As one might guess, I’ve been conspicuously absent the last month or so.

I’ve been trying to finish my YA book, which is a little past the half-way point. However, then fall (winter) began to settle in. It sort of snuck up on me unawares. One day, my alarm went off at 5 a.m. and I noticed it was pitch black dark outside. I stayed in bed until 6 a.m., and the darkness didn’t change. It was still like night time.

As some might know, I suspect I have SAD (seasonal affective disorder). This means I get depressed in the winter time. Last year, I got a jump on it by taking my meds in early September. This year I forgot until that morning in the dark.

It takes a few weeks before the medicine kicks in. I found myself driving to the store and my heart began to sink for no reason at all and my eyes clouded up. I made an appointment with the doctor.

It’s hard to be light and breezy (as in writing YA) when you are feeling down in the dumps. So the book came to a slow but crushing halt. I want to finish it before the end of the year, so I have started working on it a little at a time. When faced with the prospects of writing or jumping into bed, I choose the bed more often than not, but I am trying to curb that bad habit.

On the positive news front, I am taking a class, wire wrapping jewelry. This is a very expensive hobby. We are provided copper in the class, but if you want to upgrade to silver or gold you’re on your own.  I’ve met some interesting women in the class. It’s on Tuesday mornings, so I have to make sure the office is covered, but the time away helps. Plus, I am making Christmas presents with my own two hands.

My daughter broke up with her once Mohawk boyfriend this weekend. She’s young and flighty but that doesn’t mean the guy deserved it. It’s too bad. I like all of Ms. MiniD’s boyfriends, usually more than she likes them. Parental approval is the kiss of death for these guys. I’m sure when she finds a no-good wife-beating serial killer that we disapprove of, she will latch on to him.

Other than that, we are hunkering down in the Tundra for another long winter. The first freeze was weeks ago. So much for global warming.

As I was taking my shower today, I thought about a few things. (You must know I was taking my shower, because many times I sing and few times I think. There’s something about the scent of sandalwood that causes my mind to synapse.)

One thing I thought of was euphoria.

The event that came to mind was when my youngest, darling Ms. MiniD was born. I had spent twelve hours in labor and was really proud of myself for my counting abilities. Mr. D Jr. was born by emergency C-section meaning I was heavily drugged and missed the entire show. Mr. D also missed the birth of D Jr, because as he was getting ready and putting on his scrubs to go into the operating room all pristine and pure, he put the hat on his feet and his footie on his head. The doctor took one look and told him to wait outside.

Ms. MiniD’s birth, however, was splendid by comparison. I was counting to a song which vanished from my memory as soon as she squirted out. I was so involved in counting that I didn’t notice anything else, including my husband. The baby had crowned and the doctor, who had a cheesecake waiting for her in another room, admonished me to push. I wasn’t ready, so I held her in. Besides, I was going for midnight, when I would have two whole days in the hospital instead of one day. Insurance, you know.

Ms. MiniD ruined that for me by bursting forth eighteen minutes early. Mr. D placated my ire by bringing me steak and lobster take out the next day.

What does this have to do with euphoria? Well, euphoria kept me counting. Lamaze was going well.

Euphoria also caused my husband to say just moments after Ms. MiniD was placed on my stomach, “Let’s do this again!” Mind you, she was still covered in goo and slimy. The doctor took one look at him and then at me and shook her head.

Of course, he doesn’t remember saying that. He was in the rapture of the moment.

Love often makes one euphoric. For women, it causes them to remember. I can remember the day I met Mr. D. It was October 29, 1983. I also vividly remember our first date which was January 13, 1984. There’s something about a red rose hand delivered in a raging snowstorm that sticks in the memory banks.

I can see why some people fall in love with being in love. There’s something seductive and addicting to the euphoric state. It’s a lot like falling out of an airplane. I imagine it might be like shooting up heroin.

I’m imagining there’s a bit of euphoria in the Mr. D Jr house these days, he and the wife being married and all. (Boy, does that feel funny to call her “the wife.” That’s what my husband used to call me. Now he doesn’t call me anything. He doesn’t have to.) Mr. & Mrs. D Jr have always been a mushy pair.

I suppose Ms. MiniD is euphoric being back in SoCal. If I were in California, I’d be happy too. It would mean I somehow came into a pile of money and could afford to live there. I’m still stuck in the Tundra so it’s a pipe dream and my happiness level is a little low.

Come to think of it, when you get older, euphoria is not a waste a time but it’s just so unnecessary. I can’t remember the last time I felt that way. Well, yes I can.

