finding footing

Yesterday was a test because I was with people the whole time. Today is a test because I am not.

and nature sing

It's probably a good omen that I've had joy to the world running through my head on a loop for the past six hours. 

emptying out

I've been debating what to put into words. Sometimes I've wanted to write that I feel so much better and much stronger! And sometimes I've wanted to write that I feel like I'm the worst I've ever been, that I'm at my wit's end, that there's either something very, very wrong with my body or else my mind. I'm beginning to think that the bulk of my persistent symptoms could be caused by depression. Because why else? I don't know. I wish I did. I have been in the very darkest corners of my head and heart the past two months and I'm pretty sure I'm not out of the woods yet. I am uncomfortably vulnerable to both my continuing physical weaknesses and my psychological ones. I think I'm going to need some serious help and some serious time to sort through all that has been happening to and within me. I keep finding myself sobbing on the floor, just wanting to get away from myself. And you can't, you never can. The good news is that S is ALWAYS there for me, always patient and gentle and persistent even when I'm snapping wildly. And the good news is that today's the last day of work til the new year, and I do hope that the easing pressure of full days at work will help to ease some of the pressure on the rest of me. And more good news: I am feeling stronger physically. That's not even false optimism. And. I know that if I do indeed need serious intervention and serious time to heal and recover, I can have that. I have two families and an incredible husband who will help me get the help I need and won't leave me floundering. I may need a whole winter to regain my footing. I've got to be willing to give that up.

slugging

I think I'm just going to have to embrace the slug. Apparently my body still needs time to rest, and fighting the resting is not helpful. I HAVE been resting and staying low-key, but I've been resenting myself the whole while, feeling guilty for being selfish and letting things slide around the apartment, with friends, and at work, and I've been feeling pitifully sorry for myself and especially for S, who is missing a healthy wife. I think I just need to stop doing the resentful rest thing and just switch over to rest rest. I CLEARLY need more sleep, less tension, less self-blame, FEWER TEARS. So I should probably just embrace the slug. Sorry, rest of the world. If you're going to be loud and big and jumping around, I'm going to stay behind for the time being. I'm going to have a mellow Christmas. I'm going to try to love the mellow.

what's the expiration date on my sympathy card?

I'm typing this from my bed, because it's been another one of those days. I really, really wish I had something obviously wrong with me that I could point to and say, 'see, doctor, I'm bleeding from my eyeballs, fix it!' It is incredibly frustrating to have my symptoms be not-pain. My symptoms are a sour stomach and weakness and fatigue and anxiety and the feeling like I've been drugged, like I'm drunk, like my skin is crawling and my head is a hot air balloon. Because this has gone on for so long, I'm starting to worry that people aren't going to believe me when I say I'm just not well yet, because damnit, I don't always believe me, either. Some of the time I convince myself that perhaps I'm just insane. Or on my way. Thank god for S, who continually tells me I'm not crazy. Thank god for a soft bed and my ability to hope that I'll feel stronger in the morning. And kleenex. Dear lord, kleenex. I feel as if I have the best-flushed tear ducts in the whole county.

progress

Jinxing whatever, whatever--I have to say that this weekend I spent two nights in a row out hanging out with friends and I WAS FINE. A little slower and sleepier than normal, but I could do it. It has been weeks and weeks since this was so easy. I'm feeling very glad.

reversion

I think I did jinx myself. I'm struggling again. All I want is to (not be at work and) curl up on the floor for a few hours/all day. Screw my immune system. Seriously.

normalcy

I don't want to jinx what is still an achingly gradual improvement, so I haven't really wanted to talk about it. But these are the facts: I'm feeling more human. But I am still craving shelter and fearing being left alone much more strongly than ever before. Still tiring quickly, still unable to eat things like supreme pizza without a day of payback.

I'm very jealous of the me of just a few months ago who never needed to think or worry about body's stability. These days I have to gauge myself every time I leave the apartment. Will I be able to stay upright through a trip to the grocery store? Can I handle a 90 minute community band rehearsal without becoming overwhelmed? I'm still very weak, and the virus, somehow, hijacked my senses in a way that has left me vulnerable to loud noises, bright lights, big crowds. My immunity to overstimulation has been slowly returning, I think. I DID survive a 90 minute community band rehearsal yesterday, even though it was so loud. And I'm on day two of a full day of work this week and though I don't feel great, I feel... ok. I'll last til 4:00. It helps when I'm distracted.

I wish I didn't know that my body was capable of this type and length of collapse. I'm afraid that now I know, I'll always be on the lookout for the next. It kind of sucks. But I DO feel better, I do. Have kicked, I hope for good, the low lingering fever and phlegm and the pervading feeling of malaise that colored a good month and a half of every waking moment. I'm still left with a weird stomach/digestive tract and muscle-deep fatigue. I miss normal poop. But I guess I'll just take things one step at a time.

Beyond my body, life has been sweet and I have been feeling Christmassy and warm. S has been reading Watership Down aloud to me in the evenings when he's home. We sit on the couch, and my mind DOES NOT WANDER. I am able to sit and listen to him and be perfectly in the moment. One evening we cut open a pomegranate and I fed him bites of the rich red seeds in between the chapters. We got and decorated a Christmas tree yesterday. I'm not looking forward to coming home to an empty apartment this evening, but knowing the tree will be there helps. I am determined to regain my ability to be alone and to take care of myself, and I am convinced that Christmas music and a pine scented candle will help.

I have been such a drama queen since I've been sick, full of tears and neediness and gasping out about DYING and NEVER GETTING BETTER and DEEP, DEEP SADNESS. But I'm happy to report that I haven't had a crying jag in three days. So, bring on the next few weeks. Bring on this one-day-at-a-time hike back to normalcy. (Normalcy! WTF!)  

craft time

Today is about curative rice pudding and puppet making. And clean results on this week's tests--blood is fine, poop is fine, heart rhythm is just a little faster than normal but fine. If a part of this sickness (and I believe this is the case) has been psychosomatic, NOW is the time for my mind to get the message that I'm going to be just fine, so that my body can finally follow suit. It will feel so good to be hungry again.

weepy mess part five trillion

My parents keep saying that there is reason in my sickness. Reason is definitely something to cling to, five and a half weeks in. Dad said maybe it's so I learn to fully rely on and trust S. Boom, whack, you're vulnerable. I guess this is what marriage is made of. Or maybe the reason of this is to give me a chance to revel in all the amazingly generous and warm and loving people around me. I mean. I have been so doted on. Today there was ginger ale (my favorite coworker keeps me supplied), and a get well card that said 'pretty please!' and then when I got home from the doctor's office just now, a lady from my parents' church, who has already given me so much, like a toaster, and beautiful ferns to decorate the sanctuary for our wedding, drove twenty miles into town to bring me chicken noodle soup and crackers and freshly baked bread and a poinsettia plant. My first poinsettia plant. I have not gone more than twelve hours, give or take, without breaking down into tears for quite some time now. And now I'm crying again, because of the poinsettia and the food, and because this is so much for one day! And yet it's just a piece of the amazing care and soft hands that have been all around me throughout this damn sickness. It's not over yet--I'm still not whole. I guess maybe that means that there's another reason in this somewhere. Like, I don't know, a 'come to Jesus' moment on my horizon or something. Or maybe I was always meant to own the pink plastic puke pan my mom gave to me the other day. Now that it's in my possession, perhaps my tribulations will soon be over. Waah. At this point I think I may be asking for tissues for Christmas, and that's it. 

#30

I'm thankful for sudoku, which calms me. And for S's sweatshirts, because ditto. 

#29

I think maybe I'm thankful that of all the many times I felt like I was about to puke today, I only actually legitimately puked once. Trust me, it could have been worse. Also, I got to give a stool sample for the first time in my life. I guess I'm just thankful that there are people out there willing to analyze that... crap... for me. 

#28

Thankful for white undershirts. 

#27

I want this month to be over because, although I do have things to be thankful for, they are all the same: S, who is taking care of me, mom, who is taking care of me, family, friends, coworkers who are taking care of me. I can't even say with any legitimacy that I'm thankful for the warm weekend we've had and the crunchy leaves. BECAUSE I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO EXPERIENCE THEM. I am still not back to normal. Don't know what the hell kind of virus I've got/had, but I do NOT recommend it. I am a whiny, shaky, teary mess who bears far too little a resemblance to the happy, confident, hungry April I should be. I want to feel like myself again. None of this weakness, no appetite, pervading sense of ickiness. It is shit. It needs to be done. This has even gone so far as to require me to wear a 24-hour heart monitor later this week. It's that much of a deal. So for day #27 the only new thing in my repertoire to be grateful for is applesauce. There. Applesauce. 

#26

I'm thankful for ten hours of sleep, three nights in a row. That stuff is no joke.

#25

I'm grateful for my extraordinary family--the siblings who make me laugh and make me silly and inspire me, the siblings-in-law who delight me wholly, the parents who... they're my PARENTS. I am so, so, so loved.

#24

I am feeling relatively whole this morning! I think I'll be able to keep the residual ick at bay today. I'm so thankful. Thanksgiving lunch with S's family, dinner with mine. I am a lucky woman.

#23

And today I'm just so, so, so thankful for a half day at work (by MANDATE, not by body giving out) and then the rest of the week off... if I can just get my body's act together today I may even be able to enjoy Thanksgiving tomorrow. I hope to hell. 

#22

Forgot to post yesterday. Must have been distracted by being doted upon. Well, I was thankful for cake pops from an extremely thoughtful faraway friend and thankful for an evening spent drinking tea and convalescing with nearby friend. I still am.

