Psycho Fish died today. I went to feed it and boom, we are dead. We cannot decide if this goldfish was 7 or 8 years old. The only one who had a few crocodile tears was The Girl, for Psycho Fish was once hers, not that she liked it, not that she cared for it, it was just the thought.

I once had a serious conversation at a a very nice pet store about this goldfish. This fish killed anything in it’s tank. They told me that this was one disturbed fish.

I took very good care of this nasty fish.I cleaned the tank, changed the water, the filter, made sure that things were bubbling away. I put it in a bigger tank. I renamed it, so that maybe someone would like it.

None of this worked. We don’t care. It was a miserable fish and we are not going to feed it to Destin. Nope, not happening.

Baby ( Psycho Fish ended up in her bedroom) now wants a turtle or a lizard. I am stalling : first I have to clean out the tank, the filter, the dead fish. She knows how much I love lizards and frogs. But they should not live in glass boxes. And I don’t want to do the how to feed a lizard road. I am thinking bugs.

And a turtle. Really. What can you do with a turtle ? I am just going to stall.

Tonight is brownie night. Baby is going to cook.

I have realized that my favorite kitchen tool is my little whisk. Whenever I say this, I feel like that guy in ‘Allo ‘Allo with his little tank.

Today is good. So far. It goes up and down, I am sure caused by the pain that The Father is in, and my high strung nature. The Father is dealing with Alice The Viper right now.

Has anyone noticed how often the word pleasant comes up here ? I simply want people to attempt to be pleasant. They don’t have to be pleasant, they only have to try. We all have our bad moments. We are human.

I have stepped on The Father’s toes a number of times today, in a very pleasant manner. The latest was after I came in from chatting with our neighbor.

It is a given that I am bad at small talk. It is a given that I am shy.

We picked up a package for her and she came to get it. I hadn’t seen her dog for a while. I have kept this dog busy a few times, looking for one of the neighbors. It was an old black Lab. Blind, gray and most likely deaf. Where is your boss, Sweetie ?

They had to give Sweetie the shot in December. Sweetie ( that was not the dog’s name. I call everyone Sweetie, even The Boyfriend, much to the Girl’s horror). That dog was 14 and a half years old. I did some quick math, and when they bought their house, they bought a puppy, Sweetie.

My jaw dropped open. How horrible this must be for you ! There are many things that are difficult in this world, but giving a much beloved pet the shot is simply awful. You want to give them one more day. We talked on and on, about Buddy, Destin, Elvis and different pets that we had had. Neither of us likes hamsters. Nasty little rodents.

I came back to the Kitchen and told The Father about our chat. His comment was that I should invite her over for coffee. And I said that I am not a coffee with the neighbor sortof person. I talked to her, find the positive cast to this. I made this funny.

I am the bear that dances. It doesn’t matter if I dance well, the important thing is that I can dance at all.

He was so very pleasant today ( hear that word again ? ). I could talk and talk and talk and no one made fun of me. I told him about Baby’s nature show this morning, this was a good one. Did you know that algae produces most of the oxygen that floats up into our atmosphere ? He did. I didn’t. And there was a great white shark, just like in Jaws. That was one fast and big animal. It ate a seal. And I told him that I simply say that these animals can’t go to the grocery store, they will die if they can’t find something to eat. He said : this works.

He also said this is not a problem today. I said, oh, you sound like me. We laughed. An important part of humor is truth.

I feel so much better. He saw today how I really try to be pleasant with the children and what crap I am getting return. I did not have to point this out, he saw it, he heard it. He has said that he will get Alice back into line.

I sleep poorly. I am caught in a vicious circle. Because I sleep poorly, I need to take a nap. I have been known to run downstairs at 4am, thinking that I have to start dinner. There is now a new trick that is being used : when I am woken up from my nap, I am asked, what did we have for dinner yesterday ? If I answer this correctly, the next question is, what are we having for dinner tonight ? This places me in time.

This is rather sad, if you think about it.

This afternoon, The Girl called me from work , when are we going on vacation . They need to know at the company, to plan things. So I said that she should call Daddy and discuss this with him. I also mentioned that since it is almost May and we don´t have a kennel reservation for the dogs, I didn´t think that we were going anywhere. Plus, we cannot agree upon where to go and that toad slipped out.. and we don´t have the money for a fancy pants vacation.

This led to an altercation when she came home. November kept being thrown in my face. This is when Father wanted us to go camping in England. I told him…and he knows that this is true… that I love camping. Dump me in Scotland in a crappy little tent with some good bread, a Bunsen burner and I will be one happy woman. The children don´t . want. to. camp.

In December, I suggested a Center Park sortof thing. Good for the kids. Peers. The Father does not like this idea.

Finally, last month, we all agreed upon France, in a sortof holiday resort, with peers for the kids, activities. I actually suggested Crete or Majorca. No go. Too many Dutch there. We won´t even talk about Spain.