Mr. Demonic and his “boy” (I call him the other “b” word most of the time) are over on the West Coast of the state on a mission. They are moving a classroom from one store location to another one in the same mall.

This calls for an overnight stay. This is because the West Coast is a long drive away. They could come home, but it would be after midnight by the time they get back into town.

I have no problem being home alone. In fact, I rather enjoy the unencumbrance.

For one thing, I can do what I want, when I want. Like eat junk food. I had junk food for dinner, and it was sinfully awful. I will not divulge which form of junk I consumed, just know that my cholesteral is probably peaking even as I type.

For another thing, I can lay out my craft work. Take over the entire living room. I did this, until my fingers got numb. My fingers don’t take long to be numbed.

I can play my etudes on the violin. If Mr. D is home, I can only play melodies. Etudes are studies and they are not supposed to sound harmonius. No, they are supposed to confound your brain and your fingers at the same time, contain more flats than sharps, and sound like the cries from Hell. In fact, they are hellish for the first couple of weeks until I figure out when to shift and what the notes are. In the meantime, it sounds like a cat in heat.

I took the opportunity of Mr. D’s absence at work to get caught up on some other projects. I worked on some computer designed brochures, business cards and the like that I had been putting off for weeks.

I worked out a little too. I work out very little, because working out is boring. I can only take fifteen minutes of it. I cannot work out when Mr. D is around because his workout machine is next to mine. He likes to watch golf or the news, and I like music. He also sweats like a pig. I work up a mild sweat. Sweating like a pig I save for mowing the lawn in 100% humidity.

When Mr. D is gone, I can work on my writing. Thus, my presence here in the dark tapping at the keys. I’m about one third of the way finished with my YA novel. I am working slowly compared to some, but compared to myself only a year ago, I’m on freakin’ fire!

I haven’t heard from Mr. D. I think he took his friend to the casino. Good for them.

I think I will get a glass of wine and go to bed early. I’m entirely wiped out from my loneliness.

I have been seeing my memory slip down the memory meter for the last couple of years.

This is not a good thing.

My paternal grandmother had a severe case of Alzheimer’s syndrome at the end of her life. The last time I saw her, she didn’t even recognize me. She recognized my dad, but none of the other fifteen relatives that were there that day.

I am deathly afraid of Alzheimer’s. The only thing worse than cutting off my fingers would be to have my mind succumb to such a brain sucking illness.

I used to have a memory like the proverbial steel trap. I could remember lyrics after hearing a song only once. I would sit through college classes and not take a note. I somehow passed the test at the post office, which is 99% remembering numbers and letters and 1% correctly marking FOSDIC circles. I knew zip codes, phone numbers for not only my friends and family but for half my employees and my driver’s license number.

Now I can’t remember a movie I saw three weeks ago, Seven Pounds. I know Will Smith was in it but other than that, my mind’s a blank, a total empty white canvas. Either Will Smith or the movie was unforgettable or I’m going nuts.

Food, now, is another thing. I can remember memorable dishes and fine wines. The mediocre, no… but the good and the bad, yes.

My husband, Mr. Demonic is quite the note taker. Every day he sets up a list of things to do in handwriting that resembles chickens scratching at feed. He can read it, which is the most important thing. I used to think it was foolhardy, but now I know he’s just trying to keep it together.

So taking his lead, I have purchased a little notebook for putting down things I might like to remember. Like ideas I have for my book, or names I want to remember. Otherwise I wouldn’t remember a thing.

One of these days I’m going to have to use it to find my way home. I just know it.

My son, the outrageously talented Mr. Demonic Junior, emailed me three weeks ago on a Friday afternoon and announced he was getting married the following Tuesday.

What was most curious about the email was that there was no cc: to his father.

Eventually he told his father. Like twelve hours before.

To bring some of you clueless about the Demonic household up to speed, Mr. D Jr. is recently turned 22 and has recently graduated from a chi-chi music conservatory (where he was the recipient of the President’s Scholarship and was also on the Dean’s List) with a degree in piano performance.

Mr. D Jr. has just enough left in his college fund for a year and a half of graduate study. However, the previous 17 years of education have left him with a bitter aftertaste when it comes to academics. He announced wanting to take a year off before making a move.

(Motherly input here: if anyone deserves a year off, that would be ME.)

In the ensuing months, Mr. D Jr. has been applying for positions. Unfortunately for him, he lives in San Francisco where every other person is a musician or artist. In the meantime, he’s been doing some gigs here and there.

Yesterday he played for a funeral.

If you knew Mr. D Jr., you’d know that he tends to gravitate toward funeral marches. His fascination with them began long ago, at age 7 when he discovered the Chopin funeral march. He likes the dark Russian pieces evocative of depression and angst.

