honest

Don't let this color me as a habitual liar (because I am not--I am too lazy to regulate my fictions!), but

today I told the truth.

AND I LIKE IT

For the FIRST TIME in the nearly three years I've been working at the library, I am willingly accepting assistance. YES, do my work while I supervise! Please! Is this a sign of maturity? Laziness? Opportunism? Do I even care? Am learning to relinquish control, people, and it is sweet.

held

I am saying please out of one side of my mouth and thank you out of the other.

puncture repair

Today someone wrote me a note and I tore it into a dozen pieces and threw it in the trash, and later I spent two hours giving someone else a very pointed dose of silent treatment. Do you know I didn't mean either?

I am

drifting.

There's really no other way to say that I only get this much before I settle back down to the ground.

I'm trying to think of one way to say two things without having to pick which holds more weight. And here at my desk, I've caught the scent of the phrase I want and I can nearly feel the heat of it, and the metaphor, she makes sense, in that nebulous thought world before the words. But after another minute my eyelids slide down and my mind wipes clean and I've already forgotten where I started. In my mind I have always called these moments birdcages—when I drop the chain that led back to the start. I could say why, but I don't think I should.

Another I am—

I am juggling. Gracelessly.

I need an expander, or a second unit, or a spare room in my head to hold these things at once.

for the weight of it

I'm not cold, but tonight I'm going to sleep under extra blankets.

bloom

Had been walking around for a few days with a flower in my ribcage. Tonight I reached in, pulled it out, and planted it.

roots

I'm going camping. I'm chopping off the last three days of my work week (fine by me; they're the freshmen move-in days) and my much-missed brothers and my parents will be driving down to meet my sister and me, and screw the rain in the forecast, all six of us are going to claim a site on Skyline drive. We're going to sit around the fire and read to each other and climb trees and stretch our legs and play cards and tell jokes no one else thinks are funny and pass around the pocket knife and the hatchet and hope for a clear patch through the clouds one night so we can discover the stars. Then by this weekend one of us will be gearing up to go to South Africa for four months, one of us will be starting a last year of college, one will be substitute teaching, two will be looking at houses in the next town up (WTF?), and me, I'll be catching the other half of the embrace that had to be cut short last night, and I'll be quite occupied, thanks.

twitterpated

I've become wrapped up in the now.

caught

If I had to organize my evening thoughts
they'd center around the
missing 'o' key on my keyboard, and
the way, just now
I sat down and played the piano in the dark and
I could have sworn it was only ten minutes,
but when I looked at the clock, it'd been
nearly an hour.
And I'd linger for a while on--
good lord, has it always been so easy to lose track of which pulse is my own?
Because I have been
oh, I have been.

job

Somebody in the White House is researching the economics of energy efficiency today and I'm helping. I'm probably earning my keep.

pleased

Could totally get used to having a chauffeur.

living up

This morning got an email from 2007. From me. It said, 'dear self, today is 8/12/07. If you are not [redacted] by 8/12/09, you're screwed.'

I am [redacted].

something a little different

Ew, negativity. I'm going to push it down by saying something else. Like, hmm, I really love a few of my coworkers, like really, like my heart melts for them. And I want to give a thumbs up to my resilience, to my ability to walk home through the muggy heat and arrive smiling. And also to protein! Yay, protein! And, did you know, this is the 200th entry in this blog-I-never-talk-about? I am looking forward.

the inside of me

I don't like being this person--the one with the worries. There's something wrong with me? Maybe, probably. I deal with it through vicious passivity. I hang up the phone after I've gotten results and scream, but only in black and white, and flop my head down on my arms and moan, but only in front of my mom or my best friend. I want your sympathy, world, but I don't want to tell you why, tell you what the reason is--partially because I don't know, I still don't know, and while the bruise fades from the last one I'm already being pointed toward one more test, toward slow, biting insanity. It's like this: maybe I am fine! I mean, I am not normal, but maybe I am not threatened. Mom told me that none of this will be more than I can handle, god doesn't give us more than we can take. Oh bullshit, doesn't god know that I'm a paranoid wimp? This is already too much.

we left before the dancing

I bought a new feather pillow this morning. There's a whole story with that and never mind. This one will last.

I've been fighting all day today with be happy be happy because there is so much to be happy about and yet, it has just been one of those days when I'm not. My parents are in town. Interviewing. They were busy all but two hours of today with meetings and discussion and welcome to town barbeques. Tomorrow will be even more intense, and I'm going along to hear him preach (I know how that will feel) and I will put on a charming smile and shake hands and pretend I'm going to remember their names, when I know I won't.

I'm sitting in my room and I've taken off the wedding clothes I was wearing and when I stop and look around, I feel like I might be on the tail end of I'm not--I mean, on the tail end of my dip in mood--so there's no reason I won't like tomorrow.

I know I did love the half hour break when I cuddled into my mom's shoulder this afternoon. I forget just how much I rely on touch, but then along comes a week like this one, and I am very, very reminded.

I feel like--I am being bombarded. The wedding I was at today, it was a deluge. We fanned ourselves with silhouettes of the bride and groom cut from cereal boxes, and sat in a circle surrounding the two of them in the middle of a field. There was turquoise and poems and ribbons being woven, and fiddle music and a fist bump at the end of the ceremony--you're husband and wife, you may fist bump each other. Almost. The reception, well, I kept getting preoccupied by the dimming sky and the path of tiki torches leading away from the tent. I kept getting distracted by the fresh flowers in the center of the table and the way my skirt fell across my knees.

I was thinking about a year ago, and I realize that I've become someone else since then. But I still wish I could have been in two places tonight (scratch that, three), and had one of them be home.

satisfaction

I like when the music knows what I need and runs out in a stream through my ears and down my back.

And skipping numbers--I like skipping numbers. I don't mean counting by threes, I don't mean adding wrong, I mean
that jump from one place to the other
even though it defies logic.

nictitation

April's blinks--Now 50% Longer!

I have my reasons.

things I am into today:

plums
cherries
apples
(a theme?)
Dr Pepper
peanut butter cup ice cream
honey mustard pretzels
(maybe not)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
attention
clean feet
cat bellies
friendly cellists
Jon Stewart
refrigerators
and,
So You Think You Can Dance (don't judge. It makes me cry.)

thumbs; one week later

I am making progress!

Am high. Again.

Two days in a row I am having solitary dance parties in the office when I'm the only one in the room. The office lights are off because our whole wall is windows and it's a beautiful day, I'm cranking out my still-favorite album of the moment--Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid, and I'm, like, getting a lot of work done in between dance breaks. Geez life, let's spread out some of the awesomeness a little better, because it's clumping up like mad and I'm afraid I'll run out by tomorrow.

being a disgustingly incurable optimist

Some of my mornings are euphoric. I have always had a talent for turning on in the mornings, for hopping out of bed and sweeping the last bits of dreams out of my head within seconds of my alarm. But then there are mornings like this one--when once I am out of bed, OH MY WORD HAVE YOU NOTICED HOW AMAZING EVERYTHING IS? My senses feel sharp. Soap smells intoxicatingly sweet. Cheerios taste wonderful--food of the GODS. I hold my head high, and damnit, I look good. I walked to work today because walking three miles actually makes a lot more sense than people think it does. And lord, I kind of danced the whole way. I kept thinking, the sky, has it always been so big? And the leaves on the trees hanging over the sidewalk, have they always been so incredibly full of green? I was listening to my mp3 player on random shuffle, and each new song that played would give me goosebumps. It is so good. All this, and I hadn't even had coffee yet. I don't know, I just feel like today is going to keep getting better.