Today.

Notable because.

Catherine and I had our first public argument in 11 years. One time last March or April we had a pretty serious "either something changes or I'm leaving" argument on the bike path, but no one was around to hear us, so it doesn' t count. Today, everybody on both sides of the street could hear us, including her co-worker who interrupted me mid-scathing-sentence on Kirkwood Avenue.

Notable because.

For the first time in 11 years, I didn't give a damn that her co-worker knew we were fighting, that people could look at me and tell I hadn't slept in days, that complete strangers could tell we were both angry. For the first time in god knows how long, Catherine had to stop and listen to me and believe me and not put me off because I was just going to raise my voice all that much more if she continued to bury her head in the sand.

Notable because.

Catherine realized she couldn't just put me off with a "I'm sure it will get better, honey." I didn't have to listen to any more platitudes and accept any more well-meaning pats on the head. I didn't have to listen to any of my friends change the subject or brush me off or chastise me when I tried to talk to them about what's been going on in my head. I didn't have to pretend I was coping just fine, and I didn't have to lie to anyone.

Notable because.

I got what I wanted, which was a promise from Catherine to help me try and solve a few things, instead of just pretending that nothing is happening and that everything will eventually work out on its own. I got what I wanted, for her to acknowledge how humiliated and depressed and desperate and scared and exhausted I am, and that some of the things she's been doing just haven't been helping.

Notable because.

I made it through one more day, despite my total lack of desire to do so. Nothing is solved, nothing is better at all, but at least someone finally stopped and listened to the truth instead of trying to make me hide it in the back of my throat, where it was getting seriously close to choking to me to death.

Last night I figured out that if I was dead, Catherine would save about $500/month--she could actually live on her paycheck if it wasn't for me. She could stop paying my health insurance, she could sell the car ($4000 blue book value) and stop paying car insurance, she could save herself the $20 a month I waste on internet services, she wouldn't have to pay for music lessons or gym fees, she could get rid of my cell phone. The utility bills would drop, the garbage disposal bills would drop, and she'd probably start feeling quite wealthy. And that's without even selling all my junk. She could sell my drum kit, my trumpet, my guitar, my telescope, my computer equipment, my weight bench, my heavy bag, my power tools, my drafting equipment.... Financially, she's a whole lot better off without me.

Finally got off my lazy butt and set up the telescope. No, I haven't got it balanced, and no, I haven't replaced the bolt in the gimpy tripod leg. Still, we did give it a go tonight, and I guess it went okay. Catherine saw the polar ice cap on Mars, she's happy. Actually, it was a huge pain in the ass because I didn't have the thing balanced, nor do I have a spotting scope mounted, so it took a lot more work than it really needed to. But Catherine's happy, so that's all that matters.

Also, I remembered how bad deep sky telescopes are for planetary observing. It's hard to navigate by sight--you can see three stars with the naked eye, and a thousand stars through the scope, so you can't just jump from star to star. You need a deep space atlas, and they aren't that helpful for planetary observing. Catherine is interested enough in all this that--if I ever get a job--maybe we'll get an 8" cassegrain to add to the viewing collection.

I would just like to point out that it is a full three hours past my bed time.

Hmmm...shoulder or knee? Knee or shoulder? If you've only got ice enough for one joint, you have to make some painful decisions.

You know, I'm pretty sure that posing in lacy underwear is a dishonour to your black belt. Her body, her decision, but I think I would respect Diana Lee Inosanto more as a martial artist if I didn't feel she was doing me a diservice as a woman. She had an interview in this month's Black Belt Magazine, and I thought she had some interesting things to say about how women are socialized to behave in a certain (submissive) manner. It's so hard to take her seriously, though. I'm not saying she shouldn't celebrate her body, I'm really not, but does she have to do it in a way that unquestionably invites the (male) gaze to devour her? She talks about the fact that men don't respect women in martial arts classes, but I really feel like she's contributing to the continued visualization of women as sexual objects, even in the dojang, where that shouldn't be happening.

