This is all the randomness I cleared from my desk, plus my grandmother's runner and rose-needlepointed pillow and JUMB's Hungarian Wedding Pattern (I'm paraphrasing) pillow that she embroidered in lavender and violet instead of the traditional red and black, just for me.

Reading: Carson McCullers, "Member of the Wedding." It's about 160 pages long. This is a problem.

Moving: walked 2 miles

Watching: Clouds scudding over sun

Listening: Toni Morrison, Paradise (tape 10). Next up, Dead Man Walking

Garden: Over lunch I went to the Rocky Mountain Seed Co. and bought seeds for beefsteak, plum, and cherry tomatoes; sunflowers; basil, parsley, and borage; eggplant; zucchini; and beans. Over lunch, RDC built the frame for the raised bed.

27 March 2001: Queen Oleander

Having cleared my desk to the futon, I dusted the former. There was less dust than there were little bits of paper from Blake's munchings, feathers from Blake's spring moult (and last fall's), and various seashells reduced to shards by the same villain. I have to keep him off that shelf.

I now have to clear all that mess from the futon. I have a week, but then I'll need to it for SEMster, who's passing through, hooray! He was supposed to come in the winter but his truck went blooey. Did I already mention that?

---

I talked to my sister early Saturday morning. Blake is used to having my undivided attention in the morning and was displeased to see me on the phone, so his complaints were many and loud. RDC is convinced he modeled a particular behavior from our holding a phone to our ear; I'm not, though it's true that he does this particular thing most when we're on the phone. Blake talks to his foot. He picks up one foot, holds it outstretched toward his head, bends the head toward it, and chatters. And whines and screeches; the chattering is preferable.

Anyway. Yelling at him to shut up works about as well as you'd expect, but one of the reasons we shouldn't have children is that despite its ineffectualness we do it any. So my conversation with my sister was punctuated with "Blake, would you please pipe down?....Give it up, buddy; put the foot down....Blake, just shut up and eat your breakfast."

Eventually my sister snorted, "Eat your carrots."

We both broke up in giggles.

When my sister was in high school, one evening at the dinner table, she gulped, "I think--I think I'm having a heart attack."

I, glancing up at her across the table, could see the white face, the stricken expression, the hand at the throat, the fear. She was rail thin, of course, but not at all physically fit. Still, what were the chances? Nevertheless her fear was honest. My mother didn't look up but only over from her plate to her older daughter's. "Eat your carrots," she retorted, uninterested and possibly disinterested.

Since then we have always used that imperative to indicate a heartless response to someone's genuine worry.

Then I told her what his breakfast was--carrots.

---

Today at the seed store I talked to the folks about my plans. They assured me I don't need grow-lights but only a sunny window to sprout my seeds. I'm concerned that the sunroom might still be too cold overnight; I guess I could move the flats into the dining room, the warmest room in the house, after sunset. And I asked whether squirrels would tumble any sunflowers. They're welcome to the seeds but I want the flowers to screen the back fence from the alley beyond; I don't want any squirrel lumberjacks. The seed people said no, the squirrels should leave them alone until the seeds ripen.

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Long ago, when I first started at Dot Org, Minne asked if I had ever been in drama. I told her I have not, which is not an accurate but is a short answer. She expressed surprise, because, she opined, I am so dramatic and expressive and gesticulate a lot (all of which is true).

I am a little ashamed of never having been in drama: not that I was particularly interested in seventh grade, but that's the year my middle school put on Godspell. In eighth grade, deliberately to break my self-diagnosed "General Hospital" addiction, I worked on "The Phantom Tollbooth" and understudied Milo. (Did my schoolyear have no good actors? Of course Jesus should have been played by an eighth-grader, and was, brilliantly; but the next year, an eighth-grader should have played Milo. Right? No, a seventh-grader did--also brilliantly. In ninth grade I was a grind, and after that I worked at PGN. Also I questioned my motives: did I want to be in stage crew because I wanted to be in stage crew, or because my crush hung out in stage crew? And wouldn't it be easier not to be in stage crew, since my first kiss (in ninth grade, and now no longer even meeting my eyes) obviously didn't want me there?

A couple of weeks ago she brought it up again. She knows me better now and the drama thing struck her again. It really would have been a good place for me, except that I can picture myself becoming that girl in "American Pie": "...and this one time? at band camp?"

I know her better now too, and told her more. She understood how the crush and the kiss were valid reasons for my 15-year-old self, which I appreciate. "Funny how one little thing can affect so much, isn't it?" The other thing I told her, because I know her better also, came from a book. I forget why I had Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Changeling off the shelf recently, but I had, and reread this passage just days before Minne made her more recent comment about drama:

[There is to be a play at school for the first time. Ivy wants to sign up for a part along with Martha. Martha wonders why.]

It seems there were many reasons The first was that Ivy had a strong feeling Martha would be good at acting.
"Me?" Martha asked. "Me? Why?"
"Because you're so good at being other people. Like Queen Oleander, for instance. Remember how great you were at being Queen Oleander?"
"Yes, but that was different. No one was watching except you and Josie."
"It's not really different. You can get used to the rest of it, the audience and everything. But the other part--really being someone else--you either have or you don't. Some people are only good at being themselves, and that's all they'll ever be good at. They're just born that way."
"Well, I certainly wasn't born that way," Martha said. "But I'm not sure I was born the other way either."

(The Tree People plays that Martha and Ivy made up, in which Martha played Queen Oleander, lead to Snyder's Under the Root, And All Between, and Until the Celebration trilogy.)

I can't say that I am the best person I can be or that being myself is the best way to be, but it's certainly the only person I've ever been able to be with only one way to be her, to my own and others' detriment. I told Minne about that passage (not the immediately previous, convoluted sentence, but from the book), and she understood. She knows how single-minded and single-faceted I am. It's even a reason I don't write anything but autobiography, and why I'm an autobiographical critic.