here's something that will always make me laugh out loud

This joke:

What do you call a fish with no eyes?

A fsh.

rich

I drove my car on a bed of new snow this morning on my way to my parents' house and I drove back home again just now, sixteen or so hours later, again through a sparkling dust-down of snow. It feels like a blessing somehow, even in my disbelief.
I am full to the ears of good food and friendly faces, cookies and slingshot monkeys, delicate chains to nestle against my collarbone and bold, brassy jingle bells, and of gratitude and uncharacteristic grace.
It has been such a good day for love, for feeling like I am a piece of my family's sweet puzzle and for feeling the heat and promise in the presence of my fiance. I spent half of today in a Santa hat and half of today with my arms around someone or other, and I am feeling (so much beyond my wont)... rich.

season's bright

In my heart it's all Christmas-Christmas-Christmas-Christmas, with a steady drone of Love-Love-Love-Love, and little squeaks bursting in like YES presents wrapped and FEAST and I am still vibrating with the way it felt to look over that whole flocks of poinsettias and take in another candlelit Silent Night, and when I lay my head down on this pillow it's the last Christmas Eve I'll sleep alone.

I am waving my arms out in front of me expansively so that I may include all of the world when I say this,

Oh, be warm and content and full of laughter.

balance

I might always need the kind of reassurance
you always give.

closing the doors

This building is settling down for break. I can tell by the way the heat is turned down and the way we have all become lowercase. There's so very little left I need to do before I can let my guard down. Just a few more papers to shuffle off to the side and then a dentist appointment (rawr) and after that I'm free of alarm clocks and appointments for a whole eleven days. I don't really know for sure, because I have been somewhat all over the place these last few weeks, but I suspect I'm going to really love this Christmas. I'm going to be comfortable in my skin.

full of

There's been a debate inside of me lately over whether I'm full of fireworks or feather-down. Well, I don't know. Sometimes I do really feel like I've got fire in me. Sometimes when I should say, 'oh, please be quiet' instead I say 'fuck you.' And I walk four miles to work through the snow sometimes just because I want to feel that pumping in my blood. But then again, I drink my coffee without sugar and I pick the salt off my pretzels, and at a holiday party I am always happy to be sitting on the couch. I think that's pretty generally true, too.

stumbling along

Today's struggles are
body aches, too much access to chocolate covered pretzels, and irrational jealousy.
But I did get my Christmas presents wrapped (so! much! ribbon!), and I did remember to pull my fingers out of my mouth before I bit them to the quick.

worth it.

NOW AND AGAIN

Now and again some hubcap, jolted loose,
clangs on the pavement, upright, spinning great,
and rolls a distance wholly on its own,
until it slows and ultimately veers
over the rocky shoulder, where it starts
to wobble, bounce, and flip, and finally skids
into the bottom of a muddy ditch--
if only for the once, a sort of wheel.

-Alexander Albertus

April the grumpy icicle

The bank's thermometer said °14 and I tried to look past that, because I was on foot, but it caught up to me and wrapped itself around my neck and snaked down my back. Lacing my veins from head to toes with ice. I don't deal with wind well since I've become a foot- and bike- commuter. It saps me and reverses me from the person I was two hours before, on tiptoe on the step stool balanced on top of the table reaching up to hang glittery snowflakes from the office ceiling. I loved that! I was fearless. But the cold wind must have ripped out the part of my heart that has that joy and delight in it as I walked home, because all that I feel right now is a crunchy sort of brittleness. I need a hot bath. And some hot chocolate. And to remember next time I'm out to pick up a bottle of peppermint schnapps. OH I could use that right now.

fraying around the edges

I am wearing so thin these days and using up so many tears. I think I must be close, by now, to reaching my 1+ limit of Things Going Wrong. I may be just one slip of bad news away from too much bad news. My choices then would be complete and utter despair (so hard to sustain!) or a sort of hands-thrown-up denial. I feel almost ready for letting a total lack of trust in my body and the world turn into a sense of detachment. Like, I give up. There's nothing I can do. Let's go eat ice cream.

shivering in my seat

Part II: last evening S and I were at the type of concert that made the elderly couple sitting in front of us put their hands over their ears and I could feel myself quivering in the heat of it all, in the huge, warm mass of sound filling the concert hall. So much joy. It was all passion and clarity and charming Englishmen and this is the kind of event, the kind of confluence of sound, that will always start a glowing in my ribcage and cover me over in goosebumps.

shivering in my seat

Tis the season of secret pants under visible pants and being never out of reach of my puffy black down-filled vest. When I zip it I feel hugged, and without it I dare you to bike four miles in the cold new day and then sit all morning in an office lined with the kind of windows you can feel the wind through [through which you can feel the wind]. I dare you.

love smackdown

I had another moment late last night when nestled against S, I again let the stress and bother of being and being enough crest over my head. My whole body was tensed and my brow was furrowed--oh, so THIS is stress!--and then I opened my eyes, blearily at first--they'd been closed for so long--and staring into them was a pair of firey brown ones. His eyes were imploring me to calm down, breathe deep, try more of the trusting and less of the doubting. And I did feel that. I felt the stunning gravity of his eyes meeting mine. Not only just meeting my sorry gaze, but watching me all the while beforehand, loving the flushed, torn, sorrowful me. I would have expected pity, but what was there was love and assurance and faith--in me, and in us. I am still stuck in that look and the way in the shock of that moment my mind and my body let go of the shrill worrying and I came unknotted. Ah, you will take care of me. Ah, I will take care of you. I believe it. 

no more tears

I am complaining! I need to stop complaining! I have a gift certificate to Starbucks, and I need to use it to get myself something pepperminty and then, by god, I'm going to just tackle these next few months just one step at a time.

I'm not alone.

brokeassbroke

Well, I suppose all this bursting into tears lately over bills I can't pay --I
am

such

a failure--

is a nice way to sort of do a deep cleaning of my tear ducts. Purgative.

And on the bright side, the best things I have are still free, like welcoming love of my parents, the long walks around the neighborhood, the daydreaming about being married. You know. The kind of things that don't bill me.

*sigh*

phoenix

Well. I guess the good thing about having a complete computer failure was that it happened on a Sunday, when I could take the offending laptop to my dad and be able to have him putter away a Sunday afternoon reformatting the thing and reinstalling Windows. And I guess the good thing about losing all of the files and programs stored on my laptop is that, I guess, I am going to learn how to find again the things I need and let the rest just float off into the ether. It's minimalism.

Well. Here we go from the beginning.

snowdown

Nothing says 'first snow of the year!' like flannel shirts and newly-decorated Christmas trees, Jack Daniels and James Bond, an unconscious catch in my throat at the sight of the glistening world outside the back door, and the dumb way I doggedly insist on sweeping the snow off my windshield with the sleeve of my coat.