I had the most fantastic weekend in DC visiting friends and attending the March for Women’s Lives, and a lovely few weeks at the new house, where I am now mostly moved in. And I really want to write about all of that, but I keep putting it off because I want to do it all justice, but there’s just so much to do at the new house that I’m having trouble getting the time and motivation together all at once. But I really don’t want to let all this go by without at least some sort of record of it, either. So I’m taking the half-assed cop-out route right now, and copy-and-pasting the weekend recap email I sent to my mother and sister. It’s even more rambly and stream-of-consciousness than my journal entries usually are, if such a thing is possible, and it glosses over some things I’d like to talk more about because, well, I love my mom and my sister to death but I don’t necessarily tell them the same things I’d write here. But it at least gets the big picture down, so it’ll do for now. And maybe I’ll find the time to elaborate on some of the rest sometime soon. So, as my cop-out journal entry, here’s the email.

* * * *

…I find myself with a few minutes to answer a few emails and do a DC weekend recap. (Although not too many minutes, as we are going to the grocery store soon to stock up our kitchen. Tomorrow we barbecue!) So here we go. Prepare for a very long email.

On Friday after I got in I decided to stop in at the DC Film Festival, just to add another film festival to my roster since it happened to be going last weekend. I saw a German film about 9/11 hoping for a different viewpoint, but instead I just got some seriously pretentious arty crap, and the audience was much ruder than a Toronto audience. Conclusion: the Toronto festival is much better. Grabbed dinner, went back to hotel, slept. Saturday they were running a couple of different March activities all day, a volunteer training thing at the Armory and speeches and boothes at Dupont Circle. But I blew them both off in the morning and went to the zoo instead. I wasn’t overly impressed as zoos go, and the cats were almost all asleep (big surprise), but it did have a few neat exhibits. The pandas were very cute, hanging upside down in the trees. Rather disturbingly, inside the elephant house they were running a constant video tape loop showing the artifical insemination of one of their elephants. Not so much what I wanted to see first thing in the morning.

In the afternoon I stopped by Dupont Circle just in time for the tail end of Gloria Steinem’s speech, which wasn’t anything earthshatteringly enlightening. But hey, it’s Gloria, so who’s going to complain? Dupont Circle was filled to the brim with people, and I got a bunch of free buttons and stickers and stuff and signed lots of petitions and listened to a few speeches. But then my friend who was supposed to get in at three got in at two instead so I had to leave early to go meet her. We went off and had dinner with a bunch of other friends who were in town for the March from all over the country, which was very cool.

On Sunday I got up bright and early and headed off to the Mall. The metro was absolutely packed to the gills with people going to the March. Everyone was really energetic and excited and it was very cool to witness before we even got to the Mall. We got there around ten and I promptly proceeded to lose the friend I was with, though unintentionally. I signed in for the official count and picked up a sign and some more buttons and then went roaming around looking for my group. It took forever to find them because the helpers could only tell me the general area they were in, but on the way I got to watch lots of very interesting people (and a troupe of Belly Dancers For Choice!) And of all the randomness, in the middle of a million people, I ran into [my best friend for most of my college years.] Who I don’t think I’ve spoken to in three years. We didn’t have a falling-out or anything, just lost touch, so it was really great to see her again. Apparently she lives in DC now and is in grad school at GWU. So I caught up with her for a while and then went on my merry way to find my Planned Parenthood group. I did find them, but the escorts weren’t there yet, just the office staff. I tried to watch the speeches and performances and I did get to see several, Hillary Clinton among them, but the video monitor near us was on the fritz and the sound kept coming and going. Plus we were near the street and some of the protestors were driving by playing really loud music trying to drown out the speeches. Eventually the rest of the escorts showed up and then we had lots of fun.

Eventually the march proper started, although I don’t think there was any particular rhyme or reason to it, just sort of a disorganized mass getting tired of standing still. It’s pretty hard to crowd-control that many people so there was a lot of stopping and starting and chaos, but overall it went pretty smoothly. We were toward the end of the pack and it took us about three hours to get along the whole route. There was your typical mix of really great signs and shirts, and other people a bit too over-enamored of the many puns that leap to mind when you’ve got a President named Bush and a VP named Dick. There were a few antis dotted along the route but there was only one section where they were really thick. And anyway it wasn’t anything I haven’t seen a million times before. Except for one small group with a bunch of signs celebrating Bernard Slepian’s murder. That one chilled me a bit, as that’s one line my clinic protestors don’t cross. Maybe they think we all deserve to be shot and blown up, but at least they keep it to themselves.

