Hall, which is on the corner of 38th and Spruce.  There is no cell signal in that there basement, so if you need to send/receive a text you have to go into the stairwell that leads outside so you can pick up just enough signal to send/receive a few characters.  Plus, I'm not on their WiFi/network, so I really am cut off from the world from 7:50am - 4:30pm. (I should add that by the time I get home from teaching all day, I am 100000% out of spoons, so I don't even get online, really. I'll check my work email via my phone, and that's all I got. LJ/OPW/Twitter/Instagram? Nosiree.)

Anyway, the last time I taught at Wharton, I had Delaware Express Shuttle drive me to and from Penn every day... but at $130 EACH WAY (yes, really... $260/day x 4 days, that's over $1000 just to get to and from work each day.  Granted, it also involves the least amount of hassle, and since Wharton is paying a pretty penny for this training, I didn't really feel all that bad about spending that money (crazy as it sounds).  

So, this time around I decided to take SEPTA for the first time in my 18 years of living in Delaware.  So I had Delaware Express drive me TO Penn in the morning, and in the afternoons I would walk to the University City station and ride SEPTA to Claymont for $6.50.  Much better than $130.

Yesterday (Wednesday) the train schedule was such that by the time I ended class, I'd have to wait over an hour before my train would leave, and I wouldn't be home until 5:45pm. We had a Billy Joel tribute band rehearsal last night, and I desperately wanted to take a nap between teaching and rehearsal, but I knew I wouldn't be able to fit a nap in if I took the train.

Anyway, after class yesterday I grabbed my backpack and walked down Spruce St. towards the University City train station, and I'm weighing the pros and cons of taking the train as planned for $6.50 (even though the train didn't leave Philly for a good 75 minutes. I also considered calling an Uber to see if they would just drive me home thanks to the miracle of credit cards... and then I decided, "Screw it. I'll take a cab, then. I wanna get home, I wanna lose this heavy backpack, I wanna take a nap... but most importantly, I wanna see my guy."  As my eyeballs scanned Spruce Street for a cab without passengers, a car beeps next to me... and it's a green Mini Cooper with Matt behind the wheel!  Apparently he had texted me 7238 times asking if I'd like a ride home (messages I never received due to the location of my classroom); and when he didn't receive a response, he decided "Screw it.  I'm gonna go get her."   What makes it nuttier is that Matt doesn't 'normally' drive up South Street / Spruce Street to get to Wharton (the whole ONE other time he's been to Wharton), and instead he'd normally take some weird back streets... but something made him take Spruce, and we like to psychically believe it's because he somehow "knew" that I would be walking down that road at that time.  So I jumped in his car.  We kept saying, "Oh my god! This is so crazy! What are the chances I'd be walking on this street at the same time you decided to drive up it?"  Boom!

As if that wasn't amazing enough, today I finished up my class and a few students wanted to hang out and chat, so I did... all while covertly keeping an eye on the clock because I didn't want to miss my noon train... which I did.  No worries though... after I said goodbye to the students, I gathered my stuff and walked out of the building, and onto Spruce Street... and suddenly Bobbi Block is standing in front of me, fresh off the plane from New Zealand, and we are staring at each other, totally baffled and excited and giggling to be seeing each other so randomly and unexpectedly (not to mention out of context).  We kept saying "Oh my god! This is crazy! What are the chances of us walking this way right now?"

I love when cool stuff like that happens.

Sometimes the voices in my head surprise me. This morning I was trying to get my shit together to leave for work and I was running a checklist in my head. 

"Glasses house keys charger earbuds phone wallet knitting no not knitting you won't have time GOD DAMN IT I WANT MY KNITTING, WHICH SIDE OF HISTORY ARE YOU ON?" 

I'm working this week... my first in-person teaching gig all year so far. (Yes, really.). I'm rusty... and sooooo tired. I teach all day and then go straight home and eat dinner that Matt has waiting for me because he rules, and then I go to bed.

I haven't read LJ, OPW, Twitter, instagram, nada.  Haven't even checked my personal email or voicemails because my classroom is in the basement so we have no cell signal. So that's it.

I'm teaching in Philly at Wharton/UPenn and I took my very first SEPTA ride today from University City to Claymont.  Yesterday I had a sedan come drive me home for 135.00 (yes, really, one way). Today, that same ride, sans traffic, was $6.25.  Holy shit.

Anyway. Sorry I'm ignoring you... I'm ignoring everyone.

Love you.

Me

(Xposted to LJ)

I was flying my drone today. It's not all fancy and sexy like the big (really) expensive ones, but it wasn't cheap, it fits my life nicely (it's just slightly larger than a smartphone), and it's been a hell of a lot of fun to play with.

The down side to it being so small is that it's crazy light weight and gets blown about by the lightest of breezes. Still, I took a slight risk. There's been a ton of wind here in TX, and today wasn't terrible. What's more, I was in an are somewhat protected from wind by trees in a wall around me.

