Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

But first: yesterday evening the Wendling decided to, in the words of his mother, stay in his bedroom in his underwear rather than take his malfunctioning phone to the store. Over the phone I heard her lie to him about my having plans for Friday in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to do it right away. I gently told her to cut that out. I'd already bought dinner ingredients, but he wanted to stay last night with his mother in the other end of the city and handle it this morning. OK, kiddo, I'll cook your dinner and put it in the fridge.
No wait, said Ex, he just took a cooking class and should cook; the new agreement is that he'll do that once a month.
Next week, said I, and made with the chicken as originally planned. This is all a long way of saying, Good grief, the pair of them.

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But Ex & the kid are probably in need of slack at the moment: Bigpuppy has cancer. As of this writing no one knows just how treatable that cancer is, but we should know in a few hours. To her credit, Ex hasn't hit me up for vet bills directly even though I once shared custody of the dog. Poor beast. Poor Ex. I don't know how attached my son is to his dog - we got her right before I came out to him - but we may be about to find out the hard way.

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And from the Dept. of Old Testament Stuff, about half an hour ago I saw a prediction that Hurricane Irma is going to buzz right up the spine of the Florida peninsula, packing hurricane force winds all the way to Georgia. And who do I know who lives right on that path? My mother, of course. For my whole lifetime and probably centuries before, Gainesville has been far enough north and inland that nothing worse than a strong gale came through. This time is likely to be different.

I called Mom. She seems pretty calm about the situation, possibly because her location has protected her all this time, or possibly because she's run out of fucks now that she's pushing eighty. She says there's no gas to be had, so she has no plans to bug out. I asked her about shelter - basements are hard to build and rare down there - and she said she plans on using her bathtub. (!)

Sure, I almost didn't notice the full moon last night because the wildfire smoke had dimmed it, but I'll take a few days of scratchy eyes over the possibility of losing my roof and/or getting my house crushed by blown-down pines.

Ex & m'boy will be in the Bay Area visiting their family April 7th through 10th, and Ex wants somebody to stay in the house in the south end and dogsit during that time. She asked me after her usuals fell through. I noped out because I don't want to move out of my apartment and across town for a weekend. No, I don't have any plans for that weekend yet but I can see how I might like to make some. Besides, we're supposed to be divorced, dammit.

Why doesn't she kennel Bigpuppy? In a word, anxiety. The dog's anxiety, that is, not my Ex's. I couldn't make this up if I tried.

So yeah, if you want a nice place to crash in the south end on the edge of Seward Park (the neighborhood, not the park itself) and like big, bouncy, loud dogs, drop me a line. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, I can certainly relate.

I'm typing at you from my old place in Kirkland - the one I own half of - where I'll be until Monday night because my Aspiring Ex and m'boy are flying to San Diego as I type for a cousin's wedding. I'm here to take care of Bigpuppy, harvest fruit, and water plants.

This isn't to say, however, that it'll be a dull weekend: I'll be at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival as usual tonight and tomorrow night.

This has been the week when I watched things go wrong from a safe distance: a friend losing his job, infestation, things going kablooey at work. I'm not worried that the other (Or is it the eighth?) shoe is going to drop. Not much.

I bid a fond farewell to morthael and later icprncs, the former off to train for a hard-won job as the Man. How cool are they? Their house barely had room to walk from all the People in Black this afternoon, that's how cool they are. I was there the night they met over Trivial Pursuit at the Mercury. Team Florida and its opponents will be diminished. And I never did manage to transplant the fashion lobes in icprncs's brain.

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I have my permanent driver's license now. Yeah, the photo's even perkier in hi-res color. If I ever get pulled over, my photo will look more suspicious than the real me.

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Nibs scored a coupon for Pike Place Chowder, one of my son's and my favorites. That and a stroll through the market on a sunny day are worth the drive from Kirkland.

Some months back a neighbor (?) gave us the game Axis & Allies. M'boy and I may possibly finish by 2012, and that's with the less stringent victory condition. I think we've finally climbed the learning curve.

One learning curve he hasn't climbed, though, is Bigpuppy's. When we start walks, with him as the leash holder, it takes her at least half a block to settle down and stop leaping and chomping the leash. The thing is, he acts scared and jerks his hands above his shoulders. Wrong. There's more dog draining in both their futures. He has to make her respect him, and the sooner the better.

Nibs & I have been riding the Wendling for years to put his stuff away, as do most parents. One of the items we're long since tired of picking up in various places around the house is his retainers. You know, the ones that go in his mouth.

Enter Bigpuppy. She chewed both his retainers into sharp bits yesterday; we're hoping she didn't swallow any. The replacement cost is coming out of m'boy's Bar Mitzvah money.

