the end of crisp sandpaper

I am feeling flush with good cheer, because after seven months of line-dried clothes, yesterday afternoon a dryer was installed in our little home, and after seven months of line-dried jeans, the ones I'm wearing today feel like heaven. Warm, soft heaven.

pounced

Well, this morning the upstairs/outside cat pounced at me out of a basement shadow and oh my heart, and yesterday I stole a faux snowball and almost cried over a sandwich, but I'm still really happy. We have a tiny fake tabletop tree and it's topped with an owl, and my husband likes to light the oil lamp and read in front of it, and I'm doing better with the underpinnings of work stuff and relishing the chance to take a full two weeks away from it soon. I like the fact that I hear band music in my head and I like the fact that cold makes warmth divine.

three snow days

On Sunday morning S and I woke to an empty fridge and snow already drifting down, so we bundled up, even pre-coffee, and within ten minutes were on the way to the grocery store for milk and bananas and cheese doodles, and stopped at Mr J's on the way home for an egg and cheese breakfast bagel for me and everything else they sell for breakfast at once for S. Home through the snowglobe fluffy powder, oil lamps lit, styrofoam containers full of steaming food and eventually coffee and the calm, quiet of a Sunday morning snow with nowhere to be. Later the day included short commute up the basement steps, and red wine and football and roast beef.

Monday morning we woke up to the odd sort of ice that Virginia always gets where it's too warm for straight snow and not warm enough for rain, and so every twig, branch, blade of grass is encased in ice. So were our cars, but S had the day off, even if I didn't, and he good naturedly volunteered to drive me into town, and between the two of us we chipped the solid block of ice back into something resembling a Ford Taurus and puttered in. I don't know what made work crazier--the ice, the non-delay, the start of finals week--the morning was a beast. The day was a beast. Later the day included cookies and a gift exchange and sitting in a living room with three girls I have really grown to love lately and discussing books-->discussing life-->making plans-->staying out much later than normal.

This morning instead of ice, there was a blanket of beautiful wet packing snow. And too much of it to be overruled by the importance of finals week, so the university closed for the morning. S unstuck his car and I made him text me when he made it to work safely and I sat in my robe on the couch and cried while I watched the previous night's Sing Off on hulu and then I put on boots and tramped around outside, turning my face up to catch the flakes and thinking about snowmen. I painted my fingernails gold instead. By 11:00 the snow melt was on, so I just drove the snow off my hood with my arms and inched down the driveway and into town. Everything is heavy and wet, and I'm the first one in the office so far, so I'm listening to Swan Lake and drying the cuffs of my pants and later today will certainly include chai and dripping and being helpful.

recommending kindness and books

I hit a goose--a big white goose--and ran my car off the road. I think the goose lived.
I ate the same meal in the same restaurant twice in one week.
I had a private tear and snot fest over the fact that kindness and benefit-of-the-doubt-i-ness is Very Important to me and I don't know how to handle the fact that sometimes the same is not true of the people I rely on for their kindness. Relatedly, I am bone breakingly thankful for my husband and my husband's brother for how they have deliberately chosen to look at the world.
I read a few books, and watched a few movies. Was at the theater twice in one week, kind of like the restaurant thing. A year's quota at once. Saw Catching Fire, which made me goggle and ache and cry, and The Book Thief, which edged its way to the top of my favorite book ever list when I read it last month, and which, in movie form, made me goggle and ache and cry. Can't recommend either enough. Read, watch. Especially ensconced in the seats between fellow book lovers.
I'm wearing new socks today, and drinking chai, and am back into yarn-craft mode after months of relative apathy, and all of this feels very December. So does the eating gift fudge and sleeping in past workout time thing. Take a deep breath.

blurry with gratitude

I am once again blurry with gratitude, in tears twice today for youtube videos and book endings, out of work early for the rest of the week with resounding well-wishes and a ride through the snow --the SNOW-- to a lunch with my husband, and a sandwich on rye bread. Oh, how I love rye bread. And I still had time before S had to leave for his evening shift to take an accidental nap all curled up with him on the couch as we watched an original Star Trek episode. I caught maybe the first fifteen minutes before I was out cold, full belly, cuddly husband, deep couch.
I am so warm here, and so happy to be feeling all these rushes of life and thankfulness that were muted for nearly two years of sickness. I'm not sick anymore. My immune system, my nervous system, are back in as much alignment as I can hope to expect. I'm so markedly better, and maybe in some ways better than I was before, because of this added unsolicited gloss of wisdom and knowledge of boundary that I didn't have in the past. It's just wicked good, really, this living thing.

