Random

First: I love this story about Obama getting the boot from Disneyland because he was smoking on the gondolas. Love you, Barack.

Also, a pregnant woman with a kid younger than Baz walked into the cafe. Two of them! How do people do it?

Today's writing

I don’t know whose idea it was to fuck. Fucking as killing time, yes, that’s an idea. How can you relax enough to have sex when your child is missing? But that’s what leads to amazing sex sometimes – the tension that propels people into one another’s arms, the search, the hunt. The same way you turn over your child’s pillow for clues. The way you call their name in the backyard, hoping. The hard, hot tears you shed right before reaching for the only other person who really understands.

We start right there in the kitchen, his hands on me as we sit in our separate stiff seats. Kissing him is different than the typical. His tongue is more snakelike, a serpent looking to strike. His hands hit their targets, investigate. It’s almost like I’m cheating. I keep running my fingers over his wedding ring, dreaming reflexively of a faceless and forbidden other. But it’s not. It’s him, the one I gave myself to years ago, the one I promised, the vows I’ve wished so often to break.

Boys

Happy birthday, sweet baby

Written just now

I should have been nervous the day Mike replaced the windows. That just wasn’t something he did. We’d lived with the same shoddy, cracked glass for years. But replace the windows he did, and not only that, but with swanky double-paned ones that made us grin. This winter our typically outrageous heating bill might prove manageable.

Never did we think we might not see another winter at McGee’s Farm.

I should pause and explain the genesis of our home’s name: It was once a co-operative preschool named – one guess – McGee’s Farm. The door still says that, and I’m looking at it as I type those words. After we’re gone, after they’ve replaced the faulty sink and the bedroom glass slider door that always falls off its hinges and the sink that’s looking like something’s chewed it up, after they’ve staged up the place and it feels like they’ve deep-cleaned the oxygen between viewings, they’re going to paint that door over.

Daily OM is psychic

The word "home" has a wide variety of connotations. To some, home is merely a place where basic needs are addressed. To others, home is the foundation from which they draw their strength and tranquility. Still, others view home as a place inexorably linked to family. Yet all these definitions of home imply somewhere we can be ourselves and are totally accepted. There, we feel safe enough to let down our guard, peaceful enough to really relax, and loved enough to want to return day after day. However, these qualities need not be linked to a single space or any space at all. Home is where the heart is and can be the locale you live in, a community you once lived in, or the country where you plan to live someday. Or home can be a feeling you carry inside yourself, wherever you are. 

The process of evolution can require you to undergo transformations that uproot you. Moving from place to place can seem to literally divide you from the foundations you have come to depend on. Since your home is so intimately tied to the memories that define you, you may feel that you are losing a vital part of yourself when you leave behind your previous house, city, state, or country. And as it may take some time before you fashion new memories, you may feel homeless even after settling into your new abode. To carry your home with you, you need only become your own foundation. Doing so is merely a matter of staying grounded and centered, and recognizing that the pleasures you enjoyed in one place will still touch your heart in another if you allow them. 

Your home can be any space or state of being that fulfills you, provided you are at peace with yourself and your surroundings. A person can feel like home to you, as can seasons and activities. If you feel disconnected from what you once thought of as home, your detachment may be a signal that you are ready to move one. Simply put, you will know you have found your home when both your physical environment and energetic surroundings are in harmony with the individual you are within. 

After nearly 12 years

Our landlord is selling the property and we need to be out by Dec. 1. No relocation, no debate. All the lovely rent-control laws that apply to Berkeley do not apply to us as we live on a Golden Duplex property and that's an exception.

We alternate between feeling powerful and desolate. We've talked about leaving the Bay Area, but not because someone else threw us out on the horrid rental market. Yesterday I met some wonderful landlords who were very dog-friendly, and that gave me hope. I need to hang on to that.