Oh, I did the requisite high school musicals, singing in the chorus, and I love singing  carols, but only if there’s a tenor I can hide behind (the tenors get the melody, and my alto voice can follow along). But not real singing, like when someone can actually hear you.

Because the director of Under Milkwood is who he is*, he took this as a challenge. And so I became one of the few people who has ever had the chance to sing in the MIT Music Library. Which is awesome. But doesn’t really change the fact that I didn’t sing in public.

But then my girls were born. And now I find myself singing roughly constantly. I sing the Beatles. I sing hymns. I sing wordless ditties that at their best could be called scat singing, and at their worst sound like I’ve forgotten how to use language (I have to admit, sometimes I am so tired that I do forget how to use language). I make up little ditties that narrate the day, and I sing songs that have gradually evolved to have their own verses. But I sing. All the time.

I always hoped that my kids would grow up with music, but I never envisioned this different world in which I sing all the time, without (much) self-consciousness, whenever the girls are fussy, when I’m trying to get them to go to sleep, when I’m walking them to the library.

Part of it is that I’m too tired to be embarrassed , and it’s a way to interact with two babies at the same time when I’m short on hands.

But I’m enjoying it a whole lot. And I don’t care what anyone else thinks.

* Full disclosure: many, many years later I married that same director, and now I sing, so apparently he was right to take it as a challenge.

During that time I’ve gotten married, left a job I loved, and gained two beautiful timesinks.

There is always something more important to do than write, and always something to take up the brain space and keep the hands busy. And more than busy. And never enough time to sleep or do laundry or daydream. But eventually you have to draw a line in the mud and say “That’s it. I’m doing to do it.” And then just start doing.

Even if I should be napping. Or doing laundry. Or teaching the babies long division.

Days at home were pretty laid back: I was the only one who actually slept Thanksgiving night, so everyone else was recovering. People took turns making their best stews and chilis, and we went through a loaf of bread a day. In the course of the errands, I got to ride the cargo bike, which was all sorts of awesome. The back wheel is set a little further back than one would think, and the frame extends into a tube rack that could hold pretty much anything. One side had the world’s biggest pannier. When filled with groceries, I could scarcely get the bike unlocked, but once I was actually riding it, I didn’t notice either the weight or the fact that it was all on one side. Impressive.

One afternoon, we took off to tourist. We headed over to McMenamin’s for tater tots (comfort snack food taken seriously) and Powell’s where we wandered through the whole store and brought presents back for everyone (we were both heading out on business trips, so there was a limit to what we could carry on our own.)

I had a play deadline to hit of December 1. The deadline had been looming over my head all month, and I’d been reworking the play, but actually submitting it had gotten lost in the logistics of Thanksgiving. Sunday I popped over to Office Depot (not far from Powell’s) to print it, then Monday afternoon I borrowed the folding bicycle (link!) to head over to the post office. The great thing (okay, one of the great things) about Portland is that the streets are all numbered, so if you have a street and cross street, you can make a pretty good guess about how far away it is, at least in the numbered direction. There are two holes in this: one is that the numbered streets go up on both sides from the river, so you have to keep track of which side you need; the second is that, Ogdenlike, the streets don’t all go through. I was looking for the post office at, roughly, fourteenth and Powell Street, but from the north side, you just can’t get there from here. Seventeenth and twelfth both do, so with a quick glance at the map, I headed out. Seventeenth funneled me into an alarmingly narrow concrete underpass that twisted and turned, then got steep enough that I got up and walked. I emerged on the other side of the railroad tracks and looked for the post office. Google had been mistaken: other side of the street. But Powell is a main street, and just there it was doing some funky underpassing itself. Can’t get there from here. I biked up to fourteenth, sent off my manuscript Priority mail, demonstrated the bike folding for the small crowd that had gathered around it, and headed home up twelfth, which was far less eventful.

That evening, we headed over to the Bluebird Guest house, which was a cozy combination of bed and breakfast and grown-up hostel. My favorite thing was that they set out breakfast the night before, which meant that I could have some before I left for my flight at 4:30. And on to the next!

Walking across the Marina, I heard sirens, the clank of hardware on masts, the whispered lapping of the bay, the clip-clop of half-a-dozen policemen on horseback. Pelicans circled, crabs basked on their rocks, and I looked for the Golden Gate. It was nearly invisible: thin spans of red peeked out through the clouds.