When I told Mr. Demonic of his son’s funeral gig, he laughed and said Junior should print up business cards and hand them out to local funeral homes. People die in San Francisco, you know.

Back to the wedding… With such short notice, I was unable to attend. EVERYONE was unable to attend, which caused a furor among my family. You see, we like to party. (Mr. D’s side doesn’t party at all. They rarely speak to each other.) Mr. and Mrs. D Jr. tied the knot at the Courthouse in downtown San Francisco, a stunning building to be sure.

Basically, they did what his father and I did, but for different reasons. Mr. D says to me one day, “Let’s get married, but I don’t want a big wedding.” to which I reply, “I’ll go along with that, but only if a get a substantial diamond to make up for the lack of party.”

So yeah, it wasn’t exactly like that.

Mr. D Jr. had been dating the girl for two years. I like her. She’s rather quirky in some ways, but basically good to him. I’ve only witnessed one tiff between them and it was nasty as all tiffs can be. I’ve even used her as the basis for one of the characters in my first novel.

However…

I am not without motherly reservations. Junior is only 22. He doesn’t have steady, gainful employment. (She works part time at Victoria’s Secret, not exactly a money maker.) There’s also an immigration issue, which is why I think they speeded up the process to begin with. Her student visa extention was coming up shortly and she’d have to go back to Japan.

Don’t worry, my dear readers. Mr. & Mrs. D Jr. are NOT pregnant. Wouldn’t that be the icing on the cake?

However…

I cannot be the kind of mother-in-law my last one was. Come to think of it the first mother-in-law was rather a bitch too. I just can’t be that way. I remember many days crying over the tenuous relationship and at the end the lack of relationship. I had no mother of my own so I adopted my MIL. Bad deal. I expected as much from her as I was giving and it wasn’t going to happen.

So I’m being a good MIL, congratulatory whilst biting my tongue (again and again and again).

Oh, this is rather long. I’m going to have to put the other earth shattering events in another post.

It is so hot in So Cal.

My online friend who I had dinner with last night, lost real life weight.

I write more when I’m out of town. I actually wrote an article and pumped out six pages of novel in less than two days. I wonder how I can transfer that energy for when I return to my boring, humdrum existence in the Tundra.

My daughter is a slob. Her car is a mess. She’s not much of a mechanic either. Oh, and let’s not forget the forgotten traffic tickets.

Futons are for children, not grown adults with bad backs like me.

It’s really far from La Jolla to where I’m staying. I think it was farther because it was 10 p.m.

There’s real life traffic here, not like where I’m from. The failing economy has eliminated our rush hours.

I had the best crab on the planet last night. It came from the Bering Sea.  I should feel guilty because I’m not eating local crab but I don’t.

If you noticed anything I missed, please let me know.

Actually, Mr. Demonic’s car finally breathed its last, and it’s about freaking time.

When last we left Mr. D, he was nursing along a very old Malibu with over 250,000 miles on it. It’s a car that’s seen a lot of action, first with a multitude of teenagers who invariably aim straight for curbs.

At 80,000 miles, he coopted the car and started driving it himself. At that point, it was still a reasonably nice ride. Leather seats, nice stereo. Luckily he took off the stickers and the dual brake. Such items are a dead giveaway as to the perilous nature of the operator.

Fast forward a hundred thousand miles, four years and several pots of coffee later: the car is beginning to show its age. It shakes, it shimmies, and the worst part of all, it smells like rotting caffeine. Hint: you don’t want to set your purse on the floor.

Nonetheless, Mr. D decides to take it on numerous cross country journeys. He motors to the Twin Cities, to Kansas City, and to Nashville, in addition to driving it back and forth across our Rust Belt state several times a week. I held my breath every time he backed the car out of the driveway.

This was two years ago.

After that, it was a matter of principle. It was pride. It was a matter of tenacity. Plus, he’s a tightwad. Mix all of these wonderful characteristics together and you have a person taking his driving life into his own hands. He wasn’t going to get rid of the car until it died and he was darned ready to give up the car. He was going to see clear to the end of the relationship.

Three months ago, as the odometer edged nearer to the 250K mark, Mr. D’s Malibu began to run even rougher than before. It smelled of burning fluids. I was afraid to get in it to go for a quick run to the grocery store. Then he started to run out of gas on a regular basis. Like three or four times a week.

For those who know Mr. D, he has run out of gas with amazing regularity. He times it so that just as the last fumes are circulating through the engine, he rolls right up to a gas pump. It’s something of a joke. On those other unlucky occasions when he’s stranded, he calls other people to come and get him out of his fix. That’s because even though I’m the wife, I think it’s ridiculous in the modern age to run out of gas. Gas stations are like fast food joints, there’s one on every street corner.

