Today’s inspiration is Hamlet.

What my reader might envy about my life is the time that I have to do things at home. Like most humans, I squander my resources. I am sorry to say, that here I am at home, while the kids are at school and sometimes I really waste that time.

Sometimes, I use it industriously to do egregious tasks.

Sometimes, I squander it in personally enjoyable activities, such as reading or napping.

Sometimes, I decide I should memorize speeches from Hamlet. That’s one thing I did today.  I am trying to commit to memory the speech in which Hamlet describes his depression, how he really knows that the world, the air, mankind, etc., are amazing and all that, but his attitude sucks and he is Not Pleased.

To test my learning of it so far, I am going to try to write it out now.

I have of late, wherefore I know not , lost all my mirth.  … What a piece of work is  a man, how noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form and moving how admirable, in action.  How like an angel, in apprehension… How like a God!

It’s close, but not quite right. If you are a Shakespearean scholar, you’ll notice my funny punctuation.  A quick trip to Wikipedia and you may talk like a scholar, too, for there it explains how in different places where this brilliant speech is committed to paper, there are different punctuation marks. I don’t recall which is what, and why, but I did decide to memorize and say this speech to myself as it most made sense. So, I am saying that in apprehension, man is like an angel, rather than in action.  Daring, I know. That’s me.

You might notice that it has no P in it.

I am writing on a derelict com’uter that has a broken letter p.  I can ty’e a p when I try really hard, and ‘ress down on it intentionally. But most of the time, I will be too lazy to accom’lish that.  Sorry in advance. The a’ostro’hes will go as well. Oo’sy.

Well if that didn’t scare away the reader, then maybe the rest of this entry will be just for you, that one special person for whom a hard press of the letter will be made.

Today Pann is thinking about the nature of the egregious task.  What on earth is that, you may ask? An egregious task, in this household, really, is any kind of task that simly must be done, and no matter how much whining one does, it all comes to the simle fact that it has to be done, so it is.  Usually involves something unleasant or stinky.  When you have two kids, three cats, and two guinea pigs, there’s a lot of unpleasant stuff to manage.

POOP.  Not to mention, there is plumbing to be managed. It is annoying how often the larger mammals around here clog up the toilets.

Funny, though you may at this oint be thinking that I am complaining, I actually feel pretty good and I don’t meant to complain at all.  I did several egregious tasks today and I don’t mind much.

The one I really didn’t like was plunging the toilet.  Because, YUCKY POOP! Stinks, you know.

I also scooped the cat boxes. But that was stinky but not as bad as plunging. I also cleaned up my younger daughter’s room, which was messy but not poopy or stinky.  That wasn’t bad, but it is an act of fierce futility.  I looked and even entered my older daughter’s room, but the level of chaos there defeated me anyway.  I don’t know how she feels about it, but oh my. Egregious state of affairs indeed, and not even poopy.

The letter p key seems to be sticking less. That is good.  What is the point of this particular little missive? The moral of the story is, if you have the time, go ahead and do the yucky stuff that has to be done. You’ll be glad you did.

And maybe just maybe you’ll be lucky to have your letter p get unstuck in the process.

Perhaps.

Tonight, darkness will reign in our household from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM.

It’s EARTH HOUR in the Pann household, and around the world.

Find out more here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour/2009/

We interrupt this novel to remind you that Neil Gaiman is amazing.

He writes…. by hand.

In charming little notebooks that he picks up in Venice.

I write, by contrast, on my Macbook, and the drivel that I am writing, well, it’s fantasy of one kind or another.

Oh, Neil Gaiman, I just adore the little gravestones you drew at the end of the chapters. Sigh.

Please, if anyone out there is reading this blog, remember this: 1) it’s possible to write a novel in one month’s time and 2) if by novel, you mean putting 50,000 near one another in some semblance of a prose and 3) the most important thing to do if you haven’t done so already is read the works of astoundingly good writers. May I suggest you immediately stop what you are doing (ie, reading this blog) and go pick up one of Neil’s books?

I swoon, I swoon…. by the light of the crescent moon, a bit of icecream on a spoon….

OK, thanks Artemesia, you’ve tagged me, thus allowing me to put off cleaning the catboxes just a little longer today.

The Rules:

# Link to the person who tagged you
# Post the rules on your blog.
# Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
# Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs. (um, okay, but please know, oh randomly tagged people, that I truly don’t expect you to comply unless you are into it…)
# Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged. (being a total rule breaker, I am not even going to bother doing this… slacker!!!)

ONWARD!

