Just that half a pound. Oh, well. A loss is a loss. Bring on the pies.




That’s 32.5 pounds lost since restarting my diet this year and a total of 66.5 pounds since my highest weight.

So, David wrote to me last Monday and I responded but he never answered my #1 question, which was: what happened with Dubai? So I wrote to him again yesterday, and he responded this time. Turns out he’s in Dubai right now, interviewing and finding out if he wants to move there. I invited myself to visit him if he does move there. His initial response was flirtatious; I flirted back; he wrote back today that it sounded good and we’d work out dates.

I know at least two men who will be very mad at me if I go visit David in Dubai. The first is Kev. Since I first talked to Kev about David, he has maintained that he’s bad news. Kev doesn’t even use his name when we talk about him—he’s FW for French Wanker.

The other is Dan. (Ok, the Scotsman might also be upset about it but he’s a harder read.) But Dan has a similar hatred for David. After being friends for well over a year, Dan also wants to date me, and we are planning to meet if/when I’m home for Christmas this year. I’m a little worried that Dan’s becoming too interested in me, given the distance between us. Plus, he hasn’t dated anyone since becoming single in February, when his wife of 16 years ended their marriage. He’s talked to a couple of women online, but both of his main interests turned psycho before they ever met face to face. He recently signed up for the big online matchmaking services—OK Cupid, Match.com, and eHarmony—but it’s too early to tell how those will work out for him.

I’m just worried for him that he’s going to fall in love with me and I don’t really have a Prague exit strategy. That’ll end badly for him. I want him to date and possibly find someone local, and if he happens to be single in December, we’ll meet (not that the December meeting is even a date but it won’t happen if he’s seeing someone because the time I’m allotting him is New Year’s Eve). Dan is probably the kind of man I should date—sweet, honest, loyal, and traditional. I’m certainly not opposed to it. But I’m not going to start dating someone now and certainly not someone I’m separated from by an ocean.

It’s possible that he likes me so much because I’m convenient—I know that sounds funny considering that he’s in the US and I’m in Europe, but I mean I’m easy to talk to and access in some capacity. He shouldn’t settle on me until he goes on some dates with other women.

Anyway, last night, he wrote me a really long email that basically amounts to a love letter, and it’s flattering and sweet, but I worry for him. And I won’t commit myself to him until we’ve met in person and I have some plan for moving back to the US. Otherwise, it’s silly. So he’s going to have to go with the flow, and I don’t know if he can.

I’ve told him that Kev invited me back to London in late October/early December and that the Scotsman will have me at any time after this coming weekend, when one of his friends is getting married. Both of these trips, I think, he can handle—Kev is a friend and the Scotsman honorable. But if I go to Dubai, he’ll be crushed. I wonder if I can avoid his feeling like that. It may not even be an issue.

In other news, I’m trying to sort out some documents I’ll need to take care of when I’m back in Illinois for Christmas. And I want to get my ticket booked before the price goes up any more. Which means I need to sort out all the travel I want to do before the end of the year so that I can figure out how many holidays I’ll have.

Potential trips: Switzerland with Caroline (and possibly others) at Halloween for a hash weekend; Brussels for their Christmas hash weekend in mid-December; Scotland to see the Scotsman (any time); London to hang out with Kev in late October or early November; Dubai to see the city and David (any time). I need to pick and choose.

When I was in Austria, my sister's fiance Greg sent me a message on Facebook to tell me that they had decided to move their wedding from January 2010 to this New Year's Eve. This wouldn't be a big deal to me except for the fact that I wasn't planning to go home for Christmas this year.

That means they gave me about two months to book a flight to the US during peak season, when ticket prices are already high because of the cost of fuel. I've not bothered to price tickets yet, but I imagine they're insanely expensive.

I wrote back to Greg about this, and he said that he and my sister would pitch in to help pay, but it's not just about the money. I also ate up a week of my holiday leave when I was in Austria, because I hadn't anticipated taking off a lot of time for the Christmas season. Plus I find traveling between Europe and the US to be exhausting and no fun whatsoever.

In short, I don't want to go.

Anyway, Greg didn't just offer to help pay; he also said that they're moving the wedding up because they no longer want to live in sin. It pisses me off that he invoked religion because now it's as if I can't even argue against it. Well, is it more important to end the sin or have me there? I guess we'll see.

