Go find and rent a movie called Shortcuts, best if you don't have any idea of what it's about (I'm not even going to post a link so you can't see what the synopsis is) - you won't regret it.  Excellent film.  My friend, David showed it at his backyard "theatre", the "Monoplex".  I'd never heard of it but it looked good so I went.  We all were laughing, holding our pee so we wouldn't have to get up and miss anything.  It's a might long when yer holding it in and shivering on a breezy, chilly summer night, I'll tell you.

these things were super wooly and dusty! ah-choo!

heh bathroom humor

yay for dogs!

 summer in the city smells like this (to me):
fried foods mixed with dirty dish water, dryer sheets and dumpsters.

summer in the country smells like this:
wet soil, dirt, manure, rotting roadkill.

 things that i've done since i last posted any real post:

/ played pinball.

/ late night bike riding.

/ a long walk with pepper to the park where i watched turtles frolicking underwater.

/ went to a punk show.  almost had my kneecap taken out by a rambunctious singer, tim.  he's funny and nice so i won't hold it against him.

/ hung out with metalworkers and their friends and mutual type of friends.

/ made efforts to make plans with folks - i haven't followed through yet nor have they.  i know why i haven't, but i don't know why they haven't.

/ discovered mulberry trees nearby.  

/ saw gogol bordello with friends.  kind of danced, back in the corner by the wall, we had a little crew of dorks.

/ gotten angry at activity near my house involving ladies, pimps and johns.  had to look away so as not to yell at them.  roommate and i are scheming to hang posters letting johns know we are paying attention.

/ shared a beer at the river on a beautiful sunny day.  staring up at the billowy clouds was somehow a surreal experience for me that day - i think i had too much caffeine while at work and not enough food.  but in a good way.  i was giggly.

/ started reorganizing my room.  too many clothes, not enough storage.

/ been complimented on my fashion several times.  *blush*

/ had a semi-argument with a customer.  heh heh oops.

/ had a false alarm regarding my stimulus check being here.  spent a little cash i wouldn't have otherwise then later regretted it once i found out that it was only a form telling me it was coming and how much to expect.  fuck!

/ consoled a friend regarding the murder of her friend's husband.  

/ co-workers also had a friend murdered, a separate situation.

/ had to decline an interview for a 2nd time for the same agency, i can't do the overnight or night shift hours they need.  it sucks.

/ sat around at a coffee shop doing a crossword, killing time.  

/ met new people. 

/ got a new camera.  picture posts soon.  i need to renew my flickr account first.

/ have been having fun people watching while doing my shift at the record store.  so many cute little baby punks.

happy birthday coconuthead!

i wish i were a kid right now - the raptor center is coming to ariana's school today and bringing birds.  beats being at work serving people sammies and coffee.  

in the past week or so, i've had my window open pretty consistantly - as a result we've gained some new friends:  mosquito hawks.  our nights trying to get to sleep are spent giggling and screeching as they swoop around our heads.

and the S and J's dogs are inudated with ticks.  it's become a victory each time another one is plucked off and drowned in the toilet water, or if you're J, stuck onto a piece of tape to die slowly.  as far as i can tell, Pepper has escaped them so far but i could just not be seeing them...

highlights of the past few days:

/ discovering a chapter in a book that is sitting around our house that shows one how to make gloves out of mice in a survival situation - each little mouse hide makes one finger. uh, the power was out and J was reading things. another good thing comes of no access to the distractions that tv and computers provide.

/ a mass exodus from a nearby punk house has yielded many good finds - both in the free box and just stuff that was left behind. yay! one man's trash...

/ i've finished planting my cherry tomatoes, my lavender, ariana's cabbage plant and the spider plant she gave me for mama's day.

/ ariana had some good mom/kid time this afternoon, both at the May Day Cafe and at Powderhorn Park. We ate, played frisbee, she played on the equipment, we observed baby geese, helped a little girl that came down a hill too fast on her bike and literally flipped it 3 times - i think in the end, ariana was more traumatized by it than the girl was. it did look really scary as it happened.

