On Monday, I woke up with the kind of anxiety I often have when I feel behind even before I get my butt out of bed. We spent a lovely weekend in Disneyland celebrating the fact that some friends of ours have been married for twenty years and like Disneyland enough to decide to go there for the occasion.

While I was visiting the Small World and debating which Disney mountain is best (Matterhorn, but feel free to debate among yourselves), I was not doing laundry or shopping or yard work or cooking or anything else. Unfortunately, Tink’s magic doesn’t extend to my house (or, perhaps more to the point, Wendy wasn’t here to be Mother—I don’t think Tink is much for household management). Even before I left, I lost a day or so to the depression monster, so even more things to do had piled up. I also ate badly while I was gone and my body was letting me know it doesn’t like the abuse.

Since crawling back under the covers with my fingers in my ears was not an option that would get T. to school on time, I was faced with the task of creating order out of chaos.

I did create some order out of some of the chaos. No surprise. But what was different was that I began, at last, to figure out which chaos was the most important chaos to address. Here are my new priorities, in order.

One: keep breathing. Most people don’t find this much of a challenge. Me, well, that’s another story. In practice, this means that if my meds make me sleepy, I sleep because I have to take the meds. If dirty dishes are messing with my chi, they become the next most important task. If order needs to be restored to the universe by neatly writing crossword answers in the appropriate boxes, that is ok.

Two: be healthy. This is not the same as keeping breathing, although it is related. This means that, for example, riding my bike is more important than ironing. Having conversations with friends trumps weeding. I get to move enough, eat enough (but not too much), work enough, and play enough.

Three: take care of the people I love. This is where the cooking and cleaning go, because nothing says love like not running out of underwear or like restoring food at the end of a busy day. But it is not just about that stuff. It’s listening and flexing and cuddling and killing monsters and asking about homework and giving an extra snooze alarm.

Anything else I do is gravy. Or perhaps I should say organic strawberries, since gravy is not particularly healthy.

My reading list for spring is looking pretty sparse. However, I finished Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn last night. I’m feeling it lingering in my head.

The story is about the civil rights movement and in particular about a person named David Champlain. Despite having had a great-grandfather and a father who were both killed by white violence, David is one of the lucky ones. His grandparents raise him with love, an expatriate Scandinavian professor tutors him and prepares him for college, Harvard and Oxford teach him law. He is a man of two worlds, of poor New Orleans and educated Boston. When his grandfather also is killed by white violence, he chooses to work to free his people.

It could have been a preachy meditation on Bad Whitey, a take entirely justified by the facts. Instead it is a novel with well-drawn characters who have to make decisions in an insane world. Of course it was depressing, but it was also uplifting in a way, showing that love might not conquer all right away, but it can do miracles.

Thanks to Anneli for lending the book to me!

I am looking forward to a world in which people are accepted as who they are and not killed for it.

And this pushes all the buttons that make me a scared mom.

Yesterday, T.R. turned 15. In honor of the occasion, he received, among other things The Shark, a time-honored family tradition begun one Christmas when my father made the mistake of giving it to me in the first place. After the shark appeared by surprise in the bathroom, the refrigerator, the cabinets, and so on, I was informed that I was having too much fun with the shark. Naturally, I wrapped it up beautifully and gave it to my mom for her birthday. Since then, it has traveled between family members, sometimes hidden within other gifts, sometimes taking a holiday off to allow the family time to forget what a box of shark size is likely to contain.

Brent asked me if I had put fresh batteries into the shark. I said, "Of course not!" With batteries, the shark plays the Jaws theme and then sings the beginning of "Mack the Knife." T. will have to find new batteries himself before we have to hear shark-sounds.

There is no explanation needed for the Napoleon hat, is there?

I love this kid.

This is social activist graffiti at its finest. I am more than used to seeing stop signs with further instructions (Stop Driving, is, I think, my favorite, although I’m still waiting for In the Name of Love) after so many years in Berkeley, but this takes it to a whole new and better level.

Much like the fire danger signs, this new form of graffiti is updatable! No more permanent records of obscure propositions from long enough ago that no one remembers which regressive or repressive issues they were about. No more dead dictators eternally remembered in spray paint!

Best of all: no actual harm to the sign. Your tax dollars are at work, after all, in providing the sign. I am sure that the person raising consciousness in this fashion will remove and recycle the topical portion once victory is achieved.

