We're through the worst of it now. Laura was getting an odd pulsing in her temple. It scared all of us for we feared it was a blood vessel getting weak. Her Father died of an aneurism. Much sobbing may be good catharsis, but not if it's wrecking your health. So she did her best to distract herself the past couple of days. We rented videos. Inspector Gadget was light enough fare. But even so, when the security guard had the accident prior to being turned into gadget-man, all I could think was, NO, IN REAL LIFE, PEOPLE DO NOT SURVIVE ACCIDENTS LIKE THAT! I watched it in a kind of daze, fell asleep through most of it. Laura and Julia didn't fall asleep. Yet Laura can remember nothing about it. That was Friday night, if I recall right.

Saturday morning, we tried some kick-ass movie. Fifteen minutes into it, we sat there dumbfounded at all the violence. It wasn't doing anything for us. Tea With Mussolini looked to be calming fare. The English lady tells the little boy, No, your Mother isn't coming back. She died, but she can live on in your heart. Augh, too close to reality. We pulled that one out of the VCR's mouth. No, only big screen could do it. We could get lost in all the big screen details.

Off to Ray Rd. We decided on the James Bond flick, The World Is Not Enough. The violence is never disgustingly gory in a Bond movie, so this had possibilities. I watched slack-jawed, fell asleep midway, but apparently not so long that the plot was too confusing. Innocent appearing sexy lady turns surprisingly(!) EVIL.

Yesterday, Sunday, Laura checked out the theater's web site. Flawless looked VERY tempting.
Plot Synopsis:

Robert De Niro plays a security guard who suffers a stroke. The good news is for his rehabilitation, he is assigned a tutor that happens to live next door, the bad news is the tutor is a drag queen.

It's a gritty movie, set in a bad section of New York City. People don't end up in this area, unless they're pretty desperate. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the campy queen with true class. Some of the other queens in the show are genuine drag performers.

Convincing and cute in those dresses....

I didn't fall asleep on this one.

It's quarter after four. I managed to sleep a little later this morning, 3:30am instead of 2:00. It's not yet been a full week since Shayna died. Sometimes it seems longer than that. But sometimes it seems like time has stood still since that night.

Serena and I went through Shayna's clothes yesterday. She was quite the clothes horse, and six huge black bags of them are on our porch, waiting for delivery to Goodwill. Serena handed me that glucose bag, and said Get rid of it!. I tossed that in the trash with a hard throw.

Later in the day, I went in the sewing room and straightened things up a bit, preparing for sewing. The tasks still looked big to me, and I postponed them yet another day. Maybe my head would be clearer then.

So I went to the computer to read a few journals while Laura left to pick up Julia. A pipe under the hall bathroom sink separated again, and I needed to be home to wait for the plumber. He came, did his job, and said he'd bill us. I should have asked what it will cost. I guess we'll find out when the bill arrives.

After he left, it was 4:40. Laura should have been home with Julia by then. They weren't. In the past I wouldn't have thought much of it. I'd just calmly know they went somewhere like grocery shopping. Not last night. Each succeeding minute they did not show brought a rise in blood pressure. By an hour, my heart was pounding. All I can think of is The LAST time somebody didn't show up . . .

One of them could have CALLED. You'd think they'd know what I'd be thinking. But a little over an hour later than expected arrival time, they did show up with bags of groceries, lots of tasty stuff like tapioca pudding. Oh, I've been eating, all right. I packed away two huge bowls of vanilla bean ice cream, one with chocolate and kahlua syrup, among some other stuff.

I just don't feel like bothering with the diet log, though. One thing I will do is celebrate one full year of Weighty Matters, however. Yes, the first entry was one year ago!

The bouncy upbeat music of Angelique Kidjo entertained me, as I was getting back into sewing. This used to be Shayna's album. One time I told her it was my most favorite of her albums, and somehow she took it to mean I didn't like the rest of her music. But I really do like the catchy tunes, and had marked a mental note to send for a disc of my own from BMG music.

The lyrics of one of the songs made me drop what I was sewing on, so applicable they were:

(From NEVER KNOW) Inner peace or private war Lose the key Just when you find the door. 'Cause you never know what you've got Till it's gone Mondji irorun kossi mon ééé 'Cause you never know what you've lost Till it's found Irorun, irorun, irorun egbamin o

Just when you find the door: Shayna was just starting to learn she wasn't from the dark side, as her negative self view had previously made her think. Consider her words after seeing The Matrix( a science fiction movie in which the reality everyone believes to exist turns out to be just a virtual computer program into which they're all plugged. One man, Neo, beats the system.) : "We, however, each and every one of us, with our own mind and regardless of our individual situation, CAN choose, for ourselves, WHAT OUR REALITY WILL BE LIKE FOR US." She could choose happiness.

Then she lost the key. Did she think "If I chose to, perhaps, I could run up walls, stop bullets, levitate, self-heal wounds, etc ..."? Did she think, by mere force of will, she could take a lightweight car and go high speeds on a dirt road, with no consequence? There are some aspects of reality that can't be changed. She lost.

