Okay I totally failed to journal this morning and so am writing this at 4pm on Friday afternoon. Hey, it makes more sense! I have more to say at the end of the day than I do in the morning!

So I’m on the couch with the pups, but it’s nigh on time to clean the kitchen in preparation for Pizza Friday. Even if I haven’t graded a single assignment today.

Luz has worked in the garden (alone!) and filled up the green bin. And taken lots and and lots of plants out.

I am still reading Tananrive Due’s final Lalibela novel, My Soul to Take. Which, interestingly enough, has a cross-over with Phoenix from Joplin’s Ghost. (When I was reading Joplin’s ghost, I remembered that Phoenix’s music was crossed over in Blood colony, but didn’t realize that the character herself would show up in this world. I never finished Joplin’s ghost, mostly because I didn’t like the Scott Joplin character and could just flip ahead like you would with a physical book.) I find Tanarive due annoyingly heterocentrist, especially heteromance. It’s like she still thinks Dawit and Jessica are a great tragedy. Argh! That makes me kind of mad. Okay, here’s a joke to get me to lighten up. Due’s Dawit is Nina Simone’s brown-eyed handsome man.

It’s funny, though, that all of Due’s immortals are men except for Fana. She’s like the protagonist of Mind of My Mind.

Hey, I got a thank you note today from Mother Bear for my first two bears. I’ve got one more done, one more waiting for his face, and I’m on the legs of a third (i.e. my fifth) who will be wearing overalls like Tío Antonio and Fonsito. Fonsito will be the name of my bear in overalls, even though he’s really wearing a chambray shirt and cuffed jeans. That’s what his doll will look like. his little brother in a tshirt and overalls.

anyway, I posted my question about crocheting overalls on the bear and got some really helpful instructions from the moderator on ravelry. Hurray!

 

I talked to Luz last night about Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal and what I really like about it, and what I found triggering. (I go back to feeling like cancer is inevitable. that soon it will be my turn to get cancer.) I think I’m going to go ahead and order it in hardcover, and then mark sections for them to read.

We’ll see if that works.

Luz suggested giving it to my sister to read, and I think that’s a good idea.

Okay, I’m already behind for today, so I’d better hit the road.

Oh, I think I’m going to order another amigurumi book, to help me with my Mother Bears. I still don’t like the way my heads come out—I think they ruin the whole effort. I took out the chart for the craftsy class I took and then charted out how I’m doing the bear—only the leg so far—so that I can have a reliable way of keeping track of what I’m doing to get consistent results. So far, that has meant changing from a starting ring of eight with one row of increases (to 16) to starting with a row of 6 (6 or 7 is standard) with two rows of increases (12, 16). I did a sample last night and the new version looks smoother and less lumpy.

Go to work, Catriona!

 

 

Even though I managed to hold on to that dream an extra day, I’ve already forgotten last night’s dream. Other than how surprised I was when the alarm went off.

Oh, today would be a good day to post my dog-walking poem. Because of Joanne talking about writing shitty poetry. (which she totally doesn’t!)

She posted a poem last night about sexual assault and fighting it off and how terrifying and dismembering it was, and how when she retells the story, that part is erased in favor of the supportive narratives everyone else inserts.

I’m crocheting another bear (#4). I’m really torn between wanting to finish the running bear I started, and wanting to go all Mexicana huipil and skirt on this one. I think I should finish it, and save the huipil for the next bear, the one where I **count the stitches** instead of just eye-balling it and then later saying to myself, this bear looks kind of chueco…

I have just a few minutes before I wake Luz up.

I have office hours at noon and plan to grade before and after that. I should have the photo essays finished today (assuming I find them all) and make a good start on the Lotería projects. I’m going to take the dogs with me. I’m hopeful that their presence will make me more inclined to walk and less inclined to crochet.

I’ve been reading (listening to) Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. It’s pretty intense. On the one hand, I want to ask Beverley if she’s read it, I want Luz to read it, I want my mom and sister to read it. On the other hand, I want to spare everyone from reading this book. I get really mad when I realize that my Dad is much closer to the end of the journey than most of us want to admit. I think my Mom has a pretty good sense—she’s thinking weeks or months. I do think my sister is now thinking “this year.” Steven had asked her if he should come out and she told him, not now, but this summer for sure.Flaco was a total ragdoll in my arms this morning. Although he’s a total tiger much of the time, it’s fun to see him so cuddly. (Klingon in the streets, tribble in the sheets.)