Anyway, lots of marching. I haven’t gotten my pictures back yet so I don’t know if any of them came out well since I was using a crappy little disposable camera. Toward the end there was a break as the conga line had met up with the belly dancers and they were having a little dance party, so that was fun. Overall it was just fantastic and, embarrassingly enough since my entire worldview is based on cynicism and mistrust of my fellow man and woman, inspirational and hope-inspiring and full of warm fuzzy feelings. But by the end of the whole thing I was exhausted and sunburned and dying of thirst, so I was very happy to buy some overpriced bottled water and collapse on the Mall for some more speeches and performances. I wanted to stay as long as it kept going, but around 4:30 my starvation drove me away, since I was dumb and didn’t pack a lunch. So I went back to the hotel and collapsed into a weary ball of exhaustion.

I had been vaguely pondering doing something else afterwards, but it turned out my feet and legs were just in excruciating pain, so I ordered in some Chinese food, had a nice hot bath, and watched an overpriced hotel pay-per-view movie. (”Kill Bill, Vol. 1,” which was not my favorite as Tarantino movies go, but it was the only halfway palatable offering.) And then the next day I met up with some of the same friends from Saturday night for breakfast in Alexandria. I had intended to wander around and explore Alexandria all afternoon until it was time to go the airport, but there was a torrential downpour so I decided to just go to the airport early instead of getting soaked. So I passed a dull and uncomfortable afternoon at the airport and then came home to my kitties and my new house.

Which leads me to the other emails I was going to answer. First, an update on the cats. The cats are doing well. Schroedinger and Antigone are still a bit growly but not terribly so, and Dimitri and Pixel seem right at home. They all love the big window in the front of the living room and are spending most of their time there. Which works out nicely for me because when I’m across the street at my bus stop waiting for my bus to work, I can watch their cute kitty antics in the window and it keeps me amused. The house is going well too, although packing boxes and trash still abound. We unpacked a bunch of kitchen stuff today so the kitchen almost resembles a real kitchen, and the living room resembles a real living room. The bedroom is still just a vague semblance of a bedroom, and my office is a mess since I need to get some more bookshelves or drawers or something to hold all my miscellaneous stuff. But it’s coming along. Our yard is running wild, however, and we’re told our neighbors are picky about it, so I’m worried they’re going to come yell at us unless we get it under control. One of Len’s friends used to do landscaping and is going to help us get it under control, but I don’t know when. We were going to do it today but cancelled because there were supposed to be thunderstorms. So of course it was clear and gorgeous all day after we cancelled. Grrr.

And that, I think, is quite a long enough email. I must go seek food. My belly growls.

Love you both, S

Two weekends ago, I did the March for Women’s Lives. Today I did the Race for the Cure. And I was about to sign up for the AIDS Walk when I realized it’s a day when I just can’t possibly squeeze it into my schedule. Apparently the trick to get me actually moving around and getting at least a little exercise in my life is to disguise it as some sort of political or philanthropic activity. I’m having visions of seeking out and signing up for every race- or march-like activity I can find just to get in shape. But I suppose I’d probably run out of walks for causes I agree with quickly, and then I’d find myself marching for all sorts of things I didn’t support in the least just to get the exercise. And there I’d be, all marching with the NRA one week and the ACLU the next. Which could actually be sort of amusing, and there’d probably be a documentary in it somewhere, but I’m guessing it would be more practical just to haul myself to the gym. If only I could convince myself that sitting my ass down on an exercise bike would bring about world peace or each trip to the gym would save a baby seal from a horrible death-by-clubbing or something.

Other than the Race, it’s been a quiet weekend. I gave myself the weekend off from escorting because I thought I should get to sleep in one day this weekend, and I’m feeling mildly guilty about it because they’re really short-staffed this month, but I also really enjoyed getting to sleep past seven on a Saturday. We moved a bunch of stuff from the old apartments, and stocked up our new kitchen, and I did some useful domestic crap and will unpack more boxes tonight. I finally got to watch Capturing the Friedmans, which I was really bummed at not getting to see in the theater, and it fully lived up to all the good things I’d heard about it. We also finally caught Goodbye Lenin last week, and I’ve got the TiVo set to record Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story in a few days, so apparently it’s just the week for me to finally get to see all the things I’m bummed about not catching at the film festival for the last few years. (Except for Prozac Nation, which I have become increasingly convinced will just never get released in the U.S.)

And here I interrupt myself to say argh! The real point of this entry was going to be to post some pictures I took on Friday of the deer who visit our new backyard. One of them has little horn buds and is the cutest thing in the world. But I am an idiot and just corrupted the photo files. Grr. Now I must wait for the deer to return. And I can’t even replace them with cute cat pictures, because two of the cats are in hiding and two are in the bedroom taking a nap with Len, and I don’t want to wake him up with the camera flash. Here, have a link to MIT’s baby-hawk-cam instead. It’s a lame way to end a journal entry, but it will have to do.

