Right here at the outset I'm fully aware that I won't be able to recount, in any worthy narrative at all, the thrilling month that was March.  Already, this far in, I can tell this isn't going to be much of an entry.  Gotta get me them feets wet, though, so anyway, diving in...

Amy is well.  Two months have passed since her last seizure.  I think new meds are mostly responsible for this respite, although her growth may be a factor as well.  She's growing like a weed because she's eating like a horse.  Giant breakfasts, full lunchboxes, after-school specials -- hell, you can harldly call 'em snacks, they're more like schnaughrrrgs, great inhalations of yogurt and juice and chips and leftover dinners and popsicles.  She's taller than her mother now, and her personality is acquiring that slight hint of vinegar that fully ripens at about age fifteen.  With her adolescent eye-rolling keenly tuned, she's now discovering the art of the foot stomp.  It's a beautiful thing to witness her mother's side of the family coming through.

*****

I never made it to Arizona.  I went to a funeral instead.  One of the dads from the old neighborhood died, the dad of one of my best high school buddies, so instead I rode down into deepest Orange County and sat in a church and sang hymns and talked with folks I hadn't seen in a long long time.  For those of you who know me well and are trying to picture me in a church singing hymns, well, all I can say is age brings tolerance.  Loads of it.

*****

My house was the site of what may become the annual March Birthday Celebration.  There are about ten of us here in the immediate neighborhood with birthdays in and around the month of March, so in lieu of overwhelming the calendar with scribbles and having to memorize ages and dates, we set aside the 23rd, stoked up the firepit, and potlucked our way into our next respective years.  I was my usual jaded bitter self and everyone seemed to have a good time.  I turned 46.  Thank you.  It's an honor just to be nominated.

*****

This past year has been one of the most stressful of my life.  The difficulties with my parents' decline, Amy's seizures, the palpable aging of my own body (I broke another tooth last week, you'll be happy to learn), but now I'm feeling the burdens starting to lift.  Sheesh, if it wasn't for my crystal meth, LSD, hashish, and tequila I just don't know what I'd do.  Just kidding.  The hashish isn't really mine, per se.

*****

Have you noticed a trend in the journaling world?  Well, I see one in my little corner of it.  Journal-halting metamorphoses seem to be occuring among former Journalcon attendees.  Interest seems to be waning.  Lucy took a powder.  Jill has become another stripe of butterfly.  Michael's lease has lapsed.  Xeney is overwhelmed - again.  Nothing new, I guess.  Age has its privileges.  Lynda is barely squeezing 'em out under the weight of school -- in fact school seems to be suffocating many of the middle aged among us.  Renee is quiet.  Spinny gonny hiatussy.  Naze, like me, is dragging his heels.  Remember when he used to write real journal entries?  Enthusiasm for this sort of expression seems to be losing its sizzle for several of us.  We're all doing this quite separately, and yet I feel connected to all these disconnecting people.  We seem united in our disintegration.

I wouldn't be saying this had I not attended JournalCon last October.  Meeting folks in the flesh has a way of informing, transforming how one feels about them.  Even for me, Mr. Leave Me Alone.

Even journalers who weren't in attendance are being affected by some sort of diaristic kryptonite.  For example, Another Day has become Another Year.  And Snoozebar needs a wake up call.  

Thank goodness we still have Bob.  The man is solid.  Bravo.  'Course, that's envy talkin.'  Who else do you know who has no kids, is gainfully employed, test drives new cars for fun, lives with a cat in the Bay Area, and drinks really good Scotch every damn night?  If I didn't like and admire him so much I could really hate him.

For those of you reading this who don't keep an online journal or read other ones, I'm sorry if this is boring to you.  But then, of course, you are the person who has chosen to lurk and not take a bite of the big and tangy social apple that is online journaling, so, you shall forgive me these internicine observations.

I wish my neighbors kept online journals.  As usual, I am more interested in them than they are in me so I have to go poking around in their private lives the old fashioned way, through skullduggery, expensive background checks, lying, bribing their children, and electronic eavesdropping.  It gets tiring.

I mean, c'mon, people, I give and I give and I give...

*****

Okay, my ankles are used to the water now.  I can get on with some more regular updating in the days ahead.

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