No Really, I *Am* Alive

But where has my life gone? And by "life" I'm talking not about merely the state of being alive, with all that entails (with the breathing and eating and sleeping), but about the whole wide and messy spiderweb of events loosely centered around one person, only in my case it's less like a web and more like a sandstorm. I'm 3-D in my chaos, people. I'm not keeping up with the life admin, to say the least. I mean , laundry still gets done, and groceries find their way into the house, but I'm letting email go unanswered, birthdays go unacknowledged, and friends go un-checked on. And that is just frustrating, but I'm so tired all the time that I occasionally fear my face might just melt off.

Anyway, that was just a poetic way of saying damn, I'm still feeling incredibly busy and overwhelmed, especially in the evenings which are really all the free time I have right now (ah, for the golden olden days in which I could email, or shop, or even blog--occasionally--from work!) The mere thought of trying to tie together everything going on into a coherent blog post has stopped me from blogging on many an evening--so screw that, I'm just going to post some random bits, a la the smorgasblog on the general theory that something is better than nothing. Those of you who have become overly dependent on segues between your paragraphs might just want to avert your eyes or leave now. You have been warned.

Job update: still employed. Still barreling through each day managing to mine a few small shiny success nuggets from the swift raging river of newbieness. Holy moses that didn't make much sense…what I'm trying to say is that the days are full of work and go by quickly and that a lot of what I do every day is not terribly easy or fulfilling, but it is becoming more so week by week. I'm getting at least a little bit of rhythm and groove now, and that is a blessed relief. Of course, now that I'm juuuuust feeling like I've gotten a tiny bit of equilibrium, last week we had a big change in the way we get compensated--but I think it will ultimately be to my benefit. I'm going to be working my ass off in July, that's for sure.

Josh and I went to my 20th high school reunion in SF last weekend. It was quite a head trip to look around a room of several hundred people, many of whom I had not seen since graduation, and see the physical differences a couple of decades make on familiar faces. I'm glad we went, and I made a few good reconnections, but overall it was noisy and unsettling (in a variety of subtle and unsubtle ways) and we wound up leaving on the early side.

Which wasn't so bad, really, because we were staying overnight in the city at the funktastic Hotel Triton in honor of our anniversary (thanks for the babysitting, Grammy!). So we went back to the room full of funky furniture and hit the mini bar and spent some sweet time together that night and all the next day. We slept in, went out to breakfast, poked around Chinatown, saw a bit of the Pride Parade going on nearby, and wandered around Union Square. We talked a lot about all the entrepreneurial plans we're considering and made ourselves anxious enough that we decided to pass on the idea of an elaborate fancy dinner. Instead, we picked up Indian take out on the way home and got to see the kids before they went to bed, which made everything better.

So much else has been going on…but it's late now and I'm tired and rushing to finish. Quickly then, a few recent events.

Last Tuesday was the first writer's group meeting in about a month, and ohhhh I am just still so blocked on new writing. Getting closer to being unblocked, but still--the stuck and fallow feeling is not comfortable, and not okay. But I'm just too tired and distracted and overwhelmed by everything else to be able to, ahem, focus. (Yes, that's an in-joke reference to my novel.)

Friday was all about the iPhone (and much other tech fiddling) for Josh, but we had a fun Shabbat dinner with new friends on Friday night. Eli and his buddy broke (!) the hinge off the bathroom door, but other than that it was a lovely evening.

Saturday after interminable errand running and house cleaning we left the kids with a babysitter and went out to the woods to celebrate our dear Burly Fighter with much of our Tribe. We stayed until around 2, which although far too late for my aging cranky physical body was barely enough time.

Despite severe sleep deprivation and a full measure of overcomplicated familial logistics, yesterday we met up with DKJZ and my parents and went to the Marin County Fair, and overall had a great time. We didn't get to see the art exhibit or the animals, but we did get to go on the Tilt-a-Whirl and bumper cars, and see Stormtroopers at the Creatures & Models exhibit (Isaac was hilarious giving high fives to the Stormtroopers--but what does he know from the Dark Side?) DKJZ left after dinner time and Josh had to leave for another engagement not long after that but the kids and my parents and I stayed for fireworks and funnel cakes, and watching my kids' faces throughout that experience alone was worth any hassle or tiredness.

Falling asleep now. That'll have to do.