I don't know, I just get so tired of women glamming it up for sports. The WNBA publicity this season was totally disgusting. It's all about snagging male viewers. Get the men, get the money. I understand the practicalities of the situation, but I don't have to like it.

Well, I may have lost my voice, but I gained a belt. Passed my orange belt test this evening. Added a couple pieces of pine to my short stack of broken boards in my office--palm heel strike and side kick did the damage. My goal, inasmuch as I have one, is to make it farther up the ranks than I did in college. If I go one more belt level (green), that will be even w/my college rank, so I need to go at least two levels, to purple. I was in a lot better shape in college, though, so I may give up on this yet. If I stick it out, I could conceivably be a purple belt by the end of the year. Stay tuned.

What is it with band directors and drummers? If our director doesn't learn how to control his tendency to berate the percussion section, he's going to find himself with one less percussionist. My foster father was the same way, but at least I understood why. Drummers in junior high and high school are always pounding on something, they're a constant distraction. But you know, at this point, we're all adults, we don't sit back in the back and bang away at the snare just to have something to do. We're working our asses off most of the time, trying to cover 6 parts with 3 people. Brian and I both practice more than any responsible adult should, and we're both dumping money into lessons every month. We are not goof offs.

It just bites my ass that the conductor can spend 20 minutes rehearsing the clarinet section note by tedious note, but when he has to give the percussionsists five minutes of his attention, he acts as if we've committed some sort of heinous crime. Why is it if he has to spend a couple of minutes with us, we're "wasting the whole band's time," but if he spends twice that on the trumpets, they're not accused of doing the same thing? Brian seems to be able to shake it off, but I am definitely not getting paid enough to put up with this.

I am such a wuss. I got up at some ungodly hour this morning to go in for an MRI on my shoulder. I've had one done before, so I figured, hey, no big deal. A little loud, a little tedious. Well, the last one was in an open machine, and this one was in a closed machine. There's nothing quite like being strapped to a table and sent into a tunnel to start off a panic attack. I spent 45 minutes staring up at the top of the plastic tube, telling myself to get a grip. Such a big baby.

My birthday apron. Now I have no excuse for not cooking dinner.

We managed to add an extra two, if not three, hours on to our return trip by getting lost in Brown County. It's bad when you know you're driving south along the lake, but you can't find a road heading south--much less a lake--on your map. Neither of us is an idiot, but we had to ask for directions three different times before we made it to a spot we recognized.

Although we drove right through Portland, we skipped the big tractor engine show. We picked up a flyer for it in Geneva, and I must say, when I saw they were going to have six thousand different spark plugs on display, I was sorely tempted. Hanging out with 30,000 other people actually interested in all those spark plugs didn't sound like a good time, though.

We had a great time watching the kingfishers and herons at the Loblolly Marsh this morning. The DNR has been working on reclaiming the wetlands--the former Limberlost Swamp--for the past six years, and the Loblolly is a good example of what can be done to return cultivated land to a more wild state. I'm not sure if turning corn fields back into marshland is a good idea or not--surely the land has been poisoned with pesticides, surely we shouldn't be pretending we can control nature--but it does seem that the area *wants* to be swamp land. I know it took a lot of human work to turn it back into a marsh, but no human brought back the birds and fish and frogs and bugs.







Anyway, after we spent some time out at the Loblolly, we went back into town and talked with the site manager of the Limberlost Historic Site. We talked to him quite a bit yesterday, but it must have been slow today, because he didn't seem like he was trying to get rid of us. Probably everyone that would usually visit was in Portland at the tractor engine show.

Oh, I am not making this up, Catherine took a picture of it: we stopped at a Shell station at the intersection of 27 and 67 to wash off the Deet, and outside the gas station they had a converted soda-vending machine full of live bait. $3.00 for premium night crawlers, $2.00 for the regular kind, $1.50 for moths. What kind of quality control do you have when you're buying your bait out of a vending machine?

I should have had more alcohol on my birthday.