thankful

I think everything just may be perfect. The strength in my legs to walk up hills and run in circles and fit into pants from two years ago. Things full of love, like baked brie and bridal bouquets made of ferns and pine cones, and homemade Chinese food and board games. The husband who aces his nursing tests and aces his husband tests and who at this very moment is engrossed in making a big batch of chili while wearing surgical gloves. I have a comfortable home, albeit a small one. I have friends to make me laugh and to laugh with me, who shriek and run toward a playground against the wind chill and clamor and swing. I can share a cup of coffee and conversation that lasts for two hours. I have a mother who is overwhelmingly comforting to me and who can explain my differences by matching them up to her own. I have old friends and new friends and a book club and an adventure club and a yarn club and I live in a place where I can stand in the middle of a field for fifteen minutes watching a cloud of starlings hum from tree to tree overhead. I have podcasts like Ask Me Another and My Brother, My Brother, and Me, and Stuff You Should Know and Welcome to Nightvale to keep me fed, and a freezer full of actual foods to keep me actual fed. I have a job that I love, not despite things, because of them. I have exuberance running through my veins and on top of all of this, it is Thanksgiving week, and there is very little better I can imagine than getting to sit around a full, warm table full of my entire, inimitable family and sharing a purposeful, joyful meal. Also, having 2.5 days off of work. I LOVE this season, even counting my wind-burned cheeks, and I am beyond grateful for the steady, level head on my shoulders and the fact that I am whole, hale, and absolutely alive.

too much too soon

Today has been oh for the love of god why can I not just stop time to stay in bed longer or to pause a meeting of high emotions and pinched self-esteem to go by myself to an empty study room to growl at things. Or to get this cascade of work done alone, in quiet. But I got home from work to a bottle of wine from a friend and a nicely made bed my by husband and instead of combining the two, yet, I'm going to snort back in these doubts and wobbly tears and go to watch my sister in law perform in a play and tomorrow I'll start over.

I guess you'll say

It is a gloomy, overcast, balmy All Saints Day morning, and one of the construction workers at the old hospital/future administration building site is belting out, 'I've got sunshine on a cloudy day...' and as I walked past two others sang along and so did I.

taking notes

When this library is full, I hate it and I love it. Why I hate it is students camping out in front of our office door and long, long lines and loud noises (despite everything) and tripping over laptop cords. Why I love it is along the lines of gawking and appreciating humanity and sheer entertainment value. I wrote a bunch of it down this week while rounding the stacks. Spilled coffee in stairwell B. The unflaggingly polite and helpful student assistant at the circulation desk. Hummus. Jimmy John's x 4. Chick-fil-A x 6. The periodical room reeking of stale male. The reference section oddly smelling of hay. Tom Hiddleston on public computers. An anachronistic boy studying in the stacks without a laptop, tablet, headphones, or a cell phone visible (gasp). A conversation about baked macaroni. Lots of neon pink. Laptops streaming Parks & Rec, Sons of Anarchy, and New Girl, just from what I recognized. A sun salutation. A stack of flash cards a foot high. 'Nope, she's not going home until Thanksgiving. She's really not doing well. She just stays in bed all day watching tv.' Bible guy relentlessly palming off little green New Testaments. A couple awkwardly spooning in a too-small couch. Second nicest cleaning lady losing her shit at a student ignoring 'this area being cleaned, please keep out' sign. Nicest cleaning lady dusting plants. Pizza. Three students at one table asleep, or in a posture of sleep. Earnest girl to earnest guy: 'I just really want to work with older adults with Alzheimer's.' A tube top and a thin scarf on a 50° day. Red shoes and pink pants. A study group rising in volume until one member says, 'as it says in the Bible, 'quiet, woman!'' The third floor smelling of everything bagels. 'It'll be totally worth it to pay $200 for the hotel room.'

