My sweetheart, my sweet baboo has graduated with his Ph.D from UMass-Amherst. It's pretty great. His parents flew in and we had a great time w/ the boys and MFM. Then, on Saturday night, our Agawam friends threw him/us a big party and the grandparents watched the boys overnight. It is more pleasurable to party in Agawam than it is to wake up at the EconoLodge in W. Springfield, even if the party's host copped to a few illicit amour adventures there. “It's right next to Geraldine's,” he said. “There were lots of, oh, what's the word they used in the '80s to describe hot divorcees? Anyway, there were lots of them there. I think now it's hip-hop.” Looked pretty empty to me but could be I only had eyes for my post-festivity Big Mac. Anyway, the place was super clean, though the TV remote was missing and you couldn't turn on the TV without it. Good thing I'd just gotten my new Playboy that afternoon, and needed to keep it out of the house from the grandparents.

Happy graduation, Monstro. Good thing, too, because from now on, I only want to sleep with doctors. 🙂

…is this.

I've been writing this journal for more than 15 years, now, and I get a decent amount of traffic. The lack of commenters I ascribe to a crappy comments system. But I really like the blogharbor platform (even though they keep hinting that they'd like to xfer me to their WordPress platform) — it has a soul that WordPress lacks. Also, I typically use wordpress for clients, and it's nice using Blogharbor as my personal domain.

I'd like to set up motormouth.com with a worthwhile design and then attach my blog to that, with all of the entries categorized and (ugh?) tagged. I've bought a few other domains through the years: coolortool.com I sold a number of years ago, nobody wanted the recession-proof-yourself-and-your-friends pitch of last year (could've helped us all, guys) so I retain “bloomfromgloom.com”, plus my full name, plus joblessmofo and joblessmuthafucka.com, which I want to turn into lit sites for the chronically un- and/or under-employed. I registered one for Monstro, too; we'll see whether he gets it started, he's working on a fascinating “Planet of the Apes” paper now.

Ah, Monstro. Not to change the subject but he graduates from UMass-Amherst this Friday, which will make him Dr. Monstro in my writings, at least for the meanwhile. If you don't like that, well: comment.

Still missing Kyle, still working to retain the best candidate in the election between We-Call-Him George and Judge Robert Lemkau, Superior Court of San Bernardino County election. I expect that someone uneducated on the subject will sling crap at me about how I'm helping an out-of-state candidate, to which I say, “My darling friend Kyle McDowell lived in Redlands pretty much forever, at least until he died three weeks ago, and this was the final request he left for me on a voicemail, so I'm going to do it and do it well.”

Also, there is a $12 wedding dress hanging over my head. Actually, it's in a bin in Monstro's car. Really need to get on that thing.

Been a real up-and-down week. Ups included working super-hard on Judge Lemkau's campaign, getting both Web sites up in three days (that's one day ahead of schedule, too). Downs included being able to rely on my best friend I'm not married to for a ridiculous request across about 37 time zones and then having the request be bogus, watching an awful lot of cable-access TV live from Big Bear, CA, and missing my buddy Kyle, thinking of all the fun he could be having with this (not that death has stopped him — looks like the campaign is receiving a contribution from a carpenters' union, the head of which is named my maiden name). Another down was spending two hours in the dentist chair after not visiting the dentist in nearly two years, but the ups of that were 1) only one tiny cavity and 2) my Oral-B Vitality toothbrush with the extra-soft head seems to have improved my gum strength. Today the boys and Monstro and my Mom and I piled in what we're still calling the “new car” a year-and-a-half after purchase, got our belated farmshare box, and then had the best Mexican in the Phoebe Price bullying-case area.

And I'm pretty sure y'all have already seen that Lord Jesus Christ was hit by a car in a crosswalk in my town yesterday. He must have come in from out-of-town; in Northampton, only the tourists don't know not to jaywalk.

So it's Monday, and it's May, and instead of thunderstorming for 10 hours as expected the sky just poured forth for 10 seconds and then, fini. I'm just back from giving a final. It's almost been exactly one week since Kyle's mom called us to tell us he'd died. Miss you, buddy. The interesting thing is, Kyle being Kyle, he left me a final request on my voicemail. So I've been keeping pretty busy doing that and I think this work is pretty much going to benefit the whole world. It doesn't surprise me; Kyle was like that. He gave me my orange ukulele, too, which was autographed by Jake Shimabukuro on my fifth wedding anniversary. Love you, man.

Today was HOT for May first. I'm pretty sure while BK and I were on our run that quickly turned into a walk, it was 90 degrees on the bike path. We got to the herbalist's, found out she won't have any homemade pure castile soap for three weeks, and then we trudged home. At least BK got a cookie and half a cup of water rubbed into his hair. I also swam half a mile while Lex had his last swim lesson for this session — and that's half a mile *without* pushing off from any of the walls in any way, to simulate a more open-water feel.

I wouldn't say I'm anywhere near having my size-fours fall off my butt (Fringes, you kill me), but it would be nice to shop in a regular store. I'll get there. Haven't been eating a whole lot this week (hi Kyle!) but it's OK, I'm being healthy. Is it wrong to admit that re-reading “The Best Little Girl in the World” kick-started my diet a little teensy bit? Yeah, nevermind.