I slept most of the day today, which was a good thing, because I have been sleeping sporadically for the better part of a week. Being so close to finished with my sorting/storing/selling/donating process has given me a feeling that I could fly away almost immediately to my new life in Costa Rica if I hadn’t committed to the June 11th book reading/signing date at King’s Books, and that reality has given me Christmas Tree Brain: I’m excited to begin my next (final?) big adventure!

 

But but but…

 

I do want to get better with the Spanish language. I can get around when it comes to basic needs and elementary greetings and challenges in the present tense, but I’m clumsy with the other tenses — past and future — and with the way some sentences are constructed.

 

I want to learn the most common irregular verbs like the back of my hand so I can speak like a native (or nearly like one). They’re used extensively, so I need to know how to use them, too. As a professional wordsmith (en ingles), being unable to communicate effectively and precisely will be my greatest personal challenge, I predict. I’m ready and eager to embrace the culture,but I’m not ready (yet) to engage with it verbally or in written form. That’s a stumbling block I want to get over before I get there.

 

Before too long I plan to tune in to a Spanish radio station here in the Northwest tostart listening to the news and to music. When I do that, I hope to be able to understand at least half of the words I hear there.  I can get a sense of the meaning of spoken Spanish by immersing myself in it and “reading between the lines”/words that I don’t understand to get a sense of the meaning of phrases, sentences, and what have you.  Immersion is the best way to move forward. Studying independently can only get me so far, and that’s not far enough!

 

When I learned Spanish originally, I began dreaming in Spanish. I would dream that I was in a Latin American country (Mexico usually) and we (Mom, Dad and I) were lost, and so I had to speak to residents to get directions to where we were going, and other scenarios like that.

 

I did the same thing when I was learning Disaster Recovery/Emergency Warden duties at Warner Bros. to become an Emergency Warden in case of a catastrophic earthquake, plane crash, or other disaster. I would dream about how to care for victims.  (That training and dreaming came in very handy just weeks later when my nephew Phil was stung by a bee and went into anaphylactic shock.)

 

So, I want to start dreaming in Spanish. I know that as I fall off to sleep each night my mind goes into Spanish mode and I start thinking of conversations in Spanish. During them, I sound and feel fluent, but I wonder how much of it is accurate and how much of it I’m inventing!  Time (and actually speaking with ticos) will tell!  All I know is I’m dedicating myself to being able to communicate when I get down there.

 

Garage Sale Tomorrow

 

Tomorrow is another garage sale and I am not looking forward to it. I’ll be super glad when February is over and I can take a break for a couple months. It’s too freaking cold to sit out there for three hours, so last week I put a sign outside saying CALL ME when you get here and I’ll open the garage for you. (I said it more diplomatically than that, you may be sure!):

 

 

Got My “Keeper” Remaining Journals Finished

 

 

The “keeper” blank pages journals arrived Wednesday night instead of Thursday, so I spent all evening Wednesday putting the “keeper” items into the fattest one you see above. Es muy gordo!

 

The second one isn’t quite as gordo, but it too is half-filled with “keeper” treasures.  Among the treasures inside are letters of recommendation, certificates of commendation, handwritten letters and notes from my mother, copied notes and letters from Alpha Rossetti (I sent the originals to her daughter Susan), and lots and lots of photos that I couldn’t bear to burn up even though they are preserved on PDFs in the 182 journals I finished lately.

 

Some things just need to be kept in their original forms, ya know, so that when I revisit them, I can do so as if receiving/seeing them for the first time…

 

Here is a substantial sampling of what’s inside them (Yes, it’s true! sometimes I don’t know when to quit!):

 

 

 

 

 

Doing my stand up comedy routine “Husband Hunting on the Enterprise” in Oakland CA

 

At an Actors and Others for Animals Benefit in Hollywood in the 1990’s

I was AC Lyles’s star polisher, too…

 

 

Following is a single depressing-as-hell piece that I wrote in 2013.

You will be happy to know I got over that hump

and have my spirit back since

proclaiming my truth to the world

that I’m transgender and on the spectrum,

which explains a helluva lot as to why I was occasionally morose in the years before I figured myself out!

 

(P.S. My family’s attitude hasn’t changed.

My younger sister and her son continue to disavow my transgender/autism reality, but I now embrace both, so I’m feeling fine again!)

 

 

Memories…