sssshhhhhhhhhhhwoooooooooooooooooossssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........sssssssssssssssssssssssss...............

sometimes when i can't take it, i pop a little bitty pill i was prescribed years back. perhaps it's no longer fully effective, but it helps me still! half the size of an altoid, an hr w/it down my gullet i start hearing the ocean swooshing in my head. my face melts placid as a rubber doll's & the steel bands around my forehead, neck & chest release. i get chinese eyes & forget to breathe, or maybe my respiration just slows way down to pro-athlete level, i'd like to think. most of the time after little pill i then will sleep very calmly & deeply for a long time, but today i decided to clean house. it's been slow going, but peaceful... one time i thought i was too panicked to make it even one more day in this realm, so i took two of the little things as emergency preventative  & then couldn't get up for three days. the life of the lightweight nutcase, i think...
don's cancelled at the last second, so we went over to a place at the long beach pier to see gino matteo for a few minutes. james just loves young, plus-sized gino, a pale rumpled guitar player/singer w/kindly worried face. their set seemed of the r&b-soul-feel-good variety to my untrained ear; people danced happily & bunches came out to greet james, & me, too! gino's wife jade at one pt sang an ike & tina song we've been toying w/for our duet & realized probably wouldn't work after all... but it's not like there are too few songs from which to choose! we gabbed & mingled for a bit, then had a very expensive & delicious meal nearby, one of those we'll-always-remember romantic occasions of sweet kind gazes, conversation, view of sunset over the ocean, & fantastically tasty lamb, linguini clams, & fresh bread w/butter. yumyumyum. that part of that day was pure golden!
our challenge is this rollercoaster. neither of us even like rollercoasters, so it's ironic we frequently are on this helluva one... he says we can do it, & i do, too. we are fiercely emotional, but also fiercely devoted. everyone who walked up to james yesterday complimented him on how happy he looked. he laughed, smiled, joked, held me in his arms. his eyes were bright: "it wasn't like this at all last year, or since i got out, any time people saw me, for that matter." friends & fans are glad for him, not just still kicking but doing better all the time, & seem to be happy i'm there, too. yes, his life is getting better, better, better. but it's not been easy: lots of water, sheets & sheets of dirty sludge, in fact, must slough away to run under the bridge & be gone forever. we keep scrubbing, even when it's a discouraging & overwhelming job, cause there's both of us working together on this & the payoff is amazing, we both know. rather than "no quarter," maybe, we now say "nunca te rindas!"
well, time to finish cleaning this cute little place & work more on europe stuff for james before he gets home so we can nap. ...wow! it's monday! if you worked, let it have been pleasant or at least not denying you your dignity...