I need another cup of coffee...

Oh no! I’ve searched my journal and totally failed to find my precious Barrio Chihuahua’s poem! My timeless verses, lost forever! ¡Qué lástima!

Hmm, I wonder if I lost not only the post with the dog walking poem but also the one where I wrote about being able to connect to dropbox. I’ll do another search to look for it.

I am back at work on my fourth bear, and I am mostly following the directions. I mean okay, I’ve only followed the directions for the last 15% of the pattern, but at least I’m doing that. I think if I counted and kept track of numbers, my bears wouldn’t keep coming out so chueco and with pin heads. This one I’m mostly following directions for the head and neck and now the head looks ENORMOUS. (It would have helped if I’d first followed the directions for the body!)I’m super sleep today: don’t know why, other than that I don’t want t grade. The pups are here at the office with me and they are both sleeping, so maybe that’s creating a general atmosphere of sleepiness in the office.
Follow up—yep! That’s what happened! the dog post was the same one where I was first able to access the macjournal through dropbox on the macbook air.

I am doing a phenomenal job of procrastinating—perhaps the best job I have ever done! Class is at 11:10. I haven’t graded anything since the first assignment, and I have no idea what I will do in class today.

That said, I’ve crocheted some might fine bears!

I’m punchy and need to drink more coffee, defrost some dog food, and pack up my stuff for agility class today. I might even need to buy some new tennies: just something that will see me through indoor agility training without tearing up the ground.

Last night I started looking for other charities to crochet for and got all caught up in “recovery buddies.” But I think I need to step back on that before I reach the “overcommitted and underprepared” stage. Just tell myself in my head “that will be for another time,” “I can get to that later.”
Of course, what I really need to do now is to grade my student’s work, even thought that’s what I’m **least** interested in doing.

I’m going to take the dogs for a walk today. I should’ve taken them out yesterday, and I’m sure that’s why someone ended up peeing on the bathroom floor.

I’m trying to read a m/m novel I bought years ago. I must have read it at the time, but honestly the writing is so bad. This is funny, right? considering some of the stuff I’ve so easily devoured? But it’s so repressed and disorganized. Honestly, until the introduction of a third character, I didn’t think I was going to make it through. It’s still pretty much hit-or-miss was to whether I’ll be able to finish it.

Last night at Beverley’s I started Bear #4. This is the first one I didn’t start with bear-colored-feet, because I wanted to do that whole cute footie-pajama look. But now I’ve decided against that because kids in Africa are not wearing footie pajamas! That’s a luxury of folks with in-house washer/dryers.
So I’m going to undo both of the legs I started. I was sent a welcome kit from the “Good things together” group, and it included bright yarns in aqua and yellow, and a cafe au lait color for the bear. I actually want to develop the skills to make darker complexioned bears. Even the rust I’ve been working with is pretty light compared to these kids, and I don’t want them to associate American with white-skinned. In fact, working with the yellow for the pajama leg bothered me quite a bit because it looked like it was supposed to be flesh-toned.

I think I should go back to the idea of the Ole and Tang Tang Bears. and knit up some i-cord scarves, which make finishing so much easier!

My first two bears should arrive in Minneapolis tomorrow.

[long grumbling part removed from entry]

All right. enough grumbling on my part.

I should set myself some grading goals so that I will be able to make some progress today. And the crocheting should be a reward for grading.

 

I’m almost finished with my third bear. I mailed the first two off yesterday, along with some magazines and stuff to my dad. The third bear just needs his face stitched on, his head stuffed and sewn off, and his scar made and attached.

I sent the second bear off without having photographed his face. Oh well.

The weather has turned cold again, which is an adjustment for us, given our recent trip to Dallas.

 

Home at last! Home at last! Lord have mercy, home at last!

So that trip to Dallas was a lot more whirlwind and exhausting than we were prepared for, but it went well and now we are home again. We got to sleep in our own bed, with our own puppies.

I pretty much finished my second bear, although I am wanting to add a collar or something. But I think I should let it go and send it off. I can refine as I go, but everything doesn’t have to be on these first bears!