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The whole point of our trip--to visit the house at Limberlost (Geneva, Indiana). The Queen Anne influence is obvious here. Beautiful house in its own way, but I much prefer her house at Rome City.

I feel like I could write a book about Gene Stratton-Porter, I've been living with her non-stop all week.





Since all the hotel rooms in this part of the country are full, we end up at Bearcreek Farms for the night. We are not senior citizens.



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A lightning show after an evening of swimming in Lake James.

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After LaGrange, we went directly to Rome City to see Gene Stratton-Porter's second home, in Wildflower Woods, on the shores of Sylvan Lake. A brilliant house, ideally laid out to take advantage of all the daylight available. Particularly charming was the conservatory w/its dry sink. Too hot to spend too much time in the gardens.



Decided to drive to Garrett for no real reason, stopped in Avilla on the way for lunch at St. James Restaurant, the oldest restaurant in northern Indiana. Ended up in Auburn. A quick look around led to an hour spent in the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum. An hour wasn't enough time, so we went back the next morning. It's just a totally cool way to spend the morning, and not just for the cars. The museum building was the former administration building for the Auburn Automobile Company, complete with showrooms. A lot of the offices were laid out as if they were just waiting for everyone to come back from lunch. I especially like the drafting/clay model rooms. Looking forward to going back. Looking forward to owning an Auburn Supercharged Speedster.

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LaGrange, Indiana. Not so much happening here, but that's quite alright. Never pass up an opportunity to sit in the shade. We didn't get a chance to try out the coffee shop, but can give the local bakery two thumbs up. Just across from the courthouse is a mural celebrating the LaGrange corn school. How neat is that?

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Fairmount, Indiana, "where cool went to school." An un-planned detour on our way to northeast Indiana. Who knew that Fairmount could claim four famous people? Wish we had time to hang around longer.

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Wow, those Amazon people are wiley. Spend a few minutes reading jigsaw reviews, the next thing you know you're getting power tool catalogues in the mail.

Audioblog is all set up. If I see anything truly fascinating on the road in the next few days, I can call up my journal and describe it, as long as I can describe it in two minutes or less. Anything more complicated than that will have to go undocumented. I can't imagine anything exceptionally exciting appearing in front of my car in northern Indiana, but you never know.

Mm. My anger carried me through a strong 45-minute run, so I guess that's okay. I wish all my anger was so productive. If general disgruntlement could be harnessed and used for fuel, I could keep a small nation in business w/out it ever having to resort to using fossil fuels.

Catherine can never become an invalid, because I'm a totally incompetent caretaker. I've just been following her around--when she hasn't been in bed--asking, "How do you feel? How do you feel? Should I get a doctor? How do you feel?" She's probably ready to shoot me. I can't tell if she's sick or REALLY sick. If she feels like fainting or vomiting, do I reassure her it's probably just the allergy medication, or do I pack her into the car and take her to Promptcare? Somehow when I'm sick, she figures out what to do--ignore me, bring me water, call an ambulance. But all I seem to be able to do is ask, "Are you better yet? Are you better yet?" like some twisted parody of the cell phone commercial.

We've been at odds a lot lately, a lot of stress in our lives. A lot of stress at her job, a lot of stress w/my lack of job. So we bicker about stupid things. We're both tired of it but seem to keep at it. I hope the time away from home does us both some good.

It is absolutely amazing the number of hits this web page gets as a result of the keyword search "how to make a meth lab."

Well, Catherine's sleeping, and I'm trying to decide if I should stay here *just in case* or if I can go for a run. She says it's okay to go out, but I'm not all that sure. A not-so-unreasonable chunk of my afternoon was spent waiting for her at the doctor's office, and than at the pharmacy. We're not sure what she's allergic to, but she looks like a burn victim, the hives are so bad. Head to knee, really harsh looking welts. She's pretty uncomfortable, but says she isn't having any trouble breathing. She's not known for telling the truth about things like this, though, so I think I should stick around in case I need to force her to seek more medical attention.