As soon as I received the first message about the wedding, I called my mom. She had heard nothing about this. A few days later, she still hadn't. As far as I know now, she still hasn't.

I guess I should talk to my sister about this, but I'm also hoping it'll just go away. I find it very unlikely that anything will get me on a transatlantic flight this Christmas.

Had he not died on Christmas, my grandfather would have turned 73 today. I wonder if it’s a solemn day in Quincy.

I don’t hear a lot from home, really. Everyone is busy—my mom teaching summer school, my dad working a second job, and the pair of them raising my sister’s kids. Meanwhile my sister is, I think, completely caught up in a romance with an unemployed guy, which means that he has plenty of time for her. That’s how it works best, I think, until she has invested (and I mean that in the financial sense) so much in that person that she wants something back.

I got a MySpace message from her boyfriend on Fathers’ Day saying that he planned to propose to her on that day. I haven’t heard anything from either of them since, so I don’t know if they are engaged or not. My money is on no, because I think her Facebook status would’ve been changed immediately. Thank God for social networking sites, or else I’d have no idea what was going on with them.

My parents aren’t so keen on this guy. They think he’s a weasel, but I’ve barely been around him and, as long as he’s polite to me, I don’t really care about anything else. And he is polite to me. And friendly.

But one of the reasons that they don’t like him is because he had my sister arrested on felony charges and she spent a night in jail last New Year’s. She broke a picture frame over his head in some domestic dispute, and he called the police. She was supposed to go to trial—an actual, honest-to-God jury trial—last spring but he dropped the charges.

He also brought up the proposal to my parents, and he whipped out a ring in front of them a month ago when my sister wasn’t around. It was after dinner and they were sitting on the sofa in the living room. My mom said that she was speechless, while my dad pretended to fall asleep so he didn’t have to react.

I am meeting my parents in Barcelona at the end of the month. The last time I saw them was in early August, so it will have been almost an entire year since I last saw them. It’s unbelievable how that happened.

We’re taking a Mediterranean cruise, and we’ll start in Barcelona, hit Malta, France, and a couple of cities in Italy. I’m stoked, but I bet that much travel at the hottest time of the year will be exhausting. But hopefully we won’t push ourselves too hard and have a lovely time. I can’t wait.

I have some pretty big news that became official when I went to the Czech embassy in Munich yesterday (which, by the way, was a pretty nice trip--especially for a paid day of work).

Anyway, the news is that I'm leaving the Czech Republic for a while. I have to leave the entire EU and Schengen countries because my visa won't be ready until I've been here for more than is legally allowed. While a lot of people live here illegally or on travel visas--making border runs every 90 days or so--that lifestyle will be fading in popularity, thanks to the Czech Republic joining the Schengen Agreement on December 21, 2007.

Joining that agreement now requires that for every 90 days that a non-EU citizen spends in the EU, she has to spend another 90 days out. This won't apply to me when my visa is ready, because I'll be allowed to stay in the EU for a year and to travel in and out with no problem. But if I go over that 90 days, it could be problematic when I pick up my visa.

And by "problematic," I mean that I would be banned from the EU for two years.

The entire thing is quite ridiculous. My own visa could've been processed by now but the guy in my office who's in charge of taking care of those things has been absolutely swamped with work for months now, so it just sort of fell off of his to do list. I certainly don't hold that against him, but even if he had gotten right on it as soon as I was hired, it still takes 30 days to get a work permit and up to four months for a visa. It makes absolutely no sense, but I take it as a move to make it much harder for non-EU citizens to work over here. Fortunately, my visa is rushed because of the kind of work I do.

Still, my company has accepted responsibility for this inconvenience, and I will continue to work for them and be paid--I just can't be in the office.

Instead, my company has offered me a plane ticket to anywhere in the world, where I will stay for approximately 6-8 weeks.

The current likely candidates:

1. Australia
Pros: It's effing Australia, and when else would I ever go?

Cons: The plane ticket is quite expensive, and I'd hate to feel like I'm taking advantage of the situation, even if I'm meant to. Also, it's 24 hours of travel, possibly more, and I would absolutely dread that.