I ran out of gas once. I was on southbound I-35 north of Minneapolis. I was 20. It was 1976.

For me, walking two miles to a gas station that one time cured me. My gas gauge never goes below 1/4.

Mr. D’s car appeared to suffer from a malfunctioning catalytic converter, which was replaced. Twice. However, he still continued to run out of gas. This is because the gas gauge hasn’t worked in six months, and with the catalytic converter gone awry, his miles per gallon fluctuated. Wildly. Most of the time he was getting right around ten miles to the gallon. Or less.

Cash for Clunkers came in the news, and I told Mr. D (no, I begged. I implored. I nagged.) please, oh please, could you maybe see fit to get a new car? Something with a working gas gauge maybe?

He was resistant to my idea. He still had hope. (!) He wanted to see the odometer hit 300K.

Last week, his car bit the proverbial dust. Mr. D called around and learned that since the car was titled in the business name, he couldn’t take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program. (What? Businesses don’t have clunkers?)

But it’s over for good, so let’s get out a requiem, or a pitcher of margaritas. He cleaned out the car over the weekend. I’m embarrassed to say we’ve pulled up to valet parking at ritzy restaurants in that sad ride.

He’s not sure what the next car will be. It’s the end of summer and they all come back to roost, so he’ll choose one out of the fleet and probably drive it until it drops.

Just returned from a quick trip to Colorado. More later… The basic premise is that you can go home again, it’s just not going to be the same as you left it.

I just realized that I hadn’t visited WordPress for awhile, but I was amazed to find out after just logging in today that it’s been over a month!

What the hell?

There’s much news and no time to devote to sharing it. For those of you who wish to follow my escapades, send me a quick note at the end of this entry and I will send you an email with links to what I’ve been doing.

Let’s just say summer  has been busy.

The best thing is that I’ve been writing, usually for an hour or two every day. Yesterday I pumped out four pages of the novel which sprung from the loins of the novel I was working on. Tandem novels! Whee!

My garden is super, all in place. Except for the critters, things are going great. Now if the weather would cooperate. We haven’t had much for a summer this year. It’s mostly been cold, rainy, foggy and gray. Just like San Francisco but without the culture or the sushi.

I’ll try to come back this weekend…

Hello, all, I have been away.

Not that anyone cares…

Life is full of things to do, especially this time of year. My husband got the bright idea to pressure the home office into putting up a web site for us, since because of the name we cannot do it ourselves. Actually, he’s been nagging them for about five years. This week, it finally became operational.

It’s still in its infancy, which means I have to do a lot of back and forth work. My husband has been driving all over the state and is unable to work on the bugs, but he’s not too adept at bugging, so it’s a good thing he’s out of the office.

It’s hot here, summer came up and over us in about two days time. Really, it’s not too hot,  but the humidity is horrible. Going from the house to the car to the office is excruciating. I don’t know what people did before air conditioning.

This morning I woke up at 6 and started mowing the front lawn. (Don’t worry, I have an electric lawnmower that makes less noise than my vacuum.) Even though it was very early and not yet hot, by the time I finished 45 minutes later, I was dripping in sweat.

I received a huge bead shipment and it has taken me a few weeks to sort through it. In fact, I’m still not finished, but I have all winter for that.

My one guilty pleasure came when I went to my favorite discount store, Nordstrom Rack. Nordstrom the real store is nice, but very pricey. I feel like I’m hitting the lottery when I shop at the Rack. Last week, I had a coupon. I didn’t need anything in particular, but I’m getting to the age where I don’t need much these days.

I happened upon a pair of marked down shoes. These weren’t just regular marked down shoes, these were Ferragamo slides. Originally sold for $500, now less than a hundred and with a $20 coupon, I couldn’t let them go to someone else’s feet.

Before I continue, people who don’t know me must realize that I have a thing for shoes. I sometimes buy shoes just because they are architecturally superior and sometimes because they are works of art. I also collect vintage shoes, especially those produced during the disco era. The clothes sucked then, but the shoes were to die for.

I would never pay $500 for a pair of shoes, but I can see why people do. The Ferragamos are the most comfortable, softest sandals I’ve ever worn. The leather is soft like cool butter, and even though there is a bit of a heel involved, it’s not hard to stay atop them. Shoes that are poorly envisioned are easy to teeter off of.

If you must know, I’m not wearing them yet. It’s because it’s too darn hot and I don’t want my sweat to ruin them. I’ll wait for a cold spell before I take those puppies out for a stroll.