If he learns anything from this, Bigpuppy should work out better than I ever imagined. If he can't get it together, though, our adoption trial period ends and Bigpuppy goes back to Motley Zoo. Doing otherwise could endanger the dog.

I keep calling Ruby Katie. (That doesn't bode well for me after Full Time, does it?) Nibs & I have to keep an eye on her to keep her from destroying stuff with her scarily beautiful teeth.

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Yet another benefit of the hormones: my eyelashes seem to have grown out to something less pitiful.

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I know where there's going to be a good techno party tonight: chez xaotica. The trouble is, it's only supposed to occupy one floor of the house, the DJs are reasonably big names, and there have been a few lapses in organization. (No, xaotica wasn't involved.) I'm going to get there before the cops do. Comment, mail, or text me for details.

Up: My boss gave me a laptop! I didn't even ask for it. I certainly have a use for it, and since I'm moving out and I'll need one, especially for working from home, this comes at a supremely opportune time.

Down: Bigpuppy (You knew I had to give her a nickname here, didn't you?) is reminding us that she's only seven months old. We need to let her out to pee every two hours. I was about half an hour late last night, and sure enough, she peed in our bedroom. She also whined us awake an hour before the alarm.

Up: I can tell I have breasts even when I'm lying on my back. I hadn't noticed that before yesterday.

Down: I got so busy working I forgot to score free beer. Boss.Boss.Boss.Boss even sent a reminder mail.

Up: Don't have to drive to Tacoma for zappy this weekend because Ms. Zappy was all booked up down there. I'll be doing it in Bellevue instead. Yeah, it's more expensive, but I can use the extra time.

Up: Planning social & clothes-buying things this weekend.

Bopped up to Bothell to a) work on the new voice and b) scrub a bathtub for kathrynt, who's no longer in any condition to do so herself. Happiness for me is being told I look like a girl when I'm on my hands and knees. Really.

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Over in Bellevue, I told the Wendling's shrink about my transition. To my surprise, he, Nibs, and I managed to use up an hour talking mostly about what's going to happen when. It was then that I (re-?)learned that m'boy will be going to Nibsmother's place in San Francisco August 6th through 9th. Dr. Kidshrink advised us to tell m'boy no less than two weeks before school, so that works out to around 8/19. It's a tad later than my previous plan, but no biggie. I'll just have to tell my shrink that no, really, I'm not procrastinating.

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Went to a dog "adoption event" at the Petsmart in Issaquah, only to find that all the dogs were too small. Duh, they had to be portable.

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Also in Issaquah, we tried XXX burgers. It's a small, busy, family-owned joint, decorated in 50's auto memorabilia taken to charmingly tacky excess. Fries? Excellent. Homemade root beer & shake? OK. Burgers? Not awful, but certainly not Red Mill. Maybe on a level with Kidd Valley.

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Nibs had a jeweler value our wedding rings. Nibs' fifty-year-old diamond that my grandfather bought in South America is too damaged to be worth anything. My ring? $60 for the metal, even at today's gold prices. Nibs was insulted. How metaphorical.

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Finally, back at the Abbey in Kirkland, I'm about two thirds of the way through Jennifer Boylan's She's Not There. Boylan is a professor of literature at Colby College; her first name used to be James. The book is a memoir of her transition. I tell you, I'm that woman's evil twin. It's a lovely, often hilarious book that does as good a job as any book could of explaining us, and to me it's absolutely uncanny. Much more on this after I finish the book.

I spent last night filling out a Washington state parenting plan. As I recall, this request came from Nibs' shrink. It was relatively painless. The answer to several questions on it was, "We'll decide that case by case when we come to it." I'm OK with that because Nibs has shown herself not to be actively out to get me.

I've also filled in a spreadsheet for the move that'll happen in the late summer or early fall. Yeah, still worried about money. I started now because I knew I'd keep thinking of items to put on it.

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Starved for affection even worse than usual. It isn't the hormones, says Nibs; it's the absence of Puppigrrl. She's got it too.

As part of m'boy's Mitzvah project, we went down to Barkz, a doggie stuff store in downtown Kirkland, where the Bullseye pit bull rescue folks had four of their dogs. Officially, we were there to find out what they needed and introduce ourselves, but of course, we had to pet and play with the pups.

There was one who had the Puppigrrl's coloration and similar markings, another one who sagged against you when you scratched her as mine did when she was young, and another one with a ready tongue. One of them is missing a foreleg. They were all playful and pettable and drop-dead cute.

None of them were my beautiful Katie with the deep, scary bark and the rock star charisma.

(We stopped by Meow cat rescue, too, on the way home. Sorry, kitties, but I'm much more susceptible to the charms of a dog.)