2. Thailand
Pros: Not nearly as expensive in ticket, travel time is closer to 12 hours.

Cons: I'm concerned about culture shock, and this was more the idea of my coworkers than my own. They keep telling me that I could lie on the beach all day, but what they don't know is that lying on a beach doesn't sound appealing to me.

3. Turkey
Pros: Same time zone (or possibly an hour later) so I wouldn't feel as detached from work, and I think I might be able to gain access to a villa there, which would be amazing. And I've already gotten an offer for someone to visit me if I'm there, which would make it a lot less lonely.

Cons: The cheap ticket makes me think that this is some place I'd go anyway, as it's been on my list. Plus, Turkish troops just crossed the border into Iraq, and that sounds a bit scary.

4. Quincy, IL
Pros: I haven't seen my family since August, and it'd be nice to get a free trip home. I also think it'd hurt their feelings if I didn't show up. Also, minimal travel arrangements necessary.

Cons: Someone might end up dead if I have to stay with my family for two months. Plus, going back to live with my family when I'm 25, even if I know it's only temporary: sad.

Anyway, I'll make up my mind in the next couple of days, which is good, because I'll be leaving in roughly 7-10 days.

My grandpa died yesterday. In the hospital of my hometown, where I am not. I didn't go home for Christmas; I stayed in Prague.

My entire family relayed the news to me over Skype. At first, I thought it was sweet that they were all there, crowding around the webcam. But then my Aunt Val, who was apparently chosen as messenger, told me.

And it just seemed completely surreal. I knew he wouldn't live much longer--he'd been having terrible health problems the last few years, stemming from a bad liver (stemming from a lifetime of fatty foods--not alcohol). Eventually it spread everywhere--causing fluid to build in his lungs and his kidneys to shut down.

His doctor told my mom and grandma yesterday morning that he would probably die that day, so they were both there when it happened, along with my aunt and my sister. All of his girls, except for me, of course.

I won't bother telling you how selfish I feel for not wanting to fly 12-14 hours each way or pay the thousand dollars to see my family for Christmas, especially when I knew--I knew--he wouldn't live to see another and that it was a gift for me to have the opportunity to see him once more. But I didn't go.

And now I'll never see him again.

I wish I could tell you beautiful things about what an amazing man he was, because he was perhaps the greatest, most admirable man in my life (he thought very highly of Leon, whose own greatness is the sole reason I add the "perhaps"). But I could never do him justice, so I won't try.

I will only say that he was a good man, and I loved him very much. I will miss him.

I haven't posted a weight loss entry in a long time, because I've gained several pounds over the last month. It started with my discovery of a Lebanese restaurant that I went to one evening with Fouad. The food there was arguably among the best cuisine I'd had in Prague, so, naturally, I proceeded to eat there four out of the next five days (and several times after).

Here's a gratuitous picture of Fouad in this restaurant that brought about my downfall:



After finding the Lebanese food, I continued to eat extremely fatty foods until I left Prague. Once in the States, I was greeted with the amazing cooking of my Mother-in-Law. She made Hawaiian pizza (my favorite!), scones, chocolate-covered pretzels, and at least three different kinds of cookies.

At Ruth and Todd's rehearsal dinner, I had BBQ ribs, pulled pork, and cheesecake.

Since arriving in Quincy, the ice cream has been plentiful as have meals from my favorite restaurants.

I am not happy with myself, but I know that I'm the one who is putting all of the food in my mouth and, hopefully, I will soon regain control. I think that once I return to Berkeley, I will face less temptation. Oh, I'll still want to have some Mexican and Thai food, but there won't be half gallon containers of Bunny Tracks in our freezer (right, Leon?).

I was nearly to my 50-pound marker, but I've gained back several pounds from this recent gluttony. I think I'll wait until I'm on a familiar scale to give an official total to the damage. Hopefully it'll come back off as quickly as I put it on.

My sister went to the emergency room yesterday for a staph infection. She had a mosquito bite on her stomach that became infected and grew to three or four inches in diameter.

At the hospital, they cleaned it out and bandaged her up. Afterwards, she and I argued over whether this constituted surgery. I said that a non-invasive procedure wasn't surgery, and she said, "Like hell it wasn't invasive!"