I don´t even know if I want to go into this. The Girl wants to go camping now. In Spain. With her friends. Or back to Italy, where we had the worst vacation ever.. the theme song for that was an old Beach Boy song, Sloop John B .. I want to go home…This is the worst trip I´ve ever been on.

The Father and The Girl asked me where I would like to go. I said anywhere except here. If I am honest, I would like to go to the Gulf coast. I would love to go to Pittsburgh, Winchester Va. and then to UVA. Ohio, Kentucky, a tent in Scotland. But nobody else wants to go to these places. I HAVE to take this into consideration. Tunisia. For the fall, The Girl asks. This sounds great to me.

But this is not going to happen. Everyone is pissed off at me, but I do the money, I do the taxes, this is not in our budget. Not now. I don´t think that I am being negative, I think that I am being realistic.

Everyone is so mad at me. Except Alice, The Vampire. She was singing for me this evening. How that child can sing. We had agreed upon two songs .. bedtime coming up.. and then I asked her to sing something for me. Her choice, she knows what I like. ..not White Horse, that is beginning to bore her, but Because of You.

She has some problems hitting those high notes, but she was doing it really well. She was soaring. And then The Fisher King came in ..look it up.. and said that it was her bedtime. He did not even listen to her sing.

He is the loser here.

They want me to go away somewhere, take a vacation. Where could I go . I keep telling them why I am so stressed, but no one seems to be hearing me. I have been on my own here for over a month.

I did the big shopping today. I put everything away. The Boy asks me if he can help me, once it is all put away, and I say, yes, help Baby to make her bed. I don´t know how to make a bed !

I wish that Rock wasn´t so ticked off at me. He wanted me to leave town in January. And when I did not, the great silence. I think that he is the only person that I could let help me. But he offered me too much money. I told him this. I could never take money from him. He has been my best friend since I was 17 years old. This is a pearl beyond price.

I am not going to write about Wesley today. I want to take my time when I do. I want to think about this. I want to be able to say what Wesley Kerlin is to me, not the names, dates and facts. They most certainly will come up, but I want to be able to write about how I have spent years imagining what he was like.

From Grandma:

Dressing -

1 clove garlic, minced
2TBS Honey
2TBS Dijon ( 1 for us)
2TBS Orange Juice
3 TBS white wine vinegar
1/2 Tps salt
Ground Black Pepper
1/3 a cup of olive oil ( we have to use something else. Kids don’t like that much olive oil at once)
1 TBS Toasted Sesame Seeds. I pump this up, as Baby loves sesame seeds.

Salad :

2 large oranges ( I used navels, that smarts on my hands)
1.5 lbs spinach ( nope, will never work. I am using a bag of ruccola and what I think is called lamb’s lettuce)
4 thin green onions, sliced
4 slices crisp bacon, crumbled

We are having this with carbonara tonight. I think that the dressing is nice and I want something green to eat.

Carbonara, well I do a 3 ratio : 3 yolks to a third a cup of cream ( yes, I found cream in town today) Salt on the yolks before I whisk the cream into it ( because that is what my mother told me to do : makes them yellow-er), 3 ounces of one of the 5,000 sorts of bacon that the Dutch have ( because that is what they like here) and a hell of a lot of garlic. Well, not that much, for I have good garlic right now. Penne. I usually pump up the salt and put the pepper grinder on the table.

I just want something green to eat.

When this day is over, this miserable day, I am going to write about Wesley Kerlin. If I get a chance. I don’t care if anyone on this earth cares about Wesley Kerlin, I do. I know that if I write about him, there will be magic in my soul. If I can put it in order.

And when I cross that river, I want a new camera. I want a good one. I want one that has a great shutter speed. I want a zoom that isn’t optical. I want a billion pixels. I want to show what they did to my door to the magic garden.

I loathe Joni, but they pulled down my door to build garages.

I am very cranky right now. Time to prep for dinner.

I nearly knocked The Boy down today : he would not let me upstairs to get my blue jeans. He was using his size once more against me. I have spoken to The Father about this, and he is going to have a little Father- Son chat with him : you are not Mummy’s boss.

The Boy and I are friends again. This all passes. But he better not do this again.

Today at his school, they talked about immigration to America. He has actually sucked up some of my talk about our family in America. He gave the standard answer : I am from the Boston area ( do you know what a hub is ? I am constantly trying to explain new words).

He impressed his friends by saying that Frenchy ( my Grandmother) lived on 8 Mile ( as in Eminem). She didn’t, she lived on 7 Mile. Same moonscape. I told him why people moved to Motown ( no, it has to do with the car industry. My Mother was born in Detroit and she always called it Motown) after the Depression : there was work. He did not say that Frenchy was born outside of Warsaw. Being polish is still not cool. One has to live up to this and say, I am Polish, make my day.

