I was talking to George about music, and reminiscing about the times some songs represented for us. It got me trippin yet again about how pitifully incomplete my cd library is.

I began buying CDs in 1990, when I got my first stereo with a cd player. I would go to Berkeley to buy records every payday. I got whatever I had to have that week, as well as CDs to replace my tape collection, a project I have yet to finish. I had this modest collection of about 45 CDs, and I had this lil' plastic box of 30 of 'em, that was stolen at my neighbor's party. You know I still hate having lost all that music.

My ex-boyfriend also put a huge dent in my CD library. He would take my shit up out the house and lose it, like an eight year old would do. All my hip-hop disappeared. Also my Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine.

I ended up with a long list of music I'm missing. I didn't buy a thing while I was unemployed, and I won't be able to afford new music for a little while yet. so the list just grows...

Even though we often use them on our respective web pages, both George and I seem to have a certain aversion to making lists. Do you? I'm a die hard non-conformist, and I don't usually like the restriction (constriction) of a list. But how does one avoid them? Even a bunch of randomness resembles a list, often.

Got caught in the rain on Monday. I hadn't listened to or watched any news all weekend, because Jayden had been sick, so I had no idea we'd be getting cooler weather, let alone rain.

When I dropped Jayden off at school Monday morning, it was cool, but I expected it to get warmer later. He just wore a light windbreaker -it doesn't even zip up, 'cause the zipper is broken. Five o'clock came around, and as I stepped outside I realized it was raining. I was completely unprepared! My first thought was, oh crap, Jayden doesn't have a coat or a hat. So instead of walking the ten blocks to his school, like I usually do, I caught a bus downtown to get to the bank before it closed (no ATM card, a long story there, too). Then I took my lil' twenny bux and dashed into the Goodwill to see if they had something for my boy.

Of course, all I saw were girls' coats. Purple, pink, with flowers or Hello Kitty or Barbie on them, dozens of girls' coats. There were a few boys' coats as well, but they were either too big or too small, and one that was Jayden's size had what appeared to be blood stains on the front of it.

I started going through the girls' jackets to find one that wasn't too girly, when a flash of yellow, on the rack under the kids' coats, caught my eye. I moved some adult sized jackets and saw a little yellow slicker. Could it be? I took the raincoat off the hanger, and although there wasn't a label with the size on it, I could tell by eyeing it that it ought to fit Jayden. I looked it over and it had no tears or stains on it. A perfect yellow raincoat, with a hood and a flannel lining, and a reflective stripe on the back. What luck! I took it to the counter and paid for it - $1.99.

I got to Jayden's school and put the raincoat on him, and it fit just the way it should, with just enough room to do a lil' bit of growing - so he will hopefully be able to wear it this fall, and maybe even in the winter, when we will be getting some real rain.

Oh, and me? I didn't have an umbrella or a jacket, but I didn't even bother looking in Goodwill - they never have anything for fat people. And besides, I don't mind getting wet in a light rain. The only reason I'd even worried about Jayden was because he'd been sick and didn't need to catch a chill from walking around in wet clothes.

I love it when I have great Goodwill karma.

It's not like we didn't already know, but it pisses me the hell off anyway.

Grandmaster
cuts faster
than any known
soul to the bone
full grown
he's a one of a kind
and Flash is gonna rock - your mind!

Yeah, I know I said it was over, but the child care drama just continues.

I'm currently drafting a letter to the director of the program, and I will cc: a few local & state legislators. Dammit.

I'm dying to know what the offices in Pleasanton look like. Would you believe that the Oakland office doesn't have any bathroom facilities available? They tell you to take your kids across the (very busy) street, where there are some stores. WTF?! I bet the folx in Pleasanton don't have to take their kids across the street to pee.

Where we were last Sunday.

I have a bunch of friends that I met online. We're IRL friends. They're all mamas and most of 'em are single mamas like me. Their kids are different ages, most older or younger than Jayden. One boy is just a few months younger, though, and Jayden says "he's my pal". His mama is hella cool, smart and funny and wise. I was so glad to have finally met someone with a kid doing the same stuff as my kid. And they live in the same neighborhood, which is nice. Too many of my friends have gone, or moved out of state. Or are distant for other reasons.

