i've been silenced for a few days posting as i worked through the feelings i had about heath ledger's death. tuesday, when it happened, i had what i felt like a really personal reaction. then i spent wednesday and thursday berating myself for that.

he was, of course, my favorite actor. my infatuation with him -and even his family- is long known. i can't deny the countless times i walked gus past his house in brooklyn, hoping to catch a sight of him. it's a little embarassing, yes.

i think that real-life connection -hi, i'm admiring what you guys are doing to your backyard, hannah just saw you at fairway again- is what knocked the wind out of me so badly.

we all gape at celebrity and as a society can't seem to resist that car crash mentality of wanting to see what's going on. it's not something to be proud of, but i'd be a liar to deny i wasn't a part of it.

i'm torn between not wanting to hear anything about this tragedy and letting it absolutely consume me in the quest to know everything. i wish i could turn that off, be a bigger and BETTER person.

my heart aches for his little girl, his family, michelle williams. but i have no idea of the life any of them, the true lives, that is. so it doesn't even seem right - seems intrusive, presumptuous - to think that i do care. what right do i have?

this isn't about me.

can someone please tell me at what point a person should stop expecting other people to pick up their tab? jason and i have a friend here in brooklyn who never pays for anything. she doesn't even reach for her wallet. when the check comes she just sits back and does nothing. this weekend my father and margaret were in town. she managed to join us for two meals (only one of which she was really invited to) and allow my father to pick up the entire bill. he is that kind of man. even if she offered money he would decline. but the point is she never even tried, and i don't think she bothered a sincere thank you either. i was so frustrated that by the end of meal two i couldn't even look at her. jason and i talked it through. he feels a the need to talk to her about this habit, especially since it is really getting in the way of our friendship. he plans on telling her simply that socially if you are out with anyone except your boyfriend or your own parents you offer to pay. but really…she is in her mid twenties and a lawyer. does she really need to be told this!!!

that said (or discharged from my annoyed brain)….we are finally back in our apartment after a week plus in VA. i am so happy to be back. it is hard to travel with a baby (ray, i agree a vacation with children is not really a vacation). jason has just over a week until work start. i am filled with emotions about that…both good and bad. life will be quiet and slow when he is gone all day. but it will be a more constant and scheduled life…and i know we all thrive when life is more regular. still the endless summer (over three months with no jobs) is about to end and we probably won’t have this much time as a family without any work for a long time to come.

as for the larger not me world…maybe today i can catch up. i haven't seen the news in weeks. but i did catch about ten minute of the show anchorwoman. big surprise… it was axed after one show!! but for those who need to watch fox has it online (i think??).

we are in brooklyn. we moved in on the first and spent our first night in an empty apartment on a borrowed air bed. the movers were delayed. many days later, we are well on the way to being settled. there are still boxes around, but mostly because the apartment is being painted and a new kitchen put in next week while we are back in VA. the apartment is so good. we've meet the downstairs neighbors (who have two young boys) and the upstairs neighbors (with two college aged kids). the way upstairs people seem anti social and glum. but we may just have caught them at a bad moment. it is a nice small community here. just four families living in this huge old mansion. we pass in the halls and talk. those who share our floors and ceilings have kids too, so they know about the noise, the fussing, the early hours. we’ve heard ofetn how nice it is to have a baby around.

prospect park is just one block away. a long block, especially now when it is so hot, but really so close. we go every morning so finley can get his fill of the dogs. he wakes up and starts talking about dogs immediately. i love to hear him talk! on top of many dogs there are babies everywhere. and friendly moms and dads. i am working on being out going, joining in conversations at the park, introducing myself and finley. it isn't always easy. i can feel the awkward, self judging creature inside me start to wiggle as i prepare to reach out and make a connection to a stranger. but it silences quickly. it feels good to push past the discomfort and find that i really do like connecting to new people.

so all is well. we are finding the places for all our things. finding the things that need to go back to VA or up on the craigslist. we are exploring the streets. each evening my legs ache a little from all the walking. finley is adjusting well. and it all feels like home…or like it will be home soon enough. i can feel myself melting into this place, finding my groove, finding the places i go over and over, the walks i take, and even the new people i'll meet. it is nice to have a home again after almost three months of wandering. i need a home…i see that now…it grounds me and helps me breath. i feel lighter already, even in the heat and the humidity. it is great!

we have a house. this is nothing short of amazing to me. we do grownup things like spend $2K on a fence for the yard and have A Mortgage. and i still feel about 22. not that 22 is that far away from 29. but these things that are part of an adult life are a part of my life, and somehow the obviousness of that correlation does not sink all the way into my noggin.

after weeks of packing and then unpacking i can't handle anymore organzing. i'd say about 80% of things are out of boxes and put away, but i have reached an impasse where i simply do not want to do any more at the moment. i sit here in our computer room knowing the entrance hall is cluttered with random plastic totes and shopping bags, a couple things needing to be assembled, and i just can't deal with it right now. i love our house but i want a vacation!

so today so far i have slept in, had some non-breakfast food, joyfully watched the dogs frolic in the yard, checked my gossip websites, and played a few hours of sims 2 pets on wii. and i feel guilty! which is ridiculous. or maybe i just tell myself it is ridiculous to feel less lazy. particularly because i know it is pretty damn lazy, for example, to want to go outside to get the mail but to not do so because it requires putting pants on (flashback to new years: "no pants in 'o7!").

