Why, why, why? Why do applications go sideways, stop behaving normally? I need to make changes, update my web site, which is why I bought Adobe Contribute, and can’t because, the Edit Page field is gone and I can’t move the windows around. Arrgghh! And why do I have to spend so much time dicking around with this stuff? I just want to get in and drive. I bought it as a download and have no clue as to how to find the serial number or how to re-install, get to spend the weekend trouble shooting.I told my web designer John Dowler I’m amazed he has any hair left. I want to tear mine out!

I’m trying to write, despite a million distractions. So what else is new? I’m planning a retreat next month. My friend Pete has offered me the use of his place in Gibsons before he moves out so I think I will go over there and work on the novel, get it ready for the Mother Tongue BC novel deadline end of May. Just wrote a haiku for BARE, the art book with Tina though I’m not certain about that title. Most of the trees are bare though so perhaps it is apt .

lofty midrib splayed
dual cedar blades soaring
clear of high riggers

I’m beginning to wonder if there is something going on hormonally that is making me more sensitive to smell. I swear there must be a dead mouse rotting in the utility room. I keep smelling gas and all kinds of pleasant and unpleasant aromas around the house. I have always been acutely sensitive to smell though, my mother said I used to sniff everything I picked up or before I ate it. It makes me think of the Diane Ackerman book, “Natural History of the Senses” and the hypothesis that our brains evolved out of the olfactory bulb.

I think I hurt myself, finally got to use my elliptical yesterday after months of it being broken or undergoing repairs. I went at it for 40 minutes which may have been 20 minutes too long. My right shoulder is killing me. I’m determined to get rid of this tummy and man is it hard. Takes a huge effort, both cutting back on calories and intensifying the exercise, which I detest but I dread the belly fat more. It’s not entirely vanity-though I want to feel good, confident in my clothes-it’s a health issue. My mother had both diabetes and heart disease.

When I was on the ferry the other day I noticed a table reserved in the front lounge, then being decorated with flowers and a white linen tablecloth. I figured it was a wedding and sure enough, on the news the next day was a story about a couple who met on BC Ferries so wanted to be married on one. Isn’t that romantic? I’d have to rent the Vancouver Public Library if Josef and I were so inclined. I suppose that would be a cool place to get hitched, could party in the courtyard or on the front steps. Speaking of parties… I don’t know what got into me but I got quite bratty at my birthday party the other night.

Roderick and I had a productive meeting with Josef about how to pull off a video of How To Remain and have recruited some volunteers who will help us procure the cameras we need in order to ensure a broadcast quality production.

Queen of Wands, that’s me or some vestige of her surfacing, according to the psychic I took my niece to for her birthday. Progress as I understand it from Queen of Swords which is what came up last time, a few years ago. I would love to be these things:

* ENERGETIC
* CHEERFUL
* SELF-ASSURED

I have good days and bad days but beginning to feel stronger overall. Certainly I possess some of the qualities but have been depressed, really down lately, not feeling particularly vibrant or attractive. I am a natural athlete, optimistic and have deep inner abiding faith in my abilities. I am less a princess these days, moving into Queenliness, and allude to my feeling of being abandoned nobility in this poem from my book Window Seat forthcoming on Ekstasis Edtions in the fall.

Sky Busting

To the hillbilly born
a cursed monarch who swore
this pothunter could not be her blood
with his short gait, sight, temperament.
They must have abducted her
from a conclave of columned nobles,
the bastards, and this she declared
into her black lab’s ruff. Unless her peeps
traded her for gasoline in a time of war?
Splitting dog hairs, she knew this much;
she would never know, and this, she must accept.
She must adapt and learn. She scrubs
and sweeps though never convincingly,
swift clips to the noggin ever reminding her.

Neither was she popular with him in the marsh,
standing as he knelt next to her, shotgun
between them, instructing her how to squeeze
the trigger slowly, taking the kick in his shoulder,
disgusted at her recoil, terror, the mutt’s whining
and nuzzling. Her aim ruined, gaze diverted
by bulrushes and horse tails, her common sense
overloaded with the sweet smell of grass and peat
loam, its deep, black grave-bed lure.
Sky busters infuriated him too, those idiot
swellheads taking 60-yard shots, crippling birds
that can’t be recovered. Wasting rounds.
They’re no outdoorsmen. Same with deer.
He’d never use his 30 ought six
at five hundred yards, even with all
that knockdown. He wants to fill his freezer,
not lay the countryside full of rotting game.

At dusk it was she who saw the foxfires.
Only she had an ember
to light their way through the bog,
past the shooting and blasting. Well out of range
yet a sitting duck at the table, old man
commanding Quiet, fouling the nest, wounding
with the back of his hand, waiting for her to fall
into place, to find her place. He had not forgotten
his Greek myths, named her Diana for a reason
and she was his daughter. He didn’t need sons.
She was the warrior, the pilot, the victor.
She would learn. She would believe.