Greetings, fellow stargazers!
Well, it seems almost like a surreal dream now, but after nearly a month of my own life being on hold (first because of a visit from my German friend Alamar, then because of a trip myself to St. Louis), the craziness is finally over and I'm ready to get back to my usual day-to-day activities. A month is a strange amount of time to be distracted from your normal life, in fact, as I've already learned from my international traveling - just long enough that your usual routines seem weird and difficult to get back into again, but just short enough that you can usually get back into them without too much trouble. Anyway, I've been back in town around 48 hours now, and have been just very gently getting back into my routines again, adding one at a time in no particular hurry until hopefully by next weekend I'll be fully back into the swing of things. And today's the first unhurried journal entry I've gotten to write in something like two weeks or so, so I thought I'd just take my time and tell you a little about what's been going on with me lately.

So regular readers will already know why I was down in the St. Louis area last week (technically St. Charles) - because my mom recently had her hip replaced with an artificial one, and I wanted to go down and help out with the housework that she wouldn't be able to do herself, for obvious reasons. And that's indeed what I exactly did for a week, too - I vaccuumed, I cleaned, I dusted, I did dishes, I ran errands, I did laundry, I took out trash, and I also simply kept my mom company during the day, when she was at the house by herself. And this kept me pretty busy on its own, which is the main reason I didn't really get any journal entries written last week while there.

Then of course my dad would get home in the evening, and theoretically I could've gotten some writing done then, but I just have the hardest time getting these entries written when there are distractions around me - a TV playing something I'm not watching, a conversation I'm not participating in, phone calls, music, etc. And there was plenty of that in my parents' suburban home, so that prevented me from getting any entries done in the evening either. And of course I could've just packed things up and gone to a coffeehouse - except there are only four coffeehouses in the entire county of St. Charles, according to Google Local, and one's now closed, and two are half-hour drives from my parents' house, and one's real close by but closes at 6:00 every night. Ugh, those fucking suburbs, man!

But no sweat, really - I've taken lots of breaks from my journal in the past that were way longer than a week, so another seven days or so isn't exactly going to kill me. It was interesting being at my parents' house last week, in that it's one of the few times I in my particular life can be of actual help to people who need actual help - I have no spouse or kids, of course, no day job right now, so a lot of that potential help that others can be is lost on me. And it was nice, actually, knowing that I was doing some easy things that were nonetheless difficult for other people right now, and things that they really could use some help doing. It's one of the few benefits of unemployment, I guess, is that I can just hop to another city for a week and help out temporarily for people who need it.

Mom was actually doing much better than I was expecting - she was on a cane instead of the walker I thought she'd be on, and could do most of her personal chores on her own (like showering, dressing, etc). The main thing, in fact, had to do with her actual stitches; namely, she's not allowed these days to bend more than 90 degrees, in fear of the stitches popping out. In fact, it seemed one of the biggest benefits I could provide last week wasn't even physical in nature but more psychological; that my mom was going a little stir crazy, being in the house now for three weeks and not able to move very far on her own, and simply needed companionship and someone to talk with. So that was nice as well, that I was able to provide something like this, where we'd take a little walk everyday to stretch her legs, and sometimes watch game shows together and try to guess the answers (and make fun of the contestants).

When I was younger, I always thought I was bound to freak out as my parents got older and older, and needed more and more help from me. But now that I'm starting to go through it, I'm realizing that it's not too big a deal, or at least not psychologically; it's just something I calmly accept about the matter, that my parents are getting older and need a little more help a little more often, and neither fret about it nor think about it too much. Which I hope is a good sign, and hope shows that I'll remain steady-headed about it all as my parents get even older, and these little problems sometimes flare up to big giant ones. (My brother and I, in fact, have had a pact in effect for many years now, that we will both remain calm and level-headed if we ever need to have a group discussion/decision concerning our parents' health.)

In the meanwhile, though, my parents remain as goofy and active as ever - they're both still in a community band, and still travel to Europe at least once a year, and will be going to Egypt again this winter. And mom's still a gentle and well-liked school nurse for an elementary school near their house, with the emphasis this month on "well-liked;" we didn't have to cook one meal last week, in fact, because so many of her co-workers and bandmates have either stopped by with food or sent gift cards for restaurants (which have apparently taken over the suburbs like a fuckin' plague - highly specialized gift cards, that is, based on how goddamn many I saw last week for sale in every goddamn store I went into). And many of them have been stopping by, too, just to keep mom company for awhile as well, which I could tell my mom really enjoyed - I can keep my mom company up to a certain point, of course, but ultimately she's still going to want a big gab session sometimes about rubber stamping, CBS evening dramas, and whose son/grandson is getting back from Iraq next.

For fellow city-dwellers like me, and of course for international readers, here is the latest on what's going on in the suburbs (compiled by yours truly, so you won't have to yourself):

--There are more fucking yellow ribbons on the backs of more fucking SUVs than ever before.

--There are more Wal-Marts and other FESs (Fucking Enormous Stores) than ever before. They have taken over out there.

