30

this
does
not
bode
well.

Oh, the rain and cold forced me off my bike and into my car and on the drive to work the check engine light started flashing. Again. And I forgot my lunch. And my jaws still ache. And.

BUT. It is November 30th and I have done my own little NaBloPoMo and that satisfies me. So my car is useless and my mouth is useless and I will spend today hungry, BUT. I'm at least still finding the little reasons to be proud.

whirlwind

This is one of those days when I am stuck at work until after the sun has set because I was up too early at a doctor's office and because, lo, the scholarly research, it is in season. It is a free for all, I think, in the English department today. I am tightening the muscles in my lower stomach and swallowing one more pain pill (I am still waiting for my jaws to forgive me) as I dive in and out of journals and books and trip over the stack of papers I left on the floor near my desk so I wouldn't miss them. I didn't. Ah. This happens every year.

earthquake

One of the ways I feel like the world is straightening beneath me and making more sense is when it starts getting harder and harder by the day to not be married to you.

tis the season

"Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body."
 
~George Carlin

healing

This morning I am drinking half a cup of coffee in bed and chewing with both sides of my mouth. I feel like I am so close, so close. I took yesterday literally and I really was just grateful from the ground on up for all of the little parts of life that add up to make my own. Body parts. Kindness. Optimism. Colors and sounds. Running up a hill into the wind. I hope I loved you all yesterday as much as I should have. I was trying.
I am not sure what chased them away or for how long they'll stay banished, but right now I am living without my worries. I am putting aside all that long list of we-won't-have-enough, I-won't-be-enough, I-can't-make-up-my-mind. Today I am going to spend on bringing myself up to the present, and using ice cream gift certificates, and hunting up some Christmas bargains. And I'm going to meet my fiance and his family at the Harry Potter movie, and I will probably spend the rest of the day after that laughing and holding on tight.

in love with the whole world

I am going to spend this whole day, gingerly, gingerly, dunking myself in mashed potatoes and love.

For you, too, I am thankful.

not enough keys on the keyboard to convey all of my thanks

I am writing this on painkillers, but my heart is not numb.

I am so thankful for quiet love, for the blanket your body can be over mine.
I'm thankful for my amazon woman mom, who fought and kicked cancer's ass over the last seven months, for my thoughtful, gentle dad whose voice is always echoing in my heart, for my strong and capable sister with her eye for appreciation and color and the lines of a story, for my incredible baby brothers who live with so much fearlessness and adventure and whose huge hearts attract the same--for the new sisters they give me.
I am thankful for that reassurance of, 'we'll figure something out.' For mentors and co-conspiritors and friends who make me laugh and pluck me up when I'm reeling off on a flight of worry.
I'm thankful for my ability to laugh easily and often, for my ability to heal.
I am thankful for the excitement of a wedding that is building in me, hotter and hotter. And I am oh so thankful to be able to share and witness the wedding of my dear dear brother taking shape and taking place within the reach of my arms.
I am thankful for the solid feel of the road under the tires of my bike, for the way it feels to coast down the hill to my apartment. I am thankful for the colors of the sky and socks without holes in them. I'm thankful for book carts whose wheels don't squeak and I'm thankful for the industrial strength papercutter.
I am thankful for orchestras and for being invited back again and again to play. I'm thankful for courage and showmanship and that unexpected ability to take a step back and remind the audience that it's not really about who's on stage.
I'm thankful for the meals I've shared around big tables with both of my families and I'm just plain thankful that I have two. I have the family I was born with and I have the family who has chosen me, or allowed me to be chosen. A family who shares diamonds with me and who shares their oldest son. I do know how much of a treasure this is.
I am thankful for thrift stores--oh what would I do without thrift stores?! I am thankful for an ability to be more, with less.
I am thankful for proud cats, and winking cats, and the dog in between.
I am thankful for the certainty, the calm assurance I feel when I look at my future. I see myself and I see love and it's going to fit, and we're going to be partners and each other's backbones. We're going to be meeting each other in all sorts of places for all our lives. I am so thankful that I know this and I trust this.
I am thankful that I have become a woman, and that I have learned how to love as one. I have been taught how to open myself and to believe in my own beauty. I am thankful that I finally see what you do when I look in the mirror--I see a blossom.

unmolaring

Who's the sad sack who has to have two teeth pulled two days before Thanksgiving? I'm that sad sack.
I have wisdom teeth only on the left side of my mouth and I guess I hoped lopsided was something I could just... be. The dentist has other plans. By the end of today my teeth will number evenly on both sides and I'll be hoping, hoping, hoping I heal quickly enough to enjoy some Thanksgiving turkey. I woke up this morning a half hour before my alarm and my jaw was already clenched. Damnit.

