Manic Monday No. 9

Miserable Franglais keyboard won't let me make the number symbol. Quel morceau de m*rde.

Law Review article handed in.
::collapsing from sleeplessness and sudden adrenaline withdrawal::

EnvLaw skipped, as Laine was not able to take Daniel and Justin until 8:30 and I didn't feel like walking in halfway through the class. 'Sokay though - first class I've missed all semester, so no biggie.

ADR was really, really cool. I may have to take a mediation class, because I can see wanting to go in this direction, career-wise.

Drafting: Prof Cuthbert had a migraine, and was thus even quirkier than usual. Also let us out early. Also wrote very nice compliments on my last drafting assignment.

Good stuff all around :)

remembrance

This Friday we're doing my mom's inurnment (taking the urn from the funeral home and placing it in a niche at the cemetery). We got a place inside, where there are plenty of flowers. Then my choir is doing a Rememberance Day concert (yeah, I know, it's the 12th - close enough) that night, and I'm hoping some of the people who loved my mom can come to it. The concert has nothing to do with her, but there's a few songs in it that make me think of her - eg one song with the words to one of the poems that was read at her funeral, as well as the Pie Jesu.

Rather ironic, I suppose, considering how her death and funeral ended up helping me to fall off my agnostic fence onto the side of atheism. But it just feels very different from the in-your-face-for-your-own-good Christianity that repelled me at her funeral. Not sure why. Maybe because the only kind of God that makes sense to me is a being of love and comfort and acceptance, and not one of conflict or arrogance. I think I would have made a lousy Crusader, but a halfway decent Franciscan ;)

***
On a partly related note, I was purging old e-mails and found one I sent to cassatt last February, when she took part in the San Francisco gay marriage movement. We were going back and forth about what it meant, how she was doing, how people were reacting, etc. So I'm reading through with a sense of some bitterness, considering how many states voted on November 2 to never let that kind of thing happen again, when I stumble across something I wrote to her about how my mom reacted to the events:

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I was talking to my mom about this and she was doing her regular "uh-huh" and slightly disinterested nods that are her signal for, "I know this is important to you, but it's not to me." I was a little disappointed in her because normally human rights are an issue with her, but I've known for a while now that other than outright discrimination and gay-bashing, she really doesn't register a lot of more 'subtle' homophobia as all that bad. I was disappointed that people being denied the right to marry apparently didn't concern her, but you can never really tell, with my mom.

Anyway, at one point I paused for breath, thinking we'd go on to another topic soon because she really didn't seem to care about this one, and she sort of nodded thoughtfully and said, "I know. It's insane. When are we going to stop this complete hypocrisy? Where do we get off letting things happen like, say, two men living together for twenty years, but then one dies and the other has no rights? It's disgusting. Making them stand in line for hours for something they should be able to do in five minutes, no questions asked. It's so stupid and so completely hypocritical. It makes me sick."

I was a little stunned, actually. She's been rather lukewarm on the whole topic until now, but watching the news from SF seems to have made a big difference.
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Anyway. It was a nice memory to find unexpectedly :)


Edit: I hate when my mood icon doesn't reflect my mood. "Contemplative," to me, means contemplating stuff - not necessarily good or bad, just stuff. My icon, OTOH, seems to indicate I'm contemplating indigestion. Same with "thoughtful." And "nostalgic" looks bloody morose. Perhaps I need to find a new icon set.