--Cable television gets worse and fucking worse each time I have access to it. Seriously, how many damn reality shows are on cable now, featuring "celebrity" contestants from past reality shows? It's like this diseased, putrid snake eating its own fucking tail! GLAHRG! And FUCK, what is up with the same fucking shitty half-dozen movies being shown like 120 goddamn times a year on some channels?! FUCK ME! And you people pay, what, 60 bucks a month for this bullshit or whatever? Why do you people do it? Jesus!

[rant over now, feeling much better]

--Here is what every suburban person I met last week had to say about gasoline prices - "Well, uh, you know, it's like, hey, you know, what are you expecting me to do about it?" Everyone is sitting around not complaining about gas prices, because maybe they're waiting for others to start complaining first, or they've all just resigned themselves to the fact that this is what happens when things go badly in the Middle East right when a hurricane also wipes out most of the refineries in America.

What suburbanites are talking about a lot instead, then, is something I found much more promising - about ways to permanently switch to a less-gas-intensive lifestyle, profoundly and for good. Because let's make no mistake - the suburbanites I talked with aren't seeing things in terms of an energy "crisis" like it was thought of in the '70s, but rather the start of what will permanently be worse and worse news about gasoline and the oil industry. Suburbanites aren't stupid - they read the news like everyone else, and see all the warning signs about oil depletion, no matter how little the current administration wants to officially acknowledge them. So suddenly ecology, energy conservation and alternative energy are no longer watchwords for just the hippies in California, but a growing amount of flag-waving, NASCAR-watching, car-owning Wal-Mart shoppers as well.

And in usual midwestern suburban style (that is, extremely pragmatic), the suburbanites I talked with are looking at such subjects in a very real-world way, and seeing if they can't combine the small results of six or seven options to maybe lower their overall dependence on the utility companies and oil industry, even if it's impractical to get rid of them for good. And politicians I think should take note, because it suddenly means that this whole giant bloc of loyal voters are going to be into a whole host of issues, and how they can be implemented in small ways at the local level to provide just a little help in their overall new plans: new bicycling options in their suburbs, like dedicated paths and bike racks on front of busses (a much-more discussed issue in the suburbs than you'd expect); adding home-sized solar panels and a wind turbine to their house, to maybe cut utility bills only in half; electric cars, hybrid ones, and those that run on ethanol (as you expect, the number-one topic of conversation I heard last week on this subject); and the government's role in all this, and how to best split implementation between the federal, state and local levels. It's a big subject that a lot of people are surprisingly talking about out there, and both politicians and business owners would be wise to pay attention.

Dad's still teaching at an area community
college - he's up to six classes this semester, in fact, which he swore he'd never do when he first retired from his previous job (at a former major defense contractor), and was deciding to switch to teaching in the first place. My dad gets happier and happier with teaching, I think, with each passing year, which I think is great, that late in life he would decide to make such a big career and lifestyle change, simply because he thought it'd make him happier. He is of course insanely loved by his students on campus, because of the traits that made my friends like him so much when I was in college - he listens very intently to people no matter who they are, takes people's opinions seriously no matter who they are, and always tries to see real-world applications in whatever general thing you're being forced to learn at that moment (political science, in case of what my dad mainly teaches). And so he always tries to do these classes that make something boring like state and local government interesting, and somehow tie it in with these suburban community-college students' lives and why they should just naturally care about such subjects as a tax-paying citizen. And they do a bunch of field trips every year, like to an election count, and a school-board meeting, and even to the St. Charles CSI labs (which is the big huge popular field trip every year, that even other professors and secretaries attend, and which I attended myself one year so can attest that it's fucking fascinating to go to an actual honest-to-God forensics crime lab that's actually being used to solve cases). And then he has like eight guest speakers come in per semester as well, from suburban mayors to election officials, emergency management specialists and the like. And so of course the kids all love him, and all the bitter academe professors can't stand him, and he does this shit like bake intricate homemade cookies for them on exam days (like the ones pictured above, iced and glazed to look like little hamburgers). My parents, man - they just make me laugh so hard sometimes, because they're just that goofy in this thoroughly charming way.

I'm sure some of you are waiting for my opinions on the new television season - but between Alamar's visit and my trip to Missouri, I've actually missed a lot of it, so cie la vie I suppose. I loved the season premiere of Threshold, for example, but then have missed the two subsequent episodes; missed the fucking premiere of Lost, grr, then missed the rerun the following week because it wasn't fucking listed in TV Guide; haven't seen any episodes of Invasion yet, or Supernatural, or Night Stalker, or Surface; and have missed a lot of new episodes of regular shows too. That said, Lost is freaking me, freaking me, freaking me out these days. What the hell? "The Dharma Corporation" with their weirdo little I-Ching swan logo?, which if you missed it was tattooed on the side of the shark that swam by Sawyer in the episode?, which might suddenly give a much more plausible reason why a polar bear is walking around a tropical island? But what the fuck is up with that bunker? And all that generic '60s food in the lockers with their logo? And the freaky Irish guy who thought he was under quarantine from a society-killing plague? And that goddamn MURAL, man, which may or may not contain clues to every single episode from season 1, according to which TiVo owner you listen to on the discussion boards? Fuck!

Tomorrow: My new G4 is up, running, and purring along in my Chicago apartment (see the Jason Pettus Instant Locator™, elsewhere on this page, for photo). Hmm, hmm, hmm. A wee report.