/

i'm currently listening to a live show Built to Spill is doing outdoors nearby. i kind of wanted to go but listening to it free from afar is okay too.

today has been pretty good. not in a happy happy joy way but good. work went by quickly. i received a call from the college letting me know that my waiver of 2 pre-reqs went through and i am good to go on all 4 classes for Fall semester. you don't know how happy that makes me. i e-mailed Augsburg today to set up a time to speak with one of their reps about the Social Work program there and the admissions process as well as just to take a tour of the facilities.

ariana was super cute and sweet when she came to my work after school. we then did a target run for a few things and went to the East Lake library for the first time. we dropped some books off to be shuttled downtown and picked up some of theirs - i was pleasantly surprised not to have a late fee.

while we had to miss our shift at the record shop, we went to ana's first counseling appointment. it went very well. the therapist seems really calming and good. ana and i both got teary a couple of times and i know that she felt anxious and weird - she felt better once she started playing (with play therapy toys/tools). i think this will be good for both of us. when the therapist drew a grid (i forget the offical term) of all of our moves and all of the chaos our life has been it was pretty telling. and kind of sad. most of her life has been being uprooted and having things taken from her (Beastie, family, friends, comfortable spaces, etc..). And here i've been lately plotting our next move - a new apartment? back home for good? a new mark on the grid. the saddest part is, some families have moved even more than us and ours was nearly once a year/year and a half for ana's entire life. imagine that - i would never unpack, i barely have here for that matter.

anyway. we biked straight home from the appointment. i arrived back in my neighborhood only to bike by 3 people smoking pipes on the porch of a foreclosed house behind ours and a man passed out in our alley nearly directly behind our house. to be honest, i was pissed. i almost went off on the users and told them to get the fuck out of "here", i wasn't in the fucking mood. i called the po-po and they sent an ambulance for the guy passed out and were going to send a squad for the fuckheads - i'm not sure if the squad car made it but the ambulance did, i think they honked at the dude to see if he was consious and would amble away, he must have because they then backed out of the alley and left.

we had to call Animal Control over the weekend because there was a cat trapped in the empty house directly behind ours - it's been vacant for a few months but there were workers in there recently, it must have snuck in and gotten locked in. poor baby. i saw it watching pepper and i at the park from the front picture window...

*annoyed*

man, waitressing for 9 hours is the pits. especially when we only walk out with 50 bux. boo.

i biked down downtown today with ariana in the trailer, apparently i should have either eaten or drank more water or maybe it was the humidity - i felt like i was going to die. my chest was all heavy and i was huffing and puffing. it was kind of embarassing because i had to stop the bike and pull over off of Hennepin to get some water and catch my breath. that's not like me.

anyway, i was able to get more of my paperwork cleared up at the college, i think i'm pretty much set to start in Fall. i'm not ruling out another hang-up in the process but i should be okay. all the classes i chose are pretty pie (easy) except for maybe Printmaking. i've made prints a bunch of times in the past but my ability to create art is pretty basic. but i wanted to take it and maybe challenge myself and develop some better skills so i'm on it.

i picked the girls up some art supplies for their respective birthdays - they are about a week apart so that makes things easy on us. i'll be trying to get ahold of folks for the invites but i don't have a lot of your addresses (locals). let me know if you think your kids would be into it. there will be a special custom cake, a pinata and a trampoline and just hanging out. nothing major. gifts are optional.

heh heh. i accidently rode the bike through a movie set today. luckily my acquaintance jake (a certain local star's brother) is one of the production assistants so i joked it off with him. i don't think they were actively filming when we buzzed through but we probably weren't supposed to be where we were. oopsie. i didn't realize until it was too late....

insomnia.

ariana had her procedure yesterday. she took it like a champ, i didn't have any doubts. she only cried twice, once before we left the house when i told her she couldn't have any tea because if she puked it up while under anesthesia she could die (oops) and once when her dad walked away - i've never seen her have that look on her face before, it was a mixture of grief and heartbreak, tears streamed down her face, she had tuned out me and the nurse who was sitting with us and was staring after him, minutes after he had disappeared around the corner - i'm not saying this to be dramatic, just honest.

this week was our second shift at the record shop. i'm feeling still slightly awkward there but i think it will improve by the next couple of shifts.