Alas, I appear to have lost my favorite crochet hook somewhere between the plane and the car. I was crocheting right up until landing, so I know I had it then, and when I got home, I wasn’t able to find it anywhere. I’m going to have to replace it today. I’ve got another hook that works (and two that I thought would, but don’t!) but I don’t like it as well and so I need to get one. The sad thing is that I had recently bought two new ones at the Joann’s in Colma, but I either left them at the office, or I lost them both as well. So sad!

The pups are coming to check on me now to find out when breakfast might be forthcoming.

The are both so beautiful! Whe we were on our trip, we begged Marla to bring by her Chihuahua so we could meet and greet, because we were so missing our puppies. Her dog Goldie was very sweet, with a Chihuahua face and an underbite, prob’ly around twelve pounds or so. But, honestly, she wasn’t that into us. I mean, it makes sense. We are not her people.

Marla told us the sweetest story about when they met. Marla was walking and this little dog came out and greeted her and wanted to walk with her, and she was trying to shoo her away. And then a big menacing dog came out and went after the little dog, and Marla chased it off, and after that the little dog never left her side. It was a hard sell to her husband, because they have twins who were then five, and they had promised them they could have a dog when they were seven. But it all worked out and they are crazy happy. Her husband is a really established artist, Will Power, and their twins, now ten, are Sofia and Omar Sol.

Oh, she also told us this great story about her kids. Kind of a crazy day, and they were all making dinner. And then she thanked them for helping with dinner, and they told her “we didn’t ‘help.’ We all made dinner together.”

(I should ask Marla what they made for dinner that night, so I can tell the story right.)

We didn’t actually get to meet Omar Sol and Sofia, although they were at our presentation at the community center on Wednesday night. They had homework and school the next morning, so their dad took them away before it ended. And apparently, Omar Sol was very upset. He has a lot of dietary restrictions, and he was watching us make the cauliflower ceviche and asked if he would be able to eat him, and his parents told him yes. “Then why are we leaving?!?”

Oh, at the potluck on Thursday evening, we had invited people to share their food stories. (In Spanish, which is why I should have really been taking notes, because I don’t remember Spanish conversations in enough detail), and one woman said that when she was in Mexico, her father used to grow corn. And there were nine kids, I think she said. And they ate tortillas. and that was the whole of their diet, corn tortillas from her family’s corn. And I think it was a lesson about how not all stories of “the foods we grew up with” are about abundance and plentitude. But now I am wondering if it was also a lesson that, their mother was able to sustain them on the tortillas and their labor.

At the garden planting on Thursday afternoon, we were at the Bachman Lake Together community center. Some of the women had such incredible knowledge about plants and food. Quelites and verdolagas, sí, but also a wealth of different chiles, different, squashes. I was asking how folks prepared chilacayotes and most answered dulces (candied) but one also talked about how the flowers from the chilacayote are the best eating—and they really are! Very meaty and more substantial than other squash blossoms. And I said that Luz had made them in tamales and one woman replied that she hadn’t made tamales but she especially liked them in quesadillas.

Luz is going to be working hard today to get their spring quarter classes up and running for Monday. It’s the first time they’ve taught three courses in quite a while, and it’s a big adjustment. Next winter/spring, they will be on sabbatical (at 3/4 pay), so on the bright side, it’s just spring quarter and fall quarter and then nine months off!

One lady at the dinner was saying how when she was growing up, her family ate such a wide diversity of foods, quelites, verdolagas, huazontles, amaranths, such a variety of vegetables, and then when she married her husband only wanted her to cook pork or beef. Everything she knew how to make, everything that was rich with vegetables, he dismissed. She knew so much about foods!

At the garden, too, there were three women who just knew so much about all the foods. There was none that we knew that they didn’t! I kept telling them, they need to write a cookbook, because they have the knowledge, right now! in all it’s vitality! The same knowledge that Luz and I are stumbling in the dark trying to reconstruct.

We spent quite some time with the mother of one of the women who runs the program. She was from Querétaro and was telling us about things like pan relleno de chilacayte, severd with a syrup. And lots of atoles, I think.

 

 

 

 

I’m still absurdly pleased with myself for finishing Rhonda bear. I will ship her out today.

We are getting ready for Dallas!

They sent my my ticket itinerary, so I guess I really am going too!