#21

I am SO SO SO thankful for my mom, who came and sat with me and talked to me for three hours last night when I was a sobbing, snotty, helpless mess. Nothing like momma-loving to make you just feel like you're going to be ok, even when you're still mired in the sickness that never ends.

fingers crossed

I'm choosing to believe that the 'tension tamer' teabag that ripped in my hands and spilled all over the counter was NOT a bad omen for today.

#20

I'm grateful for... well, I did manage to go for a half hour walk this afternoon. It's a start. I hope. 

#19

I'm thankful for my feet. I'd say why, but really, I don't even need to. They're my feet.

#18

I'm grateful for this job I've had for the past five years. I work independently yet surrounded by friendly faces. I keep busy, but am always able to take a break to stage a rubberband battle in the shipping room or look up pictures of sugar gliders or answer an email or text from someone I love. I use my brain, but not on a theoretical level, and rarely to an extent that exhausts and drains me. I am a helper by trade, paid to profligate (within copyright, of course) scholarly research to the students and faculty here on campus and to other libraries all over the world. I create good karma for the university who employs me, and never have any reason to take my work home with me in the evening. I never dread coming back to the office in the mornings. Except when I'm tired and sick. But even when I'm sick, my boss and coworkers are kind and sweet and understanding. It is the perfect job for someone like me. And now that I've got a sugar daddy husband I don't even need to stress (too much) about my salary level brushing on poverty. So I'm very thankful. Hope I don't keep missing chunks of it over the next few weeks. I want to end out 2011 on a document delivery high note.

#17

I am thankful for my innate optimism and resilience. And I hope both come back soon. I had to leave work early again today when I got too feverish and fatigued and foggy-brained to last out the afternoon. Spent about six hours being the most frustrated I have ever been with this body of mine. And then, I don't know, the ibuprofen kicked in several hours too late? And S and I talked for a while about recovery and accepting my limitations and we made plans for me to feel better tomorrow. It helps. I can feel a ray of hope again. It's my natural state, the 'it'll get better.' I have been tamping that down way too often. Here's hoping tomorrow I can say, 'I'm thankful S was right, and I am having a strong day,' and I can get back to the business of thinking life is good and forgetting the bad parts I've just left behind.

#16

I'm thankful for my brand new driver's license, with my brand new last name and even a surprisingly flattering new photo. I can't stop showing it to people. Look, here, my last name is NEW. This is NEW. 

#15

I am thankful for Netflix instant streaming. I am at a verrrry low level of energy this evening, and Netflix is keeping me company while I loll on the couch. Thank goodness. 

#14

Made it through three hours of work today and FELT GOOD while I was there. This is such a gift--considering where I've been--that I can't help but be thankful.

#13

Well, yesterday worked out! But...today was a backslide. Kind of a big one. But I'm still thankful--for my sister-in-law nurse to say calming, nurse things and not mind the tears, and for a best friend who stops by at dinner time with a novelty ring, a mini bottle of Jack Daniels, noodle soup, a whole coconut, a DQ cupcake, a listening ear, and good advice. She also didn't mind the tears. I have been very bare and very frustrated. But I'm going to get this figured out. I'm going to get off the couch and back in charge of my own life. Even if it takes more days away from work in a doctor's office. And drugs.

#8, #9, #10, #11, #12

Oh lord.

I'm thankful for the way music is made up of chords, and how sometimes I can sit down and just play those chords and the melody hops up out of the page into my lungs.

I'm thankful for my teakettle. My lovely red teakettle, and all the tea it's provided for me when I've been sick on the couch.

I'm grateful for crunchy leaves and the way they skitter around outside our kitchen window--I keep thinking they're chipmunks, or mice, or small brown birds.

I'm thankful that I had a full load of whites for the washer this morning.

And to say it again because I can never say it enough: I'm thankful for S, my superman, who has carried me through all of this, even when he was under the weather himself. There's no one else I'd rather have taking my temperature, bringing me mugs of soup, and holding me until my breathing steadies and my heart stops pounding out of my chest. I am a very lucky woman.

what's been going on

I have missed the last days of thankfulness because I have been... not well. And I don't want to keep writing, 'I'm sick, but I'm thankful for soft pillows.' I wanted to write 'I'm thankful that getting better' and I haven't been, so writing such a thing might have made my non-improvement worse. But today! I feel optimistic about today! I am out of bed and have been active all morning. I hope I'm not jinxing myself, because there have been other days in the last three weeks when I have felt optimistic and active and then the world crumbled in on me again. I had the mother of all chest colds, with the violent, wracking cough that turned into bronchitis which turned into a sinus infection with laid me out completely flat with dizzy spells and anxiety and punishing headaches and --this was new-- a surprise visual migraine when I attempted to go back to work. I can't work when I can't see. The light show wasn't worth the stress. I have missed a total of seven days of work in the past three weeks, which is insane. And I started to think that maybe I'm insane, too. My body just gave out on me, and there have been days this week when I haven't had the energy or the will to do more than tread from the bed to the bathroom and back. I am not sure how much of this has been physical and how much has been psychological, and what's terrifying is I think it's probably both. I am an active person by nature. I hate sitting still. I hate physical weakness in myself. My lack of strength and of bounce-back-itude has been very psychologically punishing, and if I were alone in this, my bouts of anxiety and bewildered tears and racing heart could have been the start of a neurosis. Afraid to leave the apartment because the last three times I've tried, I've been knocked to my knees with lightheadeness, with a migraine, with incapacitating anxiety. Until today, though. I'm writing because I feel better--I feel like I am finally kicking out the last remnants of the virus that has ruled my physical body for three weeks, and I feel like I'm on the road to psychological recovery, too. I went to the grocery store today, by myself, in the bright sunlight. I fully intend to play a short concert this evening with the community band, even if part of the time I'm just going through the motions. It is possible that this will be the one step too far for my newly fragile self, but I cannot not try, you know? It's been so long.

#7

I'm thankful for dried apricots in my desk drawer. Brain food for catching up from sick days.

#6

I'm grateful for my car, Biff the Civic. It has some... quirks, let's say, and it's hardly a car to fall in love with, but the heater and the A/C work, and even if it takes some coaxing, the engine always starts, eventually. I'm glad I have it.

#5

I am thankful for a bread-baking mother, who instilled in me a love of the smell of homemade bread fresh from the oven. The process of kneading a ball of dough came naturally to me this afternoon, no need to google this. The rising, the waiting, the baking. I think it's in my blood, just by being born. 

#4

I could say this every single day this month and talk of it non-stop on Thanksgiving itself: I am SO THANKFUL for S. I have been sick; it has sucked. And yesterday I hit a particularly bad snag and when the fever and lightheadeness couldn't be ignored, S came to work to pick me up and take me to the doctor, and he sat with me in the exam room and went to the pharmacy on my behalf afterward. He nursed me all afternoon and evening and night and I cannot TELL you how amazing it feels to have this kind of safety line attached to my waist. It's not just that I can count on him to physically be there when I need him, I can also trust him to be tender and loving and patient and attentive to me, all the damn time. My GOD he makes me feel like a queen, even when I'm three days unshowered, whining, coughing, drooling on his chest in my sleep. I can't say this enough: I am so, so thankful for my husband.

#3

I'm thankful for water to drink and for my red Nalgene water bottle, which is rarely far from my side. It has been my companion on hundreds (thousands?) of bike-walk-bus-car trips, and it patiently forgives me for dropping it, and dropping it again, and accidentally kicking it after I drop it. Clean drinking water from the tap is a precious gift, and my water bottle is the... gift box? [I'm sorry. I'll blame my incoherence on my poor lung function *wheeze*] [staying hydrated]

bruised

The gremlin in my lungs still hasn't moved out after a week. I'm losing patience with the way it wakes me at 3:00am and drags me out of bed, gasping for air, pacing around the apartment trying to expel the demon without disturbing S. I'm getting better, I know, and these things do take time. But this is the good part of fall--the cold frosty mornings with the air that just mmm, buzzes in your lungs (in your healthy, pink lungs), and the warmth of the sun cutting through in the afternoons, dancing through the crunchy leaves under the clear blue skies. I miss that. I am confined to the bus, behind a tissue shield, watching the skies from a box. Die, gremlin.

#2

I'm thankful for cheese. I love cheese. I'm glad I'm not lactose intolerant. For real.

