chasing tornadoes
october 19th, 2000

I had a dream last night about a tornado. I've never dreamt about a 
tornado before, I've never seen a tornado. On the list of 
Things-Devon-Is-Afraid-Of, tornado is down in the below seventy range. I'm 
used to being concealed my mountains and foothills, a fortress of sturdy 
rock and earth on either side to deflect such winds. But last night I 
dreamt up a tornado.

Erin was visiting. And it was a side of Erin I had never seen before. An 
irrational side, an insane side. I think she might have even been smoking 
cigarettes. She was angry - angry at her mother for some reason, angry 
because she was afraid, angry that the tornado was coming at all, and she 
resisted and refused to seek shelter for the longest time, as if her 
obstinance in itself would stop the winds from seeking us out. I pleaded 
with her, she relented. We went to my grandparents' house, and hid in the 
basement. I clung tightly to Ash. I had seen the billowing, swirling 
clouds on the horizon.

We kept waiting for the tornado to hit. It never did. I woke up in the 
waiting. I kept wanting to slip back into sleep to see what would happen. 
As if by waking, I was falling asleep in the dreaming, and being 
inattentive, and danger could happen.

I had a conversation yesterday. With actual real people. About childbirth 
and babies and children, about parenting and "the cute age" and 
relinquishing freedoms. It was really nice. These were people with 
similar, creative ideologies about life to mine. And they were older. It 
was so great. I forget how much I miss real social interaction.

The evil-aunt-bitch-from-hell with her even more annoying husband left 
this morning. Thanks be the gods. It wasn't nearly as bad as I feared it 
would, though. She critiqued my parenting only when I came home from 
school and started playing with Ash and chasing her around the house. 
"You're spoiling her," she said. If she considers playing with a child and 
giving them love and affection a form of spoiling, I'd hate to think what 
kind of childhood her kids must have had. (And of course, considering that 
some of them won't even let her interact with her grandchildren, well...)

I went leaf-collecting today. I got caught in spiderwebs. I'm trying to 
hunt down a scanner, and I need to pick up my Laurie Anderson book from 
the library. I also need food. And to do another section in probability in 
statistics.

I had guilt like crazy last night. I'll be sending out packages soon. 
Maybe it'll help.