I was telling Luz that we should boycott because of the transphobic bathroom bill, and then when it turned out that they hadn’t sent my ticket and Luz says—panicked—“does that mean that only I am going?”

When I asked for them to send me my travel info, I had also asked for housing information, but when marla wrote back she said she’d be picking us up at the airport tomorrow. Which I guess means that we don’t need to know where we’re staying—information is on a Need to Know Basis!

Oh well, it will all be fine.

The program and the contract and all that looked really intimidating, but was actually fine!

I have a packing list going for the trip.

The pet sitter (Michelle and Mighty Mouse) come tomorrow and will keep our crew happy. Michelle came by for the key on Saturday while I was out, and Luz said the three dogs reuniting was the cutest, cutest thing.

When we went to pick up yesterday’s dinner, there was no parking in Piedmont. My old standby is to park in the Pet Food Express lot. Usually I go in and buy something but when we got there, Rocket Dog Rescue was having an adoption event. So I basically acted as a volunteer, cuddling a mama Min Pin while folks looked at her puppies. She was only two—same as Sweet Pea when we got her, and super good natured. She made growling sounds at some big dogs that were kind of close to her x-pen but not loud or not aggressive.

three hours when we got home and Nopalito smelled another dog on me he was NOT HAPPY! He gave me reproachful glances and snorted in disgust. Then he went over to the other furniture and attempted to wipe the smell off of his nose. That was a very sad moment.

Oh, I’m pms-ing, with the result that I was near tears after dropping Pearl’s eggs last evening when I was bringing the eggs in. (four brown eggs and one white one, so I knew it was Pearl’s). I apologized to her and tried to clean it up, but we were also in a hurry.

Let me go feed my puppies breakfast. I’ve been worrying that SweetPea is more frail after her dental visit resulted in five tooth extractions. She recovered pretty quickly, and except for the shaved area on her wrist.

Alright, Luz is tarting to get antsy so we need to put together a list of things to do today before our trip. We don’t leave until 2pm tomorrow, which is a mercy!

So this queer youth suggested knitting titties (there’s a knitting pattern linked to a pink breast cancer support group, that knits false breasts for women who have had mastectomies) for transwomen. I thought it was a pretty great idea, but because they said “that breast cancer org is prob’ly transphobic” they haven’t gotten any support.

Of course, they’re right, those breast cancer orgs prob’ly are hella transphobic.

what a super sweet idea this is!

I actually think it’s a better use to knit them for interested transfolk than for breast cancer survivors.. but i have kind a unique perspective, since my partner is a breast cancer survivor, gnc, and we had a really hard time with the pink-lady-culture of breastcancer Inc.

Plus, I’m really haunted by the Cancer Journals where the nurse(?) pressures Audre Lorde to wear a pink falsy on her way out from the clinic, because she wouldn’t want to lower the morale of the other women, would she?

The original pattern is by Beryl Tang, Tit Bits.

She also published it in Knitty with a great article, but what’s really neat is that the emphasis is on fun and funky versus “realistic.” I could see a knitting group at the LBGTQ center knitting up fun, beaded tetas, cupcakes, etc…

In fact, I see a whole short story growing up around this idea. From the perspective of a young transwoman. titled something like “the crazy lesbians that want to adopt me.”

“Look, m’ija, I crocheted you a breast!”

“Look! it’s like a cupcake, and the nipple is a cherry!”

And the young woman is all, please, god, please, can’t I just have a confirmation dress?

or something.

I’ve spent my morning thus far in the leisurely pursuit of reading nine year-old blog posts from a knitter who makes motherbears—comfort bears for children in Africa affected by HIV. Purling Antonia is the name of her blog. She started it planning to make 100 bears. I’m pretty sure she’s made 500, but I could be wrong about that.
 
Anyway, she makes it seem wonderful and magical and meditative. And makes me want to finish up Rhonda Bear and move on to my next bear.

Luz has just left for yoga, where, I told them “Get Hot! Get Sweaty! Make Boys Cry!” and then I imagined them having a tshirt that said that, and wearing it to yoga and the boys nearby reading it. Of course, that would push them to try harder, which would make them cry harder.

