The winter must be cold for those with no warm memories

Some internal, empty furnace

Holding open a drafty window

For the inevitable weather

To rearrange the few cold items

On the endless anxious shelves.

In the evenings of the late monsoon

My dad would sit in a wicker chair

Drinking tea, talking to whoever was lodging at the guest house,

My damp hot head against his chest,

His voice low and grumbly,

 being small enough to fit effortlessly in his lap.

Babies, espcially while still in the belly are a strange and facinating phenomenon. I am amazed and frightned simultaneously. Magnus had the hiccups and I could tell. Hopefully I'll become an aunt tomarrow.

Sea breezes are sorely underrated.

I like taking long walks on the beach.

I’ve been reading Lemony Snicket’s  A Series of Unfortunate Events to the adolescent girls I work with. The blatantly pessimistic themes of tragedy, depicted with a certain sense of irony is very therapeutic. I work with girls who have been raped and shot at and abandoned and have been pushed or have pushed themselves into roles that should be occupied by adults, all by the time they are 15 or 16. No wonder they’re fucked up. Lemony Snicket’s stories are all about grieving, that when something negative happens in life, you can’t lay down and let the world pass by, things will get worse. The Baulelaire children feel their grief but it is not immobilizing, they are still able to take proactive steps to protect themselves and each other, they refuse to play the role of the victim. And this is my hope, that the girls can find the hope to do this as well, to not quit themselves, when shitty things happen they can still believe that they are worthwhile enough to find their footing again (all the profanity used here are professional therapeutic terms).

The adolescent girls are probably my least favorite group to work with because they require so much work and at the same time when I get the truck and leave the field at the end of the week I know that my time spent in the wilderness was meaningful, that I’d done something worthwhile.

Currently Listening Excava-11 By Spartan Fidelity see related

 things have happened.

There is no possible way to explain it all, so I'll put it in a grammatically incorrect summary:

Birthday week in the house-mystery/surprise/picnic/linedancing parties-I've been making bread as a destresser from the field- a zen kind of thing- got my hair cut, the woman who cut it pretty much did whatever she thought would look good and chopped more than I was expecting-epic geocaching in sketchy parts of the desert and at night-climbing-as usual-sinus infections that produces massive amounts of green snot-drive to Santa Fe, which includes two hours of stopped traffic outside albuquerque, making my drive 12 hours long-chill with Andie and Dan-see Blades of Glory-go to sweet middle eastern restaurant-pretent to go camping but come back only a few hours later-tour the Anasazi's cliffside homes-drive back to St. George-see 300-get Utah plates for my car- make more bread-attend parties.

there is more, have some pictures instead.