Over the last two years, Sam and I have talked about mov­ing else­where. Geor­gia has almost no con­sumer pro­tec­tions for cit­i­zens, has a crap­py sup­port struc­ture for humans in just about every way you can imag­ine, and has law enforce­ment who don’t care to enforce laws unless you’ve got enough mon­ey to get their atten­tion. Essen­tial­ly, we want to live in a blue state, which means leav­ing the Bible belt. Cool­er weath­er would be nice, too. Less humid heat, at least, would be a relief.

We haven’t real­ly made plans, not want­i­ng to uproot Katie while she was in school and so on. There’s a lot of iner­tia, too, since I’ve been here all my life (except for the few years in Alaba­ma before my par­ents moved us to Atlanta). Sam was born here, and was­n’t thrilled with New York or New Jer­sey when he lived there. Our fam­i­lies are here, which means some­thing, even if we don’t see them that often.

I know that Hope and Juliann are doing it—anybody else? Any oth­er Blog365 par­tic­i­pants should note that it will be a great source of blog ideas, and I know we all need those at this point.

For my Sam

A Mar­riage
You are hold­ing up a ceil­ing
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, ter­ri­bly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceil­ing
will soon col­lapse.

But then,
unex­pect­ed­ly,
some­thing won­der­ful hap­pens:
Some­one,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arm up
to the ceil­ing beside you.

So you final­ly get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flow­ing back
to your fin­gers and arms.
And when your part­ner’s arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this
for many years
with­out the house falling.

From Against Romance: Poems by Michael Blu­men­thal, Pen­guin Books, 1988

Any­body going to Momo­Con here in Atlanta? I’d nev­er heard of it before today. It’s free, and may be in its sec­ond year (I’m not sure). It seems quite small, which could be nice. It’s local, which is a big plus for us. I’m unclear as to whether there’s any gam­ing hap­pen­ing or not, and there’s no men­tion of filk­ing that I can see.

What a weirdo! I mean, you’d think these kids were being, I don’t know, respon­si­ble or some­thing! Just because she has an appoint­ment ear­ly in the morn­ing, she came home ear­ly.

Kids these days! I don’t think I ever got home an hour and a half before cur­few.

Maybe she’s smarter than I was. Hmmm.

But, real­ly, she should have giv­en us a warn­ing. She caught us pod­cast­ing!

I’m so excit­ed! We’re going to have our very own Hope Evey vis­it in a few months! We final­ly get to meet the sweet pret­ty lady in per­son!

This after­noon, I opened the blinds on the win­dows behind my chair, think­ing it would draw Kioshi off the mon­i­tor (his tail kept obscur­ing the screen) to look out the win­dows. Nope. He turned around, so at least his tail was­n’t in the way, but he was inor­di­nate­ly pleased with him­self because he could then sur­vey his world from his nice, warm perch.

I down­load a ridicu­lous num­ber of pod­casts, then for­get to lis­ten to them. I can’t find my MP3 play­er, and it’s tiny any­way (512k), so it does­n’t hold much. Sam has the same kind, and he gets by, but he’s more moti­vat­ed: it keeps him sane while he’s “out there” every day. I nor­mal­ly take the lazy way out and lis­ten to Pan­do­ra or Last.FM.

Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by Kim­ber­ly Jen­nery

Dit­to show­ing off her new paint job!

This cute­ness just strength­ens my wish that we lived clos­er to Kim­ber­ly and her fam­i­ly. Click for more pho­tos.

Sam and I had a very nice date night while Katie was out with her beau. He had start­ed mak­ing chili last night, fin­ished it tonight, and added corn muffins. I’m not a big fan of chili (I won’t eat it if Sam did­n’t make it), but it was a very sat­is­fy­ing meal.

The girl is doing very well in the online course she’s tak­ing, and I’m hap­py to say that my semes­ter is going well, too. It’s hard to believe that my baby will like­ly start col­lege cours­es this sum­mer or fall!

Today’s post is at Fibrant Liv­ing. I want to talk about work­ing with a chron­ic ill­ness, or return­ing to work after you’ve devel­oped one. Please com­ment there!