kerouac says

my grandmother is having her leg amputated. she got a cut on her foot, and apparently there's no blood flowing to her leg (and i don't understand how this wasn't a problem before, why her leg isn't falling off or something) and so the cut became gangrene and a bone infection, and there is no good answer, so they are cutting it off.

she's eighty-seven, or so. she's with it occasionally, but really really sad and tired and mostly confused, especially since the pain meds for the bone infection came on board. she made a joke at the dinner table the other night, apparently, about how the next time there was a referendum about euthanasia, she would vote for it. there isn't much that makes her happy. there isn't much that's fun to do. and not because she's a poor sport about dying, but because it's awful, awful to be dying slowly.

she's started hallucinating that a boy my dad went to grade school with is with her in the nursing home. she makes room for him on the bed, she gives him some of her dinner. the operation might be happening today, and she might die on the table, and my parents are saying it would be a blessing. i can only think of how much more horrible the awful will be when she wakes up without a leg, and so i hope, maybe, that the best thing happens. whatever that is. i don't think i know what it would be, but i hope it happens.

everyone has been saying they're sorry, and thinking about me, and i feel fake and horrible about it. my leg is pink and soft and under this desk. my grandmother is a kind, good person, but we don't know each other that well. i'm getting the gut-wrenches about this because it puts some dark fingers on my ideas about what old will be like, or about what taking care of my parents will be like, but really my feeling for her is my feeling for a general human person, combined with my fear for my dad. because it's not easy to wish someone dead, not even if it's the best of a field of bad possibles.

here are the gates.

it was going to be a lot more better, but we ran out of batteries almost immediately. why someone isn't running through central park with a shopping cart of double As, i do not know. million dollar scheme.

on this day, a thought from the monkey, via his camera phone.


and a poem from my dad, who decided to come back from his evening bike ride last night with a dozen roses and this verse for my mother:

Roses are red,
Putty is ecru.
These roses are sort of
Impromptu.

we signed five million forms this morning. first the mortgage application, then the actual contracts. this business is not for the faint of heart or the light of brain. i've got my hands full juggling dates and checks and board applications, but it's fine by me. tonight i'm writing my first ever five-digit check. it kind of makes me want to nervous-barf in the best possible way.

when we took the elevator down from the attorney's office after signing the contracts, the monkey put both his hands on my face and kissed me, and then whispered hey. we're legally bound. into my hairline.

i hadn't thought about it like that. i mean, obviously owning property together is A Big Step and all that, but . . . now that it's on papers that have been filed in big buildings, our US is recognized in a place other than our living room. we are legally bound, and i didn't expect it to make me so weak-kneed. the best part about it was how joyful he is that it's true.

i don't know exactly why i stopped writing. maybe it was the combined distractions of falling in love and moving away. but maybe it started before then and those things just seemed like good excused to make it a habit. whatever happened, i hate it.

i hate that i'm not writing. i hate it. i hate that i am getting older with fewer and fewer pages to show for every year. i hate that my ambition is getting lost in my need for naps and email and Six Feet Under. i spend more time writing comments on the bulletin board of my online writers workshop than i do writing fiction or plays. the other members of the workshop are pretending not to notice that i haven't submitted a story in three years.

i guess i'm just now realizing that not writing anything down in this long means that i *stopped.* i kept thinking of it as . . .a delay. and now the length of time between when i felt good about writing and the current moment is making it extremely painful to start again.

i know, poor me. pain pain pain.

anyway. i'd say that i'm going to try again, but i've said it so many times to very little effect. i feel like a giant doofus. a giant doofus who is never going to publish a novel.

i'll never go hungry again.

our new home.

and buy "our," i mean:

we're gonna own it.

i'm touching wood and everything, because the deal is not done and life is long, but just so the world knows, i have nothing angry to say today. today, i'm feeling okay. and as suggested previously, grateful.

it all goes forward.

we put an offer on an apartment yesterday. it's in washington heights, which is a perfectly nice neighborhood, if a little remote. it's a sweet little place. i am waking up in the night with some sort of anxiety-insomnia-hot flashes, which i'm sure are a result of Large Happenings involving the process of buying property and the aftermath of recent acts of violence. i lie awake thinking, where will the recycling tubs go in that tiny kitchen? and should i still walk to port authority by myself at two a.m.? and what about the bathroom tile? is it okay? will the commute to brooklyn make me regret the move? am i too much of a backtalker to survive a mugging? just how big is the storage area in the basement? is one of us going to die before we can get it together to get married?

these are not the best days, but i'm feeling a lot of grateful. i'm aware that i spend a lot of time meticulously counting what i don't have, which seems outstandingly arrogant in the light of current events. it's human and all, but i think it's a good time for a small (medium-sized, even?) break from the tallying of failure and not-having and woe-is-me.