Having agreed with FBF that the best way to get back into writing is to write (in my lifelong struggle with my contrary resistance to the fucking obvious), I'm back in the saddle once more.

Howdy! Instead of trying to backfill the story so far, which hasn't worked so well in past attempts, let's try in media res.

*The CMonkey has outgrown her moniker, as she is six, in first grade, reads and writes, and owns an intro level chemistry set (basic kitchen experiments made awesome with glow in the dark powder!).

*Ancient Cat is now 19, which is 98 in cat years. She's a bit creaky, but is enjoying life now that we're not in Connecticut. Her affection remains undimmed, despite being characterized by a hamhanded plausible deniability--'I just happen to be sleeping tucked under your chin, it doesn't mean I missed you, it's just that your breath is warm.' Like some elderly cats, she has bouts of inexplicable yowling in the night, but we're chalking it up to a newfound interest in Klingon opera.

*I think it's hilarious when squirrels use the sidewalk.

*My brother and sis-in-law and my parents are both within blocks of my house. We're not really this provincial, honest! But it's quite handy, since I like my family, to have them in walking distance.

*My eyebrows are going selectively grey in the middle section where I've plucked since age 14. I'm experimenting with only plucking the brown hairs and leaving the silvery white ones. They remind me of butterfly antennae.

~*~ In my burgeoning collection of odd-jobs, I've been eschewing a chair for the accounts payable clerk gig.  Instead, I stand with the computer propped higher and work that way.  Unbelievable how different it is from a sitting position; I get more work done with less mental effort, I'm not exhausted when I go home or restless at bedtime, and after a week of adjustment my legs are noticeably stronger and my hamstrings have unwound like snakes in the sun.

~*~ Seriously, without any current stretching habit I'm regaining flexibility I haven't had for years.

~*~ As I was income-challenged when it came out, I've only now started watching Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.  Haven't finished it yet, as parenting duties cropped up, but even if the balance somehow sucks I'd adore it for one reason alone: in the horse riding scene the soundtrack does a musical callback to "Two Mules for Sister Sara".

~*~ I cannot explain or defend why I love "Two Mules for Sister Sara", I just do.

~*~ I'm experimenting with not having a plan in life; instead I have a few guiding notions to shape my efforts and I'm letting things fall out as they will.  Which they always do, so why waste time confabulating what I want to be airtight reassuring plans that, ultimately, will have little to do with actual life as it unfolds?  Bah, fuckit.

~*~ While I've been sleeping better as a result of this mental practice, it still takes me too damn long to choose a meal from a menu.

~*~ The things that I love, need and want, do as daily as feasible.  The things that really aren't important will fall away.  The things really are will accumulate nacre like pearls.  Stop worrying over contingencies, risk vs. reward, and solving problems five steps ahead.  Focus on actions, opportunities, ideas, and greasing the skids in the direction you want to go.

~*~ I should go to bed, I have an interview for another odd job tomorrow.

Notes from the new homestead:

~*~Received a delightfully passive aggressive note re: the state of the lawn from a Nonny Mouse.  Our guess is it came from the lady kitty-corner, recently seen Windexing her porch.

~*~Threw someone into a panic by parking by their house--she seemed deeply perplexed that I wouldn't move my car, but it was legal parking and I was there for ten minutes picking up a Craigslist lawnmower with a kindergartener in tow.  Life can be rough, but my park job is not, deal with it.

~*~Went into the squat cage for the first time in years.  I'd had no idea how much I missed it, squaring under the weight and rearing up like a weed busting through concrete.

~*~So...any good Avengers fic?

* One cool part of synesthesia is that the very randomness of the associations injects chaos into the mental landscape.  Hence, numbers in the thirties are kind of fussy and raisin-colored, while numbers in the forties are a clean bright red.  The fifties will be a stately warm dark blue with a mischievous wink, the sixties a butter pecan yellow, the seventies a rich green and zippy, the eighties lilac and generous, and the nineties a spicy dark red.

* I have a sunburn on my nape and shoulder blades.

* Getting a tablet with a keyboard will not help me write more.  Only writing more will help me write more.

* I have a much calmer and healthier attitude toward money, risk, material goods and life itself now than ever before, having blown up the Bridge Over the River Middle Class and lived to tell the tale.

* Having only discovered it in the last year as a "thing I could do", I find I really like eye makeup.  I wear it about 3x a week on average, and I still hide it behind a heady lens prescription, but it pleases me in a strange way.

* I'm started dreaming a great deal this week, which bodes well for my mental recuperation after the Autumn of Doom; also, writing may follow now that the subconscious is talking to the conscious again.

* I'm back at my peak weight, but do not look like I did the last time (we both got married at our peak weights--perhaps this is the key to a successful partnership, as opposed to dieting down for a special day which will always be in one's past).  Clearly I've been putting on more muscle in the intervening time, which takes the sting out of falling back upward.

* Have gone back to swimming laps with a snorkel at the YMCA.  Being in the water is so serene and beautiful, pulling through and against the weight of it, like flying through a heavy atmosphere.  Love it.