Cs

This has been a week of excellent costumer service (to me, not from me, necessarily), and hoodies against cold rain and cheddar cheese and conscientiousness.

not busy

I drink a lot of strong black tea and I eat late lunches. I still navigate the library by my nose sometimes, and I leave chap stick stains on the lip of my water bottle. I'm doing well on fiber. My husband is having moments of struggle that I didn't anticipate and I'm doing a lot of patting and willing. With everyone else I still keep listening more than I talk. I'm really good, though, at keeping the balls up in the air at work and at home. I make people wish they had a wife. I have concrete goals for each day at work. I'm not busy, but I'm important, and that is probably the single most perfect place for me to be.

later

Well, this weekend I baked cookies and then dropped an entire tray fresh out of the oven, so I sat on the floor beside the melty crumbs and cried. The next morning they were still there so I ate floor-cookies and I regret it, but it's a Monday, so I'm turning over a new leaf for this week. It'll be better than this weekend.
I'm varying from feeling content and helpful and self-realized and feeling the opposite. Not a lot of middle ground these days. Or ever? I have spent hours--HOURS--talking lately and a lot of listening and shopping for navy blue wedding shoes and Chinese food. I have been re-setting my alarm so I don't have time to get up in the mornings to go for a run, even though at one point I had done that for a month straight. I made meatballs.
Tomorrow will be two years married to S. He's still the best thing. I can't even imagine better. Sometimes I bring him tea and non floor-cookies while he's studying and sometimes he lifts me up off the ground when I'm being nonsensical and he is always warm and patient and gentle, even on his worst days. I cannot adequately communicate how wonderful it is to be married to that man. For the first year of our marriage he protected me and the second year he delighted me and we're into the third during which he will impress me with his ambition and intelligence and budding organizational skills. He got up at 5:30 this morning for clinicals and he was so good tempered about it, I can't even. He's never been anything less than remarkable and our relationship is way, way, way beyond anything I could have dreamed up during my dreaming years. We're really good together. I won't see him much today or tomorrow or Wednesday, but Thursday, when I finally do get a chance to see him for more than a few sleeping hours, we'll get to celebrate a little. We're putting a lot of stock into later right now and I think it'll work out.

on time

I've been full of phlegm these days, which I will willfully ascribe to the season and nothing more. It feels more like I live in a basement this week. We keep waking to crickets in the room or mystery bugs swooping at our faces. I trust they are not muscular spiders, which I like, as long as they are at least five feet from my face.
My husband has been busy. He's been remarkable. He keeps up with school and work and his band and doesn't fall apart. I fall apart on his behalf sometimes, but I'm getting used to and kind of really liking being the S technician. I keep him in clean clothes and make sure he comes to bed on time and feed him what he needs to eat and encourage him into a good rhythm and relish the small moments of time we do have together. I have to remind myself not to ooze with the sort of achy neediness that I know will (always) elicit a guilty response from him. It's not fair. He's doing what he needs to do. He needs to be a nurse. I need to be a support system. That kind of need. We'll be ok.
I am, though, leaving him to prop himself up for a week. Going on his family vacation without him, in fact. A week at the beach with his grandparents, parents, and siblings. And, incidentally, also my parents. I am not sure what kind of idea this is. But, the beach. Even without my husband, even with two sets of parents, the beach. That's what I want.

not like you

I still have that stabbing feeling of 'are you sure?' when I tell myself it's ok to be different. Ok to not because to transpose myself on top or someone else. Ok to have my own beat.

liminal

This is a liminal moment for my family of two, between one pattern of living and the next. S starts nursing school this afternoon, and I start filling in the gaps. I'm not sure how to frame this or anticipate it, and I hope the pavement over which my ankles bow is enough. I am seismically proud of my husband, and confident in him, and I'm feeling (when I get enough sleep) that the threshold here is the line between stasis and growth, comfort and adventure. I think this is what we need? I think I'll keep up, at least for the next week and a half. 

marrying

Miller wedding #3 is this morning. My sweet, deep-thinking, passionate golden brother found his match, and I didn't think I could love either of them more than I have in the years building up to this, but then I watched them yesterday during the rehearsal and changed my mind. 