I like myself better when I'm optimistic

I think I would like a small shot glass rimmed with lime and something salty covered in cheese (I won't be particular). And I would like painlessness, and a goose that lays golden eggs. I would like a room filled with candles and a new pair of shoes and I would like New Years Eve. Or maybe just a sense of assurance from the inside of me instead of outside. A way to tip out of my mind all these figures and dates and niggling worry and collect them in the drawer of my desk with the lock and shove it closed. Walk away lighter and back to my baseline sense of contentment. I'd like myself better.

XL

It seems to me that perhaps one of the best reasons to fall in love is so you'll have access to an endless supply of comfy guy t-shirts to sleep in. The one I am wearing now is from a high school musical way before I knew him, and it's stretched and lopsided and probably hasn't been actually white in years, and I just love the way it sags toward my knees and I just love the way the neck is worn from a thousand piled-up nuzzles.

limits

I spent an hour at both ends of last night lying still in the dark, counting minutes and feeling the limits of my lungs. Last night it was the only remedy to an upset stomach--perfect stillness, the night cooled air running across my bare feet. This morning, after I woke feeling less at war with my body, I still felt like I needed more of the silence, of the no-distraction breathing. I am perhaps waiting until my body tells me it can run on full power again.
I have a dress rehearsal in an hour. A long, gossipy lunch date. A hot shower, an orchestra concert. I need to find some clean black clothes and a way to smooth down my hair.

pats

I think I deserve a merit badge for the citation I just tracked down. Or at least a firm handshake. I don't think I will ever use my powers for good, but I am apparently developing the type of research instinct that will lead me straight to the wrong journal with the right article somehow in it anyway. Oh, and yesterday, I walked down to the reference section and found the right book without any sort of call number because I remembered vaguely what the spine of the book looked like and thought it was somewhere near the P section. My GOD I do this job right some days.

I say this with such fervor because there is coffee dripping through my blood and because it is a bright day for a Friday and because if I keep myself in line with strict joy I think I can keep this up. 

50/50

"The oboe is the sensualist of the woodwind section. In movie soundtracks, you tend to hear the oboe when the woman is taking her clothes off. Also a little later when she asks the man for a cigarette. You start playing the oboe, you're going to have babies, take my word for it."

-Garrison Keillor

leaves leaving

I think all the leaves took a dive last night sometime between the thunder and the wind. I biked this morning across a carpet of the last oranges and yellows and reds of the season. It kept going into the library and across the halls. The leaves dotting the floor like footprints.
I should make that more interesting. Leaves leaving footprints. Meh. Oh well.

Last night I dreamed about pancakes, and broken phones, and coming home only to be stuck on the outside, peering in through the windows and thinking, 'I used to BE there! I used to BE!'

storing

The stack of broken down boxes hanging out like a roof above the storage cabinet makes me want to crawl inside it and become just another printer ink cartridge or box of staples.

body being

I felt like a girl all weekend. Deeper than wearing a skirt and the smoothness of my legs and back. I felt the burden of quick imagination and slow body. I felt very un-absolute. I felt like I was sledding down a steep snowy hill and dodging inflatable pine trees.

Or maybe, I felt like you were reading down my lines and you expected a serif and got none. More likely the reverse. If it's too smooth you'd fall right off the loop of the y. Pick up too much speed going down the hill. Good thing I come equipped with speed bumps.

Oh ho! You think I'm reasonable! Moments before you watch my quills flair out. You think I am kind and gentle! So I dig my fingernails into your skin.

There seem to be a lot of nudes today in the research on my desk. Maybe this is underlining my feeling of body and body being unexpected. Sometimes I just sit and turn them around and around. Make the top the bottom. Close one eye. It's all me.

Sunday night

Sitting on the floor. STAND UP, body, and go rinse off the dust and peel off your skin. The prize is smooth sheets and warm blankets, a pillow doubled up under my cheek. This is when I wish I was on casters, or hooked to to a high wire that could just swing me up and ready for and into bed. Off the floor without having to stand. In my pjs without having to undress. Lights out, Lights Out without having to flip the switch. I am imprinted.