life is weird in other ways - like how i've (somewhat) subconsciously put myself into a sort of solitary mode. i've stopped trying to make new friends and reach out to old ones. i haven't been to any shows or events since my friend's birthday party in April (or at least any "scene" shows or events). not fully for lack of wanting to (but maybe there is a hint of that for various reasons i won't get into here in these dumb parenthesis) but just because it's too hard for me to ask for someone to watch ariana while i go out late late. i need the help when i have to work, this weekend is a perfect example, i never work weekends but i was scheduled both sat and sun, now i have to ask for help because she can't stay home alone and when she comes with me it's like torture for her to sit there for 8 hours. i need this kind of help once every couple of weeks it seems, the school always has a reason to have a day off every other week or so... that being said, she might be going home for a bit this summer but part of me doesn't want her to go, partially because i have her set up in 3 different programs this summer and it might mess those up, partially because i'll miss the hell out of her, partially because we were going to take a trip at some point and partially because i can't drive back to get her and i hate to have my MIL drive back here to drop her back off. what to do, what to do?
i've pretty much accepted that i most likely will not be enough for another person - meaning that while i do have things to offer, they aren't enough. the exception being to ariana. while we had our really rough patches in the past few months, this week has been pretty good. i've tried hard to be patient with her and to make sure that she is eating well and getting to bed at a good time.

i've been picking up the job search again - i got an offer for an interview at a place that shelters teens transitioning from homelessness to independence but much like the last time, when i was actually OFFERED a job at a shelter here (!!!!) i had to decline - the shift was the same 3pm to 11pm. i just can't do it right now. maybe i won't be able to break into the field until ariana is old enough to stay home alone, i don't know. if so, i'm disappointed. it's enough to make me just want to go back to MI and build my career at the shelter i was working with.

i picked up a few plants last week - lavender, eucalyptus, and one that will give us cherry tomatoes. i also have a cabbage plant and a spider plant that ariana gave me.

my tolerance for people right now is very small. just sayin.

however, sitting in the sun, furnishing myself with things that make me happy, sipping on a good beer, going out and other similar and pleasant things seem to ease the pain.

i'm off to walk the dog.

Our first night at EN was pretty uneventful aside from me effing up something quite simple due to spacing out.

I almost resisted the urge to pick some music up but still walked out with 2 cassettes - one local band, Pocket Pussy and one band from pdx, The New Bloods.  

In other news, I did finally get registered for fall classes at mctc.  I need to waive pre-reqs for 2 of them but the other 2 I'm good to go.

A friend the other day told me that I looked like such a tough mama - at the time I was riding by and she was on the sidewalk, I stopped to walk with her and hauled the Burley (with Ana still in it) and my bike onto the sidewalk to meet her.  I joked it off and she told me she was serious.  Jeez.  Part of me knows that I am a little tuff but the rest of me knows how not tuff I am or should I say CAN BE. 

There may be a co-purchase of a car on the horizon.  I'm still going to get the nice bike but I'm in for the car also.  Especially once winter hits again, an extra vehicle would be handy.  Biggest problem - stick shift!!  I once turned down a free car because of that very reason...

The Lake Street construction is making me aggro - I can barely or not at all get by with my bike and Burley - imagine how a person in a wheelchair would feel??!!

There may be a camping trip on the horizon - a big group of riff raff will be going up to Madeline Island at the end of June.  We are supposed to come with...as long as I can get the time off.  I may be getting it in exchange for helping my boss plant pots at the cafe.

Ooo, oo, oo!  Ariana and I got our insurance back!!!  Her surgery is a go for next week.  Thank god!  I was so mad at DHS for all of this.  It always feels like they are trying to barr people from getting help.  Grr.

Ariana and I are beginning our volunteer shift at the record shop today - whee!

As someone who eventually wants to start working with youth in similar situations, I was floundering as to what to do yesterday....

So, a teen girl comes into the cafe yesterday and wants to use the phone. Okay. No big deal. She has it for a while but I wasn't too concerned. There were neighborhood garage sales and I figured that she was out doing them and was trying to find a ride or something.

A while later, someone calls our cafe number because they got a call from her. I give her the phone, yadda yadda.

Then, one of my former co-workers is sitting outside with her at a table and the story comes out. She ran away from her parents house in the burbs because her mom found weed in her room and was going to commit her to a local hospital.

We get several more calls from numbers she had called. As did our former co-worker who had also lent his phone to her. Then we get a call from the hospital, the parents were sending the Mpls Police over to pick her up. Someone told them that she had called from here. We didn't warn her but I didn't want to leave her without some type of resource just in case she left before then so I scrambled to get a phone number for one of the teen shelters in town. The last thing she needs is to be stranded here in the city at night if she's not familiar with where to go.

Shortly after a squad car pulled up and removed her.

We all stayed pretty uninvolved because we weren't sure what to do - WHAT WOULD YOU GUYS DO?

 This morning I wasn't feeling the hottest after the day I had yesterday.  But one thing that brightened my day was when Bell (2nd photo down on page) came running into the cafe full bore smiling as only happy dogs can do.

I <3 Bell.