Our people of the grass and tree and sky are unfortunately being chased out of a park and into a church for their ceremony because of thunder and rain, but you know it doesn't really change things in the end. I'm going to be there on and my breath is still going to catch and hold and I am going to watch them slide into one unit. I'm so proud of them. This is the real deal. 

I have a lot of room to grow

The corn is so tall on both sides of our country road that driving home is in a whispering hallway smelling of green and stickiness. I've gotten to know these turns.

In the foggy cool mornings I take off on foot in the opposite direction, running alongside cows and gravel ditches. I feel a sense of rightness and I feel my legs regaining some of their oomph. I feel almost like it's time to name myself a victor.

sanding down

We never stop falling to pieces, do we? We never come to a complete rest, a stasis, we continue to dissolve in the rain and the daylight. You might be a block of solid marble, veins of green and gold jagging throughout, and the corners rub off, the blocks crumble away bit by bit to reveal a stunning bust, a hymn to terpsichore, a liquid moment captured and saved in rock–beautiful, permanent, whole now that it's halved, and if the weather beats down further, all it will do is polish and refine, make dainty the already tight patterns. Or you might crumble like a river bank. Time sweeps higher every year, swells, froths and tears support from roots, sand from grasses, eating away at shelves and leaving behind the fingers of mud and bare roots exposed to the horizon. I am a muddy bank that has always been muddy. Nothing gains in grace.

I am still living. I have been feeling profusely these past few weeks, good and bad, and last night I psyche-vomited out all the feelings I had left, which left me just roots, husky and pink and incoherent and unable to make any sort of decision about going along/staying home/needing S/needing to be alone. I've done a lot of lying flat on my back on the floor.

I suspect this might sound like a bad thing. I suspect it's actually not.

I AM THE COWARD WHO DID NOT PICK UP THE PHONE

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone, so as never to know. So many clocks and yardsticks dumped into an ocean.

I am the ox which drew the cart full of urgent messages straight into the river, emerging none the wiser on the opposite side, never looking back at all those floating envelopes and postcards, the wet ashes of some loved one's screams.
How was I to know?

I am the warrior who killed the sparrow with a cannon. I am the guardian who led the child by the hand into the cloud, and emerged holding only an empty glove. Oh--

the digital ringing of it. The string of a kite of it, which I let go of. Oh, the commotion in the attic of it--in the front yard, in the back yard, in the driveway--all of which I heard nothing of, because I am the one who closed the windows and said This has nothing to do with us.

In fact, I am the one singing this so loudly I cannot hear you even now.
(Mama, what's happening outside? Honey, is that the phone?)

I am the one who sings, 

The bones and shells of us.
The organic broth of us.
The zen gong of us.

Oblivious, oblivious, oblivious.


-Laura Kasischke 

living

I am glowing with love tonight, even though S's car died in the grocery store parking lot this afternoon. Bro-in-law and all around astoundingly wonderful human being stepped in to save our milk and eggs, and the car was towed, and we have money in the bank to fix it. And I spent this evening talking for hours to an old/new friend, and sharing beer and playing cards and eating quiche and the last of the funeral cake. There are some people your heart recognizes, and she is one. I'm very rich in ways that matter, and my finger stopped hurting, and I have had the thought twice today that I'm really, really glad to be living, and living here. I am grateful.

setting down

I burned my tender guitar-string-battered finger yesterday morning and held a bag of ice all day until I set it down for the memorial service for a man who was stubborn and brilliant and more complicated than I realized, and who was a mentor to my husband for 15 years. He was forced to level down from living as an ambitious 90 mph musical phenom to desiccating in a motorized wheelchair when MS (there is too much MS) sunk its teeth into him. It finally killed him. There was a lot of laughter during the service, even so. S and his brother sat with me on our couch afterward and we ate chocolate cake and toasted to the memories. He taught them both so much about music and caring and what it means to be accountable. I don't think either of them really know yet what it means to not have him in their lives. I'm glad I got to meet him, and I'm glad I met with his approval. He would call S and tell him to hang on to me.