I used this opportunity to remind her that she never had cancer, despite the fact that she had precancerous cells removed from her cervix. (She participated in a Walk for a Cure marathon as a "cancer survivor," which is beyond embarrassing.) She said that she didn't want to argue with me about it.

Anyway, she was over at my parents' house, which is where her two kids have been living, when Harrison needed to have his diaper changed. My dad wasn't home, and my mom was busy cleaning up the kitchen after supper and entertaining Mattie. I told my sister to change her son's diaper.

This caused her to fly into a rage about how she wasn't supposed to bend over because of the big open wound on her stomach. I have no idea if this is true, but it seemed like a lame excuse when, minutes earlier, she asked if I would go shopping with her and surely trying on clothes would require some bending over and potential chafing of her sore (it's covered with gauze, so it isn't as though she'd be getting pus or blood or whatever on the clothes, but that still seems pretty gross, huh?).

Anyway, she cussed and screamed in front of poor little Harrison, who obviously didn't know why mommy was behaving like that.

Later, she fell asleep on the couch and I told Mattie not to wake Mount Mommy or else she would erupt.

On Tuesday, my sister took me out to dinner and we had a wonderful time. It was so sweet of her, because she used a work bonus that she's been saving for at least half a year to take me to the Country Club, where she works. I was really touched that she treated me when she could have invited anyone--my parents, her new boyfriend--anyone.

But then she behaves like that in front of her kids and I'm reminded of how much growing up she needs to do. Staph infection or not, she's barely seen them at all while I've been here and that's pretty much the status quo when I'm not around.

I'm so glad I don't live here.

I missed a call from Dirk today, and he left me a voice mail in which he identified himself as "Dirk from Germany." I'm not sure how many men named Dirk he thinks I know, but even if there were many, his German/Danish/British hybrid of an accent is a dead giveaway.

Usually when I leave him messages, I don't even identify myself, because he has caller ID and, if he doesn't recognize my voice by now, I'm just not sure we should even be friends anymore.

I don't know; it just strikes me as odd.

But I still like him, even if he did have a hundred and one excuses for why I couldn't see him during my three months in Europe. It makes me wonder if I'll ever see him again. When I watched him walk away from me in the Brussels airport last November, I had a feeling that I wouldn't, even though my visit had been wonderful (you may recall that I referred to that trip as some of the best days of my life). But sometimes you just know when someone is walking out of your life, and he enacted it quite literally in the Brussels airport. Even if it was a couple of months premature.

Eh, I sound like I'm sad over him and I'm not. I feel fine. Tired, but fine. My niece and nephew have been a handful; I've ingested more second-hand smoke in the last 24 hours than I have in six months; and it is absurdly hot in this shade-free town. Plus I want to eat everything in sight.

This is not a good place for me to be. But hearing from Dirk was nice. Amusing, pleasant, and a bit sad too, since we used to be such close friends. But something changed, I guess.

I've been back in the States for nearly six days. That's six incredibly long days.

...Okay, to be fair, the time in Tennessee flew by, but less than 12 hours after arriving in Illinois, I began to question why I thought I needed a full week here, especially since time stands still in this little town of Quincy.

I'd like to write a post about Leon's sister's wedding and share some photos from the weekend, but for now, I'll be lazy and only do photos. I may add more later, but know that there's a huge chunk of them on Flickr.

Leon's sister Ruth is getting married on Sunday in Tennessee. I will be there. I'm flying on Friday, through Brussels and Atlanta. It will take nearly 17 hours, plus the two hours of security and airport hassles I'll have in Prague.

I probably don't have a window seat, which means I probably won't sleep. Which means I will likely be irritable. And then I get to explain to Leon's family the function of my trip to Europe and what I've been doing for the past three months. This makes me feel incredibly anxious.

That's not to say that I don't want to go. I really like Ruth a lot, and I haven't been to a wedding since my own, so it'll be interesting to once again see one from the other side. Plus, when the wedding is over, I'm heading to my hometown in Illinois to see my family (more explanations, surely), who I haven't seen since Christmas.

Seeing my niece and nephew should be wonderful, and I'm really looking forward to it.