1. I pretty much only wear Doc Martens (shoes). I have two pairs that I mainly alternate, and love them dearly. I have another pair, that I can’t seem to find, so I don’t wear them as much. Before these three pairs dominated my footwear scene, I had just one pair of black Doc Martens, that I had bought in England in 1994 and wore extensively for about ten years before I had to buy replacements.  Oh and in the summer, bare feet round the house, and crocs elsewhere. Oh, and for pants I wear Levi Jeans.

2. I always wanted to have two daughters, and never hoped — not once– for a son. I have two daughters and that suits me perfectly. Sometimes I crave little baby feet, but then that feeling ebbs away. I think I may really be done!

3.  Almost all of my furniture is hand-me-downs. Exceptions: our queen sized bed, and Carla’s loft bed from IKEA.

4. I stopped eating commercially processed pork because of what I read in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I had already pretty much stopped eating conventionally processed beef (not being that fond of it anyway.) But pork? Oh GOD, I fucking love pork. Bacon! Ham! Pork Chops! Salami! Prosciutto! But what I read in that book saddened and disgusted me so deeply, that I won’t buy pork products unless I KNOW that they come from small farms that treat their pigs in a humane way, and slaughter them as humanely as possible. Being killed for meat in and of itself is not upsetting to me.  But horrid and painful living conditions for animals who are headed to eventual slaughter is unacceptable to me.

5. I like to paint my toenails blue in the summer. I had blue toenails to stare at when I gave birth to my first child. My husband had painted them for me, because I couldn’t reach my toes so well at that point.

6. I worry every day that I might lose my new job (as after school director) next year. I want to keep it so badly. It really hurts my feelings that when I was hired, I was told that a search for a new A/S director would be conducted for next year anyway. So I worry and try to do a really good job, and blabbermouth at everyone at school how much I love the job, the kids, the school, the program and I wear my heart on my sleeve about how dearly I want to keep this job.

7.  I have a lot of gray hair. It started turning gray at the ripe old age of 23. When I first noticed it, I cut my hair short, as I didn’t like sitting there in grad school staring at my long gray strands and wondering if grad school was the cause of the gray, or if it was perhaps my full time job as a head teacher of a group of 18 – 24 month old kids. Or perhaps the insanity of working full time and being in grad school full time simultaneously. These thoughts were more unwelcome than the hair itself. Today, though, I am at peace with my hair. I have never once dyed it in my entire life and I often give it any trims that I think it needs with my own pair of scissors.

Randomly tagged souls… hmmmm…. how does one randomly tag someone? Am I supposed to put the names of blogs into a hat and see who comes up? I’ll just list seven bloggers whose blogs I visit somewhat regularly, in no particular order. Swistle, Stacie, Cammy, Heather, MamaGeek, TBH, Neil Gaiman. (Ok, I seriously doubt that Neil Gaiman will take on this meme, but you never know. Neil, if you read this, holy cow, man you just made my day. I think you are just brilliant.)

Tonight I spent several hours using the internet to figure out the current name, address, and phone number of my half sister, whom I have never met. She is the daughter of my father and his first wife.  That marriage ended in divorce within a couple of years; my father re-married as did his ex-wife.

The reason that I never grew up knowing this half sister is that my father signed away his parental rights, including visitation, because he was unable to make child support payments, some time before I was even born. His regret at doing this has eaten away at him for a long, long time.

My half sister, whom I’ll call “Jennifer,” was born in 1964.  My dad gave me her date of birth, and, using her date of birth and first name, along with a guess as to which state she resides in, I was able to find out her married name, her maiden name (which is not the name she was born with), where she works, what educational degrees she holds, and the fact that she has a daughter, “Alexis”.

I am astounded at the sudden windfall of information. I’d wondered my whole life about this mystery Jennifer. What she was like (is she like me??), how does she look, would she like to have a little sister?

Tomorrow, I think I will give her a call. What will I say? She might hate my dad, for having agreed to not contact her all these years. He was required to stay away until she reached eighteen years, but what about when she was 19… surely he could have gotten in touch at that time?

Well, I cannot make excuses or explanations for Dad. He has lived and decided and made choices of his own; his regrets or mistakes are solely his own emotional property. He seems very excited and pleased that I may be able to contact Jennifer tomorrow, or someday soon.  I imagine he would like to know more about her, although this evening I gave him a lot more information than he’d previously possessed.  I am sure he went to bed with a full mind.

I wonder if I should think more about how to approach this phone call; what I should say to her, and how to put it.

“Hi, last night I  spent 3 hours stalking you online using your date of birth and found you by being weirdly obsessive and reading your grandmother’s obituary which mentions your maiden name, and married name, and has your mother’s name, and using each bit of information I systematically tracked you down like some kind of psychopath.”  No, that does not seem like the right approach.