ok here

I married a wonderfully hard-working man, who comes home from a 12 hour shift and uncomplainingly deals with a basement--our home--dripping with last night's rain. Fans and wet-vacs and dehumidifiers and infinite patience. This evening I was inhaling (as I do) old photos of my father-in-law as the suave, two buttons down person he was at 21, and I feel a bit of a stab when I forget, sometimes, that he wasn't always in a wheelchair. But, oh, I feel lucky to be doggedly pursuing dryness and comfort and future with his son, the product of that confident grin. I am ok here.

families

I'm very grateful to be a part of an extended family with whom I can travel to Ohio and spend four days in companionable company, and whom I genuinely, heartily, nearly universally like. And I'm just as grateful plus 20% to have my own little family to come home to afterward--my sweet, handsome husband, who kindly allows me to sleep skin-to-skin and who will never wear off.

legacy

My office has been helping a retired librarian researching/preparing his and his wife's family's personal history for publishing. He's legit. He's collected thousands of footnotes. It's been years, it's been fascinating, and it finally came home from the bindery, a big, heavy, serious book, and the other day he brought it in to show us. It's 600 pages and full of photos I scanned for him and research my coworker helped him find and he misspelled her name when when he thanked us in the acknowledgements but we didn't tell him. He kept telling us he thought he'd die before he saw it. I had just put lotion on my hands and left a handprint on the brand new binding. I'll see it on our shelves.

marrying

I fell asleep last night somewhere around #29 when trying to count the number of weddings I've been to, and I woke up preoccupied with what you're supposed to do when you don't have trust in one or the other. I decided maybe the best thing is to just be a sociologist.

I bet I could grade some of the weddings with levels of belief/confidence/doom. I will self-congratulatingly put mine and S's on the very upper end of the confidence scale, because I got it right, got lucky. But not everyone does.

I do a lot of thinking about this. My best friend and I spent last evening in the hammock trying to figure it all out.

Marriage ain't no joke, and though I firmly, firmly believe that it should be an option for any and everyone, I firmly, firmly believe that getting married as a knee-jerk next step, or out of fear, or out of impulse, is asking for a life of major struggles. Not necessarily ensuring struggles, but oh, definitely leaving yourself vulnerable to them. I've SEEN it already in some of my peers, and I'm even apparently a product of it, as I've recently learned some absolutely chilling things about one of my own great-grandfathers and the way he terrorized and lessened the lives of my great-grandmother and all 12 of his children. They shouldn't have gotten married.

I doubt that any of the several dozen weddings I've been to will result/have resulted in that kind of visible misery, but, dude, I know that there is some subcutaneous misery, and a few have already ended in divorce, and I even know of some couples where divorce should happen but won't.

Years later I vividly remember the worst, most pessimistically fluorescent wedding I've ever been to, and I hope I never have to watch something like that again, and I guess what I'm saying is, ahhhh. People. This is serious and you don't have to. This summer is full of weddings for me, and I have my husband right there reminding me of our own every day, and I guess I just get in a loop sometimes.

happiness levels

This week has felt long, measured in kicks from my hot, parched feet strangling under blankets at night. The upside and downside of living in one room is that the bed is always right, right there. I've taken more incidental naps than usual. I can take a nap on the way from the table to the sink. I don't sleep well at night.

I've been using up scrap yarn, and I've been flailing in the mornings, sometimes (but not today), trying to come up with something akin to running. I've been irrationally annoyed by evening visitors and irrationally afraid of being abandoned. I am all about goldfish crackers these days, and am being very reluctant about getting back in the habit of lunches at work.

Three weekends in a row I've missed my Saturday morning zen, which leaves me less room to miss the sunny mornings in the old apartment. Tomorrow it'll come, though, the zen, the missing. I plan on filling the freezer, because I'm out of practice.

Two weekends ago S and I were in NY at a lake and it was absolutely lovely and I try to legitimately picture us all as 50 year olds, keeping the tradition. I can't quite believe it yet, because I know how things pull apart, and how people change, but, oh, I hope this is the end result anyway: a joint 50th birthday party, on a lake, with kayaks and sunlight and burgers on the grill and staying up way too late drinking tequila (I don't even like tequila) and wine (I do like wine) and sob-laughing and spooning on the ottoman. The trip home from NY was a bubble being popped and some despair in the fact that my happiness is forever--voluntarily--tied into another's happiness, and all the bizarre mixed results that come from levels misaligning. I think sometimes that this is how the next two or three years will be.