I wish I knew where Chrissie Rhodes is. She used to live in Ben Lomond, CA. She has a brother named Danny (like me), and a little sister named Marianne. Chrissie's mom & stepdad were in Santa Cruz, last I heard, but they're not listed anymore. Chrissie's biodad lived in Arizona, I think.

If I had a scanner, I'd show you what she looked like in the 80's. She had a little yellow, Datsun? was it? And it was named Lucy, I think. She'd pick me up before school (11th grade) along with Stephanie Rousseau, Teffi Nixon, and Karen - ah, I forgot your last name, even though I have pictures of you! When one of us got in the car, the rest of us would sing "off we go, into the wild blue yonder..." We snuck out of her house to go party in Santa Cruz. We played "Radioactivity" to death. We smoked weed and she would say she was stoned, and I would say I was keyed. So we just said "fuck it" and started getting coned. We were secret agents, sometimes known as the cliff honkies. We were on a secret mission to make sure everyone ate their wheaties. I miss that girl, and I wish I knew where she was now. I wonder if she's a mama, and what her kids' names might be. I remember her birthday every year, but I haven't talked to her since 1989. She was living with a boyfriend named Rocky, and our letters stopped and I moved all over the place for the next few years and by the time I'd settled down I'd lost her.

Yesterday morning I went to the child care agency and cleared everything up. I got a contract and brought it and my son to the school at 11:30.

Now, I'm just sayin, I got the shit, they could have let me bring him in the morning, so I could handle my business without draggin him on the bus all over town and back (the agency is on the east side of the lake, his school is in North Oakland). They want to get their point across by telling me "we can't trust the agency to pay, we've been burned before". You know they really mean "it's YOU we don't trust". Mm hm. I ain't stupid.

I'm just sayin...

Here are a couple things I see on my walk to the bus stop:

a door

the space ant

When we were little, my brother and I called that sculpture The Space Ant. I don't know what the real name is, or who the sculptor is, because I don't want to know its real name.

The door is covered with beautiful art created with scraps of metal. My camera won't show too much detail, you can't tell just how cool it is up close.

Today was picture day at my son's school. When I dropped him off this morning, I gave his teacher $5, for a group photo. I couldn't afford to buy a package with individual shots of him, but hey, it's preschool so I'm not trippin. Another mama was there, with invitations to her son's birthday party. The director and the other mama were checking to make sure that there was an invitation for everyone. I took Jayden's with me to work. When I get off work I'm carrying a bunch of stuff I'd gotten from a special event at my job. I'm all happy 'cause I got some new stuff that I didn't pay but a dollar for and was in a good mood, going to pick up my boy and have a fun bus ride talking about all the stuff that catches his eye. As I'm gathering him & his stuff up, his teacher says "So I guess todays Jayden's last day? He won't be coming back tomorrow?" so of course I'm like, "what do you mean?!" and she says that she didn't receive a renewal contract from the agency that is s'posed to be paying for my child care...after I'd taken off one morning last week and had a frustrating meeting with the agency, and left the meeting thinking everything was taken care of!

I'm what could be called an emotional wreck. I try really bravely to keep myself level, especially in public. But when she said that shit I started shaking, trying hard to not burst into tears, 'cause I'm a big ass baby like that. I started babbling about oh my god, I thought the contract was renewed, I just went down there, can't he keep coming while I straighten it out with the agency, I'm just a temp and I can't just up and take off work, oh my god what can I do...and she says I would have to pay in advance...well you ought to know that I've been piss-poor in beggar mode for months, and the feeling I get from not having money to do shit that needs to be done...I did start crying, and then the co-director walks over to me and says some shit like "I'm the one who handles the money, and we've been burned by this agency before..." and I'm grabbing for a tissue, pissed because once again something is all fucked up, Jayden is crying "I want Mommy" which pisses me off because he only says it when I'm right next to him or holding his hand, fercryinoutloud, mad because I'm such a fucken loser to be crying in front of these people, when the co-director says "we're a business, we're not a social services agency".

I snatched Jayden up and left there in tears. I am so insulted by what he said, how he said it, how shady it all seems to me.

I mean damn, she took my picture money this morning and then gone say "So I guess today's Jayden's last day?".

Some yummy things to eat that I'd never heard of ten years ago:

Pocky
Jollof rice
Baba ganoush
Stamp & go
Pad thai
Roti

And before I was in my twenties, I'd never had Korean, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Thai, or Indian (besides curried rice) food. Man, I was missing out.