Nopalito got me up last night and then when he was outside, went tearing across the yard, chasing and barking and barking and barking! Of course I had neglected to put on slippers, and so there I was, walking barefoot across our treacherous back yard, in my just-pedicured soft-soled little feet! Curses! Since then my toes have been hurting on my left foot, which I injured recently. I can’t remember now if I fell on it, or it was just that I smacked it into the cast-iron table leg, full force.
After the initial injury, I was worried I might have a fracture, but there was no swelling or discoloration, so I decided not.

Today I am wishing for comfrey to rub over it, to promote healing.

The lady who gave me a pedicure wanted to buy Rhonda Bear off of me.

Hey, you know what’s funny? I always get really impatient with beginning knitters/crocheters, who want their first project to be runway-ready. And I always think, the folks in beginning art classes don’t expect their work that day to hang in museums. (Although we kind of do!) Hang on Mom’s fridge, and hang in our study, or the the friend to whom it had special significance, sure!
But that’s part of what I struggled with Rhonda Bear. and that’s what me and the OCD were working against: she’s a bear to learn on.

Give me a kiss to build a dream on,
and my imagination will thrive upon that kiss.
Sweetheart, I ask no more than this:
a kiss to build a dream on.

She, the blog author, Gisela (not Antonia!) posted this memory from 1956 that I want to figure out how to incorporate into my lotería assignment.

[The art teacher] walked into our classroom once a week and told a story. When he was finished he asked us to draw a big rectangle on paper and divide it into four parts.
“Draw the four scenes you like most in the story.”

I think the answer is that instead of drawing from whatever, they have to draw from one of the texts or stories from the class, and do a 2x2 loteria tabla.

The students resist any kind of structure, but I think structure is very good for them. It makes you make choices. It makes you commit to those choices. so instead of doing a half-ass job on nine different images, you have to do a great job on four.

Like they might do La Llorona, Huitzitzílin, Cleofilas, and the river.

Or Malinche, Guadalupe, La Chalupa, and La Sirena.

Yeah, I could really see this working!

Alright: Luz has been gone for more than half an hour and I am in exactly the same position I was when they left. But I have written over six hundred words more and that is a very good thing.

I need to move my writerly brain if I don’t want it to atrophy. and that means that it will get sore—like my left wrist from crocheting amigurumi style, or my left foot from walking barefoot across the backyard in the dark in the middle of the night to retrieve a barking chihuahua—and maybe disturb my sleep, or at least restructure my dream. And those are all very good things as well!

Okay, some fine-tuning to take care of the cat ears on my bear…

Honestly, I think I decreased too much for the neck or should've increased more for the head.

I was in a rush to finish (thus the cat ears) because I was knitting in public, and that makes you want to have a finished project to show.

Coming back, I followed delight's bear ear tutorial -- very helpful. I went back this morning and tried to follow it, adapting to crochet.

definite improvement.

I picked out my finishing seam--I remembered I'd had to join more yarn just a row or so before the end, so I knew I could unravel a little without disturbing the facial embroidery. I unraveled to there,
--I added a photo here because with her head open and all the curlies coming out, I was reminded of those ads for Sea Monkey's in the back of the comic books!--

I added a row or two, with some extra increases at front and back of head, at sides, and above eyebrows--I really should have started with a bigger head!

quick scarf before DH gets home from yoga--have to hurry so that I won't be sitting in the exact same spot in the exact same position as when they left two hours ago!--TA DA!

Rhonda the Acrobat bear

Named after Rhonda Daufman (sp?) in the Theater Department at Eastern New Mexico University in 1985. She sewed her own hot-pink unitard. And dated Palestinian guys to make her parents insane.
(pasted in the notes from ravelry, because I don’t want any of my words to go to waste, i.e. not be counted. Like when you’re not wearing your pedometer, so your steps don’t count.

I didn’t wash my face yet and it’s breaking out so I’d better go rectify that, then head out to the pet store to get dog food etc, and stop by La Farine for a hot cross bun for Beverley.

(I was eying them yesterday at Feel Good Bakery at Alameda, but worried that they wouldn’t be fresh enough for today)

Luz does not want a hot cross bun.

one a penny, two a penny, hot crossed buns.
if you have no daughters, give them to your sons
one a penny, two a penny, hot crossed buns.

