I was lolling around on the bed in the wee hours with Mike drowsing in and out of sleep. I was telling him about my childhood on my grandparents farm and all the things I remembered about it between tears and grieving.

As I was talking, I realized I remembered a lot of details. Details make for good writing, so I think I'm going to write the stories down for my kids. I think they don't understand working from dawn to dusk every day. I have always worked like that, but I've lived on or near a farm my whole life and that's just how you do things. You get up early and feed and water the animals in the barn before you eat, so you don't forget to feed them. You do the same thing before dinner each night, too.

For example, I remember tromping everywhere around my grandparent's farm. On the right hand side of the house, there was a garage that the roof had long ago fallen down on. The roofs were made of slate a lot back then. I remember my brother and I sifting through the rubble of that garage looking for large slate tiles to use as chalkboards and taking them home to use chalk on and playing school with them.

I also loved to fish. Mind you, I hate eating fish. I can only stand tuna if you cover it in mayo, cheese and other stuff, so it's a relatively secondary ingredient. I just enjoyed the process of looking for earthworms under rocks and logs in the woods. I enjoyed the accoutrements of fishing, a kreel, a can of worms, and the quiet.

I used to go straight back from my grandparents' house to a dam on a small river there. The pool under the dam was about 10-15 feet deep with boulders around it -- a good place for fat brown trout to hide under in the heat of the afternoon. And there was just not a good, safe way to get to the top of those boulders and the trout could clearly see me, and just ignored my wiggly pink worms.

I once caught a small brown trout, but I had been told it'd better be as long as my forearm, if I were taking it home because otherwise it'd be too small. And this one was more like 6-7 inches long, so not worth keeping, but I remember being fascinated by the difference between that brown trout with its brown speckles and the shiny colorful rainbow trout that I'd occasionally caught other times, and throwing it back. I often went with my brother or my cousin, Harold, and we just played in the water, fished, and hung out.

If Harold hadn't had a motorcycle wreck in his 20s, he'd have been a year older than me. His grave is near my grandfather's and soon, my grandmother's.

So maybe stories are a good way to record a sense of family for my children. Also, I think Mike often doesn't know a lot of this stuff from my life. Even for me, it feels like I'm talking about a movie I saw.

--

Today, we have been working on cleaning our bedroom. Russell's room is spotless, Genny's grounded til hers is about the same. And Mike and I've been plowing through ours.

Mike found out something new about me today, as we dusted off an old wooden cigar box. It was full of my harmonicas in every key. I showed him my box and said I hadn't played in years, so didn't even know if I could any more. I sounded out a few keys from blues songs on the radio and picked up parts of it. I was embarrassed as hell, but my ear is still pretty good, even if my mouth is out of practice. He just watched me with this bemused stunned look. I haven't played since before Russell was born. I used to play with the radio and just play when I went camping.

Maybe if I can clean up my house, I keep thinking that maybe my life will get into order, too.

__

I discovered today that I do better if I take an extra dose of glucosamine. I was standing up and discovering that I was experiencing no pain. It's weird, but you get used to wincing and it was weird bracing for the pain to wince at it. And then, it didn't come.

The side effects of glucosamine is that it can raise your sugars and make you retain water, which might explain why my ankles have been comparable with elephant legs, recently. I took extra metformin to cover for it and am enjoying the absence of pain for a change of pace. It's weird to be pain free and not loaded up on painkillers. I still have swollen ankles, but it's 97 and I took extra glucosamine, so I'm willing to ride this one out.

Imagine that.

My mom and I had talked last weekend and she mentioned how sick my grandma had been and how she seemed to be improving. I immediately thought about how much I wish I could go there to see her and was thinking about creative financing that would get me there.

From January to April, she'd lost 30 lbs, but no one had really noticed. Her doctor felt she needed to go into a hospital for a bit. She had been improving some, but then got really ill with a cold that turned into bronchitis.

She was having trouble eating, but in a week, she went from weighing 92 lbs to 77 lbs! When my parents had been there, my dad got her to drink some ensure and he could here it gurgling into her empty stomach. She seemed to be eating better and recovering from bronchitis pretty well for a 97 year old woman. My Aunt Della, however, forbid anyone from discussing "going back home" with her. She had clearly lost her ability to continue to take care of herself.

This is the grandma that when my folks weren't speaking to me and were treating me like I was some piece of garbage, sent money, cards, pictures, etc. This is the grandma who showed me her poetry when I was writing my own around the age of 10 and encouraged me in mine. This is the grandma who when I said I'd rather be confirmed Episcopalian instead of Congregationalist, started talking about how our family name was on some very old Episcopalian church in Connecticut and that it ran in our family and that I had nothing to feel embarrassed about. My parents were deacons in the Congregationalist church(which my grandma attended), but when I looked at who attended each church, I really felt much more like I'd rather emulate the relationship with God that people at the Episcopal Church had than the folks at Congregationalist church. My mom was at first stunned, but when i started to tell her all the lousy unkind things I'd seen most of the Congregationalists do versus the Episcopalians in town, my mom came down squarely on my side, too. Of course, then I had to attend both church services on the weekend -- Saturday night at the Episcopal mass and Sunday morning at the Congregtionalist service.

