There's a chill in the air at night
and in the early morning
when I take the pup out

I wear my pjs now to keep warm
when I go to bed
I spoon you in the morning

when I first wake up
but while the pup is still being quiet
Leaves have already partially filled the yard

I am bent
and my skin has turned to parchment in some places
and hangs too loosely in others

I wonder what winter will be like

I drop my words along the path
not to find a way back
but to find a way to myself
I worry about others
who might stumble down this path
and
seeing my words lying there
feel compelled to turn away
I am bruised by judgement
or disinterest
so easily
but
still
I drop my words
and hope

I am empty
No words left to describe my need for you
Again
I am here and you are there
and I am alone
with just thoughts of you
to hold me till the end of the day
I know I can make it
but it takes more and more effort
as more days pass
till I am weighted down with the absence of you
When will I ever be self sufficient
and not just this needy shell

Here I am again
Facing another day
and wondering why I bother
Then I remember you
and it doesn't matter that my book of days is growing to a close
that most of it
I wouldn't even bother to read myself
so many ordinary days
just strung together
with no discernible meaning
other than sheer survival
I know I'll never be a celebrity
but I look at you
and it doesn't matter
at all

Okay. I'm back. I decided that if I'm going to write, I might as well do it here.

Hollow and a little high
I cozy my way through this month of days
When you are gone
my sky is heavy and flat
all my movements are heavy and flat too
reality becomes fuzzy and too long
You are the parentheses of my days
Mornings evenings and nights are right and true
It's the middle that doesn't hold
You are my center
and I wobble through the hours when it's been misplaced
You fill my thoughts
and you are all I can think to write about
over and over again
I come back to you
and your goneness
I will live for this evening.

My weight has plateaued at 200-205. This morning I was 203, down a pound from yesterday.

I seem to be blogging once a week now.

My ankle is still bruised an swollen after nine days. It's started to feel a little sore now, too. Odd. I've put in a call to the Aurora VA clinic to see what they say about it. The loml is more worried about it than I am.

Yesterday in 1st grade chess I went back to a single board so I could review how all the pieces move. After I was through with that I had two kids play each other while I commented on each of their moves. I know some of them are getting it, but I also know that not all of them are.

I haven't written anything for several weeks now. I had some new stuff to read at the 3rd Tuesday open mic at B&N in Geneva Commons, but it wasn't all that recent. I need to get disciplined again, but it's hard to do in this funk I've been in lately.

Well. I think I'll go and try to write something now.

First the good news - there is no bleeding in my brain. On Sunday the loml and I went on a 12 mile bike ride with Pam and Wally. We were on the bike trails around Batavia and Geneva. At one point about 1 1/2 miles into the trip I was going off a bridge and down an incline and I was going too fast to make the sharp turn at the bottom. I hit a two foot high stone wall. My momentum carried both me and the bike over the wall. There was a 12 foot drop on the other side. Get the picture? I have abrasions on my right ankle, my left knee, my right elbow, my left forearm my lower back on the left side, my right shoulder and my forehead above my right eyebrow and a contusion on the back of my head on the left side. Fun. I was worried at all at first, but when my head was aching still the next day I called the VA. A nurse there told me to go to an emergency room to get checked out. The loml and I went to the local emergency room where they did a catscan of my head and xrays of my neck and my right ankle which was very swollen but not hurting. Every thing came out clean, no internal bleeding and no fractures. An interesting thing though, the catscan showed that I had an old stroke. I never knew I had a stroke. When I told my mother about it she sai, "Well. That explains a lot." ??? Anyway. I'm just going to take it relatively easy for a week or so. Nothing really physical.

The first week of my volunteering at the elementary school went well. I'm not sure how much of my chess lessons will be retained, especially the 1st graders. Oh well. I've off to do some errands before I head up to the school again.

Well. Yesterday marked the beginning of my stint as a volunteer at the loml's elementary school (grades K - 3). I got to spend 1/2 hour trying to teach a class full of 1st graders how to place chess. Today I teach some 3rd graders and on Thursday I teach some 2nd graders. Tomorrow I go in for an hour to help advise kids on the "expert project." At the start of 1st grade kids are told to pick a topic they want to become an expert on. They stay with that topic through the 3rd grade and at the end of the year they're expected to have some sort of presentation on the topic. It could be a poster or a show and tell for instance. On Friday I'll help out in the reading program for an hour. Whee. Somewhere to go every sincle day. I need to get out the apartment every day to keep from going completely bonkers.

That's the biggest thing going on in my life right now. I'll see how this 1st week goes.

I haven't told you about the Chicago Russian meet-up yet. The loml and I took the train from Aurora to downtown Chicago. We got there about two hours before the dinner meeting, so we took a cab to the Corner Bakery by Millenium Park. There I had coffee and the loml had a caramel something. We shared a piece of cake. I waited there while the loml strolled through some nearby stores. When she got back we took another cab to the Vermillion restaurant. We got there at 5:30, a half an hour early. 6:00 came, then 6:10, then 6:20, and no Russian speakers. Finally at 6:30 a small group showed up. At first they were speaking English, but after a little bit they started speaking Russian. Too fast for me to understand much of anything. They did humor me while I talked briefly, and it was nice that they at least understood me. Eight of us wound up sitting around a small table in the waiting area, and then we were joined by four more when we finally moved to the restaurant proper for our meal. There was one guy from Spain amd a woman from France (both of whom spoke Russian fluently) and the rest were all Russians. The loml and I had a great time. The fellowship was marvelous. When we left to head back to the train station we told the group we'd be back for the next month's meet-up.
конец