But I don't want to explain myself to anyone right now. Which is why I don't miss my therapist. And which is why I have omitted a lot of things from this journal.

Why am I in Prague? Why did I come here? I'm not sure I have good answers for these questions. But I do feel quite a bit better than I did three months ago, if that counts for anything.

And after I go to Tennessee, to Illinois, and home to California, I plan to come back here, because I'm not finished. The assumption was that I would be ready to return to normal life at the same time as the wedding. But I'm not. I don't know what the longterm implications of this are but I'm not going to speculate or try to explain.

Late last week, the divorce became final. No, not my divorce, you vultures! My sister's.

Sara filed for divorce from her husband Jeremiah about a month ago when the news of his termination at work and his subsequent lie about it were the final straws on the back of a camel that was already supporting the weight of his alcohol problem and physical abuse of her while she was pregnant.

About a month ago, Jeremiah told my parents that there were going to be some layoffs at his place of employment. I don't know if this is true or if Jeremiah knew that he was about to be fired and was cunning enough to plant the seeds for a cover-up. Either way, he was fired and soon began telling everyone--including his wife--that he was laid off and was nothing but a victim in the tale of how he'd come to be unemployed.

This might have worked, except that he caused such a spectacle when he was fired--screaming and cursing at his bosses--that he gave his coworkers a reason to talk about it. One of his coworkers sent a text message to his girlfriend as the huge argument was taking place, and she received that message while she was at work...with my dad.

Quincy is a very small town.

A day or two later, Jeremiah and Sara showed up at my parents' house for dinner, and he told my dad that he had been laid off from his job. My dad didn't let on that he knew otherwise.

But after dinner, my mom told Sara privately what had happened and she was understandably hurt and angry.

I talked on the phone to Sara shortly after all of this happened, and she confessed that she wanted to get a divorce, but, "I look at mom and dad and grandma and grandpa, and they've been married for so long. I don't want to be the one who gets a divorce."

I told her that staying married for the sole sake of avoiding the stigma of a divorce was silly and that she shouldn't care what other people think of her. Besides, anyone who condemns her for divorcing the man who lied to her about something as important as his job and who beat her when she was pregnant has some serious issues of their own.

In other news, Leon is in Tennessee this week, visiting his family. He flew into Knoxville, which is halfway between his hometown of Johnson City and Nashville, where his mom has been receiving her cancer treatments. When I last talked to him, he didn't know if he'd be spending his time in Johnson City or Nashville, but he did know that his mom's cancer didn't go away when she was injected with her brother David's stem cells several months ago--a process that, as I understood it, had a 20% chance of curing her, a 20% chance of killing her, and a 60% chance of sending the cancer into remission. But none of these things happened, and she's set to undergo the entire process all over again.

I obviously hope that she beats it this time around and that she is well enough to attend her daughter Ruth's wedding in August. My prediction is that she will have to wear a surgical mask to the nuptials, just as she had to when we went wedding gown shopping for Ruth during the Thanksgiving holiday. Those chirpy David's Bridal employees had never seen anything like it.

This is getting a bit long, but I must mention that my Aunt Val was in the hospital recently, having lots of tests done. Last I heard, she didn't have the results back, but I'm confident that she's going to learn that she's suffering from the same degenerative liver and kidney diseases that my grandpa has. It's sort of like looking into the future and seeing what's going to happen to me if I don't take better care of my body.

As for my grandpa, he's showing the early signs of Alzheimer's in addition to his own liver and kidney problems.

And this is the news from the States. But Prague is great. Wish you were here!

I just got off the phone with my mom, who told me about this story that happened in my hometown of Quincy, Illinois.

A married couple got into a dispute with one of their cousins. The cousin retaliated by setting the couple's house on fire at 3 in the morning. The couple was out at a bar when it happened, so they were fine. Unfortunately, their five children were at home. All were killed. They range in age from 10 years all the way down to 5 months.

A neighbor must have contacted the parents when they saw the smoke or the flames, because they were on scene in time to try to help rescue their children. The mother broke a window but was overcome with smoke and passed out. The father rushed into the house but had to be carried out by a firefighter; he is still in the hospital in Springfield, i.e., a better facility than they have in Quincy. Apparently the children were banging on the windows, trying to get out.