#1

I am thankful for nail clippers and my regained ability to use the tips of my fingers instead of the tips of my too-long nails to feel out (feel up, sometimes) the world.

into the fantastic

Halloween this year--beyond bringing to the forefront Milky Way bars, pumpkin guts, gold corsets and swan dresses (we won the prize for most sophisticated!)--made me think of fairy tales, and that always leads me here:

(I don't know what this says about my mind, that I think of this version before I think of the original, and that the first sentence gets stuck in my head in a loop for days at a time)


Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage, honor itch offer lodge, dock, florist. Disk ladle gull orphan worry putty ladle rat hut, an fur disk raisin pimple colder Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.
Wan moaning, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut’s murder colder inset.
“Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter an shirker cockles. Tick disk ladle basking tutor cordage offer groin-murder hoe lifts honor udder site offer florist. Shaker lake! Dun stopper laundry wrote! Dun stopper peck floors! Dun daily-doily inner florist, an yonder nor sorghum-stenches, dun stopper torque wet strainers!”
“Hoe cake, murder,” resplendent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, an tickle ladle basking an stuttered oft.
Honor wrote tutor cordage offer groin-murder, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut mitten anomalous woof.
“Wail, wail, wail!” set disk wicket woof, “Evanescent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut! Wares are putty ladle gull goring wizard ladle basking?”
“Armor goring tumor groin-murder’s.” reprisal ladle gull. “Grammar’s seeking bet. Armor ticking arson burden barter an shirker cockles.”
“O hoe!” heifer gnats woke,” setter wicket woof, butter taught tomb shelf, “oil tickle shirt court tutor cordage offer groin-murder. Oil ketchup wetter letter, an den - O bore!”
Soda wicket woof tucker shirt court, an whinny retched a cordage offer groin-murder, picked inner windrow, an sore debtor pore oil worming worse lion inner bet. Inner flesh, disk abdominal woof lipped honor bet, paunched honor pore oil worming, an garbled erupt. Den disk ratchet ammonol pot honor groin-murder’s nut cup an gnat-gun, any curdled ope inner bet.
Inner ladle wile, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut a raft attar cordage, an ranker dough ball. “Comb ink, sweat hard,” setter wicket woof, disgracing is verse.
Ladle Rat Rotten Hut entity bet rum, an stud buyer groin-murder’s bet.
“O Grammar!” crater ladle gull historically, “Water bag icer gut! A nervous sausage bag ice!”
“Battered lucky chew wiff, sweat hard,” setter bloat-Thursday woof, wetter wicket small honors phase.
“O Grammar, water bag noise! A nervous sore suture anomalous prognosis!”
“Battered small your wiff, doling,” whiskered dole woof, ants mouse worse waddling.
“O grammar water bag mouser gut! A nervous sore suture bag mouse!” Daze worry on-forger-nut ladle gull’s lest warts. Oil offer sodden, caking offer carvers an sprinkling otter bet, disk hoard-hoarded woof lipped own pore Ladle Rat Rotten Hut an garbled erupt.

MURAL: Yonder nor sorghum stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.

claws out

Today I am a blond with pointy gold boobs and a hangover from a poor night's sleep.

four weeks in

Dryer humming on a load of towels, four inches of snow on the deck, in October, in Virginia. Clean kitchen. Warm, fuzzy blanket on my lap, dark chocolate Reese's cups, green tea, hard-working husband. Long nails (it's weird) painted a dark gunmetal gray, plans for an evening of mac and cheese and inside jokes with my sibs, despite the snow. This feels like home and normal and contentment.

better because

I am thankful for communal tea and gorilla tape and friends who can borrow my things.

mercy

I usually only call in sick to work when something other than me needs my attention, like a motorcycle on some winding mountain roads. It's preferable. Today I called off, though, because of a sore throat and seal bark cough and a fever that's kept me prone since yesterday evening. It sucks, because man-voiced, hacking women aren't sexy, and because my body is adding insult to injury, and because I would have rather been at work, almost always. But this sickness doesn't suck, and the timing of it doesn't suck, because S is working the late shift today so was home this morning to brew me tea and listen to my chest as I breathed and tuck the three blankets in around my shoulders as I slept the morning away. And he had chicken noodle soup ready at lunch time, and DayQuil, and the kind of cuddly affection I have craved for a lifetime and finally have, all the time. I have been asleep for probably five of the past ten daytime hours, and have been carefully dosed and doted on the whole time. And though S has left for work, I'm safe and warm and there's more soup ready to heat up, and I am realizing it's ok to just do NOTHING but lounge around and recoup when you're feeling poorly instead of trying to push through. It's ok that I'm behind at work now--I'll catch up tomorrow and Friday--and that the dishes won't get washed yet this evening--they'll keep--and it's ok that the backing up laundry backs up further--we are far from strapped--and the milk might run out before I get to the store, and that's ok, we'll be fine. We still have orange juice. S will be back sometime after midnight to slide into bed beside me and I'll sleep soundly and I'll feel better in the morning. 

new normal

Um, why have I not always made my own hummus with jalapenos and a bit of cheese and eaten it liberally with carrots for lunch? Why?

---ler

These days when it's late at night and S is out working the late shift, or at a gig, or with his buddies pretending he's an elf, I try to figure out what I would do if he never came home. About my last name, I mean. I am, I'd say, 45% done changing it from mine to his. What would happen if I were made a widow after three weeks of marriage, with my name change only partially official? The horror of having to continue on with the process without the a man to match. The horror of having to backtrack, erase him. I think about this and before I get to a solution, he's home and I'm asleep.

hit on armor

So nice to be able to say, 'thanks for the offer, but that guy up on stage is my husband.' 

Thursday evening

Curtains pulled, clean face, no pants, belly full of spaghetti squash.

crime

The spilled coffee in stairwell E looks like a crime scene. Sticky brown caffeine blood spatter. I can tell you tripped. I'm hoping it wasn't something delicious and hazelnutty, because that would make the accident more of a tragedy. I'm thinking too hard about this. I'm not even going to clean it up.

{}

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you,
Not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

~Maulana Jalalu'ddin Rumi

no title

I have been ignoring being behind and accepting my blind, cheerful laziness as just. Sometimes, though, I think of things I could say, like the 95 year old man who just wishes someone would shoot Obama already, and the gnat that flew up my nose and itched in my nasal cavity for ten minutes, and the husband--the HUSBAND--that I have all of a sudden (well, it's been going to be this way for all of my life). This guy, he works so hard to make me happy and comfortable. He puts away dishes and assembles cabinets and hangs pictures for me and in the mornings when I'm up he is suddenly at the kitchen table to join me. 'It's early! Go back to bed!' 'But I'm awake. And I want to be with you.' I could write these things, and I could mention the wedding, the drum beats in his head and the buzzing in mine, the forest of mums and ferns covering the altar, the brilliant copper color of his vest, the way the gold band looks on my ring finger, just under the one with the diamond. I tried to count the number of hugs, but there was no number, it was infinity and it was just so vast, and so was the honeymoon afterward, a trip down to sundresses and bra-less-ness and FINALLY a chance to be in the sand at the beach and feel the sun on our married faces. Snorkeling was hell on my manicure. I could just say that I'm happy, that S and I are making a home and making mistakes and moving on and getting better and there is NOTHING like pulling his head to me in the dark and listening to the rumbling of his voice from his chest as he unburies himself and as we fall asleep together intertwined.

1

We have a future together. More than just the wedding tomorrow. We have a whole lifetime. We have plans and ideas and dreams, and the confidence and sureness we feel about this partnership, about how well and strongly we love each other, is heady. I am the richest woman in the world with him by my side, and I cannot wait to walk down the aisle to meet him in the middle of the sanctuary and tell him and everyone in the world that I love him, I love him, I love him.

2

He proposed to me on another August night a year ago, both of us still in our band clothes. I was stunned at the sight of the diamond and tongue-tied and I think I said, ‘what the hell are you doing?!’ But I knew and he knew, and from the moment the ring slid on my finger, I’ve never doubted the wisdom of accepting it, and him.

3

S is such a man. Such a good, good man. He’s tall and strong and hairy and handsome and clever with his hands. A man like that brings out the woman in me, and we’re two halves.

4

He sings to me when I’m scared. He answers me without pause when I ask for comfort or reassurance, or just want to hear him tell me again, for the thousandth time, just how much he loves me. He says ‘I love you more than I love the laws of thermodynamics, babe.’

5

S is not a fairy tale prince. He is human. He is not static. He is endlessly capable of learning, of growing, of surprising me. He’s unflappable and flexible and so, so weird. He will never stop learning and questioning and improving himself. I wish I could take credit for the massive forward leaps he’s taken in the past few years, but I really have only been a companion in the growing and changing. I’m going to keep on growing and changing with him and he with me. I am not at all worried that one of us might branch off in the opposite direction. We’re just, we’re going to be going the same way.

6

We like to sit down at a piano together, hip to hip on the bench. He calls out chords for me to play on the left side of the keyboard and he takes the right side and makes the melodies come out of thin air. Our tempos aren’t always perfectly aligned, and sometimes my chords get too dark and forceful, but what we do works together. Who we are is this: the steady backdrop and the soaring over top. Sometimes we switch roles, but it’s always the same.

7

He is always there when I stretch out my hand for him. He’s been a caretaker all his life and his ability to anticipate needs and solve problems before they reach a critical level is incredible. He will never back away when times get tough. He never shies away from the ugly cries and the pain in my voice. He is always at his most sincere and patient when I or others are at our most vulnerable or disjointed. How could I not love a man like this?

8

He has never raised his voice to me in anger. Despite my best efforts, his patience and his reasonableness in the face of my flailings and hysteria is unflappable. He never doubts me, even when I doubt myself, and he will never ever make me feel anything less than perfectly loved, accepted, and cherished. He makes me feel like a treasure.

9

His arms became my anchor. He rests his hand on the top of my head or rubs his fingertips across my brow and it’s like being bathed in warm cinnamon. He has these devilish pointed eyebrows that make you think he could be trouble, but under them are the kindest, softest brown eyes. He gets this look in his eyes sometimes when he looks at me that says ‘you are the world.’ He gives me goosebumps.

10

We once stood on a bridge in an amusement park and watched fireworks bursting over our heads and saw their reflections in each other’s eyes and in the river below and he was whispering, ‘I love you, April,’ and I knew that this was it.

11

My people like him. His people like me. It wouldn’t be possible to doubt the validity of what we’ve got here if you watch the two of us together. See how tenderly he dotes on me and how enthusiastically I reach out for him. There just aren’t roadblocks. There’s no one else.

12

He was so easy to fall in love with. His quick, unusual mind, his indefatigable kindness, his silly habits, his sharp answers and funny impressions. He makes me laugh and he laughs with me. He is not someone who smiles readily, but he smiles for me. His appreciation of my appreciation for him is so good it’s almost hilarious. We grew in on each other and grew up.