'Cause you never know what you've got Till it's gone: I didn't fully understand Shayna until she was gone. We had set to's on occasion, and it would take time for a deeper friendship to grow. Only we didn't have that time.

'Cause you never know what you've lost Till it's found: Laura and I had in the past year missed many opportunities for closeness. We had a tearful conversation yesterday morning. "Just why do you think I was so happy to spend all those hours with Shayna? For one thing, you had abandoned me to the computer. I saw more of your back than your face." Hard words that made me cry, when I thought about them later that morning. Yesterday afternoon I came to Laura, tearful. "Let's cuddle," I begged. We then sat down together and re-affirmed our love. Then Laura's healing touch to my receptivity, and we knew joy again. What we've found, we know now just how valuable it is. We embraced each other gratefully. I'll not be wasting hours when I can spend time with Laura and Julia. One thing Shayna's death has taught me, we never know just how much time we have with those we love. I don't want to lose any more chances. I've found the door, and I won't lose the key.

On the way to Julia's work, we travel through farmland. One farm house is near the road. Its wooden exterior hasn't seen a new coat of paint in perhaps thirty years. One broken window was replaced with a piece of plywood. The occupants have fallen on hard times. But that didn't stop them from having Christmas spirit. They'd made a Christmas star and tree out of cardboard and afixed them to the front of their house. Some might find it depressing, but I found the scene uplifting. No matter how low our circumstances get, we will do SOMETHING to celebrate the holidays. Its a triumph of will over matter.

    "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. . ."   

We're kind of poor in Christmas spirit this year. The thought of handwritten Christmas cards, individualized to each recipient was rather daunting. So I came up with one letter, to be sent to all, fundies included. I have no energy to bother with special edited versions for those christian fundies. I gave a fair synopsis of the years events, and ended it on a positive note, taking from a recent journal entry. If you're new to Weighty Matters, it should catch you up a bit.

 

I couldn't help think of Data, the STAR TREK robot who also possesses a positronic brain and desires to be more human. However Andrew, right from the first, seems to have a 'heart', and is more "human" than some flesh and blood humans.

"What does it mean to be human?" That's what the author of this movie asks us. Through out Andrew's 200 year journey to become more human, with all of his upgrades, he keeps refining his own answer to that question.

He acquires a neural net, he acquires a digestive system, he falls in love with a flesh and blood woman. He wants to marry her. But he can't, for he isn't a man. So he strives to have his legal definition changed. The first court rules that he can never be, for unlike the flesh and blood entities, he is immortal. Something that is immortal can never know what it is to be human.

Andrew, had, indeed, become perplexed that so many of the people he'd loved through out his years had passed on and were only memories. His answer is one more upgrade. He has a circulatory system installed. He asks the engineer how long will he live. The engineer answers him, Eat right, exercise, probably forty or fifty years. "THAT INDEFINITE?" "Yes, that indefinite."

That's the moral of this story. It is precisely the indefinite shortness of each of our individual existences that makes them so precious. If the days were limitless, we would squander them. But each moment is precious, unique and irreplaceable. Just like each person who owns those moments: precious, unique and irreplaceable.

There will never be another moment like this one. Hold it, and have a good look at it.

Those "precious, unique and irreplaceable" minutes are getting away from me. Yes, the nineteenth came and went without an entry. To show you how bad it is, I'm even having school dreams.

At forty one years of age, I still have school anxiety dreams. In this particular dream . . .

I am back at Lincoln Hall of Northern Illinois University. I'm with a group of friends in the room opposite that of the resident advisor's. I'm not crippled with shyness, as I had been, lo, those over twenty years ago. I'm chatting up a storm. I must be popular, too, for my friends are Buffy, Willow and Xander from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Maybe Dawson from Dawson's Creek was there, too. The conversation was brisk and engaging. I looked at the big round black rimmed clock. It said 2:30pm. I still had more time to converse. So I went with the flow of the moment. Occasionally I'd dart a glance at the clock, but I still had plenty of time before I needed to go to class.

Eventually someone spoke of how hungry she was, "Let's go to dinner!" I was surprised at how hungry I was. But I had that class to get ready for. I shouldn't be hungry this soon, anyhow. We walked down the hall a ways, and the next clock read 6:00pm. How'd that happen? The next clock after that also read 6:00pm.

Oh, my God, I've missed class!

My throat tightened, my breath grew short. Oh no, what have I missed? I'm sure it was important. It will be on the test, which I will flunk miserably because I wasn't there!

You dummy! You should have figured out that clock was broken!

I woke up with a shudder and a creeping anxiety that wouldn't leave. "Deep breathe, relax the muscles behind your eyes," I told myself. I couldn't go back to sleep or even to the computer this morning. I had to get some sewing done. That was the only thing that helped, knowing I could check a few items off my long TO DO list.

There are so many more items, which I must get to . . .

Talk to you later . . .