I am pretty much the standard-issue, pro-recycling, whole-grain-eating, Prius-driving Berkeley type. But on Saturday, I went with Brent to take the Basic Handgun Safety and Marksmanship class—that is, I went to shoot guns. Once before, I went to the gun range and did black powder shooting (like Pa! Like pirates!). This time it was all about Glock 9mm.

For a gun class, it was surprisingly light on NRA-type you-can-have-my-guns-when-you-pry-them-out-of-my-cold-dead-hands. I did learn, however, that just as hammers and saws are tools for building houses, guns are tools for freedom. Keep that in your mind while you’re singing, Arlo.

I had a great time, actually, once we were done with the eons of lecture. Let me summarize for you: Guns are cool. Don’t point them at people. If you hurt yourself or someone else, we are going to be very very mad at you. Blah blah blah historical and mechanical details. Don’t point the guns at people. Unless they are breaking into your house in the middle of the night and you grab your gun out of your gun vault, slide behind the bed for cover and blast the living daylights out of the perp who is threatening your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as long as you are confident that you are in immediate danger and must defend yourself.

Brent got all competitive with me during the practice time with the pretend guns, so I decided it was on. The first time I pressed (note: not “squeezed.” It is bad form.) the trigger, I almost threw the gun, thinking, “Holy @$#%@! What was that horrible noise? Oh, wait, that was me.” Good news: I also hit the target. Here is the photographic evidence of my victory:

My target:



Brent’s target:



***

In other news, I now have the coolest shoes EVER. I admit that they are pinker than most things I usually select, but check these out:



And they come in a cool box:



Best of all: THEY LIGHT UP!

I have nothing against new stuff. I like new clothes, fresh paint, shiny toys, and babies. But I notice that what catches my eye is often what is old, what shows signs of use or wear or damage, even.

Some people might call what I like “patina.” Or, you know, “nuts.” But I find it reassuring to know that other people have been before me. They’ve worn spots in the floor over years of family dinners. Their tools exhibit the idiosyncrasies of their work. Their kids have banged up the stairwell walls with toy airplanes, or, like my brother, driven a Matchbox car over a refinished table, leaving tire tracks.

Or it is just a shift in perspective, breaking up the pieces of the world in a different way.

I decided to ride my bike this morning before the rain comes in this afternoon. I rode my usual six-mile loop, which takes me along the beach.

The tide was out. The salty, fishy smell was in, which made me happy. All the whorls and ridges of sand that usually hide under the water revealed themselves, garnished with wading birds making the most of the temporary territory.

Some wonderful people have been working with the park district to replace invading plants with native ones. Sadly, I am more familiar with the names of the invaders than the indigenous flora, so I don’t know the name of the bush from which an uncharacteristically brave ground squirrel peeped up to watch me pass. Its cousins dug busily farther along. The geese seem to be on vacation, but the crows and doves and hosts of cute little birds foraged in the grass along the path where it wound through the park.

I always ride with a goofy smile on my face because recess makes me happy. The joggers don’t understand, but many of the other bikers smile back, in on the conspiracy of fun.

I was too busy peddling to take pictures, so you’ll just have to imagine…

Here I am in my new glasses with progressive lenses so I can stop squinting at menus without having to remember my reading glasses.

The most important part about borrowing books is returning them so the lenders will still lend to you. So I am hurrying up to tell about two books I read this last week.

One is called Dear Mad’m, a memoir written by a woman who, at 80, decides to leave her city life in San Francisco and live in the Siskiyou mountains instead. Her adventures with a cougar, a billy goat, and a mule are hilarious and touching. She recounts stories of the people around her, her neighbors Dearsir and Up’nUp, two “boys” working placer claims, Millicent, the girl who has memorized Emily Post, Nora, Up’nUp’s impulsive wife, and the other folks around in clear and entertaining prose. She has a sense of humor not only for other people’s foibles, but also for her own, which makes her an endearing narrator.

The other book is a collection of three of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher novels, Cocaine Blues, Flying Too High, and Murder on the Ballarat Train. What fun! Phryne is a detective in the mold of Peter Wimsey (and the Sayers references are numerous and satisfying!). She dresses like a flapper (it is 1928 in the books, of course), flies airplanes, drives too fast, and thoroughly enjoys herself with handsome young men. And in her spare time, she solves crimes. The stories are not in the least challenging, but I ate them up like candy.

Now I can return them in good conscience!