But I am sure she would eventually be curious to know how I found her; I don’t want her to think me a stalker.

“Hello, my name is Pann and I’m your half sister. I was wondering if you are at all interested in talking to me.”

I need to think this through. This is pretty surreal.

1. Stop talking.

2. Notice those noises coming from the other person in the room.

3. Notice that those sounds form words.

4. Still stop talking.

5. Those noises continue. NOW YOU SHUT UP AND LISTEN GODDAMMIT.

It is very frustrating to try to get a thought across to my father.

PURELY HYPOTHETICAL DIALOGUE…

SHE: Dear, it’s garbage night, could you take out the trash?

HE: Why, certainly. Is there much that needs to go out?

SHE: Well, at this point the deck is starting to look like a midden.

HE: I hardly think you mean “midden.”

S: Well I know there’s a heap of trash out there.

H: “Midden” implies that there’s poop in the heap. There isn’t a heap of poop out on the deck, is there?

S: No, but there is a big pile of trash out there.

H: Let me look that up for you. Hmmmm… Midden: noun 1: dunghill2 a: a refuse heap; especially : kitchen midden b: a small pile (as of seeds, bones, or leaves) gathered by a rodent (as a pack rat). Although, I might add that my research shows that in Scotland, this term is used to generally denote a mess, and can even be extended to describe people whose lives are a mess.  Which reminds of another anecdote I want to share with you…

 . . .

The next morning…

SHE: There goes the trash truck. Did you ever take out the trash last night?

HE:  No, why, is there much trash to go out?

SHE: Well, yes, I’d say the deck is starting to look like… a refuse heap; specifically : a mound marking the site of a primitive human habitation

FACTS that are making my mind awfully full. I’m the kid raising her hand in the back row asking, “May I please be excused? My mind is full.”

One of my best friends is in the hospital, recovering from surgery. What they removed was not a benign cyst at all, it was cancerous. A rare one that they’re not sure how to treat, but surgery was certainly the first step, and she is recovering. I am really sad, and angry that this is happening to my friend, and I feel very powerless to help.

Meanwhile, a cargo ship hit the Bay Bridge, 58,000 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay not too long ago. I’m powerless to help.

Within the last couple days, a typhoon / cyclone in Singapore Bangladesh claimed the lives of more than 1500 people. Can’t do anything about that either.

I have a proposal to write, that was due yesterday, but didn’t get to finish because my grandmother in law apparently thinks I’m a free taxi service and calls me at random asking for rides… right now? Not powerless in this situation, just frustrated. I do not usually work when my gals are with me, so how will I get this proposal written?

My mom wants me to pop on over to the Italian Market (30-40 min car ride to south philly from where I live) in order to pick up a few christmas gifts for friends of hers, and some fresh pasta. Uh, in my copious free time.

There are way more dirty articles of clothing here in my home than clean ones. Gah.

My daughter wants me to take her to a nature center this afternoon. Sure hon, just as soon as we get back from the Italian Market?
My other daughter’s friends want to come for a playdate today, but my house is such an embarrasing heap of dirty things that I can’t bear the thought of their mom seeing it. Sorry honey.

The 100-days-of-flowers bulb assortment I bought sits on my front porch, and I don’t know when I’ll plant it or even WHERE I’ll plant it. Guess those bulbs will just sit another week. Hope it doesn’t freeze yet out there.

My yard and other outdoor spaces are in bad need of raking, but I don’t even have a rake because someone made off with ours. Maybe I can get a rake in the Italian Market.

I have two clients who require phone calls from me today. One is someone whose laptop I was supposed to have worked on sometime in the last month when it was sitting up in my office, forgotten and ignored. The other is someone who bought his computer from me over a year ago, and it’s now giving him some horrible error message and not starting up anymore.

My gutters REALLY need to be cleaned out. This is something that I can do, but it requires wriggling out the attic window onto the flat roof.

The cat litter boxes in the basement are so bad, that half my readers will want to figure out where I live and call the ASPCA and report me as a bad cat owner. Plus my wild, evil cat was out all night and she is still not back.

Plus, Swistle is going through her blog and deleting a ton of things that might offend her unreasonable and obnoxious relatives. Which is her right, but is so sad to me… such a good blogger, having to censor herself. Bleh!

I guess you could say I am a bit overwhelmed.

As jumbled as this post is, so many things of different weights roiling around together, that is how my mind is. Just not in a very effective mood, not an ideal way to be when you have a lot to do, people to call, proposal to write, friends to think of, and gutters to clean.