13

We shared things well and quickly. We cooperated. I turned from a miser of time and a hoarder of secrets to an open book, because he was, too. I could spend day after day after day with him and only him and still crave more. I’d still be aching when I left him. We broke each other’s rules of privacy and jealousy. I still feel as if somehow we missed a step or cheated to get from strangers to soul-deep lovers in so short a time.

14

He told me he loved me late one evening and I said, wide-eyed, ‘you’re crazy.’ He set about proving me wrong right away, explaining patiently and fervently just how serious he was about me, just how deep was his love. His spoken declarations were always almost as eloquent as his actions, which are expansive, graceful, and careful.

15

We had an instant rapport and mutual trust. He quickly learned to fall asleep with his head on my lap. One early weekend in our relationship we climbed a hill and spread a blanket under the clouds. He rested with his head on my lap and I sheltered him when it started to rain. He trusted me to wipe the raindrops from his closed eyelids with my thumbs. He let me protect and shield him, and so I became a protector.

16

The first few weeks and months of our relationship were full of symphonies and secrets and kisses and continual surprise.

17

Three days later we went on our first date. He paid for my meal and we walked through the woods and sat at the edge of a field and talked and talked. I didn’t notice the chill of the evening or the bugs or the scratchy grass.

18

On a Monday toward the end of the summer S was driving me home and not far from my place he reached over and picked up my hand. He timed the gesture to match up with a tempo change on the song on the stereo. It was as if time slowed down. The only thing I could think to say was ‘thank you.’

19

He didn’t make me nervous. He was awkward, but so was I, and somehow our awkwardness cancelled each other’s out. Sometimes on the highway we’d sit in silence for a few minutes, and I’d realize that I was completely relaxed. I liked glancing over and seeing his hands on the steering wheel. Especially his pinkies.

20

We traded off driving for a few weeks and it soon became apparent to me that I was right--he did have a spark behind his eyes that matched mine. I did get him. He got me. We talked about our families, words, music. I remember telling him about the possibility of my parents moving down from New York long before mentioning it to some of my closest friends. He was a quirky, endearing thing. He tried very hard to compliment things that didn't need complimenting, like the size of my car and my middle name.

21

For three years I've played in a community band that performs every Monday evening throughout the summer in a town 20 miles down the interstate. The summer before last out of the blue S showed up to play with the group one Monday in July. My breath caught when I saw him joining me up on stage. I didn't even have time to wonder what I should do about it afterward--he approached me as soon as the concert was over to say he was wanting to join the band, and to ask if we could carpool to rehearsals and concerts. Of course we could carpool.

22

Whenever we ran into each other there would be vague offers of musical tutoring, of 'hanging out sometime,' of 'someday, we should...' but I was pretty paralyzed by low self confidence and a general feeling of, no not really and he was caught up in his own head. So it was months more before circumstances intervened and gave us both an excuse to try and give our friendship legs.

23

I asked a friend of his if S was a particularly physically affectionate person, because he always made an excuse to hug me after the shows. She said, 'no, he's not huggy' and for the first time I wondered maybe if this was more than just a one-way obsession.

24

The next two or three years I simmered. S was always a magnet, and throughout his musical career at the university I couldn't help going to his concerts and recitals. I was adoring and he was grateful. Sometimes when he played jazz in a coffee shop I'd hang around afterward, and he'd come over to me and we'd sit on a couch and talk. I'd ask him questions about what the music felt like to him and if he'd ever thought about writing his own, and he'd answer and take me seriously and once he put his arm up on the edge of the couch above my shoulders.

25

Those 'I actually kind of think you're special' sentiments ended up pouring out in a facebook message I sent to him all in a hurry before I lost my nerve. S still remembers this and mentions it fondly, so I suppose the benefits of my timid ego fluffing canceled out the stalkery factor.

26

The camping that weekend turned out to be a rainy, whiny bust. But back in town I still couldn't get S out of my mind and decided to find a low-creep way of letting him know that kind of, like, got him. That I understood that there was a lot in him hidden under the surface, and that I was pretty sure it was good.

27

That spring as I was buying a supplies for a weekend camping trip I bumped into S in a hardware store in town. The spirit behind his eyes and the rush of adrenaline that coursed through me as a result of his casual hello stuck at me. We'd never really hung out or even really talked about anything non-musical, but I felt like I could, and that I wanted to.

28

I was persuaded, by a different boy, to join the university's jazz ensemble one fall, despite the fact that I'd never played a lick of jazz, and my sax skills were rusty at best. But I showed up to a the first rehearsal and was seated right beside S, who was the lead alto. Following his lead was the easiest thing in the world.

29

For several semesters he loomed large on the stage and in my mind. Do you know how there are some people you just always notice? He was one.

30

He popped into my world on a Tuesday evening in September of 2005, a cock-sure alto sax player staking claim on the first chair in the university wind ensemble.

waiting

The building next door is coming down brick by brick.

gift horses

Today I am updating passwords and breathing peppermint. Cheers. I am not drinking enough water. The weather is lousy, but not threatening, and the rainy wind didn't need to be an excuse to not go pick up my new sneakers or buy fresh fruit, but I let it be. I've been playing with bras that close in the front and eye makeup and have been disliking my hair. You know, Saturday stuff. Later there's a birthday party and a show in a bar and I can drink and smile and move from side to side and admire the boy up on stage.

I'll be married to that boy five weeks from right now. The only bridal shower I've known about in time to anticipate (for good or bad) is going to happen tomorrow--opening presents in front of a room, there should be a class for this. I actually feel GUILTY about it, the positive attention. I know that this is a problem and I know I should get it into my head that I am worth the fuss, and that people like to make a fuss over weddings, so I should let them, and happily. But, lord. There has already been such a fuss, and the big guns have not yet come out! Weddings are such a racket, and I'm surprised by how lavish they can be and how lavishly generous everyone has been to us. Every time a positive RSVP comes in from a great distance I am suffused with wanting to assure them that they don't really have to come if it's an inconvenience. Are they sure I'm worth the trip?!
A wedding seems like a bizarre sort of exemption to the fairness of life. It's not fair to those on the outside. The outside is not fair. Oh, get out of the gift horse's mouth, April. I'm going to need to at least figure out how to act like I deserve all this fooferaw, in a grateful way. I AM grateful, that's the thing. I am so grateful for all the blessings being poured on me but I feel as if the pourers must not really understand what they're doing, who they're showering. It's just me. S and I don't need to be coddled and spoiled and applauded to marry each other. We would anyway.
...This attitude of mine does not gibe well with how often I've been checking our wedding registry site to see if more of the items on our list have been purchased. Heh.

hyperbole

I wish there was a foolproof (fool being me) way to tell the difference between never happened before and never noticed before. It would make things like differentiating between growing pains and dying so much easier.

two seismic events

One: the library shaking on its foundations yesterday, wondering who was drilling into our bedrock. I wished I had a more poetic awakening to the realization that the earth can move under my feet, but it was simple, and I accepted it, and once my jitters stopped, I stood back up as if the earth was once again as sure as eternity.

Two: surprise ambush bridal shower up in the conference room this morning. I was told it was a meeting. It was a fiesta-themed extravaganza in my honor, with a diadem of paper roses and plastic chili peppers, maracas and salsa and the mariachi band of pandora. Someone gave me a George Foreman grill, and hell if the world is not shaking me back down.

grace hole

The air this morning is incredible--fall!, and my office has the best view of the demolition workers razing the building beside us--sparks! dust! cranes reaching seven stories into the sky!, and when I woke this morning I was expecting a sprint and got yoga instead. This is all grace.
Grace yesterday was in my strong legs and strong arms, in clean hair, in the spice filling my eyes at the place sworn to be the best Mexican food in town by S's Mexican buddies who cook in the kitchen of the Greek restaurant. And grace was the way the newly engraved wedding band fits onto my finger, and how well it looks on his. And in the copper colored vest he'll wear (I am all of a sudden in a tizzy about the bliss in the color of copper, and how I want it everywhere), and the hand-in-hand stroll through the furniture store, wondering if one day we'll be able to settle.
How doubly base of me not to choose to turn my face toward all of these things instead of tilting away and wanting more.

asking the bottom of my bag of Cheez-its

Don't you hate when selfishness and self-righteousness collide? Both are me and neither are useful and the combo is sheer angst.

so many from here to theres

I have been thinking a lot about bra sizes, cake flavors, the German language, the bizarreness of love, and inflation. And again this morning (it keeps happening early on a Monday!) I woke at 4:00 and my mind was turned on for the day. I had a semi-nightmare about a bridal shower a few nights ago that woke me up and kept me up, but this time the one that woke me was about graph paper and missing the crucial step Bs in my from here to theres.

I needed to laugh at

cherry juice

Earlier this week I saw a small tabby cat by the side of the road with its face smashed off, and a half mile down the road a snake, filleted and flattened. And when I got home from work in the afternoon a grasshopper jumped out of my hair and onto the kitchen counter. The next day the cat was gone, and left behind was just a dry red puddle, a jagged star-shaped stain. It made me think of the cherry juice that stains my fingers during the summers and it made me want to be held.

no emotional clue

Do you know what I mean when I say sometimes you can be walking down a road every day for a summer and know, kind of, that you've been there before, but then on a Tuesday morning it catches you off guard that you were THERE before. And you can suddenly transpose the today, the walking in this direction down this block to get from point B to point C, over top of what used to be--four years ago, when I lived in that small white and blue house in town, and this was my escape route. I hadn't really thought to myself that even from the other direction, this was the same block. And the side street I turn off onto these days is the one I used to bike past without pedaling after dark, at the base of the long hill I used to fly down with my arms outstretched. I had no emotional clue this was the same place. No emotional clue whatsoever.