Yesterday I got stuck while working on my Acrobat Bear: I joined the arms and then panicked. I posted for help on ravelry and everything. Finally someone posted and identified the four decrease points and I looked again at the pattern and was able to figure out where they would fall on my bear (since I was totally off on stitch count) and it worked out well.
I finished decreases to the neck and now have to figure out the head, whether to make it separately (top down) or attached and bottom up, with the seam on the top.
It’s coming out pretty good. A lot like I imagined it would. As a prototype, it’s working for what I wanted it to, and I want to finish it and send it off.
I know my mom is disappointed that we’re on spring break and not coming to visit. I’m sure that has a lot to do with my bad attitude about the SMU gig. <sigh>
I took the dogs for a walk yesterday and will need to do so again today. Luz wants me to get a haircut and a pedicure before our trip so I can look more presentable.
They tried to get new glasses before the trip (going to lenscrafters) but they won’t be ready for another week.
Nopalito was throwing up this morning. Just bile/foam. I don’t know if that was from needing to go to the bathroom, or something he ate in the middle of the night, or what.
I keep saying I’ll be better about calling my Dad, but I haven’t done it yet.
I am moving my laundry along. Luz let me scav off their breakfast of Ethiopian chilequiles. I need to hydrate today because I didn’t at all yesterday. Well, I thought I did, but I still ended up in a deficit. In the red, so to speak.

I did go to bed but have mostly been goofing off today!
Luz is a Julie’s Tea Cafe grading grading grading. I should be grading grading grading, too, but I don’t want to!

I started stuffing my bear’s legs and she looks so much better already! I realized I need to unravel part of the arms because I had started pink short sleeves, and just realized that the image I’m going for is sleeveless. The arms are pretty short, anyway, so I would’ve needed to add on to them anyway.
My left wrist (not my right!) is hurting from trying to tighten my gauge by yanking on the yarn. It could just be sore from being unused to so much activity, though. I’m not worried about it, but i have to stop doing things like this: it always puts me off projects when I try to “fix” problems and make the project more work and less relaxing.

Still fantasizing about making dolls. The little boy in a dinosaur costume for Steven. Cisco as teenage mutant ninja turtle.

Nopalito is barking his head off out the front window because it is Friday.

I saw something a little while ago and I wish I’d followed up. There was a Muslim woman walking up the middle of the street, and a guy in a car was going slow alongside her talking to her. I just presumed they knew each other, but I wish I’d double-checked to make sure she was ok.

I have a lot of ambivalence abut knitting for the mother bear project, because I fear it’s just white people charity, without any critical reflecting, appreciation of how we are ourselves the cause of many peoples problems. But then I say that it’s something that I can do that may be good for me and good for someone else and maybe that is just enough for now.

Right now I need to get up, get dressed, take my pills, pick up some stitch markers, go clean the coop.
I dreamt last night that my dad was driving me around old-los angeles and telling me, they used to grow carrots here, or that place had goats, so many goats you could buy the manure, and felipes where we would have the french dip sandwiches. Maybe instead of asking Margo to sketch me and christine and my dad at the sofa truck, I should just crochet the dolls.

So far my creativity is limited to the realm of imaginary crochet dolls.

anyway, the dogs could use a walk, as that would settle some of Nopalito’s barkiness.

Oh, but I was thinking about WoC theology of liberation and how Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed is the conflict between the loving, creative mother god, Anyanwu, and the predatory, dangerous, father god Doro. And while in the novel they come to being able to live together, in Mind of My Mind, the courageous WoC daughter is able to finally kill Doro the dangerous father but is ultimately setting herself and her (white+multiracial) uber-community up as the next gods. (who will need to be rebelled against in the future). But that Anyanwu decides to die, rather than live in her granddaughter’s world without Doro.

I worry that we are all (whether my family in particular or folks in general) Doro’s people: bred by him for prey, with their “talents” making them unfit for family life. They are drawn to one another but are dangerous to one another, with mental illness, drug and alcoholism, child abuse, etc. And Doro, the engineer of their misery, is also the one who “rescues” them from it, setting them up somewhere, and then “rescues” them again when he kills them and takes their bodies.

Anyanwu giveth life and Doro taketh life away.

Luz has already gone to bed and I should get there now, too, because I got up just as early as they did (although i didn’t leave the house)

But I’m getting very tired. So I should just check the front door, check the kitchen, take out the dough, and go to bed. too tired.

But I wanted to write some thoughts down before they flit away through my brain. I’m currently obsessed with knitting and crocheting dolls.

