October is the best month.  School is at full steam having successfully left September's dock with Amy aboard.  The cool of autumn has landed and settled in.  The only holiday, at the very end, is pagan.  Or humanist.  Or spooky, or fun, or anything but a day of starched families struggling with religious orthodoxy.  October also brings Columbus Day, hardly a holiday, to commemorate imperialist genocide, and those of us whose blood is making a comeback in the Americas like to take a little break, a siesta, to dab a tear out of our jaundiced eye before going back into the field, or the kitchen, or the housekeeping supply closet.  Perhaps it is true that all men are created equal, but it's clear that that particular condition is overridden by the economic class one is born into.  While I cannot be held responsible for my family's campaign (subconscious?) to breed in the direction of lighter and lighter skin, I am capable of feeling a slight sense of guilt about it.  And it is this gnawing awareness that makes me now step off this box labeled Tide With Bleach.

*****

Amy had two more seizures the week after I got back from JournalCon, and this increase in their frequency has required not only some new medication but some concentrated supervision as well.  Lots of eyes-on time.  Scrutiny.  Observation.  In the hours not spent focused on my daughter I've been rebuilding the darkroom in the garage and gearing up for some serious productivity.  Shooting and printing are now the most unquenchable parts of my self-expression, I'm feeling a definite deep-down fury about it and it's very satisfying and nurturing and I'm trying to keep that feeling alive, nursing along the muse.

*****

The Anaheim Angels have inflicted the sports version of bi-polar disorder upon me with their edge-of-the-seat playing during this World Series (another perk of October).  I grew up within sight of their stadium, watched it being built, and have a territorial affinity for them despite my older and stronger devotion to the Los Angeles Dodgers.  This latter affiliation has instilled in me an overt and prolonged hatred for the San Francisco Giants, so I'm harboring a double dose of enmity here that boils over with every mention of His Majesty Barry Bonds.  The Giants are as smug as San Francisco itself and just as provincial.  

*****

I'd like to mention, again, how much of a pleasure it was to attend JournalCon and meet so many good people there, despite the fact that it was held across enemy lines in Frisco (I understand they hate that term up there, so, Frisco Frisco Frisco).  It would be great if the convention could be expanded by a few more days just so there could be more socializing since we are normally just a bunch of moist squinty little moles who do this, in a sense, all alone.  I ended up wanting so many journalers as neighbors.  It would be great to talk over the fence daily with Renee, Lunesse, Bob, Jill, The Bitter Hag, Lucy, Jen, Michael, Beth, Lisa, Lynda, and Christopher (among the few I was able to spend a tiny bit of time with, there are more whom I've yet to get my hooks into).  We need some sort of well-funded compound.  A commune.  Wait.  No.  That would be too Haight-Ashbury.  Maybe something more like Dodgertown in Vero Beach.

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