Saturday morning

Fresh coffee, imitation radio, flock of sparrows in the back lot, goosebumps, waiting, whole grain English muffins with cheese. Feet in foreground, self in background, sprawled out like this on the couch. We'll trade it for the squashy tan one later, and I'll keep drifting off to sleep on your lap.

not eloping

I am much less inclined to suggest a last minute elopement now that I've had another dress fitting, and oh man. Oh, MAN I think I might rock the limelight when the time comes. I'm relieved. I've been having self-excoriating days lately wherein I cannot find my own beauty. It's nice to catch a sideways glimpse in a mirror every now and then and think, oh hey, perhaps I do deserve a chance to stand up in front of a crowd and announce my love and my intentions publicly. Perhaps I will deserve to be called 'beautiful.'

No predictions yet as to what effect picking up a marriage license this afternoon will have on my itching to just, damnit, elope already. It may bring all that roaring back. WE'LL SEE. Patience and drama do not come naturally to me. And apparently both are part of the last few months before a wedding.

everything

The fact that I can stream NPR on my computer all day is the second best part of this office, next to the kick-ass coworker with whom I share a space. BUT, today NPR keeps using that five-note intro to Radiohead's Everything In Its Right Place to piece together its programs and it is not helping get that hook out of my head, where I think it always has been and always will be. If this sounds like a complaint it shouldn't be. Sometimes I pick up on that theme in the sky early in the morning when I set off for work on foot and I breathe in the air that is starting to smell less and less like summer. That's what this whole day will sound like.

in the library

I am the kind of girl who never says no to stone fruits, and the kind who pencils, 'I am a woman. My power is non-negotiable,' in the margins of a scrap of paper halfway between the second and third floor.

catching up

Well, to catch you up, yesterday my spider blew off. And I spent about two hours Saturday evening, which was of all things, my anniversary, being kind of petulant. But, before both of these things were a hearty German meal and proclamations of love, and before that I got to hold a two day old baby, who is so. tiny. and before that S and I spent an evening eating red and green crackers and talking about our odds for success (I think they're high) with our mentors. But afterwards, on Saturday after my petulance rolled out and the fog rolled in, S and I went up on a hill until late, and watched the clouds fill up the night sky and blot out the moon. We felt like we were on a planet we'd only just then discovered. Yesterday was a fine day, too. Aside from the spider blowing off, or letting go, or who knows. I hope it landed feet down in a welcoming ditch. I kind of feel like that's what I've done.

RESIGNATION

I love you
 because the earth turns round the sun
 because the North wind blows north
   sometimes
 because the Pope is Catholic
   and most Rabbis Jewish
 because winters flow into springs
   and the air clears after a storm
 because only my love for you
   despite the charms of gravity
   keeps me from falling off this Earth
   into another dimension
I love you
 because it is the natural order of things

I love you
 like the habit I picked up in college
   of sleeping through lectures
   or saying I'm sorry
   when I get stopped for speeding
 because I drink a glass of water
   in the morning
   and chain-smoke cigarettes
   all through the day
 because I take my coffee Black
   and my milk with chocolate
 because you keep my feet warm
   though my life a mess
I love you
 because I don't want it
   any other way.

I am helpless
 in my love for you
It makes me so happy
 to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
 locking me in an echo chamber
 where your voice reverberates
 through the four walls
 sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
 because it's been so good
 for so long
 that if I didn't love you
 I'd have to be born again
 and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love
 is so simple
 the thought though of you
 sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
 thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
 because no two snowflakes are alike
 and it is possible
 if you stand tippy-toe
 to walk between the raindrops
I love you
 because I am afraid of the dark
   and can't sleep in the light
 because I rub my eyes
   when I wake up in the morning
   and find you there
 because you with all your magic powers were
   determined that
I should love you
 because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you

I love you
 because you made me
   want to love you
 more than I love my privacy
   my freedom   my commitments
     and responsibilities
I love you 'cause I changed my life
 to love you
 because you saw me one friday
   afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you


~Nikki Giovanni

tick tick

I am behaving as dictated by my emotions this week. I can tell by the way that my eyes keep welling up at the thought of my cousin's brand new baby boy named Julian. It's the name that gets me as much as the image of new life. Julian. Makes me think of the Beatles and I am letting it make me cry.

snazzy

Sometimes, just for kicks (I like to assume), my work computer starts turning black print to neon pink. It is an easy fix, though bewildering. I am usually at least a little tempted to just let it stay. My co-worker is dyeing all of her gray hairs bright pink one by one and I imagine there's a correlation. She supports my computer's free spirit. So do I.

hitchhiker

I spend a lot of time talking to the spider who has for the past few weeks made her home on the web stretched out at the bottom of my car's driver's side mirror. Oh, she sometimes makes me a little frantic with the way she stays on the thin strands in the middle of the air when the car's in motion. Just go sit at the base of the mirror, please! Are you suicidal!? Watch yourself! The web shakes and twists when I accelerate but she holds on and I guess she'd know better than me how much torquing her handiwork can hold. Sometimes at a stop light she'll sidle on up to the mirror and crouch there at the bottom away from the wind all casual like, and I'm just so relieved. I tell her where I'm going and how I'm feeling and most of the time I'm just scolding her for not sitting tight and for making me fret. I'll try to avoid highways.

I'll call it a vigil

I've been up since 4:00. For a change it's a little peaceful.

so I did them

Sometimes I get all dramatic and moany about not knowing what will make me happy. But then I realize it's something insignificant and totally accessible like sipping an ice-cold drink and taking a big dump and painting my toenails red.

penultimate

Today is the last wedding we'll be at before ours, RSVP pending. And then I need to relax.

the ants are marching

It has been an odd week. Today I'm humming to myself 'the ants go marching three by three,' which is vastly different from what was stuck in my head while I was avidly (as avid as I can be for two hours at a time) looking through pictures of the few weeks spent in Vienna by a student assistant of ours. I was drinking in the images and the stories behind them and lusting after Karlsplatz, which was always my favorite... platz... and in my head was 'you'll burn in hell.' The Muse version, not the fire and brimstone from the pulpit version. Like I said, it's been an odd week.
I stood still (as still as I can ever be) the other day and let my mom and the seamstress fluff a white gauzy dress around me. Pinch in, pull up. This opened some floodgates--not tearducts, not yet--and since then I have been whirling around wedding wedding wedding. You can't blame me. We're down to nine weeks. OMG flowers. What about the flowers? That's my head.
Other floodgates opened this week were mostly ones of wide-eyed, enthusiastic relief. Finally, something concrete to center our lives around. A check to take to the bank. I don't quite think it works this way, but this week has lasted forEVER and now that it's Friday I feel like I'm back at the beginning of the week and just getting started. I don't quite think it works this way, but maybe the moving forward mentally and the pressing of the beaded bodice to my skin is resetting my clocks to Monday. Go.

crumbumbly

My cheez-its were still relatively in tact by lunchtime today and I have to say I'm a little disappointed to miss that last cascade of crumbs.

the time of honeysuckle

I have been meaning to write since Saturday something about mosquito bites and the smell of honeysuckle and vinegar and the way it felt to run in flip flops down an empty road after midnight just because I could, and because the air was finally breathable. But I haven't, because, oh, internet.

There was a lot, a LOT, of good this weekend. We did indeed pick out our wedding bands. Now there is talk about engraving them, resizing his. I am very ready for all of this. I am kind of shouting it out.

We ate a lot of good food, we drank nectar. I was beautiful, and late night on Saturday after a party I found myself refusing the offer of a ride and just taking off, slap slap slap of the flip flops down the road for a mile or two, sucking in honeysuckle air. This is when I'm at my most fearless.

I can tell that we are going to be fine

I am deep, deep, into the toffee crunches in the housekeeper's chocolate.
I am bracing my back for the way it'll feel to have sweat pouring from between my shoulders, pooling at my waist. Summer has come to mean air-conditioning. Summer has come to demand it.
I think this will be a good weekend. Whereas last weekend I was up to my elbows in the love and appreciation of and from my mom's side of the family (who have all turned out surprisingly well!, (earlier this week I wrote and wrote for hours to try to express this)), this weekend I will be thinking about wedding bands and invitation addresses, will be getting counseled (we'll pass), finally ending the Harry Potter adventure, seeing friends at a bar, friends at a restaurant (it's different), diving into early birthday celebrations for my lover.
It's different, and the heat may wilt all of this a little so that it drips off to the left, the way the sweat will down my back. It's ok, though, like melted chocolate is still ok.

heavy summer

The heat index and the wobbling in my legs got me off of the pavement yesterday and onto a city bus. I fell asleep--I can't help sleeping on the city buses. I know, there are better times and better places. But I always do nod off, my head bobbing forward and then back. The soft lady beside me who liked to talk about her diabetes couldn't even shock me into full consciousness. I am just that tired. When I finally made home I fell asleep again on my back in bed, my laptop balanced poorly on my ribs. This is the heavy part of the summer.

home again

Well today was not great but I did really enjoy canoeing across a lake at twilight and beating my uncles at Euchre and late late night Taco Bell runs with my best cousins and being something to be proud of and the way both of my grandpas teared up at the thought of my wedding (I think that's a good thing).