We were gone again last weekend, driving up and around to the tip of New Jersey, and arriving just minutes before a wedding that was creaky and a little awkward and a little gorgeous, and featured S's cousin as maybe the most beautiful, and the most kind, and the most radiantly happy bride I've ever seen, and the rest of the weekend was spent with S's extended family. I always like being a niece. It's one of my favorite self-descriptors. I married into another family full of aunts and uncles. I know it's all complicated, and there are always undercurrents and gossip and flaws, but I still try very hard (and sometimes it's not hard at all) to fall in love with this whole new stack of family. It was a thick and busy weekend. I had a crick in my neck the whole time and I spent a lot of time criticizing S over things. But I also stood in a blowing, billowing long dress with my feet in the ocean underneath an inky night and a full, bright moon, and I also really, really loved my man's family and my man, too, even if we've reached the stage in our relationship where we're stressed and in close quarters and at different levels of happiness and my pickiness is rollicking.

There's a lot going on/been going on is what I'm saying, I guess, and I'm grateful to have tomorrow to look forward to as a break in the bustle, and a Saturday to myself, at home, with a long book breakfast and manufactured sunlight.

staying alive

I am being made happy by the return to below 90° temperatures in the library stacks (it's been a long three weeks), and by an earnest hula hooper on her 22nd birthday. And by scrap afghans and companionship and Law and Order marathons and fuchsia pants and cheese. And definitely happy at the prospect of spending this weekend up in the Finger Lakes with some of my favorite people, to make up for months and months of not-doing-that. I've been feeling... alright... and I have been sitting up straighter and I joke around a lot and currently, two weeks into the basement adventure dumbassery experiment, my husband and I have not yet let one-room-living turn us against each other. Partially, I think, because we're focused on presenting a united front against the ants and 'muscular' spiders. We're going to stay alive.

PEONIES

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
pools of lace,
white and pink--
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again--
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?


~Mary Oliver

so it goes

The good news is that the move is over, and the bad news is, waaaaaaaah everything is smaller and less private-er and dirtier and harder and I miss windows. But more good news: I am pretty consistently resilient (i.e. forgetful as hell), so I know for a fact that my new, cramped, foreign setting will stop feeling unusual within weeks, just as soon as my brain wipes the way things used to be from my memory desk. And also some good news is this collection of photographs. Look through them. Just do. It's made my morning feel much more pro-humanity than if left alone.

ready

Thankful, today, to have a desk job, because my legs can rest and the desk can serve as a chin prop in a pinch. In the home stretch now of a labor-intensive move, and so ready to be done and used to it already, and also really really jonesing for a vacation. It'll come.

unaccountably happy

I have been unaccountably happy this week. Maybe it's because of the infectious way one of our new summer student employees giggles. Or the drama and beauty of a week of roiling gray clouds and thunderstorms. Or the delighted feeling of aliveness I've been having lately, without any breaks for dizziness or malaise or anxiety. Or it's a joy hangover from last weekend's wedding and the bridal shower we threw for my future sister-in-law. There are FLOWERS everywhere. I certainly wouldn't have blamed me if I had been a big ol grump this week, because it's been a long hard one. S and I and some intrepid volunteers have been spending all of our free hours scrubbing and clearing the basement so we can move in next week. Thick black mildew, I'm not even kidding, and paint and dust and scrubbing, oh, eight years worth of gross boy out of the room and please do not get me started on the bathroom. It's getting better. I'll attack it again tonight. I don't know why I'm still so agreeable in the face of this. Our lovely, breezy apartment, the one I've lived in for a record three years and was the first 'home' for me and S, is a ruttin' mess. I've even taken down all the curtains. Fragile April would not have been able to sleep soundly or relax in an echoey, filthy, box strewn apartment, and if the fact that I'm taking this all in stride and still smiling isn't proof that I'm FINALLY getting my head screwed back on my body properly, I don't know what is. I even had to say goodbye mid-week to the kid at work who had been my nemesis for the past few months. Now who am I supposed to prank/tease/be teased by? Even this, and I'm fine. More than fine. I'm happy and I'm energetic and despite all of the hard work and transition coming up in the next week, I am excited. I can do this.