It wasn't enough. I was flying for a little bit when a gust of wind came in, slammed my drone head on into a concrete pillar, and she dropped out of the sky and smack dab into the middle of a creek.

What's more, I wasn't able to get to it immediately.

You can picture me running the long way around to scramble through some underbrush and through muck to find... the creek was muddy as hell, so I couldn't see the drone at all.

Fuck.

That's where the bad luck ended. I was able to find her, and eventually recover her.

I pulled the battery as soon as I got it in my greedy hands, but I'm sure the damage was done.

Stopped at Fry's (holy hell do I love that store and wish they had locations on the Right Coast) and picked up a T5 Star Head screwdriver. Which - you know - you can just pick up any ol' time you want when there's a Fry's nearby. Brought the drone back to my hotel and opened her up as much as I could (there's a couple of screws I couldn't get at without breaking the case and causing perminent damage) and she's drying over night.

I'm not really hopeful, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I really want this to work.

In the meantime, here's a little video that Google assembled of some of the footage I previously took:

Today I started listening to this podcast. Listen from the beginning. I promise it is 100% worth your while. 

When I tried to copy and paste this URL, I accidentally pasted the last thing I cut and pasted, which was a line from the last scene I wrote in Jarnsaxa Rising: "And now I will destroy you, and send you back to your father in very small pieces." 

I have two new thing-I-wanna-write ideas battling in my head. GET OFF MY STOVE. On my drive to work in the morning, I think about both of them at the same time. I'm polygraphamous.

Just finished "Between the World and Me," by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Recommended.

There are things most "white" folks, especially white men, can't really understand if our bodies have never been at risk of being randomly destroyed. On an ordinary day. With little or no connection to our actions.

The book is by no means intended solely as a manual for understanding what that feels like. Still, it succeeds brilliantly on that level.

But it's a mistake to read it as a letter to white Americans. The book is written in the form of a letter to his son, following a model laid down by James Baldwin in "The Fire Next Time." In the end, he tells his son to struggle — to pursue a better, less fearful existence for himself — but not to struggle for "the dreamers," the people who buy into the idea of whiteness. Because our awakening, if it ever happens, will have to come from within. And from his perspective, it's not worth getting shot for that slim hope.

I felt that blow — he is saying to us, in effect: "don't wait for your victims to come save you from your own history. We can't and won't. If you're going to change, change yourselves. But I won't wait up nights." There is little to suggest that he should.

The most beautiful parts of the book concern his own coming of age, the awakening of a sense of possibility at Howard University, tasting what it means to blend into the crowd and be invisible while visiting Paris. But also the shooting death of a friend at the hands of the police, and a conversation with his friend's mother. And his son, heartbreakingly certain that Michael Brown's killer would be indicted. And... how little has changed.

Gather your spoons
Our trip to the moon
Is on hold today

Gather yourself
We’re sharing the wealth
Hey it’s on display

Finding the means to say
If you’re suffering in this present emergency
Come home with me
We’ll watch TV

A weekend march
You’re doing your part
Ineffectually (or so it seems)

Just stick to the job
And Peter will rob
Paul eventually

Rome wasn’t sacked in a day
The rot took time to set in
We’re going to win
Wear your flag pin

Your bubble blew up
And you don’t know what
That’s supposed to mean

The sky isn’t blue
And one equals two
Counterfactually

And every cow has a voice
If you’re living in flyover country
You must be pleased
Wave up to me

Well some of us should move to Missoula
And some of us to Cedar Falls
And some of us will settle in Asheville
That won’t be hard to sell at all

And then we’ll teach our cats to pray
We’re not a very disciplined bunch we do things our own way
I guess we’ll stay

Snowflakes falling by the ton
And you know they can’t drive in snow
In Washington
They’ll come undone

Let’s walk together
We’ve such pleasant weather
Look who’s arrived

Wear a pink hat
Well how about that
We’re organized

And hope will always be a place
Even if it’s in a solid red state
We’re still alive

And let that be our battle cry

CAT SCAN. 

Mo Magee is the most determined cat. She is letting me tap this out with one finger in between petting her. 

Tomorrow I have a job interview with the Bureau of Vital Statistics, in Center City. I want this job because it would put me closer to things & people that are important to me. I'm cautious because I don't want to start over with learning processes and building credibility. But, that's life. I also made a few friends and leaving them would make me sad. 

This post had been brought to you by Alteril, the over the counter megadose of tryptophan that knocks you out cold. Which is good so I can sleep now, get up early, scribble in the paper journal, work a half day and then go to the interview. 

Apropos of nothing, am I the only person who has noticed this resemblance? 

With a thrill in my head, and a pill on my tongue, dissolve the nerves that have just begun, listen to Marvin (all night long), this is the sound, of my soul...

Yeah, I had no idea it was a Marvin Gaye reference. Unless the guys in Spandau Ballet knew this guy Marvin who WOULD. NOT. SHUT. UP. 

Ok, that's enough out of me for now.