Project

All morning, the kids and I walked around town putting up posters for Ubuntu Canteen.

A day perfect in so many ways.

A Taste of the Future

Today at 7:30, I was nearly the first one at the Farmers' Market and it looked completely different from when I typically show up with the kids a good three hours later after breakfast and dilly-dallying around. I must try to do this more often, although the only reason I was there instead of under covers was because I had to drop Li'L A off so he could take the school bus to a cross country meet. The hours vary, but he's usually gone most of Saturday.

We putter around, Baby A and I, doing Saturday toddler stuff, Big A not back from work yet, and it was a reminder that soon, this will be us: Big A at work as usual and Li'l A away at college, making a life. If those are the worst separations fate has in store for us, I won't complain--although they sound chillingly lonely.

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Race, Class, and Gender

There's a lot of yammering about race, class, and gender in most of my classes, but that didn't stop me from being surprised by stuff people I really like have said lately. Friend X and I were talking about some other random stuff when he said:

Your parents must respect you because you married a white guy. 

It bugged me immediately that he would think that
(a) Race: Marrying a white person (like him!) is means of obtaining respect? And we're not talking people who might find me less alien because I happen to be married to one of their own. We're talking about respect from my own parents!
(b) Gender: Marrying "well" is the only way to earn my parents' respect?

I was fuming so I went home and told my mom, who proceeded to unleash the class bomb:

Nevermind, she said. Forget it. What does he know? He doesn't even have a good education, he's just a shopkeeper.

Mortifying.

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Keepsake

boiling restless, this light
amber: caramel of rock

we two live twinned:
same room, one food

memory monsoons: pulp
hearts flatter flower flare

my name: the first intimacy
you have laid on your lips

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If it's Broke Fix it

So I wrote a report asking that the mother be supported through parenting classes and asking for an extension on the permanent custody decision because--duh--she gets out of her transitional correctional facility in January and cannot prove that she can find housing for herself and her child next week.

I sent it off unshowered, having missed most of a night's sleep, raw from tears, having missed my morning run and not talking to my own kids at breakfast time because I was compulsively tweaking drat guardian ad litem report. The director called me in under fifteen minutes to convince me to change my recommendations to the simpler "give CSB custody right now."

We talked for over 45 minutes.

I changed my recommendation as my director directed.

I cried.

I took a shower.

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Bombs

Came home today to a tiny, sweeeet arrangement of yellow and red Dahlias on our doorstep. No note. In a town that get frequently yarnbombed, I think we'd just been flower-bombed. Thanks, anonymous nice person.

It couldn't have happened on a better day, because all day, I'd had bombs going off in my head. I went to visit a mother who may end up losing her parental rights (CSB has filed for permanent custody of the child)  and when I asked her what she thought would be best for the chid, I could literally see her wrestle with her own shortcomings (incarceration, poverty, lack of education, bad parenting) compare them to the glowing report of the foster parents the CSB worker had just given her (partnered couple, solidly middle class, educated, very earnest and caring parents) and break down in tears saying, "I don't know. I don't know. You know?" It was raw. It felt like I had peeled her skin away from her body in one long swathe in the name of effective reportage and all-round meddlesomeness.

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Two Scenes from a Marriage

The water pipes must have been flushed today because all the non filtered taps have been gushing muddy brown. Normally, I'd just deal, but since we lost our weekly housecleaner over a month ago, I've been doing a deep clean of the toilets on Sunday night. This is Monday morning. All that work wasted. I tell Big A.

Big A: I know, Puppy. I felt so bad. That's why I've been trying to direct my pee on all the muddy water marks.

Me: Yeah. You're a helper keeper.

***************

No real reason why, but when I got out of the shower this morning I simply had to ask Big A.

Me: You know how... when you orgasm... and it feels like everything is radiating from the pelvic area [I'm all scientific terminology and shit, apparently]... because a dwarf's penis... would be proportionately larger than his relative body size....  does it mean that his orgasm would be that much more intense?

[I think it says something about our level of discourse that Big A doesn't look surprised by this.]

Big A: You would have to ask a dwarf that, Puppy.

Me: You mean they didn't cover this in medical school?

Big A: No.

Me: What a woefully inadequate education.

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