Summer has pretty well faded here, and it's cold, cold, cold at night and during the early morning. I was walking Elliot around the islands the other morning, and the stroller told me it was in the upper 40s. I don't know whether our tomatoes, all 30 or so of them, are going to ripen or if they're just going to remain there, green and hard on the vine.
Our blackberries have ripened and we've gone picking by the canal, and I made a delicious apple/blackberry crumble the other day. Once the last berry has been picked from our vines, we're going to rip out the lot of them and lay more paving stones to fashion some sort of all-American patio and grilling area right outside the back door for next summer, all two weeks of it.
Elliot is doing fine. She's not sitting on her own or crawling yet, but she's eating like a trooper and is a happy little sprite. No signs of any teeth yet, either, but if it goes near her it ends up in her mouth. She likes the taste of books, magazines and newspapers the best.
C* has graduated from nursing school and is now a staff nurse at the local psychiatric hospital. Hopefully, this will eliminate some of the money worries we've been having since I moved here. With me not working and with C* having been a student until now, C* has been getting further and further in debt and I've had to use all my savings in the states to pay off debts there. I still owe a bunch in student loans, though, and have enough money to cover a dozen or so months of loan payments.
I'm depressed.
Depressed? No.
Not really D-E-P-R-E-S-S-E-D as such. Just down. Down? Lonely? Yes. Lonely. My life is all about baby and has been for the last eight months. I haven't worked. I haven't played tennis. I haven't done volunteer work. I haven't made friends. It's hard to make friends here. I reach out. I try. But it hasn't worked. Have I just come across the wrong women? I don't know, but it feels like excluding me has made them happy for whatever reason, and my experiences have reaffirmed for me that cliques exist outside of high school.
Sigh!
I need some mental stimulation. I need to have fun. I need to pursue an interest outside of baby. But doing any of that requires me to a) have money to spend in the pursuit of fun and b) allow some stranger to come in and be alone with my baby! C*'s work schedule is so random that it's hard to plan anything around when he'll likely be home on any given day, and, of course, when he does have time off, I'm wanting to spend it with him...and with Elliot.
How do I balance all this? How do I trust someone enough to leave my precious Elliot in their care? I fear that level of trust just doesn't exist.
In other news, David Foster Wallace died. The coward hung himself. Oh, and, even though I would still desperately like to see Ralph Nader claim the White House someday, I voted for Obama. You should, too.
