I find, to my surprsie, that I am a mentor

I'm up at 5:30 in the morning. This is, to say the least, unusual. But I was dreaming that I was back at the Arts Institute, checking kids in for the first day of camp. I was the only one there, and things weren't properly set up yet for registration, so I was scrambling. The dream was ridiculously detailed and just went on and on. So when I woke up at 5, I was reluctant to go back to sleep for fear of going back to it. As if the real life registration days at Quartz Mountain weren't bad enough! I have to dream about them ten years later?

I think I'm having work dreams out of sympathy for my assistant. She graduates in December, and today we got word that she has a job interview at the art museum. They are looking for a full-time, one-woman PR person, and asked me for a recommendation for her, which of course I gave in glowing terms. So they called for an interview. She's nervous as a cat, of course, and I guess I'm nervous on her behalf... remembering my first "real" job at the Arts Institute, lo these many many years ago. Fifteen years ago, in fact.

Krysten started out as a journalism major, and I guess I've gradually turned her into a PR person... and a museum PR person to boot. It's a funny feeling to realize that your influence has changed the course of someone's life. Whatever else happens to her over the years, I'll always be there as the person that got her started down this particular path, wherever it may lead over time. I'm her Mary Gordon, in a way. Though I don't hold a candle to the unflappable and inestimable Mary Gordon Taft.

I am pleased to be a positive influence. But it makes me feel old, as well. No, it doesn't make me feel old. It makes me realize my age. I am guessing that I'll spend the rest of my life realizing, from time to time, and always with astonishment... my age. There are so many perks to being forty-one, and so much downside to being 20-something. You'd think it would not be so disconcerting. But it is, or sometimes is. Sometimes I feel Grown Up and Wise. But mostly I feel grown up and Surprised. Dear god, I'm an adult. Surely there must be some mistake.

Wasn't I supposed to have accomplished something truly astonishing by now?

Speaking of which, this is National Novel Writers Month, and I've not turned out a word. I had good intentions, but the day-to-day does have a way of mowing down good intentions.

Ah well...
This week I will work with Krysten to get her ready for her interview... think up some test questions for her, give her some tips. Hopefully all without seeming too know-it-all. I want her to get that job. It will be, in some small way, a measure of my own success if she does.

And speaking of success... for two whole days now I have managed to single-handedly get my child to school on time. (if only just) I'm single-parenting this week while Gray is at "ORACLE WORLD" in San Francisco. I'm a bit lonely, though having some quality time with Grayson. Oddly enough, I think Gray and I probably have better conversations this way than we do in real life. We talk each evening on the phone and, without the distractions and tedium of "what's for dinner? And "how was your day?" and homework and housekeeping, we have a little clear space to actually talk. It's amazing what a conversational no-man's-land marriage can be. It's not that we don't have anything to say to each other, we just don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said, or can be largely inferred. Same old shit, in short. At least this week we're both having new experiences to share.

The great unspoken secret of marriage and children.... it's BORING. You have to really make an effort to keep from digging yourself a trench of daily routines. Well, no, you dig that trench no matter how hard you try, but you have to make an effort to pop your head up over the rim once in a while and look around.

Anyway, I'm having to get up at a reasonable hour, hustle Grayson out of bed, through breakfast, into clothes, all while taking a shower and dressing myself (forget feeding myself, there's no way I'm getting that done, too!), rounding up books, backpack, shoes, homework (thank god I don't have to pack a lunch this year!)... dogs out, teeth brushed, doors locked, trash, lights, keys and out the door to get him to school by 8. Okay, 8:03. But we've managed. It's been an education in and of itself, but we've managed.

Friday we're off... well, Gray and I are. Grayson still goes to school. The governor declared a state holiday for the centennial on Friday (bless his heart), so we are experiencing the rare luxury of a day off work when Grayson is still in school. I feel a little guilty for not taking him out to go to the centennial festivities, but not THAT guilty.

Can I just go on record as saying THANK GOD the Oklahoma centennial is nearly done? I'm a bit sick of it. Time to get on with the next hundred years. Oh, I don't mean to be a curmudgeon, but a year is a long ass party!

Rain

Rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain

And more rain.

Today is day 18 straight of rain. It's all anyone talks about. It's on the front page of all the papers every day. Everyone goes around sort of slumped and muffled. I've heard people at work talk about going to the tanning beds just to get some light on their skin. I'm tempted, myself.

I've given up on summer. People tell me "oh, it will be here soon enough and you'll be complaining about the heat!" I no longer believe it. I think it's going to rain forever. Maybe I'll start building an ark.

The new Scrawlspace

Welcome to the new Scrawlspace.
I've been a bit Web shy since the debacle over the holidays, but now in the light of the summer sun, I begin to feel ready to gird my loins and return to the virtual realm.The topic of the summer is RAIN. Rain and rain and rain. I should build an ark.

I'm an Oklahoman. I am accustomed to Oklahoma summers. That means that the definition of "summer" to me is "three and a half months of nearly unbearable, suffocating heat, blazing sun and the near complete absence of precipitation, punctuated at irregular intervals by tremendous thunderstorms and tornados."

This, in other words, is not summer. I don't know what it is. Monsoon season. I know I should be grateful for the rain after the droughts of recent years and the wildfires that lapped right up to the outskirts of the city last year, but this is ridiculous. Enough, already. Uncle! Yes, the yard is verdant, but my poor vegetable garden is stunted. I grow peppers and tomatoes...hot weather plants. And we've barely crested 90 degrees this year. My pepper plants, which should be stretching out deep roots and popping out peppers by now, are crouched in the garden like wet cats, disconsolate and sulky. The tomatos like rain and even they are getting yellow leaves and have a look of grim endurance about them. I should have planted rice.

Twice now the rain has flooded over the garden and washed all my mulch -- cedar mulch for the walk and leaf mulch for the beds together -- all to one end of the garden and piled it up against the fence. Putting mulch out once is not so bad. Putting mulch out three times stinks.