Saturday I got up late, and teenagers were around most all day. Amanda and her group, and Roger and his group, of whom, Roger's brother is the crossover. We were taking Amanda home in after dinner when Boston grabbed the left-over chicken, pan and all, from the stove, and knocked it to the floor. The chicken disappeared like the "Botulism-in-a-Can" brand chicken legs from that Twilight Zone episode with Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson. The "botulism-in-a-can" to which Gayle referred in her post.

Sunday there were teenagers, too. We mostly had Amanda around, but she's noisy and full of attitude that would seem big shared between two people. And we took her home after dinner again. I figured the kids would hang somewhere else after the weekend was over. Maybe they're staying away from their parents on weekends for a reason. I just know they're not getting in to trouble when they're over here, so long as their parents agree. I always have one track available for listening in to and tuning in to when needed their conversations, and I monitor their MySpace use, too.

Yesterday was fairly quiet, and I had a lovely New Year's Eve watching old Twilight Zone episodes with Gayle and making sarcastic, and funny, I hope, comments. I enjoyed myself, anyway. And this morning I woke to a new year, and to a lovely seduction before my shower. I've been watching the Monk marathon most of the day. And I was pleased that I got to sit on my duff (and put my sprained ankle up) and have dinner cooked for me once again by my lovely girlfriend. I think she overestimated the amount meant by "some" when she put some bacon grease in a pan before cooking the eggs, and the eggs came out kind of disgusting. But in retrospect, "some" isn't the most specific instruction to give the novice cook.

I've been having a lovely vacation, save spraining my ankle something awful. But now it's time to get a little serious, and accomplish the work tasks I have to do before the start of the new quarter, and go to the dentist. Ick. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow at 9, for several hours, and then again one on Monday, for several hours. Right after the Monday one we're leaving to go meet my sister and my Uncle Dave's John (ex-now) in Cayucos, on the Central Coast. With the dogs. Gayle is incredibly accommodating, and sweet to put up with me.

mood: content music: Monk

It's incredibly difficult to allow myself to be cared for when I'm vulnerable and ill. If I begin feeling a little better, I feel like a charlatan, or even a dominating partner in accepting care, in allowing things to be brought to me, done for me. I'm not doing my share! And I keep being told that this is acceptable because I'm sick, but it feels like I'm getting away with something, and I'm not suffering enough. This has not been my experience with being sick before. And I was sick for three and a half years running not so long ago, so that's saying something. And because of that long illness, I know that I'm scared that this current one is somehow a recurrence of the long one, that it's come back, that I'll not be better and back to work tomorrow, that the fevers won't stop, the ridiculous, overpowering fatigue will continue and that my mouth will hurt forever. And that the nausea won't ever go away. And I know that's unlikely, but I feel so much now like I did then. And it's weird that I'm not being made in any kind of subtle way to feel guilty about it, or made to feel like I should be repaying Gayle for all she does for me, all the ways she's been taking care of me, even the leaving me alone part. Just having her around makes me feel so much safer in all this, it's incredible. I can look at her, or lean on her, and slow down all my awful "what if?" thoughts. She's so solid, so credible, logical, I don't even have to say things out loud; I know what she'd say. And she's been so lovely, and tender, and caring, and fun to be around. She's not mad at me at all for being sick! It amazes me! She's just wonderful.

I had a lovely weekend. I had a terrible weekend. I stepped in between, and through, and back and forth into several universal choices. I feel as if I should have more control over the singular slices of possibility in which I exist, but I don't seem to have mastered that. I'm not so good with controlling everything I think I should be able to control.

Gayle gave me some lovely third lunar revolution gifts, including a poem that made me blush. I spent the weekend in a rather terrible, agitated mood, set off by the circumstances I described in my last post. I didn't seem to be able to shake it off. It was relieved somewhat by the kids who dropped by; it's difficult to be sulky with teenagers around. I had two, then three, then for a moment, four, then back to three, and after we thought we were done with them, two (only one of the original two, and the third) came back for more. I like that I can provide a safe place for these oft-troubled kids to be, and their parents seem to be glad they're with me rather than roaming the streets. At least with me they're not smoking, or drinking, or drugging, or fighting, or doing who knows what, and I keep them from going off into excesses. And I listen with one ear to everything they say, so I stay informed about what's going on in the local teen community. Helps me with my work, and lets me know when to worry, or to step in. I feel badly about how irritating their exuberance, and their awful music (there's some I like, but not what they were playing yesterday) is to Gayle. But over long practice, I've learned to tune out the music, listen to the kids, and simply have a warm, maternal feeling that they're here and safe and happy.

I have to be at work now, writing math tests (inservice day, no kids). Promises to be thrilling. Should be fun in some ways; I like the other math teachers. We have a good time together. And it will be a shorter work day than a school day. But I certainly am procrastinating walking out the door.

Gayle is the most amazing woman. She stayed the night last night, breaking her regular routine of leaving on the Sunday night, because today is the day of our third lunar revolution, and she gave me the additional gift of allowing me to see her and kiss her on the actual day, braving the busy traffic to head back to her place before work. She is also amazingly sweet, and romantic, and level-headed, and everything I could want in a woman. I am so fortunate that she agreed to meet me in a bookstore and go to the state fair with me three months ago.

mood: mellow

Gayle very much wants me to quit being so damned Old, and try this ridiculous blogging thing. And she thinks I'll learn all kinds of stuff about her if I do this sort of thing. Of course, since no one has me added as someone to look at, or look for, or whatever it is that you people do, this won't actually be read, I'm guessing.

I realize that I've had only three months to practice, but I think I'm doing all right with the care and feeding of my very own Gayle thus far. She's eating real food, not just pasta-roni, and she seems pretty darned happy. I know that I'm happier than I've ever been, and glad (and amazed) that she was available when I finally determined that I was deserving of someone as good as she is. Sure she's a big geek with questionable social skills, but then I'm a big geek with questionable self-care skills. We complement each other's strengths and prop up each other's lesser abilities. I'm madly in love, and happy. And I'm not having to overlook anything about her in order to stay happy with her. Nor she, me. So I think we're good. And I'm glad if all her LJ friends are happy for her; she deserves no less.

If anyone does manage to read this, and wants to tell me anything specific about Gayle, feel free. But I don't really get how this whole thing works, so I may not be reaching anyone with this at all.

mood: amused

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn't finish, strike through what you couldn't stand, and underline the ones you own but haven't read. The numbers after each one are the number of LibraryThing users who used the tag of that book.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)
Life of Pi: a Novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and Prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A Tale of Two Cities (80)
The Brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (79)
War and Peace (78)
Vanity Fair (74)
The Time Traveler's Wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (67)
Atlas Shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury Tales (64)
The Historian: A Novel (63)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's Pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi Boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of Wrath (57)
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & Demons (56)
The Inferno (56)
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and Sensibility (55)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's Travels (53)
Les Misérables (53)
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (52)
Dune (51)
The Prince (51)
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-Five (49)
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake: A Novel (47)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (47)
Cloud Atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46)
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the Road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (45)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's Rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences (44)
White Teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44)