i'm hoping to get to new york next week. i think in 4 days i can approximate getting a fill of the people and things i need to see and do. (er. doing the things, not the, ah, people, to be clear.) it feels bizarre to think i have been away from brooklyn now for the same amount of time that i lived there. my mindframe considering this is melancholy, a little, but not regretful.

four days of looking and we found our next home. not too bad really. two of those days were the hottest of the summer so far…they were hard days (especially in the city). but overall it wasn't bad. we saw a lot of places. we looked in hoboken, the west village, and brooklyn. we loved the west village but the price tag for the space made it impossible (650 sq ft for 4800?? and i know that isn't even awful.). i spend a lot of time at home with finley. we need space to run. hoboken as a town felt too small. plus in some way jason and i were both feeling the need for a ny address! so we went out to park slope and it fit. we'd heard enough about the place to know it had the necessary mom's, yoga spaces, and good food to keep us happy. the green space at prospect park got me. we slowly narrowed our search to a few small parts of park slope. we talked to tons of brokers…yes we finally realized what so many told us before. you almost always need a broker to find a really great space in the nyc area. but the 15% hurts! that said, the apartment is amazing. it is in an old victorian. the details are beautiful. even the entrance to the apartment building is gorgeous. in our apartment we have a bedroom big enough for a king size bed (and then a chair, desk, armoire). we have a small baby room off our room. and we have the all important (for me) washer and dryer. i am so happy. it is done and we are going back to the dc area. we move in august 1. that leaves a month to move in and explore as a family before jason returns to work. (i will by that time be so use to jason being a full time stay at home dad that i will fall into a slight depressive empty space as i readjust. but hopefully by then i will know a few mom's in the area…and that will help fill the space as i adjust.)

so now our summer can really start. we can actually relax and not think about the need to find our next home. of course now i am in full decorator mode. i already drew out the space and talked to jason about what new furniture items we need to make it work. he rolled his eyes at me…as well he should. now is the time to just breath in and enjoy the feeling of being done with the biggest part. there will be time to buy furnishings in august and beyond.

if any of you reading this are familiar with bedford ave in williamsburg, brooklyn, you know that it is a one way street, pretty heavily traveled, and is one lane. so i'm walking south on bedford today, and a fire truck comes barreling down bedford ave. and you guessed it, they decide the smartest idea is to go the wrong way down a one way street. this of course wreaked havoc on traffic and was completely inefficient, seeing as most every other street in williamsburg is less traveled and MUCH easier to navigate a fire truck down. it is worth saying also that this was one of those 2 driver fire engines, with a driver steering the back end as well.
so this fire truck is driving down a one way street the wrong way, honking its horn, blowing its siren, and telling other cars to get out of the way. okay smart guys, where are these cars supposed to go? you are BLOCKING THEIR WAY!! certainly not the smartest thing i've ever seen the fire department do. i watch as the front driver yells at a lady in a car to drive forward when there is a ridiculously small gap between her car, the fire truck and the parked car on the street. he is impatient, yelling at her to hurry up, so frazzled by all this, she obliges and ends up scratching the parked car because this firefighter is forcing her to move her car in a space where it obviously doesn't fit.
i walk by the parked car after this has happened in front of me, and sure enough it is scratched. this really pissed me off, that these firefighters would be so idiotic to drive down a one way street like this. i could understand if it was the only option, but come on. williamsburg does not have that much traffic to begin with, and they decide to drive down the most heavily traveled street the wrong way? WTF?

first, go download this track called "Nel Cimitero Di Tucson" at stereogum. it's the song sampled by gnarls on crazy and it's from a 60s italian spaghetti western. as you listen, you can taste the dust in the air and furrow your brow in the glare of the pitiless sun. enjoy.

so i'm back. been back for a while but waiting to post until i'd processed all the images from yosemite. well that hasn't happened yet, so here's a stopgap, a section of journal written at the end of the second day. i will flickr most of the photos and link them in the future. until then…

some thoughts about the trip so far…

sleep deprivation kept me on the verge of falling asleep during the entire ~4 hour drive to yosemite. reid talks and drives too fast. i wonder if i ever fell asleep completely. once he thought i had drifted off and he just stopped talking mid-sentence. guess my sunglasses and stillness had him fooled. i really forced myself to stay awake, although i should have just told him i needed to crash for a couple hours.

had a headache that morning around 7am. i'm guessing no sleep + caffeine, nicotine and alcohol suplexed my brain. there was a point when the sun was just starting to rise at which the center of my vision dropped out, as if my blindspot had grown to the size of a golfball hovering 6 inches in front of my skull. constant fixed vision focused on a screen 18 inches from my face can't possibly be healthy.

reid bent my usb stick when he flipped over the laptop it was plugged into. he immediately apologized and offered to replace it if it was broken. of course i assured him that it would be fine, like i always do, even though i was annoyed. it still works and i bent it back to fairly straight. later at night i showed him my ds lite and let him play it not realizing that his hands were grubby from chasing after a mouse in the fireplace. sigh. more annoyance. but i suppose the pristine white finish wasn't going to last long anyway.

i'm actually starting to appreciate reid a lot more. we had dinner at a pizza place up the road. a pitcher of beer later and our conversation felt a lot less forced. i respect his ambition and his work ethic.

the place we're staying in is called the "hunter's house". it's about 30 minutes outside of the valley on the merced river. just down the road from the yosemite view lodge where we stayed last time. the house is huge. at the top of a hill and overlooking the river. the back yard descends into a valley with another fork of the river. i'll take a few pictures tomorrow.

jo and ben arrived late tonight. this is the first time i've met them in person. good first impression. should be fun to work with them.