I am too kind

I have just granted myself permission to stay curled up in bed all day reading Harry Potter, and for this I am very grateful.

release

I am very lucky to be tease-out-of-a-funk-able. And luckier still to have within my reach, after a long and disheartening day of appointments and work and rehearsals, the always open arms of a man willing to be the teaser.

tensing

Today I have an early morning dentist and a long day of thinking, 'well, this is not the day...'

I am just annoyed, annoyed, annoyed that the little bits of paycheck left can't go to Christmas presents and wedding invitations and instead are mashed up between my molars and sucked out of my mouth through the dentist's suction device. Ka-woosh.

bzzt

On days like today I come with a static-based force field.

I am
to
be

feared.

growing up

I was a late bloomer in a lot of ways. Like emotional honesty. And the desire and willingness to chop and freeze vegetables for the winter ahead.

oh, publishing

Sometimes the fact that I am in the middle of a Monday is not much of a hardship, because I'm also in the middle of rows and rows of bound journals and databases with titles like this:

Recreational Mathematics
Frozen Foods Quarterly
Journal of Happiness Studies
Pattern Recognition Quarterly
Journal of the International Listening Association
Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge
Hernia: the Journal of Hernias
The Lady & Gentleman's Pocket Magazine of Literary and Polite Amusement
The Progressive Fish-Culturist
The International Journal of Lower Extremity Wounds
Molecular Pain
Journal of Investigational Allergology
Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association
Small Ruminant Research
Journal of Mundane Behavior
Journal of Politeness Research
Nursing Made Incredibly Easy!

sweet clown

I love that man of mine and the impeccable aim of his silly.

#2

Today is a day when I actually do feel like I'm going to get married. I mean that today the fact of marriage seems real, not that I've officially decided against running away into the night.
I think it has to do with being suddenly second in line as far as family weddings go. If it's real for my brother, well then! It's easier to feel real for me. I do tend to be more of a 'I'll let you go first.' Not humility, not selflessness, not generosity. Just, I slide into things well when there's already a groove in place. My elbows aren't quite sharp enough to get in there first. So today was mother-of-the-bride, sister-of-the-bride, finally feeling at ease with the idea of hiring a photographer, finally saying out loud 'sage green!' and 'persimmon!' And scouting out available gmail addresses for when I take on a new last name. I mean that!
I am so tired this evening. With the extra hour I get back still waiting for me, even! I slept so well last night, so, so, so well, but I think today was long enough to use up all of that last night's peace. It has been a good day. So very much a good one. But full of talking and thinking and adding up totals. I am looking forward to ending today and falling asleep on the theme of love.
Love like cracking pecans and hot applesauce and a rainbow of dresses and a dog saying please! I will clean your bowl!

not yet

I actually said aloud this morning, still lying on my back in my warm, soft, impractically tall bed: 'I want to go home.' I wasn't thinking.

I think this is a knee-jerk reaction to feeling

unrooted.

I scold myself for this. How selfish, to give over to feeling small and directionless. It's not fair, coming from a girl with a sweet life, with a fantastic family and just a pinch of the best kind of friends, with a loving man who fully intends to MARRY HER despite the seeming insanity/inanity of anyone wanting to commit to THAT.

It IS selfish. But I am (still) feeling so very This Is Not Right, Not Yet.

I think it's because I'm busily focusing on -and fearing- all the little roadblocks and pinpricks and thin times that will probably not BUT MAYBE stand between the here and now and the... Yet.

visioning

Today's sky is gray and wet, but I'm thinking in colors...

and imagining the way they would feel between my fingers.

brothers

I know that the best part of my life today was when my work-brother stepped into a trash can. Into. I was saying, 'turn on the lights!' because he was working in the shipping room in the dark. And he responded, 'Hey. I can see just fine' just as he was accidentally backing into the trash can. Into. It came up to his knees and he flailed his arms just in time to keep from crashing to the floor. This is perfect. Not perfect in the way the diamond ring from my real-brother catches the light on my new-sister's finger, because that is also perfect. But the trash can tipping and buckling was perfect like if I've been outside in the cold rain for three hours and then come home to warm garlic bread. The engagement? That's like a Brahms Symphony. Just so.

{ }

"This is a world in which everything that comes to an end may be ending forever; it is well to complete every encounter with all the motions of grace, to give expression to every kindness, every gratitude, to make the clearest declaration of love. Better to give too readily than to keep back gifts for another meeting, when there is nothing certain even about tomorrow, and what is withheld now may wither away unused, divorced forever from the creature whose due it was and who had need of it."

-Edith Pargeter

stunted healing

I am not enough.