maybe it's physics

I am pretty amazed by the fact that my husband is the type of person who never accidentally pokes himself in the eye with his thumb. 

a long, long funnel

Recently I have been getting lost in old family photos, like really old. I am a sucker for these things. I don't even care who's in them sometimes, I just want to see them all. I'd look through a stranger's old family photo album with just as much enthusiasm. But in this case, for these photographs, they are mine. My ancestors.

I sometimes think I can see myself in the faces of my great grandparents.

I cannot BELIEVE the series of events that had to happen for me to exist, from out of this vast history of people crossing paths. They didn't have to meet! But they did meet, and so here I am. I'm at the bottom of a long, long funnel. In just the three or four generations before me--whose faces I can see in photographs--there are a whole host of humans working toward my existence. Three generations ago I am Steiner and Zuercher and Miller and and Brubaker and Newcomer and Nussbaum and Hersh and Falb. Somehow I have all of this distilled in me.

...What even is that, and how do I not take it for granted?

maybe now that I'm a year older

My horoscope in the university's newspaper told me to 'set juicy goals' for myself today.

extinction

Maybe my flaming skull-gerbil is limping on three legs?

keeping what I have

I blow-dried my hair this morning for the first time in at least seven months. It was either despite or because of being told earlier this week that my hair is very healthy. I'm not sure which. I'm just glad it has stopped fleeing my head with abandon.

another list

Today is a day that doesn't feel typical, even though it is one. 


Things that are making me happy:


Looking through family photos from when my mom was a kid and before and sharing them with people who love old photos as much as I do

A mocha frappuccino from the Starbucks downstairs, for real

My mid-day trip to an off-site storage facility in a university van, especially when I have company

The smell of the storage facility and the way it sticks to the bound journals who live in it. Smells like paint and new carpet and old books and it's somehow very wonderful

The word 'trox' as a typo that will stick

Talking with my hands

Baby ducks, as yet to be named. I think one should be named Shuffles

Peanut butter

Goodwill jeans that make my ass look better than normal

Friendly/grateful patrons

My office mate's laugh, and the fact that I can cause it

My plans for Friday evening: grocery shopping, playing this app on my Kindle, watching a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother when S gets home from work, and going to bed by 10:30 (woot)

Knowing that tomorrow I have a lunch date with my alternate mom and a birthday party to attend in the evening. Just enough.

...

I'm hanging in there, folks. I'm holding steady at 'ok.' The good news is that I haven't been laid up with the worst sort of  'sick' sensations in about a week... this is the longest reprieve I've had in five months. So I'm ok. Just sort of bumbling along feeling odd and weak and sometimes really grumpy. If I stay perfectly still there are times I can feel completely normal. I think it will be like this, and be like this, and be like this. And I'll keep on.

things I am obsessed with

My husband's fuzzy belly

My mom's painting skills

The Stitcher Smart Radio app

My Kindle Fire, Roger

The smell of my Easter lilies

The incredible awesomeness of my siblings, especially my sister (yes, you)

Chocolate cake with peanut butter icing

Community, the show

Community, the warm fuzzy feeling (this week, it was all over the library)

Falling asleep on S's lap with his hand resting on my head

The swans on the 'lake' a few blocks up from us

My favorite friend's brilliant intuition and fermentation skills

Back scratches

The Muse Pandora station

Reading other people's blogs

Getting better, getting better, getting better

chipping

My birthday gift to myself was to paint my nails a week and a day ago. I am pretty good at leaving my nails and cuticles alone when I've gone to the trouble of painting them. For seven days. And then on the eighth, I go to town.

Happy birthday, self. Please please please get healthy in this next year. I've got big plans.

misfortune

I found a crushed fortune cookie near the library this morning, still in its cellophane bag. The fortune said 'Let go of negative things today.' I don't know if I can take that on as my own fortune. I don't know who dropped it or why, and besides, just now I got a cardboard cut (worse than paper! worse than paper!) on my ring finger.

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

green

I have a not-altogether-unreasonable level of energy today! Perhaps begging worked. Or else the yellow evening joyride in a black smart car over the ridiculously rich spring hills. It is a day for adjectives, and that's a good sign.

ouch

It's not as romantic as all that to tell your husband, that after a half year of marriage, it's been a whole lot of suffering, but not because of him. It'd have been worse without him.
We ate tacos from the best little hole in the wall Mexican joint in town and he gave me pickles, because I love pickles, not because I'm pregnant (I wish. I could handle five+ months of misery if it were for someone else). And then he wrote a paper and I sat very very still in the spare room.

Ugh today my head feels like it might implode and the tiredest part on my body is my calves. I don't know why.

I don't know how I can keep doing this. I better have a good day coming up.