I want to crochet a papier mache acrobat doll.

I want to crochet a doll for Aunt Grace

I want to crochet a doll for little Jose Alfonso (in pecheras)

I want to crochet a Grandma Libby doll.

I want to crochet Tío Antonio and Uncle Pony as Los Hermanos.

I want to crochet a virgen de guadalupe doll.

I want to crochet a chihuahua.

We are nearly to the end of the series Juana Inés. I hated the first third of it. But I’m enjoying the last third quite a bit, both for the way they’re showing the end of the Padre Antonio Miranda myth (that he was her savior, that he was her object of desire) and instead shows that she fired him. But more, I think, I’m actually liking this Juana better than the others. I like how she is pretty. I like how she is smart.

 

I need to go to bed.

We had Ethiopian food tonight, so good leftovers tomorrow (Luz’s fusion chilequiles)

SweetPea is here with me and Nopalito is with Luz.

I joined the legs for the bear today. I’m heading up the torso, but need to stop until I figure out where the arms go and whether I need to re-do them or whether the ones I made will work.

For the papier mache doll, I think using a bear body might be a good option, though I’ve saved some others. The color yarns I have are perfect. I’m kindof in love with them!

I read someone today who said that the NaNoWriMo strategy is a winning one for their creativity.

Aya de Leon. That’s who. https://ayadeleon.wordpress.com/2017/03/16/nanowrimo-my-secret-to-year-round-productivity/

time to go to bed, little flower child.

It’s already March! This year is going by so quickly. Luz and I had our un-anniversary this week. 21 years. That’s crazy!

We have been watching season 3 of Jane the Virgin and I have been feeling more and more like I should be writing a novel instead of…everything else.

I’m not writing at all these days, and that’s not good for my brain or my soul.

I taught “Woman Hollering Creek” for the first time this week. And so, it was not that smooth. BUT, I realized that what I like about that story is that it’s the answer to Emma Pérez’s sexuality and discourse. That is, it’s about a community of women, stepping in and changing the tragedy. changing the telenovela story line. Cracking it open and offering new alternative endings. That’s what Felice and Graciela do.

That’s what nobody does for Delgadina.

In Song of the Hummingbird, Graciela Limón writes a new ending for La Llorona, where she kills not her children, but the engineer of her misery, Baltazar, who takes her children away from her. But she is still a woman alone, acting alone. Her relationships are with men: Zintle, Tetla, Baltazar. She is mother to her children: the wings of a bird, Baltazar (II), Paloma (little this and little that).

She has no helpers in the story. She has one nameless helper, who lures Baltazar to the underground passages with stories of hidden gold. But this character has no name and Huitzitzílin has no relationship with them. What would it mean if that person was her lover, her business partner, her comadre?

So then—back to me writing a novel—I was thinking, I should re-write The Order of Santa Rita modeling Cisneros’s writing of Woman Hollering Creek. In terms of narrative voice, structure, time.

SIDE NOTE: “Woman Hollering Creek” should go with “La Historia de Una Marimacha” in the anthology of stories that structure my understanding of the divine. What Night Brings. Luna’s California Poppies. Santora. The God Box. So Far from God. Bless Me Ultima. Portrait of Doña Elena. Wild Steps of Heaven.

 

That’s what I want to write, by the way. I feel like my ultimate goal is teach Portrait of Doña Elena. and Ludlow: Grito de los Mineros.

No, I mean that’s what I want to write. I want to write the abuela’s diary.

I can meditate on that story and then write in that way. And then I can choose another story and use that as a model. That is, I can move my fiction writing out of where it is—stuck!—into another space. and I can follow readers I admire. And I don’t have to wait till I find a creative writing teacher. Orale, I’m nearly 52 years old—“'Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar.” Quit looking for someone to be my bridge. To be my teacher.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Fuck that! When the student is ready, she can figure out how to be her own teacher.

[I posted this update on FB and then had to explain the whole concept to Luz and they thought that’s a BRILLIANT idea, because Woman Hollering Creek that is such a perfect story! And it means you have to withhold information from the reader. And it means you have to play with timing, to move beyond “this happened and then that happened” that beginning writers stay stuck in.]

Something like that. Hey, someone in Washington wants to invite me up to give a talk about theology. I should be writing “Towards a Tzlingona Theology.”