This is also the grandma to whom my dad didn't speak for over 20 years. I finally convinced him that his parents were getting old and didn't have much time on this earth and that they missed him. He said in that past year that not a day had gone by where he didn't think about them. He asked me to get their permission to call. My grandmother was positively giddy when I talked to her at the prospect of speaking to her eldest son after all that time and begrudging. Germans are a stubborn bunch!

Recently, I've been missing her very much -- kind of a dull aching for family, where I belong, I think. To some degree, it's because we're struggling so hard financially and I feel so alone and desperate, and to some degree because I know it's hard for the kids to not have lots of family close on either side of the family.

Last night, sadly, she passed away in her sleep. She was a dear person and loved me in spite of my crazy 20s. I know when my grandfather died she kept commenting on how she hoped she'd go very soon because she missed him so much. I guess she finally is getting to be with him. I'm sure you're happier, Grams. I know how much you missed him. I remember your eyes filling up while at the Lakehouse. It made me cry, too.

She was so thrilled that I had dressed his grave with perennial flowers when I went back east after his death-- Sweet William, of course. I hope I can get back there some day and dress her grave with Sweet Alyssum for Alice.

Some of the reasons behind my visit then had been to have my kids meet her. My grandfather's death had driven home how little my children know of my family and I wanted them to meet my brother, see my folks' farm and meet my grandmother and see the family farm. I wanted them to have a sense of family that didn't result in Russell being treated as a second class citizen by my in-laws. I wanted the kids to meet their family and have a sense that there is in the world, a family that welcomes both my children equally. (I think my in-laws have lightened up on Russell since that time, but at the time, it's how I felt.)

When I can stop crying my eyes out, I'll get to a poem for her. Right now, I simply ask God to bless her and my grandfather and am thankful for them being reunited in death.

Amen.

Well, Saturday night, I took the kids outside and we worked in the yard, cleaning up, putting in a few last minute pepper plants and watering everything.

Mike sat down and talked with Mark and told him we can't swing him living here unless he's paying something towards it. We told him what we thought it ought to be and he seemed a little ticked off, but he also said it seemed fair.

Russell's room is a freaking pit. Mark's gonna leave for a couple days to apply to work for a police position in the SF Bay Area. He's going to finally visit his grandparents, who have been impatiently waiting for him to arrive. While Mark is gone, I'm going to basically go sit in the boy's room and help him clean everything from stem to stern. Russell claimed he had no space to put things in his dresser. I found 2 drawers completely empty and 2 with 1 to 3 things in them. I told him I thought he was full of crap. But then I promptly removed an entire trash bag's worth of clothes that he had definitely outgrown.

Then I'm going to make him do the same for me in my room. (yeah, so not gonna happen)

---

Today, Russell was kind of dramatic and whiny and tired from getting to go to Tahoe with his friend. I finally said that if he was going to be a whiny pain in the butt every time he went to a friend's house that I would limit his life a lot. He was not amused.

I was tired and cranky and I felt entirely insecure about how pleasant or unpleasant I was with Russell. I just felt like every time I asked him to do anything he tossed a giant fit and then didn't do half of what I asked anyhow. I felt really frustrated with his behavior. And Genny's been a complete spazz.

Tonight, we put her to bed. And all of the sudden she comes down the hall screeching her head off. Apparently, she'd taken a flying leap into her bed and she split her lip on the bed frame. The line that cut me to the quick was,"my teeth are bleeding!" uttered through heartfelt heaving sobs. I got crushed ice into a ziploc bag and a towel, handed it to Mark who took it to Mike who was comforting her because he get down the hall to her faster than I could. As Mark headed down the hall to her, I told him to have her rinse with flouride. I don't know if it would help if her teeth were knocked a little loose or not, but I figured at least it would give her a sense of having received medical treatment of some kind for it.

I got there as the two brothers tended the princess. Her lip was pretty puffy and split, but looks like it'll heal up in a few days ... definitely not worthy of stitches. I will see what I think when she gets up.

I had Mike sit on the couch with her icing her lip for 10 minutes and then, he tucked her back into bed. We reminded her that we'd told her that she shouldn't be goofing around like that with her bed. She tried to deny that she'd done anything wrong, and I just said, "Geez, Genny, we're not dumb! We were kids, too, once. We know about jumping into beds! Take it easy and knock it off, already. You're giving me a heart attack here!" She kind of giggled and went and sat with Daddy.

I'd been mid-muffin making in the kitchen, so I got the stuff doled into the tins and put into the oven.

Mom's muffins are a source of enormous delight to my family. I mean they're good and all, but I swear, you'd think it was Christmas. The big deal is eating them while they're still hot from the oven with butter. Russell wanted another one immediately and was bouncing around like a puppy on crack to have another.

