In which I resurface and return to the blogosphere

"Where are you and why are you neglecting your blog?" My friend Julie messaged me on Facebook days ago, and I had an answer, but it was the simple version of why I haven't been blogging.
I've been zipping around in several directions lately. In addition to my new commitments to the San Gabriel Valley Humane Society and the Downtown Women's Center, I've decided to apply to another MFA program in creative writing. I've also set myself on the path to selling my townhouse and moving north of Los Angeles to a house as close to the beach as possible. Both of these projects will involve a couple of years of effort. Thursday my daughter C.(the bride,)who is visiting, and I drove an hour up the coast and met with a real estate agent. The trip was not so much about looking at houses, even though we did that, as it was about looking at neighborhoods. So somehow, I may start grad school in the fall, temporarily move out of L.A., and then permanently move from the city that has been my home for most of my adult life.
But if I had harnessed enough of my focus to blog, I would have blogged about 2 things:

1) The state of disequalibrium I experienced while visiting the banks that continue to host the two joint checking accounts that still tie me to a certain person I am restrained from mentioning on this blog. I literally fell down in front of one of the banks after I learned that I cannot take my name off of these accounts. The accounts must be closed, and because the certain person continues to use them, he must do the closing after he sets up new auto-pays for his bills. Of course, I could do the closing if I were the sort of person who went around poking bears with sharp sticks.

2)El Dia de los Muertos
I am not a fan of Halloween. I never liked traipsing around the streets of L.A. with my children while feeling like a bad mother when they recoiled from some gory display on someone's front porch in order to receive things I didn't really want them to eat. But remembering our dead loved ones seems like a holy practice. Love, I'm convinced, moves from one world to the next.To celebrate this holiday, I did what I have done every year for the past decade--I went to the fabulous exhibit at the Folk Tree in Pasadena. The photo at the top of the post was taken there.