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.