I took my plate back to the car to drive out to Fort Point. (The tamale and sope were layered with mango and veggies and cotija cheese, and I am very glad the bug had a palatial dashboard for me to rest it on as I drove.) I ate sitting on the sea wall in the chilling fog, listening to the ships play Marco Polo and watching people fishing off the pier.

Afterward, I walked out to the point. On my way, I saw an odd collection of buoys. As I got closer, I thought they might be sea lions, then swimmers, then they revealed themselves as a dozen surfers, one older than my father, waiting for the waves to pick up. It was high-level surfing: full wetsuits; heads covered; picking up a wave then jumping off the board before the wave slammed into the rocks at the shore.

I’d never been out to Fort Point before; I hadn’t realized that the Golden Gate had had a fort before the Civil War. It was built to protect gold rush San Francisco from foreign naval attack. In the 1930s, they shut down the light house and built the bridge up over the fort.

The fort itself is pleasantly sturdily brick, and I climbed up to the fourth floor to see the view of the bridge from underneath.

When she was little, my mother and her sisters used to do cartwheels on the deck of their father’s boat as they went under the Golden Gate. I always wanted to live up to her example. And so I did, in the second floor corridor of the Fort. Task complete.

Not always: I wrote Londa Went to Africa in her Day Glo Shoes in a hand-made-paper notebook while sitting out under a tree in Namibia. Gloria Gloria Tabitha Jakobson I wrote mostly on car trips, scribbling down verses on scraps of paper and old receipts. But the sequel to American Dragons I wrote over the course of a few weeks, 2000 words a day, with long walks through the Austin heat every afternoon. (This is about getting words on the page…revision, as always, comes later.)

But I feel happier, and write better and longer, when I’m typing.

I just got back from a trip around Europe, which was marvelous. On the trip, I carried a collection of notebooks, a nine-inch netbook, and an external keyboard*. I struggled with the netbook: there’s always a learning curve with a new computer. It had a new desktop manager, and a bunch of software that wasn’t yet familiar. Put that together with lack of internet and problems finding power outlets (on trains, in hostels), and I didn’t use the laptop much at all.

It was great for making reservations and checking email, but fundamentally, I found it annoying. And, as I discovered, I can be very motivated to write, but if the way I write bugs me, I just won’t do it. So, rather than returning with a full collection of posted blog entries and most of a new play, I returned with notebooks full of notes.

The lesson here is that I need to make sure my technology (even if it’s just a ballpoint pen and a notebook) is there in support of my writing. And that I need to get these notes turned around into a collection of posted blog entries and most of a new play.

* Actually, I was carrying four notebooks, two phones, a camera, and ipod, a AA battery charger, the netbook, and never quite enough pens, but who’s counting?

But the truly bizarre thing was United’s Personal Video System in First Class (I saw it through the curtains). Each passenger had their choice of movies, which they chose from a tape case the flight attendant brought around.

Actually physical tapes. In 2009. In first class.

I was gobsmacked.

I went to the airport early, then sat for an hour and a half waiting for them to open the gate, then another half an hour waiting for them to call my name. And then they asked for volunteers.

I thought about it for a while, but I was nervous about being bumped either altogether or to another full flight, and the other choice was $400 and an actual seat on a nicer airline, so in the end I went for it. Two of us went up, they needed two, and we were all set.

And then, through machinations I didn’t understand, they only needed one, and it wasn’t me. But that was okay. Now I would be sure to make my train, and I had a seat, and would be able to make it to the British library, so all was well with the world.

But wait! That was too easy. The flight was once again full. So I waited to board at the very end just in case they still needed a volunteer. And then it turned out someone was trying to make a connection from Sydney. And if he made it, I would get $400 and a seat on the later flight. If he didn’t, I would fly to London in his business class seat. The poor guy missed his flight.

Throw me in the briar patch.

But then I get a bit closer and the lists of things start to fall away: the last library books checked in, the last shopping trip, the last load of laundry. And things begin to get lighter: the keys removed from the chain, the todo list pruned, the cards removed from the wallet: every moment a little lighter until I’m gone.

I’m off on a trip to:
London
Edinburgh
Cambridge
Zurich
Venice
Florence
Amsterdam
Paris

And probably some other places along the way. Posts along the way, though likely (as this one is) pre-dated.