nut trees

Today is the day before the day my entire family, which has grown, squashes into one vehicle and drives out to Michigan for five days.
My mom's side of the family is getting together at the confusingly titled 'Amigo Centre.' This only happens once in three years and it usually makes up for all the time apart. We usually do.
I'm trying to figure out how to reintroduce myself this time. Hi, since you last have seen me I've become a female.
I mean that in several different ways and almost literally.

grinnning

I kept grinning last night until I could feel the muscles ache in my cheeks. Do I not smile enough day to day? Remind me to grin more often. Or I guess, find people to grin around more often. I need to stay in practice.
I was at a sweet, simple little wedding yesterday. I could not contain myself whenever the new couple kissed or when their heads touched. Or when the gentle bride rubbed cake into her groom's cheeks. I am beginning to understand how good this all is.
Even though it was already my bedtime as I was leaving the reception, I didn't go straight home. I took a three hour detour to the place downtown where S's band was playing. He'd been gone for ten days. Ten days! And now he was home and at home on the stage with that horn in his hands. I perched at a table near the front with some friends of his and, damn. No matter how many times I hear his band play through a set of funky soul music, I still react--my body still picks up the beat and I yell out during the applause. I am so proud of the way he moves up there. He kept playing right to me. His buddy told me he's so much more fun to watch perform when I'm in the audience and this makes me glad. Again I couldn't contain my grin.
I drove him home after the last set, both of us exhausted. And we kissed and kissed on the back step and I kept thanking him for finally coming back home and he was thanking me for being here waiting. It is hard for me to loosen my arms from around his middle these days. Harder. I'm glad there are only 83 more days of reluctant late night drives.

good

Good morning for sitting on the porch in the sun (too long, though, maybe) with a cup of coffee and a book and getting distracted from both by the movement of the pulse at the base of my ankle.

Good day for an outdoor wedding in a few hours, I think. They have both chosen wisely.

Good evening for a homecoming... for an endless trip out and back to be finally coming to a close. I've missed him. So much so that I'm reassured about my ability to spend the rest of my life with him. Better than the alternative, for real.

SUPERBLY SITUATED

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments
as breathing regularly and not falling down too often
or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed

and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow
i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects
so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed

how superbly situated the empire state building is
how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers
so far away you could touch it—therefore i love you

part of me fears that some moron is already plotting
to tear down the empire state building and replace it
with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses

just as part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness
i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes
i’ll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them

but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house
a regularly scheduled flight—something that can’t help being
in the right place at the right time—come take your seat

we’ll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines
fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state
the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve
You have done it by being yourself.


-Robert Hershon


[how could I not love this?! It is exactly right]

swinging hearts

Life is so much more rewarding when you leave your heart swinging wide open. I've learned this in the past two or three years. It's setting me up really well for the next two or three.

don't know why

I don't know why baking cookies makes me feel so virtuous.

wishing in vain

I wish this apartment had marshmallows in it and I wish I spoke Russian and I wish I could teleport and I wish I hadn't just emptied the bottle of wine and I wish I wish...

Tomorrow will be better.

empty

I'm spending today feeling ambivalent. Listening to Radiohead, eating whole grain pasta, looking at self portraits of myself I took exactly five years ago today. I was living at home in NY, working at an eye doctor's office, and it was before I was actually alive. I had the whole sequence of self photos titled 'empty.'

I miss S. I have been reminded of how much color he adds to my life because without him I'm already washing out a bit. If I took some self portraits today I'd probably call them 'empty' too. Temporarily empty.

I hope the sky clears in time for fireworks.

go

I'm setting off to explore! To a copy shop to talk invitation... shop! To Charlottesville for a day of community band  festival love and performing! To... uh... some place that makes good iced coffee, because what is a summer Saturday on the move without good iced coffee? This is me trying very hard.

alchemy

I still sometimes think 0+0=1.

lemonade out of stress

So... any tips on how to, like, make lemonade out of stress? Turn boo-stress to eustress? Ha. I am going to need some help here. Two of my three stress relief valves (my lover and my best friend) are gone for the next ten days, and the third (my mom) will be gone for about five of them. I don't even know what it means to be self-contained anymore. Once I started letting it--I mean, me--all hang out it's just kept hanging. I have become a person who revels in the company of others. I don't regret this. But man. Without physical access to my VIPs I'm going to be kind of floundering for the next week or so. This is the time to be self-soothing. I am needing to work on picking the pace up with that. WITHOUT repeated visits to Taco Bell and dark, angsty teenage-style scribblings. Although Taco Bell is delicious (I will stand by this) and at least my scribblings wouldn't be about friendlessness and lovelessness and hopelessness. Just, you know, stupid grown up things like money and jobs and wedding planning. We can find a compromise here.

not waiting well

WHY is today THIS Wednesday? I'd so much rather it be NEXT Wednesday. Or hell, the Wednesday after that! I'm exhausting myself with pique.

tatoos and cellulite

Every time I go to a waterpark I come home with a few new stereotypes to add to my arsenal.

to the right

Today I parted my hair a little to the right of center, wondering why I always go to the left. Oh yes, it's because of that streak of silver right there, growing out of an old scar and getting a head start (ha) on the rest of my scalp.

I beat a train across town on my bike this morning. We rode parallel for three miles. I did a bit of flying.

This was the weekend of wedding registries. I kept staying up til 1:00 looking up product reviews. Boom, Kohl's. Boom. With money being what it is (where is it??) I do hope this registry thing will actually work for us. I would like it if you buy me soft towels.

On Friday evening my family had a bonfire and an almost-three year old kept wriggling all over me in the grass and making me laugh. The part before he's mine and it's still cute and endearing to hear the 'hey April, hey April, hey April!' is a savory one.

Also this weekend while I was at the grocery store the produce stocker stopped me and asked to take a picture of my shirt, because he thought it was hilarious. It is hilarious. And I don't know, I'd never had a stranger want to take my picture before and something about it made my back straighter.

It is a GRAY day today. I wouldn't mind that if it weren't for the fact that S's band is playing at a waterpark this evening and I scored a free ticket to come along. I guess you can never quite always line up the brilliantly hot days with the rare times they'd be appropriate. I'll try not to complain. They'll play rain or whine. I mean, rain or shine.

warming up

I get a pleased and plump feeling when I discover a pattern about myself, a coherence between what I'd in the past just been brushing off as my random flailings.
My newest realization is that I need some time to feel overwhelmed and incapable of a new task before I get to it. This has happened over and over with all the wedding planning bustle. At the first mention of something like designing invitations, planning ceremony details, creating a gift registry, I'd clam up and feel completely incapable of producing something I like or ever measuring up to scratch. But the fun thing is that if I give myself plenty of time and lots of opportunity to google and ask questions and think through these tasks, well. I find myself always rising to the occasion. I don't think I'll ever be able to skip that interim step, though. The days or weeks of a buzzing sort of panic and feeling of I COULDN'T POSSIBLY seem a permanent part of me. And it's a shame for people like my mom and S who get front row seats to the 'I CAN'T DO THIS I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I WANT' show. But I sort of like my warm-up period. And I like that it has an end.

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


~Mary Oliver

excuses

I'm using a doctor's appointment as an excuse to sleep in tomorrow and my sunburnt lips as an excuse to layer on and then chew off strawberry lip balm. And using the formatting wedding invitations as an excuse to spend much of my morning... wait, what?!

894 miles later

I'm bleary and puffy and my blue color shows so much more vivid when I'm home. But oh, there's nothing like a weekend at a lakehouse with my childhood friends to make me think that perhaps humans are all meant to live so near bodies of water and also, to make me think with a bit of wonderment that I really did have fantastic taste when I was a kid.

I'm not just saying that because they threw me a surprise bridal shower on the deck overlooking the lake Saturday afternoon.

And of course one rather weighty other reminder I got this weekend... of the growing strength and burning warmth of the tether connecting me and S, and the way it's begun to feel so WEIRD to be in my own separate orbit, if only for three days. I think I'm pretty sure we're meant to go on adventures together. From here on out.

I'm not just saying that because if he'd have been with me on the long drive home when my eyes began to droop and smart I could have let him take the wheel. I'm not just saying that.

whew

My themes this week have been good posture, wishing it wasn't so goddamn hard to grow up, denial, and colored pencils. I expect my themes for this upcoming weekend to be more like Finger Lakes, good food and wine, laughter, and singing loudly at the top of my voice in my car. (WHEW.)

aw heck

As in, aw heck, there's gotta be a better way to spend my time than lighting a fire under someone's ass and immediately fighting wildly to put it out.

making me happy right now

HUMMUS! AND CAFFEINE!!

little bits of fluff

S told me a few weeks ago that one of the reasons he wants to marry me is that I leave little bits of fluff behind me wherever I go. I do think this might be the most charming thing I've ever heard.

on a day like this

I'm glad that my toenails are painted bright pink.

DIFFERENCE

My mind's a map. A mad sea-captain drew it
Under a flowing moon until he knew it;
Winds with brass trumpets, puffy-cheeked as jugs,
And states bright-patterned like Arabian rugs.
"Here there by tygers." "Here we buried Jim."
Here is the strait where eyeless fishes swim
About their buried idol, drowned so cold
He weeps away his eyes in salt and gold.
A country like the dark side of the moon,
A cider-apple country, harsh and boon,
A country savage as a chestnut-rind,
A land of hungry sorcerers.

Your mind?

