I had a dream last night that I was hanging out with ita's Mom and we were discussing the old In Living Color sketch about the West Indian family that all had a bunch of jobs.

I'm officially seceding from my family. Who wants to belong to my new one?

I'd love to, particularly if it means ditching most of my old family.

It was an incredibly long day, and theoretically I'm going back out to hear David Olney and some other singer-songwriters here for the festival. (Townes Van Zandt once said his favorite writers were Mozart, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bob Dylan and David Olney.) I wish there was a way to get there without putting my feet on the ground again.

I embarrassed myself in public about a hundred ways today, because I ended up having to be the voice of the festival to what seemed like thousands of people, and I appeared to lose many brain cells each hour I was there. Also, they may not want me back as a captain because I complained about the little old lady volunteer who yelled at everyone.

Here's a small petty whine about the little old lady. She harassed me for an hour to put more tape on the signs because they would fall off and told me she knew how to put up a sign because she was a math teacher for 35 years. She said no one had told her what to do. A co-captain told her something to do and she said that was the wrong way to do it. We said it was really our call and the little old lady said, "I'll listen to you when you listen to me." I know I should be nice to annoying old people, because I'll be one someday, but I was dealing with about 800 Charlaine Harris fans who were, collectively, less trouble than one volunteer.

(edited for lack of brain cells)

I want to join the new family!

I am with my family now. But I am tired, cranky and just want to go to sleep. So I am couting the minutes until it's acceptable to go to bed. In the meantime, my parents are listening to the TV too loud and every ten minutes, my mother tells me about another thing that I can eat, even though I had two portions of lasagna at supper.

I'm familiar with that, though it's more "what are you doing? What are you doing now? " and having the paper I just read read aloud to me... but really, they aren't bad, I'm just not used to having them underfoot.

So weird thing about the locker rooms at the Y: you have to have a code to enter them (not weird) BUT the girls' locker room -as opposed to women's- doesn't have a pool side lock-I didn't check the other entry. I discovered this when I learned I don't know the pool-locker room code and had to go through the girls'... just sort of strange.

Oh, and there is a sauna in the locker rooms.

There's a sauna in my clubhouse here at my apartment complex, but you have to walk through the party room to get to it. I've never used it, but am thinking about doing so some winter weekend when it's really cold out.

I'll have to keep it in mind when I get bone cold hurting during the winter.

I just got off the phone with my mom. Now, she's a politically progressive woman, former nurse, who's pretty up on most things in current events. But, I had to explain to her what the public option was. When I mentioned my disappointment at Obama's seeming willingness to toss the public option aside to get a weak-ass reform package passed, she had no clue what I was talking about.

I am just no good at sharing my space with other beings, human or not. I'm so used to my solitude.

Trudy, if only this West Indian could have one job, now that my research for my sister is done.

Today is a long-assed day session at Flushing Meadows. Is your dad home yet, msbelle?

My mom is very similar, Kathy. The pro-reform people have been horrible at actually getting the message out. And the town hall meetings were not the greatest venue. When my mom was asking me some questions about the reform a few weeks ago and I suggested that she go to a town hall meeting and listen and ask questions, she said, "Oh, are those the things where everyone goes and yells at each other? I don't want to go to that."

I think my feet have convinced me to stay home, even though I promised a friend I'd be there. I've tried three times to get up and get ready, and each time my feet said, "No! We won't let you."