I'm absolutely horrified by this. I imagine that it would be a bigger national news story if not for the terrible occurrences at Virginia Tech. It's a scary world out there, people.

According to my mom's bathroom scale, I gained about two pounds while I was home for Christmas. Since leaving for college (and even more so since moving to California), it amazes me to go home and see how we eat there. We double up on the comfort foods and favorite restaurants, of course, because they're only available to us at this one time a year. Still, everything is either fried, covered in butter, covered in cheese, or all of the above.

In the past, I've actually gotten sick, because my body isn't used to the change. I know my diet is far from healthy (note the huge burrito I just had for lunch), but it has noticeably less fat and grease than what I grew up eating.

During this past trip, one restaurant set out on the table for six adults what appeared to be more than a pound of butter. For the bread. Leon remarked that perhaps the butter was also meant for the baked potatoes that came with our entrees but no--another bowl of butter that had evidently been served with an ice cream scoop (three scoops) accompanied this course.

This is the first time that I've visited and realized just how sedentary the Quincy lifestyle is. And often when sedentary, we eat. I kept eating out of boredom and also because things just tasted good. I wasn't hungry but, dammit, when's the next time I'm going to have a chocolate chip cookie? Or a glass of eggnog? And did I actually fight my sister over a piece of caramel apple pie?

When I think about all of this, it's amazing that my mom has lost more than 70 pounds over the last 7 and a half months. In Quincy, no less. It has taken me that same 7 and a half months (in a much healthier environment) to lose only 27 pounds, something I could never do in Quincy.

And I don't know what point I'm trying to make. Perhaps it's that I never could've lost this weight in the Midwest, even though many people have. But it's easier there, I think, to stay fat.

Of course, there are many other things at work, too. For instance, I have stopped getting discouraged when I have a week without a loss. I don't think, "All that work for nothing." I think, "Hopefully next week will be better." I have stopped thinking that I have to give up all the foods that I enjoy, although it's been more than a year since I went to Cold Stone Creamery. And I have started realizing how good I feel at 27 pounds less than I was at another stage in my life.

I took the internet's advice and gave my parents the bad news before Christmas. Actually, it wasn't a rational decision to let them cope before I arrived; I had become anxious to the point where I could no longer function as a normal human being. I felt that if I didn't tell them, I was going to explode from the pressure of holding in such a massive amount of hot air. (That's one of those metaphors that you should just read and not try to dissect.)

The Monday before Christmas, I called my mom and gaged her mood for a few minutes until I finally broke out this clever, diplomatic phrase: "What's the worst thing I could possibly tell you?"

Brilliant, Kate. Way to make Mt. Everest out of the Appalachians.

She responded, "That you're not coming home for Christmas."

"Really?" I said and tried to decide if her shortsightedness was a good thing.

After this, she reconsidered and began listing terrible things, some of which included: losing my job, quitting my job, getting a divorce, and having a terminal illness. "Well, which is it?" she asked.

I didn't answer. Somehow she decided that I had lost my job and began probing the whys and hows. But this wasn't it, and so I kept quiet, which did nothing to calm her nerves as she now considered that her youngest child might be homeless or dying.

When Leon began listening in some minutes later, she sounded angry and nearly hysterical. He calmed her down and told her that everything was fine, really. He told me, "Don't make her guess."

And I told her. And I cried and cried and cried, the most satisfying, freeing tears of my life. She told me that she was shocked but that she loves me and wants me to be happy. The following day, I had an email from her that was filled with wonderful, encouraging words and lots of smiley faces.

Unfortunately, my dad overheard the conversation and he wasn't as easygoing as my mom. He was somewhere between devastated and angry. And, although he treated me normally while I was home for Christmas, he left for work the day of my flight out of Quincy without saying goodbye (we drove by his work on the way to the airport and made him hug me anyway). He was very rude and condescending to me on the phone last night, as well, but that may not have had anything to do with me.

Still, I'd say they're both taking it well, in their own special ways.

Last week, I emailed most of my family about our plans at Christmas, specifically, what I should buy as gifts. No one responded.

Yesterday, when I was getting my makeup done at the Clinique counter in Macy's, Leon called to tell me that there was some bad news and that I'd want to call my parents. The news was that my grandpa was in the hospital. Again.