--Your mind is water through an April night,
A cherry-branch, plume feathery with its white,
A lavender as fragrant as your words,
A room where Peace and Honor talk like birds,
Sewing bright coins upon the tragic cloth
Of heavy Fate, and Mockery, like a moth,
Flutters and beats about those lovely things.
You are the soul, enchanted with its wings,
The single voice that raises up the dead
To shake the pride of angels.

I have said.

--Stephen Vincent Benet

very

I am very... there are a lot of words that could fill in that blank. Spinny, healthy, unafraid, proud, tired, completely and utterly happy. I speed-walked three miles this evening against the threat of a rainstorm (#2 of the day... #1 I caught front row seats to in my car driving home from the mechanic) and I beat the rainclouds by mere minutes and weathered out the storm in a dry auditorium listening to songs from Glee being sung by a range from very good to very enthusiastic singers raising money for autism awareness. I think I started this same smile that's still on my face right then, when they all burst into song in unison on Sweet Caroline. I haven't cracked since. Or, you crack a smile, I guess, so maybe it's I haven't stopped cracking since. Through the whole performance I was charmed, with my S up there as part of the live accompaniment, and then back at his place to toast to his patience and my pleasure and since then it's been 'you are a treat' and I've been making plans to spend tomorrow afternoon at the community pool with my best friend and some sunscreen which I hope I'll need. AND, I haven't mentioned this yet, but I think this is part of why today was so good: I made an excellent tuna melt sandwich today for lunch. And then had some cherries. I mean, FOR REAL, this life is a nice one. I am so happy, too, to have the thought in my mind that next weekend is going to be even better.

toasting

This is the summer for tan line vanity and sleevelessness.

crunch crunch crunch

Sometimes I feel like just listing things. Kombucha. Freshly baked thank you bread. Font formatting. Thunderstorms. AAA batteries. Crunch crunch crunch.

lucky girl

It is a lucky girl who can show up at her parents' house for an evening, be fed, entertained, put in a few rows of quilting stitches with her mom, and leave for home again with hugs, leftovers, fresh garden spinach, and a mended dress.

123rd summer in the bandstand

oh would you look at this!

(Pride+Vanity+Did you scroll through toward the end to see the one of me?)

ode to a suitcase (you know who you are)

I look at you, open
empty

a storybook in reverse.

You are a gateway, a portal,
a wardrobe hallway to
another
world.

I long to know the places you'll come across,
the pathways you'll roll across
or where you'll be heaved across

the back of my

(new, strong)

mate.

O, give me your plans,
suitcase of mine!

(To know that I need you is
not nearly
enough.)

O, give me your baggage claim tickets
and your passport stamps of approval!

My mouth waters and my countdown continues and

You

Remain

Mute.


*sigh*

up the incline

I was awake through much of the night last night trying very hard to visualize bedroom suites and big brown couches and a bookshelf over there right in the corner. This must have been a side effect of having napped the afternoon away. The awakeness. The floorplanning and wall adding was a side effect of my continued stumbling up the incline toward... well, I can't quite tell.

*

Ah, the unbearable happiness of a hickey on the neck of someone just home from a honeymoon.

swamp

Is there any more visceral, disgusting pleasure than clearing out a badly clogged drain? Like squeezing out pus. Much more satisfying that scrubbing the toilet.

score!

For noticing me from a moving car as I walk down the sidewalk:

fiance: 0

my 90 year old grandpa: 1

S'ok, though. I'm really proud of S for other reasons today. He's been working a new job for the past few weeks that hasn't been very easy or lucrative, but as of today he's officially on his way in the right direction. I mean, the direction that will keep us in paid rent bills. We hope.

run

I actually went running this morning... for a huffy, brief ten minutes. Funny how such a thing can feel so different from its predecessor, walking. I walk for miles and miles every day, and yet all that walking prowess barely translates to one red-faced, sweaty running mile.
I'm grateful to running because once I used to do it as a prayer, running around the outdoor track at the university late in the night with nothing in my head at all. I ran all throughout a senior year that needed an escape, a calming trip outside of myself. I ran because I was in love with someone who was not there and because I had no idea what I was going to become and because the apartment I lived in housed three girls with varying degrees of diagnosed depression, and then me.
I ran because I was heavy and slow and the running that year helped me shed twenty pounds and I then wasted it all when the summer came and I was again rootless, aimless, answering office phones 40 hours a week, and answering my restless legs and fluttering mind with melted cheese and angsty sleepovers.
So what I'm saying, I guess, is that running reminds me of that time, and it's harder than I thought. I don't think I have it in me anymore to pick running as my drug of choice. Much as I'd like to, I won't ever become a Runner. I am other things. I lift weights sometimes and I try out belly dancing and yoga and I bike and sometimes I swim laps and all the time I am a walker. Kind of miss the way midnight in February felt as I jogged around an empty, well-lit track, though.

very real

Tuesday morning, back at work, picking a dryer sheet from the seat of my pants, letting loose streams of 'oh it was lovely! the weather was perfect! I got to see so many people I love! there was big love all around! and a lacy white dress! bright flowers floating in glass bowls! music music, bonfire, meteor shrieking across the night sky!'
I'm glad for a lot of things-- for perfect weather, to have my arms used for setting up and striking tables and fields of white folding chairs, to be a small part of the big, fluid mass that is my extended family, to have a strong arm looped through mine holding me up when my emotions weaken my knees, to have been able to eat a lot of yummy cake over the weekend. It's been real.

state of the union

Miller wedding #1 is done and done well. State of the union is restrained, sunshiney bliss.

state of the snot

Nose occlusion is at a weekly low of only 20% and outlook is sunny (beyond the thunderstorms in the forecast, that is). I am so fantastically excited to get all this family and friends lovin' started, kicking off with rehearsal dinner and evening of celebration tonight. I have always loved weddings, even at those moments when I felt like anything but marriage material myself. And there have been plenty of weddings I've gone to in the past few years that have made my heart just tear up and weep with happiness because I love the bride and groom so much and because their love is so... oh lord, LOVE. But this is the first time a wedding has been as close to me as could be without it being my own, and I can already feel the perfect happiness of my heart welling up inside me. My baby brother, who has been throughout my growing up my favorite human in the world, gets to marry his perfect woman. I am crying just thinking of this. Well damn. All these tears are NOT going to help stem the snot.

punk

I am drinking oceans of lemon water. It's probably not hurting anything, aside from interrupting my already interrupted sleep/work with trips to the bathroom. It is at least half as soothing as the spicy chicken sandwich I got for free from Chick-fil-A for lunch today. Though forgive me, my math is fuzzy, and at least half as might be more like twice as or almost as much as. I blame this on the stubborn plug in my nostril.

snotty frenzy

I am 3/4 of a person. I am not referring in this case to the fact that I'm still fighting a losing battle against a head cold. I am not bouncing back and the deadline (brother's wedding this weekend) is looming ever closer. HEAL, DAMNIT. *sneeze*
But no, I'm saying that I am 3/4 of a person because... I'm sort of barebones. I am missing the flesh to fill out who I am and what I believe and what I want. I'm much more of a mooch than you'd suspect. I sponge up other's ideas and opinions because I don't know how to have my own. I flail around a lot just hoping to stumble by chance on the right thing to do and the way to do it. Most of the time I can make this work, but damn. Damn if I'm not whipping myself into an unneccesary (and very snotty) frenzy over this, over the fact that that I really am flying blind--I really don't KNOW what I want my own wedding or even my marriage to look like and I am not currently and will never be anywhere near as steady and self-assured as are my brother and his soon-wife. I would love to fill the final 1/4 of me with some of their inimitable capability.

eyes, head cold, soul rocking

One thing I did not predict about this year: a brand spanking new set of never before experienced eye allergies! One in each eye! With extra special bonus itchiness in my right! I learn to be afraid of pollen and reliant on eyedrops and the kindly advice of the middle aged eye doctor I have a massive crush on. I can tell he likes me by the way he's extra gentle when yanking on my lower eyelids.
Finally this weekend I found a mix of preventative and restorative eye care that works to keep my eyes blinking happily... just before I was struck down by a muzzy headed spring cold. It's really nice to be able to forgo whining about my sore eyes in exchange for whining about my cottony head and snot levels! S is a saint. I was feeling especially bad on the bus ride home from the performance yesterday. I'd fallen asleep wedged sideways in the seat resting my head on S's lap and I woke feeling achy and blurry and wild, and S helped me right myself and smoothed my hair and held my face in his hands and told me he loves me and that I am an incredible writer and reader (I think he said that, though I may have still been dreaming) and then, even though I protested that I didn't want to get my germs all over him, he nuzzled into the side of my face, tracing lines down my cheeks and neck with his lips and nose. It was body-curing-body and soul rockingly sweet. I think you have to pledge to spend the rest of your life with a man who never hesitates to cradle and comfort you when you're low.

sesquicentennial

I along with 60 or so of my closest geriatric friends ((aka the community band I'm a member of) (I mean 'geriatric' in the most admirable way) (I'm really quite fond of them all. And there are actually a few of them a decade or so below geriatric (besides S and me) AND we have at least one high schooler)) are taking a coach bus down to Blacksburg tomorrow for a Civil War Sesquicentennial Conference. We're the featured performers. We'll play some (kick ass) Civil War tunes, because that's what we have been doing since even before the war itself. Without pause, every summer, this band is in bloom. I think this will be year 157. (How small this makes me feel... kind of like looking at the stars) (But then again, every little star counts (and we all know I'm a star. Heh.)).