I am about to embark upon a month of crazy travelling, and in between the crazy travelling I’ll have to get through both a big symposium that I helped organize at work, and then my annual employee review, so I’m thinking that in the free time I have for the next month I may want to do nothing more than collapse onto the couch with Len and the cats. So I thought that while I have a little free time and a little energy, I would squeeze in a journal entry. Expect disjointedness; I am not in a narrative-flow mood.

Things are finally starting to settle down into something resembling routine here at the new house. I’m all moved out of my old place as of three days ago. Len still has to clean up his place and give back his keys, but his stuff is all moved too. By “moved” I mean that about half our belongings are still in boxes and bags scattered through the house, but at least they’re all here. I can handle having to rummage through a bunch of paper bags to find a skillet, as long as I know that it’s in the house somewhere. Our front yard is like something from outer space, with the giant weeds taking over the planet, and I fear for my life a little bit every time I step out the front door. A couple of Len’s coworkers with landscaping experience are going to help us tame the weeds and plant ground cover, and we made some good progress, but then we keep getting defeated by the weather, so the weeds are quickly creeping back. I’m not going to be of much use this month, with my jetsetting off to a new location every week, and I’m a little worried that the weeds will win. It’s an ongoing battle. The back yard is crazy and overgrown too, but I don’t mind that so much because it means that deer keep coming down from the hillside to eat our plant growth. They are really pretty, and one of them has little baby horns starting to grow, and every time I see them I am reduced to a squeaking girly mess with the cuteness of them.

And now I must go finish doing laundry so that I can pack so that I can go to New Jersey, and see my high school best friend for the first time since 1999, and go to Philly to attend the best memorial day barbecue ever with a bunch of fantastic people, and somewhere in there visit with my family and my childhood cat. And then I will come home and survive the work symposium and then go to Las Vegas to drink and go to naughty Cirque du Soleil shows and tacky pirate shows, and then come home for my employee evaluation and then go back to Jersey for the sister’s graduation, and then come home and then head off to Germany while the ever-splendid Emily housesits for me because she is the best. And then I will be done travelling until this year’s film festival, but almost as soon as I get back it will be time to start training to be a sexual assault hotline counsellor, which is going to suck up a great deal of my time for the rest of the summer, along with the second and even bigger conference that I’m arranging for work.

So this summer is shaping up to be really hectic, in a very good way. But at some point this summer I am determined to start journalling semi-regularly again. I miss it. Plus, when I’m not doing it regularly, I wind up with these rambling incoherent messes of journal entries. (And my poor neglected film and book logs, they weep with neglect. I must tend to them, although I am trying to forget that I ever watched Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story. Perhaps if I take my laptop to the parental home with me this weekend. I am hoping to watch Black Orpheus tonight and I know it’s supposed to be fantastic, so I’m hoping it will take away the sting.)

Oh, argh. I had this whole journal entry written up and then I closed the window by accident. I cannot decide whether I am still tipsy from an evening of sangria and chardonnay, or whether I am just dumb and clumsy. The number of typos I am making as I write this, however, lead me to the conclusion that I may in fact still be a bit intoxicated, or pixellated, or one’s adjective of choice for a state of alcohol-induced motor-skill impairment. So I think instead of trying to recreate the whole thing, I had better just do the bullet-point version and then go sleep it off.

So, summary of lost entry:

1) My mother and sister are among the world’s funniest people and I wish I could visit them more often. Though I’m not sure that collectively filling out my sister’s college housing application was the best idea.

2) My stepfather has become a liberal, apparently. This is cracking me up as he has always been one of the most conservative people I know, but apparently people change. Or the definition of conservative has finally swung so far to the right that it’s passed him by. Anyway, it’s happened, and I feel badly because I didn’t really believe him when he told me. And I still sort of don’t.

3) Seeing my high school best friend is nice but awkward, and I think that I should stick with my current rate of only doing it once every five years.

4) Melissa throws the best parties, and I wish I could go to them more often. Only the fact that I will be seeing many of the same people next weekend in Vegas keeps me from being disconsolate that the party is over.

5) Who says “disconsolate” when drunk? I am so lame.

6) Someday I need to move to a city with real public transit.

That is all. I think there was more but I cannot remember it, and anyway I am sleepy. Long story short, it was a very good day and I am a happy girl. I am just getting a little spoiled by getting to see some really great people three times in a month when I usually see them once a year or never, and I really wish someone would get to work on a teleportation device. or make me independently wealthy so I could spend all my time travelling around the world hanging with faraway friends. Oh, the other thing I have learned: Australians have the best chocolate, but musk-flavored candy is just not right.