If could report the news in your world, what would you share?

It's my day off.  I slept til 10 am this morning.  I didn't hear Adam leave for work at all.  I don't know why I woke up.  I stayed up late last night enlarging photos in photoshop 1 percent by 1 percent.  On my little laptop that takes a very, very long time.  You have to have patience.  I don't really have that much patience, but sometimes I pretend like I do and then I have more.  It's magic.  It also helps to watch Dune and remember reading the book while you are waiting for each transformation of the photograph.  It's 5:30pm now.  I'm still wearing my pajamas.  I'm not sick.  I just have been doing other things besides getting dressed today.  Adam just came home from work, changed clothes, made me an espresso thing with dark chocolate melted in it and then left to help someone who is having some kind of car electrical problem on a hybrid car.  I think he is super smart and super nice and super handsome.  I love his big brown eyes and the way he makes espresso with dark chocolate melted in it.  And he is letting me use his computer while mine is taking a half hour to save a giant file in photoshop. 

Jordan has been back from his wilderness treatment program for almost a month now.  He is trying to drive me completely crazy.  No, actually he is just trying to drive me crazy enough that I will let him go and hang out with those friends he used to do drugs with, unsupervised.  But I'm not giving in.  And it's really hard because Jordan is a good arguer and he will argue and argue and argue and try again from a different angle all day and night and I'm the only mom and all the other people in his life just say, no, your mom doesn't want you to, so we aren't going to let you.  I'm the one who likes to say yes, but I don't think letting him go off to hang out with his old buddies is really the right thing to do, so I have to keep saying no.  And I'm tired of it. 

We are leaving on Monday to fly from Aspen to Denver and then Denver to Minneapolis and then Minneapolis to Reykjavik and then two days later from Reykjavik to Oslo.  I have been planning this trip in my mind for almost 3 years, even since I came back from a month in Iceland with Farland.  It was going to be a solo trip and now I'm taking Jordan along.  I think we will have fun no matter what and the best part for me, as far as Jordan is concerned is that I won't have to say, "no, you can't go hang out with your old pot smoking buddies right now."  I fantasize about just swiping his passport and id and phone and leaving him with just his wits somewhere in the norwegian or icelandic countryside.  :-) 

It's not that I don't love the kid to pieces.  I do that's why I don't want to bring him back here. 

I keep reading all this advice about seeing the world from the other person's perspective and accepting everything just as it is....   I can do this..... but then eveyone and their dog will say I am an irresponsible mother.  so I say no to Jordan and then I say no again and then I try to think of ways to spin that no into a yes.......  creative hard work is afoot.  I told him to invite all his old buddies to come to our house for a big dinner and a movie and video game night anytime.  I told him Adam & I would hang out in our room and he and his friends could have the run of the house (granted, it's small, but still) and the only rule is no drinking or drugs or sex on my couches.  They're mostly 16.   I told him girls, guys, all ages...  I don't care.  But I still say no, you can't just go "hang out" at some undisclosed location with some undisclosed people.  you just can't. 

instead just say yes to life jordan.  but he's busy pouring all his energy into the convincing me he should be free to do what he wants....   any old time...   ack.    and what he seems to think he wants is some nebulous freedom to hang out at the mall and surrounds and be bored with some other kids who are so bored that smoking pot seems like a good idea.  (note: I don't even think pot is that bad, though I don't personally smoke it, but it IS apparently VERY bad for the developing brain which in teens is just hugely,exponentially developing, like, just as much as it is in 2 and 3 year olds -- so-- well I like his brain too much to just say Ok.   I just can't.) 

Farland was here this morning.  She read me a passage from her Iceland journal and dropped off a red rain coat for me to use in Iceland and Norway.  What a magical treat.  She is a treasure.  It was about this day that neither of us will ever forget-- a day of mist and cold in a strange, almost empty, magical land and when we were both in extreme physical pain and yet we had SUCH a good time.  This is something that I love about my friend Farland.  We have fun no matter what when we are together.  Sometimes we hiked in silence, but she and I can both keep putting one foot in front of the other and we can both find the good in the midst of the hard.  I'll never forget that day, but Farland's writing brought it back like it was yesterday.   I am having a show of my photos from Iceland from June of 2005 this June at a coffee shop in Aspen called Zele.  Farland said she will be able to type up some of her journal entries to hang next to the photos.  Then it will be another magical June.  I will get to relive the Iceland adventure every day that I have to go to work, because I almost always go to Zele to get a cup of coffee or tea at some point in my workday.  It's my first photo show and I'm so excited.  I don't want to think of it in terms of selling some photographs or getting kudos for beautiful photographs.  I want it to be that someone maybe somehow feels that magic through the words and photos.  Maybe.....  

I listened to the radio yesterday.  It was Amy Goodman interviewing Bill Moyers about his interview of the Reverend.... Somebody.  I liked listening to their voices, but I won't listen to the news for awhile again.  It tires me out.  Bill Moyers -- I will read some more of his work though, sometime. 

I want to learn the real how tos of solar energy, hydrogen cells, wind power, all that.  The nuts and bolts of it.  I want to be able to install a solar panel, even build a solar panel from scratch, the way Adam can make an espresso, with the same amount of easy as I can type these words.   I would like the news to tell us some important how to's as well as which so and so's did such and such. 

The house is a mess here.  There are stacks of dirty dishes in the sink.  I haven't done my laundry properly in weeks.  The reycling needs to go to the recycle center.  I'm way behind on that.  The unread mail is taking over more and more and more of the counter tops.  There is a thick layer of dust on mostly everything.  Stacks of books and magazines cover every remaining surface.  I have no inclination to do something about all of that.  If I could wiggle my nose and find it all in it's place, that would be nice.  Jordan, Adam & I are all tremedously bad housekeepers.  It's like a bachelor pad here and I've decided to be the third bachelor instead of wife and mother, as far as housekeeping goes anyway.  When I need to clean it because we're having important visitors to dinner, then I will clean it and maybe those other two bachelors who live here will help me.  Maybe if Jordan has a dinner party for his friends we'd all have some housecleaning inspriation.  Maybe when we get home from Norway.

oh yes and the rest of my news is that I read these books recently:
Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff.
Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World Into Being by Alberto Villoldo
Happier than God: Turn Ordinary LIfe into an Extraordinary Experience by Neale Donald Walsch
Pronoia  is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings.  by Rob Brezsny (again! yay!)

and I'm still working my way through one biography of Albert Einstein.  maybe some reviews will be posted by me soon or maybe not.  :-)

and this photograph is Farland in Iceland with a glacier and some fog behind her.  remember THAT day miss fish?

and one last bit of news:  I cried and cried at the end of the movie "Life is Beautiful" the other night at 1am when I was up alone. 

I think Life IS Beautiful.