I called my mom's cell phone and she was at the hospital. I asked her what had happened, and she hesitated, telling me that she didn't want to trouble me before I went to Europe. I pressed her, though, and she said, "I think when you are home at Christmas, you're going to be surprised by how different he is."

She continued, telling me that my grandpa has been very disoriented, very confused. She told me that he gets up at night and wanders around. Recently, my grandma woke up in the middle of the night and didn't know where he was. She eventually found him in the bathroom closet, unable to get out, and with cuts on his head. He was looking for aftershave.

"He's not Dad anymore," my mom said, and I knew what she meant. "Last night, it was so bad that I had to go over and get one of the kids." (You may remember that my parents and grandparents are collectively raising my sister's two children.)

I asked her if she thought he'd still be "around" (what a clever euphemism) at Christmas. She paused before saying, "I think so."

Leon and I talked when I got home from Macy's. We talked about my grandpa, about my parents, about his mom and her cancer. We talked about his uncle's girlfriend who just died and we talked about the fate of my niece and nephew.

"We're lucky," I said, "that we don't have to deal with these things or worry about these things. We're so wrapped up in our own world."

And I thought about my Christmas present inquiry and how I was getting my makeup done when I received the call. I even thought about how I called my mom on Saturday evening, talking to her mere hours before she would have to go help her mother corral two small children and her disoriented father.

We're very lucky, Leon and I. We're still young, and being in California removes us from all of the problems that our families face every day. With the holidays coming, though, we're going to have a nice hard look at reality.

I talked to my dad on the phone this weekend, and he informed me that my high school is going to put on a production of Les Miserables this summer. I almost have no words. Almost.

The truth is, I can't wait to hear the reaction to this show, which features gyrating prostitutes and half a dozen references to erections, from a town that picketed the opening weekend of Showgirls. 16-year-olds humping other 16-year-olds on stage? Fabulous.

Of course, this will be cut out. Fantine will probably sell her hair and then die in bed. But it's her prostitution that leads to Jean Valjean lifting the cart and eventually revealing his identity, so, really, I can't wait to hear how QHS rewrites this plot. They'll probably work in tap dancing.

I went to my share of high school musicals when I was younger, and what is usually the most painful part is that there are only two or three good singers in any given production. Les Miserables demands about a dozen of them. And two of them need to be under the age of ten. Even the touring companies seem to have trouble finding exceptional children. I don't suspect that there are any of immense talent just sitting around in Quincy, Illinois.

Can you tell that I'm annoyed by this? What you probably don't know about me is that I was in love with Les Mis from the time that I was 11 until I was maybe 15. I escaped into the melodramatic and frequently fanciful world of Broadway show tunes when I was a teenager, because I was depressed and unhappy in my own life. I had Stephen Sondheim to make me feel poignant, Claude-Michel Schonberg to make me feel bigger than I was, Kander & Ebb to make me feel clever, and Andrew Lloyd Webber to underscore it all with something soaring and significant.

But so much of my unhappiness stemmed from my life at school, which was the totality of my life when I was 12 and 13. And so seeing Les Miserables joined together with the establishment that drove me to listen to such desperate and pathetic anthems to rid myself of angst is like putting together two puzzle pieces that simply do not fit. It will be a travesty, a tragedy, a disaster, and a wonderful spectacle. I wish I could see it for myself.

Theaters in Berkeley are still playing four of the five films nominated for Best Picture, including Good Night, and Good Luck, which will be out on video in, like, two weeks. (This makes me feel very torn, because I have not seen it and would like to see it before the Oscars, but it's hard to pay $20 to go see it when I know I could get it on Netflix by the middle of next month.)

The only movie not showing is Crash, which has been on video for months.

One theater is showing this: Academy Nominated Short Films: Animated and Live Action. And not just at some special, one night event, but twice a day. Squee!

I probably won't go to said short films, but it's so nice to have the option, and it's one of the things I absolutely love about living in a place like Berkeley. I will miss this sort of thing when I am no longer here. (No, I'm not moving any time soon.)

Just reflecting is all. If my family would move out West, I think Northern California has everything I could ever want. Well, I'd still like more variety in temperatures and weather. And not spending 90 minutes in traffic whenever I want to go into a more urban area would be nice. Cheaper housing. Better parking. Less crime.