In lieu of a futile attempt to update, I will present a series of jump cuts to indicate both the passage of time and the series of events since the last post:

*unemployment remained high for seven months, finally resolving in the last couple weeks
*kiddo renamed our accommodations "the consolation attic"
*I remained the only family member not hospitalized (spouse, both parents) or prescribed antibiotics (ditto, plus kiddo and cat)
*I did have a lovely bout of swine flu during finals, however
*I now have a part-time gig that's *gasp* in my field more or less
*I slightly accidentally joined a college a capella group.

It's been a whirlwind of medical care, cleaning out old junk, learning science, keeping the dream alive and trying to cross the chasm between where we were and where we need to be--which is finally coming together.

I miss writing.  I'm glad the chaos is abating.  I'm off to a capella practice, and I'll post again soon. 

The name of the game this year was Reboot, but I'm thinking that's way too narrow and shallow to truly capture what the net effects will shake out to be.  Less of a reboot.  More like gearing up for the zombie apocalypse.

In other words, we may have another round of downsize/move in store.  The first was a success, but real life introduces variables you can't model.  Back in MI we did without sleep, time to think, or leisurely interaction with loved ones.  We drove a lot.  We worked a lot.  It was gerbil-wheel living and having broken out of that we're not going back to those killing compromises.

But back in MI we had family, and the nurturing stabilizing presence is sorely missed on both sides.  His second bout of cancer has left my dad frail, and that's troubling (prostate cancer is probably in remission, but he's still dealing with fallout from the salivary gland cancer he's a four-year survivor of--he retires in a matter of months and it's none too soon). 

Also, my kid blossoms with her grandparents and there's been heartbreak on both sides of that since the move.  We knew it would be hard, and a loss, and we always planned on getting the band back together in the next few years, but if push comes to shove we aren't investing our time and effort into a place, but in living a life we enjoy with the people we love.

Then there's the dealbreaker.  The big thing we moved for was financial stability, which turns out to have been a mirage due to corporate shenanigans.  The local economy is better here (where wouldn't it be?) but our network of people with operating capital and job prospects is far better back home.  The very idea of a stable job is quaint and naive.  There is no stability, only Zool.  From now on we work for ourselves and every gig is an indefinite-length contract: make hay like a sombitch in summer and hope it gets you through the winter.  Networking is the spouse's strength, budgeting is mine, and we'll trade on his marketable skills while I plow through school.

Honestly, I have no idea what we're going to do or where.  But that prospect is not the double-distilled panic-in-a-jug it used to be.  We have options, and we have a damned sight better grip on our priorities, abilities and desires, and if this was just a few months of living in a cave eating locusts and honey then it still worked.  Nothing like packing up your household twice in a year to really cull the crap out of your life.

I've been in dry-dock for months, which has been quite lovely as I've been catching up on years of honey-dos and whatnot.  I sorted through six years of old papers and clothes, changed schools,

Reading a ton
Hippocrates has been quite interesting, as he's quite biting about physicians less skilled or scrupulous, offers marketing advice for setting up and running a practice, and gives one a great appreciation for modern medicine where the moment a broken bone pokes through the skin you aren't as good as dead.

Here's a strange two-fer: "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes followed by "Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell.  First you get a grounding of the physiological effects of a low-fat high-carb diet, then you get a historical perspective on being dirt poor in two great cities in the early 20th century basically subsisting on bread and--if you're lucky--working 80 hours a week.

Also Woolf's "A Room of One's Own", Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class", Freed's "Possum Living", Tannahill's "The History of Food", and I'm halfway through Doyle's collected Sherlock Holmes.

Knitting a bunch
Two diaper covers (like these) and a baby blanket for a friend.
This sweater using this lovely fingering yarn that I bought almost three years ago, which is done but not yet blocked or pieced together--though there's only a little bit of seaming to do as I knit most of it in the round instead of as written.
This sweater using this alpaca/wool blend, which is almost done.
This sweater (full length) using this merino/silk blend, halfway done.

I have no idea how any of these will actually fit yet.  I'm measuring and fiddling as I go to help them fit a torso that is short, busty and broad-shouldered, and yeah, I should probably finish one first and go from there, but what the hell.  Learning is learning.

Miscellaneous
I've finally populated my AO3 account: archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/works, and at the same time give blanket permission for podficcers with the sole caveat that I get a heads-up so I can listen. 

I've enjoyed the book so far, as it's a great story of physiology, bad science and even worse public health, I was particularly stricken by that one sentence.  Ostensibly about the data gathered from a study of semi-starvation in the 1940's, it also handily explains a great deal of my experience with women in groups from high school onward (and before that, if you count my five aunts and their love/hate relationship with weight watchers).  Avoiding fat, avoiding meat, struggling with weight and constantly fucking talking about food and sin.  Playing a losing game. 