I really didn't need to write all that down because it's just a thing, just a day of thing. But I had a whole head full of parentheses and this is such a good way to use them up.

a fit of the housewifes

My baby brother is getting married in NINE DAYS. My own wedding is in 135, which is both way too far away and so close I feel the organ music breathing down my neck. I spend a lot of time thinking about being married (you would, too) and from where I'm standing today, it'll be well well well worth the fuss, if only for the logistical ease of having a permanent claim to and a spot in the bed beside S. Plus, I have been infected with what I describe as a fit of the housewifes. I am craving badly a blank slate on which to create and organize a home, daydreaming about doing S's laundry, thinking long and hard about cooking, cleaning, and managing joint checking accounts. These longings must not be misinterpreted as promises that I'll magically morph into a graceful domestic goddess the instant we're home from the honeymoon, because I probably won't. I definitely will never be legitimately graceful about this. But it's meaningful to me that I'm having these desires and that I can imagine finding myself there--married--and capable of holding up my half of the bargain. Means I'm readier than I thought I'd be.

shank

THERE ARE SO MANY RAZOR BLADES IN THIS PLACE. I counted seven between here and the bathroom. The series of building plagues continues--half-dressed men, carpet glue dust, loud ripping noises, obstacle courses made of stacked study carrels, abandoned knife blades. Libraries are so peaceful during the summer.

damp

It's is raining so hard this morning that I'm interrupting myself to exclaim over it. Midsentence I keep saying 'would you LOOK at that sky?!' All this rain lately has been stepping on my walking toes. And then instead of feeling relieved to be sitting on a bus I feel guilty for the disuse of my legs and feet. Ai, guilt. I give a lot of it a lot of purchase.

Other than feeling damp and swollen, I'd rate myself 7 on a scale of cautious optimism. Not specialized optimism, broad-spectrum optimism. For, like, everything. It's going to be good, I suspect.

thanks you

I like thinking to myself: now that was cute! after someone accidentally says something like 'thanks you!' instead of 'thanks' or 'thank you.' It's reassuring to hear those slips coming from someone else's tongue and not just mine. I like being generous with this, like I'm giving this one to you. I'll let you have that without needing to backtrack.

blue and gray

I am spending this weekend and the next in the Civil War. You'd think this would make me feel like a Yankee. Usually it just makes me very curious. There is a difference.

that's fine

It is Friday the 13th. The day is so damp out that after my walk across town the dollar bill from my jeans pocket was hanging too limp to slide into the vending machine. I just misread the phrase 'EXPLORING THE MODERN AUDIT FIRM: AN INTRODUCTION' and thought it was talking about porn. After seeing Thor last night I am fired up about Norse mythology. And I am completely overwhelmed by the fact that I am loved despite my smelly feet.

well employed

Today work is hilarious. A little less shirtless workmen and a lot more insulting emails from professors outraged at being referred to as 'customer' and bemused building managers and a fine layer of yellow dust coating all the books. And one het-up boss who is being very entertainingly un-zen. It is a day I'd happily agree to pack up the office of the professor emeritus against his wishes because he refuses to come in and empty his desk and because the ranting going on about all of this just makes me laugh. And it's even employee appreciation day, on top of all of it. Sometimes the best kind of appreciation is a circus.

stitched up

Today, because my mother is doing much better and will probably even get to go home today, I am allowing myself to get down and dirty with customizing my standard forms and managing my spreadsheets. /metaphor?

bursting

So, my mom's in the hospital, there are half-dressed men surrounding my office, and my uterus hurts. Today isn't going so well. I'd be quite distraught if it were not for all the late night love poems and the early morning yoga.

we're going to be fine

Going away this weekend to get all my family reunited (and I mean that there are nine of us these days!) I hope this will be a good weekend for emptying heads of stress and opening of ears. Listen, think, act. Other than that, I know what's coming, and this is such a relief to me.

I don't like finals week

I don't like finals week. There's not even a bit of schadenfreude in me anymore. It's just all pity and resentment. The library is overflowing and barely containing its panic. There was a girl crying in the stairwell earlier this week. She was bunched up in the corner on her phone and was sobbing things like, 'mom, I'm just NOT GOING TO GET IT DONE IN TIME!' It makes me wince. I just had to deliver the news of a huge lost item fine to a graduating senior who was frantic about having looked everywhere and the book is still missing, and she can't afford that fee! She's practically homeless already! I could never be a counselor. I cry too easily.

And of course, this is the day that I forgot to bring a bra.

redaction

SHIT. I was supposed to be not insulting myself this month. Referring to myself as apathetic and greedy is unacceptable [until June]. Forget I said anything. I'm lovely.

apathetic greed

It's interesting that by nature I'm rather ambivalent, because that doesn't seem to mesh very peacefully with my... umm... distaste for moderation.

[...]

everything will be ok
in the end

if it's not ok
it's not the end.

new goal

Well, it's time to turn over a new month. I like to give these bad boys a goal. Like this past month I have been letting my nails grow. People, I succeeded. I have talons. I am going to cut them all off tomorrow morning with a sense of curiosity-fulfilled relief. So this next month. I'm getting pretty tired of self-sabotage and selling myself short. I have spent far too much time apologizing for my failings and stating for the record explicitly how much I think I suck. It's ridiculous. Why on earth should I be actively trying to prove the validity of my own self-deprecation? I should at least try to leave one of us with doubts. My goal for May is to make it to the other side with a minimum of announcements of and apologies for all my various peccadilloes. I'm gonna turn the volume down.

common

I have loved loved loved (and teared up over) all the pomp and outsized hats this morning, but on the whole, I'm pretty relieved that S is not a prince. Though I'd totally wear a tiara on loan from the Queen if she offers.

less than perfect

I am being stalked by Pink's Less Than Perfect. It's always on the radio when I turn it on. If I had enough confidence in fate I'd say I'm meant to take this to heart. But I'm not. I can tell by the way I keep glaring at the face in the mirror and hissing 'fatass.' And I suppose the biggest problem with my self-esteem lapses is that I am absolutely USELESS as a partner these days. S is struggling and I am all lying stock still and flooding with angst and nagging when I should be the opposite of all these things. I should be saying to him, 'Oh pretty pretty please don't you ever feel like you're less than perfect. You are perfect to me.'

all but the last one

What I want is hummus, lots of hummus, and my knee propped up on a pillow (I twisted it. I'm a dumbass. Don't ask). And while I'm at it, I also want universal love, speedy recoveries, and perseverance. For you, not me.
(I am always going to have all but the last one.)

why they pay me

I'm helping a law firm research the complexity of mouse tastebuds (no, I don't know why) and sometimes I think, 'is this worth it?' and this morning I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

YOU SHALL ABOVE ALL THINGS...

you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you’re young, whatever life you wear
it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love
whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time
that you should ever think, may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies, the foetal grave
called progress, and negations dead undoom.
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

~e.e. cummings

too much or less

I have too much and not enough: chocolate eggs, bonfires, rose cookies, crochet hooks, sweaty armpits, oversleeping, ripping buttons, soco and lime, rain storms, budget holes, shitty teeth, wrinkled corduroys, sore eyes, wake-up texts, 90° rotations, ghost music, jammed printers, shirked duties, buns in the shape of rabbits, building plans. I just want a vacation. Let's go to the beach.

sometimes I wish I was an actual nerd

I am splitting with a grin right now because of the achingly endearing nerd couple sitting at the table outside my office discussing--oh so earnestly--the heresy of having Frodo Baggins as a character in the upcoming Hobbit movie. She's adamantly opposed; he can see how it might possibly work. I like the way they are sitting at angles, just avoiding eye contact, and I like the way the boy one is gesturing wildly with his hands while the girl one is quickly glancing toward him and then back away with her fingers twisting through her hair. Bless their little spectacled heads. May the weight of their oversized backpacks never bow them down.

distracted and sharp

I was dancing in the evening, but then I ended the night in tears. I thought the tears were the exception, but now I'm pretty sure it was the dancing that was the anomaly. It was that sort of day. I spent it attracting displeasure and dragging my mind through mud puddles. The break to have dinner with my parents and delightfully dig into a dusty box of 1000 puzzle pieces--that was the exception to the rest of my day. I was dancing in the driver's seat on the way home and then I was... reverting, I guess, back to the state I'd been in at the start of the day. Falling into the norms of being distracted and sharp. I guess I can break hearts that way. I guess I'm never going to be ____.

un-fret

No, that does not count as a hardship. I refuse to grant hardship status to anything that is starting and ending in my own head. Coffee from my leaky thermos, please.

fret

I am making myself nervous about the fact that the future is nebulous. My constant fussing over these plans and ideas always always gives way to complacency and comfort once the Way Things Will Be sinks in. Always! But I don’t have enough control over myself to nip the fretting in the bud. I have so much good going on, despite and because of all that's changing. But uncertainty is not the way I like things, and I’m afraid until all of this has gone from an unknown to a given,
I
will
be
fretting.

no hardships!

I have a coupon for a free drink from the Starbucks downstairs. The problem is that I tend to hold off on Starbucks until I can give it to myself as a hardship bonus. But I'm having no hardships these days! No hardships at all! I still have a few weeks before it expires, though. So here's hoping.

downpour

The sky exhausted itself over our heads today. I hope it wasn't out of guilt.

make it snappy

Today I am struggling against my need for instant gratification. It's similar to the way I cannot hold off from licking the spoon and the way my nail polish always smears. I am just thinking 'it's worth the wait! it's worth the wait!' and hoping the postal service is on their toes.
Today is also a day to meet --over tater tots and thick sandwiches-- with the man who has agreed to pronounce us husband and wife when the time comes. I think that's brave.
And it's a day to soak in the sunny skies and announce to the office that 'spring is very glossy today!' and to brace for the rain.