---

Beyond that, we did this. I was actually in charge of recording all the data. My first comment is that I think that the horse could be decomposing and infected for a truly disgusting splatter effect. I also think that testing water balloon should be next weekend's data collection effort. For one thing, you could do crazy Kool-aid and really go for that biological warfare thing and for another, if you were short of the castle, you'd still nail the front of the building.

The job hunt has come to a standstill. There's like nothing out there...at all. The economy seems to have just taken a really bad nosedive and there's nothing out there. Mike and I are discussing the possibility of struggling through the summer and then I'll just teach again. I've suggested that I could work a couple days a week at the 7-11 and he freaked. He said he didn't want me hurting myself. I don't really want to hurt myself either, but I don't want to lose the house. The thing is if they reduce how much we have to pay each month by even a few hundred dollars we could swing it.

Our ARM is kicking over in August. Basically, if we even got the reduction from that, we'd be better off than we are.

I've put in a beautiful garden. We should have tons of produce by summer's end. I'm really psyched about that. I may start taking laundry to the laundromat though because I'm worried about the well. The thing is when it floods in the midwest, we get droughts.

I love my brother-in-law, Mike's youngest brother. However, I'd anticipated he might stay here a week or two -- not a month or more. He doesn't do anything to job hunt. He just plays games all day and plays with the kids -- which the first week or so, would have been fine. However, it's been more than a month. He refuses to do the things he needs to do in order to apply for a job. He stalls constantly.

And yes, he has helped around the house. He does dishes and laundry periodically. He organized all my cupboards in my kitchen for me. He reorganized my linen closet. He helps with laundry and with stuff, but it's getting much. These are things that are hard for me to do, but that I could do myself. When he does stuff like that it's helpful, but we were getting by before without him around and I'm sure we can again.

Basically, Mike and I talked and as of July 1st, we're going to charge him room and board and he better get a fucking job. We figured our mortgage is about $2200 a month, which means that each bedroom is worth about $733 a month. We have the master bedroom and bath, so ours should be more which we figured at $900, which leaves about $600 per room for the kid's bedrooms. If we split the cost of one room, that's 300 just for the mortgage. We figured with food and utilities, another $250 is appropriate for $550 a month for room and board. It's probably even low-end, but it would also help us out.

If he's going to stay, I want him to move into Russell's room because I want my livingroom back. His blanket, clothes and assorted crud are always out there and I'm sick of it. He needs to stop sleeping on my couch and have his own space. I also need to have a place that people can walk into.

There are some other things...he has to apply for this one position that everyone has told him to apply for. He needs to apply with temp agencies at the very least and look for employment through them. The other thing is that he's up at all hours. Mike and I can't begin to have alone time because he's always around. I'd like to be able to make love with my husband without him out in the livingroom. At least, if he's in Russell's room, if we make noise, he's less likely to hear it.

I know Mike enjoys him being here. For him, it's like one big frat party all the time with his brother. He gets to play games and hang out. But we can't afford to be party animals any more. We just can't. Ideally, I'd prefer he just got on with his life -- job, apartment, girlfriend, the works!! However, if he wants to hang here, he's going to have to pitch in financially.

Wow, there's no work available for a person a step away from a freaking wheelchair, I swear.

I'm applying for everything. I applied for an adult education class instructor in computers. I figure that's a job I can do. As long as it's just the one class a week, I'd be fine. I'd take vicodan that night and swim the next day and be ok. I am applying with Mike for any contract web work we can get our hands on.

I've got several sewing projects for Genny to hit, so I'm about to go scrounge around in my plastic storage boxes and get those out. I also need to find my corduroy and faux wool fabrics in the garage for her and make her a few pant sets for fall.

I also severely need to find out when the blackberries come into season on the valley floor. I have this thing in my head and have had for years. I want to get a little canoe or row boat to take down the Mokelumne river to pick berries off the side of the river. Apparently, there's a lake at the end. So you have to do some driving, but it seems like something I've done in my dreams so many times, that I have to actually do it in real life.

Last night, I was dreaming about biking around the lake here, too. I could smell the pine needles and I had Genny on the back on the pony bike. I need to ask Mike to get my bike out of the shed and clean it up. We've got a stationary bike in the garage, so I figure I can start with yoga and warming up on the stationary bike, so I can get on a real bike and get my stupid leg all the way around.

The range of motion limitations surprise me, but my big old body is freaking me out. I can't hardly get into the pool in the back unless Mike's here to help me. A good ladder costs more than the stupid pool did, so it's hard to justify. And June, my ass. It's way too danged cool right now to swim much -- 70s means that the pool is in the 60's which is cold. 80-90s bring the pool temperatures to 70s which is far more tolerable. I never thought I'd be hoping for hot weather, just so I could swim.

And Mike's brother is still here. I mind and I don't mind, but he really needs to find a fucking job. We can't afford him and he's just kind of dicking around all day playing on the computer all day. I'd be ok, if he was talking about all the applications he'd put out, but that is not happening.

So, in August when it's hotter than Hades, remind me how I wished for it and tell me to stop kvetching.