meant to be

There were some really beautiful things this weekend, chief among them getting to witness the bachelorest person I know (knew) turning into a soft, smiling smiling thing around his new wife. That, and my handsome husband in a groomsman tux playing silky saxophone during the ceremony, and later, dancing with me in a reception hall in Floyd, VA. Champagne toasts and macaroni and cheese and peanut butter pie and a warm table full of friends who make me laugh and who stand in a gazebo in the rain with me, and who dance whole-heartedly to Gangnam Style and who give out bear hugs to anyone who wants one and half of those who don't.
I have no reservations about this couple. She is pint-sized and fierce and he is bending down to meet her and they looked really, really happy and sure of their decision. I almost needed eclipse glasses to watch their first dance. That's clearly the way it should be.

stress

I didn't even really close my eyes until 3:00am because there is so much static in my head about the next two weeks. We have done 5% of what needs to be done to empty out and refill a tiny basement apartment. Our power is getting shut off and the landlord needs his keys back on the 31st and I honestly don't know how we'll have the time and resources to actually be intact when we get to that point. S works all the time, and I'm kind of flickering and not particularly hearty enough to bear the brunt of the move myself. And we're going to be out of town this weekend for a good reason, a good wedding, but it is yet another chunk of time that's going to go by without us having a safe home. So I was wide awake and buzzing for hours and hours last night. I'm going to have to keep my knees jackhammering up and down all day today to stay awake and am going to have to give myself allowances for more sleepless nights and there's going to be a level of stress/busyness/mourning over the next 15 days that will be at a code red, but will hopefully stay within itself so I can go about readjusting to a new smaller reality with grace when June finally gets here. I forget why we're doing this.

spilling better

I wonder what it means that I am perpetually in the mindset that I'm becoming more honest. I keep thinking, oh man, I never used to be able to straight out admit that/ask for that/open up my chest like that. I think it's kind of true.

being not easy going

I am becoming stringently anti-clutter. I think this happens to people when they move. Also, my practical side is expanding. I am willy-nilly throwing out/giving away things, even lovely things sometimes, if they don't serve a current purpose and aren't achingly sentimental. Maybe even if they are. I am not good with the past, because I don't live in it, and I forget it. I keep digital copies and throw out the originals.

We're moving into a basement that is full (really) of several decades worth of 90% (in my eyes) junk. Dusty, claustrophobic, almost hoarder-level junk. It is lighting a fire under my ass. Can you BELIEVE I used to self-identify as 'easy going?!' I am not. I am discovering pet peeves by the bucket full these days. Like TRINKETS. DAMNIT, I AM ANTI-TRINKETS. I married into a family full of them, but luckily to a man who leans away from the pull of acquisition in his genes. I am almost disgusted, I'm afraid to admit, by multiple sets of novelty china, and specialty bowls and pie plates and half melted candles. I think I'm becoming my mom? I'm fighting, not to eliminate specialness and beauty, but to make sure that the specialness and beauty is utilitarian, and doesn't sit unused and dusty in a basement for ten years.

I have a vision of how to make the basement hospitable, and it involves a lot of gently urging S's parents to allow us to get rid of as much as we possibly can, and consolidating the rest into a neat pile on one end that I never have to look at. And then mopping and dusting and shampooing the current carpet and laying new rugs and scrubbing the baseboard and BLEACHING THE FUCK OUT OF THE BATHROOM and hanging curtains to cover the cracked cinder blocks and maximizing the small windows by actually washing them, and rigging up some room dividers and and and getting rid of as much of our stuff as we can stand and boxing up everything we won't mind not seeing for a few years and organizing--militantly--what remains in big tupperware bins and particle board cabinets in our little corner and then keeping the interior of our bedroomlivingroomkitchen as clean and usable as I most possibly can. My face is red.

circumstance

We're at the end of another school year. I have hated finals week less this semester than usual, because my mind has been elsewhere and the spectacle is kind of worth the crowd. There was a guy in a giant shark costume running around in here.