Why isn't there a city that meets more of my criteria? And if it does exist, why haven't I found it? What about Seattle? Denver? Austin? And can you convince my family to move out of Quincy?

...Funny. I thought I was just talking about going to the movies tonight.

I found out last night that my sister's husband Jeremiah was fired from stocking shelves at the Hy-Vee grocery store. He outlasted my sister at this employer by a month, I think. She had been working in the deli and got canned for missing work around the same time that Jeremiah had her arrested for bloodying his nose (oh no, he di'int!).

What? Did I actually not tell that story?

Hmm. I don't think I did. Well, the gist of it is that they were fighting like usual, and she popped him one but not before she called the cops on him. When they arrived, Jeremiah must have been bloody and looked like the victim, so they hauled her ass off to jail. She later had the charges reduced from "assault" to an ordinance violation for "fighting" because she was able to cite all the times that the police have been called to break up all the fights in which he was the primary aggressor.

But this drama made her miss work, and they fired her. Jeremiah might have also tipped them off that she was in the slammer, so Hy-Vee wasn't left thinking that she'd simply forgotten.

Anyway, Hy-Vee had wanted to fire Jeremiah for a long while--I know this because my parents are well acquainted with one of the higher-ups. But Jeremiah told them that if he were fired, he'd sue their asses for a supervisor calling him a "lazy jerkoff," which, apparently, is a no-no. This kept them in check, until Jeremiah made a sexual/sexist joke/comment, someone complained, and it was considered suitable grounds for firing him. I guess.

Now my sister and her husband are both unemployed, unless you count her vitamin-selling position, which I don't.

He has an interview for a welding job--welding being a skill he picked up in prison. It's the same employer for whom he was working when he was busted by the cops two years ago when he was leaving work. So, you know, he's more or less got a foot in the door there. And with her on the fast track to $1000 commissions, I think things are already looking up for these starry-eyed kids.

My sister's husband Jeremiah has a tattoo on his upper back with the word "fuck" in it. Whether it says "fuck you" or "fuck it," I don't recall. What I do recall is that over the summer, when Jeremiah was swimming with his children in my parents' backyard, he was required to wear a t-shirt to cover it. And that my grandma wants to pay for him to have the lettering changed to something less offensive, like "park it" or "pack you" or whatever her great idea was.

Regardless, given that influence, it wasn't much of a surprise that his two daughters from a previous marriage showed up to the Christmas Eve celebration at my parents' house sporting rub-on tattoos. Had they worn them on their faces, it would've at least looked childish--like they'd just had their faces painted at a fair. But on their upper arms? It was kind of tacky.



Christmas Eve was the only time I saw them, as Jeremiah needs some sort of chaperone in order to spend time with them. And, besides, after a couple of hours, he seemed to have had enough of them, as he retired to a corner with a book instead of getting down on the floor and being dad.

Most upsetting to me was that after Kerri, the younger of the two, wrote and illustrated a holiday card for him, Jeremiah didn't even take it with him. We found it lying on the floor in the living room after he'd left.

And most upsetting to my parents was that his oldest daughter Angela showed up in a coat that was at least ten sizes too big and that looked dirty. Apparently, it brought a tear to my dad's eyes. No more comforting was returning the girls to their mother, who recently dropped 60 pounds in a month and lost all of her teeth (hmm, meth, anyone?).

My grandma gave cash to Jeremiah and Sara, as part of their Christmas gift, and my mom said that if Jeremiah cared at all about Kerri and Angela, he would use that money to buy a new coat for Angela. Instead, he and Sara were arguing about it within ten hours of receiving it--an argument that I was privileged to watch and that involved no less than two police officers who arrived in separate cruisers. What fun.

I guess when you look at all of those components, the rub-on tattoos hardly seem worth mentioning.

Sometimes I forget to mention important things, like the fact that Leon took advantage of being in a red county on the fourth of July and passed out anti-Patriot Act pamphlets.





(That second picture is of my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Schrand, and his wife reading the pamphlet.)

Leon only had a few pamphlets crumpled up and thrown back at him. And I think only one person cussed while doing it. Progress, people, progress.