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.

beats 2 and 3

I'm playing in a concert this week for a batch of student conductors at the university. I've done this three times? Four? I am always alarmed by how clearly I can see confidence and competence and how obvious is the lack thereof can be. I can line them up on a continuum in my head from Success to... Oh,Well, You Tried. It always makes me think of how grateful I am to music teachers, how lovely it is to be in the hands of a good one, how sometimes effort can be enough. It reminds me of which way beats 2 and 3 fall, and how to follow three leads at once, and I remember how I did this same thing several years ago and one of the student conductors was an odd sort of man-boy who closed his eyes and breathed deeply before the upbeat. I couldn't keep my eyes off of him then and that hasn't changed so far. I didn't even know then how the muscles in his chest tense up in anticipation when he is in beautiful music and how it would feel to rest my head there.

booze and limes

Today is my day to eat something green. It's been a while. I've been on a bender of sorts of self-coddling and allowances for things like grilled cheese sandwiches in bed. I can't say it was a direct result of the birthday love and attention onslaught, but that didn't hurt. I mean, that evening at the restaurant I was expecting perhaps some free ice cream but what I got instead was a giant pink sombrero and a huge shot of tequila. So you tell me it's not fair for me to assume that's what the rest of my life will be like! I sit serenely while friendly Mexican waiters bring me booze and limes! I'm kidding. I'm... pretty sure I'm coming back to earth.

27

I think this is the year I'll start acting my age. Not consistently, mind you. Don't worry. I'll still whine and stomp my feet and my eyes will still light up when I see fireflies. I will still run headlong down a hill and fall asleep on the floor. I will always be a sucker for shiny ribbon and silly puns. I will never, ever outgrow rubberband wars and to tell the truth I am at this moment wiping purple sugar from my lips. But, you guys, in between all the goofy laughs and irreverent stories and wild flailing, I am going to be acting my age. I am going to wear more dresses, and I'm going to pick up after myself. I'm going to get me a husband and figure out how to keep him alive and well-fed and happy. I'm going to start a family of two from scratch. I think I'll probably become 20% less selfish. I might get a pedicure. I'll probably even start thinking about things like life insurance, by god. I'm going to be such a grown-up by the time this year is through. Starting tomorrow. Today it's going to be all sugar.

this was on my desk this morning

Peeps, balloons, flowers...

I am loved.

I would say

If you asked me how I'm doing, I would say
Brain in a blender, late night sore backs, hand weights, getting older. Cranberries and coffee beans, one last dose and wet hair wrapped up in a towel. I should say that the sweat that drips off the tip of my nose lands like an oasis in the desert. I would say, I am incredibly blessed.

IT’S LIKE THAT

People in love only talk themselves you say

and abandon a sock and a shoe overnight in a pot, dreaming

I’m snow and you’re wind

whipped pine needles scratching the bark and pitch

and wake to the red-winged, one-eyed shadow

over your spine that dips into the rise

of your lower back. I throw the bone

shaped alarm clock to the dog and slide

into the phosphorescent

undertow, arched and squeezing the embalmed

years of sensibility out of my agitated

screaming out of the ceiling, like divorce

on a ferris wheel and suffocate it

slowly into the sheets. Or take the impossible

blue of a dragonfly, quick and dodging

its reflection on a lack after the fog

has given in to the pale

moon of morning and throw that

into the logic of the sock and the shoe

and you’ll understand why I love you.

It’s like that.

~Roger Weingarten

From Poetry magazine, March 1986

oehoe

I am fascinated with this. And I know the website's in Dutch and I know it's ostensibly... pretty uneventful. But I am enthralled. I followed a link to the site from a English blogger who said she's fallen in love with the bird and I get that.

pish

I am irritated with oversleepers. I am trying not to be. Just because I am up and bright in the mornings does not mean everyone is. I shouldn't judge. I fall asleep at 10:00 on a weeknight mid-sentence.

Pish. It's a sunny, glorious, cold morning. And I think I'll get quite a bit of mileage today out of the fact that I helped replace my car's bum headlight bulb yesterday. My car is a mess, it is a MESS. But I do feel optimistic about the fact that I'll be able to keep putting out all its little fires, like this last one. It makes me feel rational. I so rarely do.

paralysis

If you're wondering why I keep my shoulders turned, it is paralysis. It is a there-is-no-way-I-am-good-enough, there-is-no-way-I-am-what-you-need, I-can't-FIX-you stupor. And I do know, from experience, that the coward's frozen way out is Not Helpful, but if you're wondering why I keep freezing anyway, it's that this paralysis goes deep in me, comes from years of doing the wrong thing. So I've gotten myself into a rat's nest of
just
not
trying.

ravishing

I dreamed last night that I had indefatigable and outrageous charm and I was using my wiles for, well, glory. And favors. And to plump my own ego.

(must be my birthday is coming up)

(ha ha ha)

mediums

Is it time I start giving things a chance? Like the mechanical pencils that were brought up from procurement that I dismissed outright for weeks for being not like the ones I've always used until I was, well, they kept stealing my other ones--they, the students--so I resorted to these new building manager approved pencils and after a day or so I did start to think, 'this pencil has good shock absorbers!' and later, 'nice weight for twirling through nervous fingers' and on it went from there until once I was actually choosing between the last of my old kind and one of the new sort and I grabbed the new sort even though they are so round that they tend to roll off of desks. Have we gotten that far?

The bird clock is still up in the front office. Still chirping wildly every hour. I have heard students outside our office door turn to each other and ask, 'was that you?'

We spotted a lone duck patrolling the Wendy's parking lot yesterday, and this reminded me of picnics and the time she and I heard a duck quack and at the same time both said 'bless you!'

I've been biting my lower lip a lot these days. I think I do that because without the restraint of my teeth it'd be grinning clownishly, or it'd be jutting out in a pout. I am not one for mediums, I mean.

sybarite

I have spent most of today in bed, with short breaks to listen to the wind and hear stories about elephants and visit a lover and a persnickety cat and eat lasagna and each other and then a gift certificate's worth of ice cream. But now I'm back again, stretching whole body from my head to toes on my smooth (hmm, needs laundering) sheets. I am hedonistic. Clothes unnecessary. Bite your lip, yawning in.

SPRING

        To what purpose, April, do you return again?
        Beauty is not enough.
        You can no longer quiet me with the redness
        Of little leaves opening stickily.
        I know what I know.
        The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
        The spikes of the crocus.
        The smell of the earth is good.
        It is apparent that there is no death.
        But what does that signify?
        Not only under ground are the brains of men
        Eaten by maggots.
        Life in itself
        Is nothing,
        An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
        It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
        April
        Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
                                
 ~Edna St. Vincent Millay

on my mind

The guts of my computer splayed on the dining room table; transplant successful. Chocolate-dipped Peeps in a basket from my soon-mother-in-law. A Postcard of Mystery from Kansas. Grilled cheese. A clump of fake pearls at my ear. Hiring? I mean. Borrowed reeds returned worn out. Orchestra concerts that don't fade off quietly. A bouquet of flowers. April fools. April. Beer on tap. Mud. I don't know.