Nature, Cysts, Back Pain, Dynamite

Went to the Headlands in April and saw an otter swimming in the lagoon. Then he came up to the shore and stuck his head up and looked right at us a couple of times. Were we lucky. Then last weekend we went up to Point Reyes to the lighthouse and saw a baby whale and its mother swimming all the way around the lighthouse. Lucky again. Of course, both times the camera was full and we couldn't get a pic, but so what--it's all up here. Wonderful times hiking around. Got an MRI this week for my "Bad BACK" and found out I have a cyst on my joint. The doctor said these things don't usually cause pain, however, since I am experiencing pain right there, in that spot, specifically where the cyst is, maybe that's what's been killing me for over a year. I went on-line and researched cysts on the L5 joint and found they were the most common place in the spine for cysts and they can compress a nerve and cause a lot of pain. I am praying praying praying that this injection will kill the pain. I'm hoping she accidentally nicks the cyst and pops it. Nothing worse, except for teeth pain. So sick of Vicodin and sleep medication. It was really interesting to read about what's inside a cyst: blood, hardened gel, fluid, calcium deposits. Blegghh. I've become my uncle Bob. "Hey can you look at this lump I got on my back? Maybe I should go see a doctor and have that thing scraped off!"

As for reading--some more of Tobias Wolff's stories. Read "The Liar." LOvvved it. So This Boy's Life in a short story. I look at the cover of his book and see him looking at me and then when I get home there's a pic of Ray Carver looking at me and they're saying--WRITE A STORY! I've been listening to the radio in the morning and hearing them talking about people with kids and people who choose not to have kids and I thought maybe I'd write a story about that. That's all I'll say, don't like to take the power out of it if I talk too much.

Students in my Creative Writing class decided (at my pushy suggestion) to name the high school lit mag at Hercules, The Dynamite Factory. I am so stoked about that b/c Hercules used to be mostly a dynamite factory and there's a lot of history behind that name. In my research I also found out that there was a whaling dock outside of Richmond, which I just find fascinating. The kids in Hercules used to go out to the dynamite factory after it closed down and they hung out, skateboarded, and graffitied inside. Someone had taken photos of that before they tore it down, so it was really groovy to look at all those photos and read about the buffer zone for explosions. I think it's a great title, and most of the kids do, too. Last year, our magazine was called Sui Generis, which I like, but it somehow wasn't quite right for our class this year.