Item: Barley in Soup is Good

Today Ciro and I discovered that there are two large mulberry trees growing in front of Chad's apartment, which significantly delayed our trip home and stained Ciro's fingers purple. (This does not happen to me because the berries never wait long enough in my hands before going into my mouth.) As a follow up, we raided our honeysuckle bush. This has been one of the rare days in Dallas when the weather is pleasant; I've been on several short walks to take advantage. On the other hand, the pollen count is in full swing, and during its heights I have trouble parallel parking because my spacial sense gets screwed up. (I grew up in cities and can parallel park like a mofo in the normal run of things. It's very upsetting.)

I've written 15 pages of script today, which is enough to tell me that I need at least one more scene than I've planned, maybe two, or the final length will be wrong. But I don't know what they are or where they should be. I have a strong suspicion I could fill these things in during the shoot, taking advantage of available locations, but I'd like to have something written to fall back on, just to give people who aren't me some guidance. Which means coming up with a few more McGuffins for my leads to chase down in the scavenger hunt frame story. Sigh.

Sunday at the museum was low key, but I got to see some interesting photographs and was alerted to the existence of several area photography clubs. I may join them for a few excursions, although filmmaker-photographers tend to differ from photographer photographers in that we like to shoot mood and narrative rather than nature or architecture; for us, pretty comes last, even though we're using the same equipment and thinking the same thoughts about light.

Uncle Rex continued his long struggle to clean out his garage (built for three 50s-era cars, and packed to the gills with stuff); I purloined a drinking glass and a bizarre statue of an eagle attacking some kind of fruit. Chad and I played Boggle while Ciro studied and then we went for pancakes at the Metro Diner.

Although the elementary school around the corner is not aware of my work as a teacher and lecturer, or for that matter as a writer, they've asked whether I might volunteer to read stories from time to time. I guess when you're looking for someone to work with kids, it's a pretty safe bet to ask someone who spontaneously drops off boxes of donated art supplies in the middle of a school day; they're probably available during school hours and the kind of person who spends time thinking about what kids might like. Not exactly a poker face, that.

It seems to me there are an awful lot of people who shouldn't get paid

Because my adventures in banking are never complete, my bank has decided to spontaneously change the spelling of my first name after months of spelling it correctly post-marriage and years of spelling it correctly pre-marriage. They want me to come in again to prove that I'm me and spell my name this way even though they have scans of all of my IDs on file from January which, yes, say I'm Romie, and which they correctly understood up until this month. Because you see I am requesting a name change and that is the thing which is insecure in this process. It's not that they fucked up seriously and disturbingly. Heavens no.

[Edited to add: A day later, after sending a series of increasingly strongly worded e-mails, this has been fixed without me having to go into a branch. I must say that without my sense of entitlement there is a lot of stuff which would not get done. Someone non-white and non-rich probably wouldn't default to the (correct in this case) attitude that "well, obviously these people are acting lazy and I need to yell at them in elevated language from my expensive education and talk about the money I control until they give me what I want (subtext: and deserve)." It enrages me that someone not me wouldn't get this necessary thing.]