I said that in the end, parts of our family go back to the 1600′s in America, Pennsylvania. And then Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky. I know this. If I wanted to, I could prove this. He told his teacher that we have a lot of hillbillies in our family. I asked him, who in our family is a hillbilly ? Uncle Richard. Richard was born in Pittsburgh and lives in Ohio. To tell the truth, I don’t know what a hillbilly is.

He asked me if there where any blacks in our family. I said that I didn’t think so. I think that there is a good chance that one of my Mother’s grandfathers was Jewish, but who cares, this is a blessing in my opinion. I did not mention this.

I then explained ( he wanted to hear this, he kept telling me to continue the story) that a relative of ours most likely was involved in the Crosswhite Affair ( Wesley Kerlin) , which had to do with The Fugitive Slave Act. He had to be there with Giltner when he ran up to Michigan. He was married to one of Giltner’s daughters at the time. I told him that another relative met Lincoln ( Hugh Carrothers, although the spelling of this is very flexible). He married well. His father in law was a big politician from West Virginia, a senator, a congressman, who knows, it has been a long time since I looked at those Crothers. No doubt about this.

And then I told him something that would appeal to any boy’s heart : back in East Liberty ( Pittsburgh), Bucky ( my other Grandmother) decked Billy Conn. Ok, they were kids, this was before Joe Louis, but Bucky KO’ed him.

This has never surprised me. She was a woman of many talents.

After a long morning of listening to two cranky girls, I did the shopping. My bag, once again, was a bit too heavy. I bought what we needed, to get us by, in case The Father cannot drive today. I am getting so sick of saying, this will work. This is not a problem.

I set the table for him. Sit down, I will get your breakfast. What would you like for lunch . We usually have croissants on Wednesday. I get a long lecture about expensive bread. We are talking about bread here, not caviar. I attempt to be pleasant. But when I am told yet again that I am inflexible, I do get a wee bit honked off. You have no idea, I said, what life is like here, how we do things. What do we eat on Mondays for lunch, Tuesdays. This is how I do things. I try to give the kids a different lunch every day, often a warm one. Shoot me, this is my job. I didn´t say that shoot me bit.

It is decided that we shall wait for The Boy to come home before trying to fix the dishwasher. This could be 4 pm. Fine, I said. I am going to wash the dishes. By hand. Again, I get a lecture, about how inflexible I am. Fine. I made that cripple go to the cupboard and tell me how many clean plates there are. 1. How many clean glasses. 2. This is not going to work. I don´t want salmonella in this house, this is my job. I cannot cook without clean pots and pans. I am not even going down that road. I say that a lot as well. It annoys people. I need a clean cutting board.

If he tells me that the kitchen needs vacuuming, I might explode. I am not blind. I see this.I really need a nap. I can do this, yes, I can.

I say this all of the time right now as well.

He just brought up the vacuuming. He made fun of my comment that I need a nap. And then said that he did not hear me say that I am sleeping badly at night. Well, if you did not hear me say this, how do know that I am not sleeping well at night. I can´t believe this. I say this all of the time as well. He just told me that everyone is trying to help me. I am going to swear right now. Who the fuck is trying to help me out. Let us name some names here.

I am used to being alone. I am usually in the kitchen … we have a really big kitchen, we are talking 70 square meters. I kid you not. I am there with the dogs, the bird and the fish. I talk, out loud, all of the time. Maybe I am talking to the dogs, who knows. But it is driving the men in this family crazy. It is one of those things that once you notice it, it grates on your nerves. Like people who chew pudding.

I can´t stop this. I am inundated by words. I have trouble falling asleep, because words are flying through my head. I found a little trick that is working for me, I do math. I think about numbers. How old will Alice be in 2070. This is not dissimilar to counting sheep. But that is really boring, you are just going 1, 2, 3, 4. And they all look alike. If a car goes x kms an hour, how long will it take to get there.

This will put you to sleep.

There is Puccini playing in my kitchen. A little bit of Puccini goes long way. I want to listen to the BBC. I will not smother him, I promise. I am going to do the laundry and start washing dishes. We are almost out of clean dishes.

I fixed the laundry machine. Yes, I did.

And the dandelions in the yard give a very cheery cast to the garden. They are so bright and perky. I like yellow in the spring.

That is it. The dish washer is still down. But I found the book for it. This is good. I never imagined that I would find that book. I even found the bill, we might still be under a guaranty. Is this the right word ? You know, when something is screwed up, they fix it for free. This is looking very good. It is only a year old. I shall not say anything negative right now about these sorts of things. We can fix this. I can always go on line and sort this out.

I can do laundry once again. I have about 80 pounds of wet towels, but , hey, this is not a problem.

I am looking at the bright side of life.

I need a f..ckin´ break here … the Husband, the dishwasher and the laundry machine are out of order.

No, I can do this, yes I can.