Let's set aside for a moment the compelling questions of who gets good meat and real food in this society (people with time and money) and who gets processed grains and industrial meat and oils (people without time or money).  Let's set aside the power implications of the gendered conception of men working up an appetite for big meat and women being naughty by eating a cup of sugary dessert.  Let's also set aside the huge issues of sustainability, ethics and the nasty underbelly of class and power issues in the food system and in many of the movements to reform it.  We need to do a lot of quick hacking and thoughtful rewiring as a culture, because the system quo is fucked, eats some of us whole and makes a good portion of the rest sick.  I've had these questions on my agenda for awhile, no easy answers, just trying out household level solutions and running deprogramming interference on the young child when advertising can't be avoided.

There's a whole world of power, food and both real and imagined sin to explore, but what really stopped me this morning was this: given that both the goals and the methods of the USian fat woman's presumed diet are optimally crafted for failure, and have established negative psychological effects, how much human effort, drive and potential is thus channeled directly from spring into sewer?

I've now applied for the local community college, which makes four institutions I'll need to wrangle transcripts from when I apply to grad school.  My application tracking spreadsheet grows even more tabs, but whatever.

I've spent the last few weeks cogitating and fermenting, running figures and sitting all quiet for my emotions to come visit me like unicorns in the forest.  Now that I'm out of cubeville and things are stable, now that I've had time to think for a while, I've been poking at the desire toward pt and seeing what it tastes like without the heavy flavour of desperation.  Is it a daydream that had weight because it was an escape route?  What else could I do with my life?  What if I just let this fall aside?  What do I need to commit to this?  What are my personal resources and pitfalls?  Am I ambivalent because I'm using this break to course-correct and refuel, or is this just midwinter nihilism and the fact that suddenly the biggest thing in between me and this huge thing is myself?

Yeah, a lot of tail-chasing.  I'm like that sometimes.  I'm also working on the ability to actually let myself rest and have downtime instead of being anxious about all the things I should be doing instead.  Also talking, which is good.  So coming down on the same decision is not necessarily a waste of time so much as it's a fetishistic reassurance to enhance confidence in the face of huge challenge ahead: student loans, a profession in flux in a field headed over an unknowable horizon (possibly a cliff), and starting it all by diving into one of the most competitive pools in the world when I apply for grad school.

It's borrowing trouble.  Tens of thousands of dollars worth of trouble, possibly slightly more than my starting annual salary would be.  It's making a bet that a non-doctor health care profession remains remuneratively relatively stable for the next 15 years.

But I keep coming back to the fact that nothing else seems even remotely as interesting, varied, and satisfying as mechanically trouble-shooting the body and working with people to help them feel better.  It's working with my mind and my hands.  It's science, art and storytelling, it's the integration of technology with physicality.  It's also paperwork and politics and regulatory compliance, but I've sharpened my skills for those: there's little avoiding those, and I can hack 'em a lot better these days, especially when it's part of something worthwhile.

And while I don't see myself as ambitious or driven, I have the brains and stubbornness to not only succeed, but to make it impossible for me to coast happily in a low-expectation niche.  I tried.  I really really tried.  And despite the winter doldrums, cabin-fever, burnout and double-barreled grief, I'm a much happier person now than I was in cubeville.

I can work my ass off for something worthwhile.  I just need to know that it is indeed worthwhile.  But that's unquantifiable to the level I'd like, and so I've been stuck on the edge of the diving board unable to gauge the safety of the water below.

Remember, 'Gotham'--
that fearsome metropolis--
first meant 'home for goats'

I've now found several PT programs in NYC that make me swoon, and have realized that the big pond is unavoidable because I'm already swimming in it.  You'd think that living by an MTA train station would be a clue, but honestly, I really wasn't aware that I'd technically moved to a northern suburb of New York--I come from the rust belt!  I watched Canadian children's television growing up!  Connecticut sounded like a random New England state!

Six weeks ago I missed my exit going to school and found out that there are parts of Detroit, within walking distance of downtown, where the stoplights have been turned off.  Now I'm trying to understand how mass transit works in a metro area of 10x the population that 1. has mass transit that 2. works.  I was committed to the flyover-state lifestyle.  I never even saw myself being a tourist in NYC, but as it's highly likely I will end up being a commuter instead, the city has the last laugh.  Just like that time I got drunk in Vegas and ended up at the New York-New York*.  I have no frame of reference for an urban lifestyle.  I only started watching 30Rock last week**.

Two hours in a car--
too far! But does this hold true
for a subway route?

Provincial panic aside, I'm beginning to believe I have the brains and the balls to do this, once I shake off the burnout.  It's easing with sleep, good food, quietude, and the fact that when it's not dumping a foot of snow in an evening, the winter sky is this weird blue color and things are brightly lit.  I keep wanting to find out how this whole thing works, I'm like Hermione Granger without "Hogwarts: A History", except I think I'm better off not reading the manual and figuring it out mano a mano.

*I was trying weave my way back to the Luxor, having made the mistake of downing a shot of Patron Silver while waiting for my nachos after working a convention of gun nuts for twelve hours.  I bought a keychain.
**As the above anecdote illustrates, I'm less Liz Lemon and far more a jaded agnostic Kenneth.