Again two of our work study students are graduating, and again my heart tugs. We have a pretty great record here, for having students who tug my heart. These two graduating are just so glaringly good and strong and clever, and one of the reasons I'm glad to have known one of them is because I like being able to think to myself, I know a gangly, cheerful astrophysicist (almost)! and the other, because she is a ball of sweetness and generosity and spent this week handing out Hershey's kisses to the studiers out on the floor and I have a soft spot for people who are composed of one giant soft spot. It's been so nice to have them around.

good morning

This week I've been in on two surprise parties thrown by two people, for each other. Fortunately they picked different days.

So I baked cookies.

And last evening I spent two hours talking to someone I hadn't talked to in two years and that's the dumbest thing, ever, not talking to a kindred spirit for two years. Things change in the meantime, and in this case, it's going to be better.

I've found an almond-scented hand lotion I love. I am at least the third generation of this.

And my window of feeling like I am going to die after arriving across town on my bike has shrunk from 30 minutes to 10.

I've got optimism coming out my ear holes today.

over and over

I am in the habit of--without trying to--speaking in asides and parentheses and being a co-conspirator and interrupting myself and misspelling the word 'receive.'

wrap up

This week has been loud noises and bright colors and a very bad day and a slightly less bad day and deep gravity and relearning a quilting needle and good behavior and season 5 of Mad Men and surprise Starbucks from a favorite student assistant and a decent amount of time on my bike and bright spring flowers stopping me in my tracks and lots of tzatziki sauce and bocce ball in a cool grassy evening with bare feet and grilled chicken and big trucks and stubborn love from my husband. I'm still kicking. I'm glad it's Friday.

step 2

I am getting too achy and inflexible to keep sitting on a slant and standing with my right butt cheek popped up and my legs in a knot. I need to shoot for symmetry or I'll end up curled into a ball unable to curl back.

heels in

I'd forgotten how cold my thumbs get when I bike through a chilly morning and how crusty the outside corners of my eyes.

I'd also forgotten how good then bad then good it feels to be active all weekend and then to realize I've scheduled myself into a sort of knot for the upcoming week, and it's probably ok, but it's much, much more.

There are things in my life right now that hadn't been, on purpose, for more than a year, because I couldn't handle them. The biking is one, the eating things made from scratch is another, and the tickets for events and the lunch dates and weekend mornings in a sunny park and dinner plans and moving next month and a calender full of out of town weekend trips all summer. I do NOT trust myself. I give that list and my hackles raise because my mindset is not there yet. I worry that I'm skipping the gray area again and going straight from one extreme to another, because I often do this: I am on or I am off. I am on, and I'm worried that I still should be off. I'm worried that I'm going to fail/fall/regress. I burst into tears yesterday afternoon because of this. But it's ok not to keep sitting down. If I have the guts I'm going to get stronger and sleeker and rosy. I don't reeeeally have a choice.

tiny rage

your ≠ you're, boss.

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs. 

~Wallace Stevens

step 1

I need to get my narrative back from I'm weak, I need help to I can do this.

this is why

what's going on

I biked to work today (!?!) and you'd think my hands would stop being dry and cracky now that it's warm again but they're not, so I should buy myself some healthy lotion as a birthday present, and this morning our apartment is being shown because we're moving out.

I'm pink and shaky and not at all sure that a hilly 3.5 miles is the best way for the current (weak, fuzzy, chubby) me to start a day, but I did make it the whole way here and I did NOT take it easy, because I am genetically incapable of anything between inactive and full speed. So I was full speed. This afternoon will likely be the worst part. More uphilly, after a long day at work, through what they're saying will be 87° air. 

I'm about to be in the last year of my 20s, and I feel like I should make it a monumental one. My capabilities and goals have been shrunk to the point of pinpricks over the past year and a half and it has gotten to the point where I'm pretty sure I'm just S's wife. I'm really good at that, I know I am, but I need (I wish someone could just give me a bulleted list to tell me how) to be living at least a little for April and making decisions for April. I think I really need to get myself a good notebook or journal or something, to use with a pen, not with a keyboard, and keep it with me and use it to digest the news and ideas that I am always insatiable for and then forget right after the podcast ends or I move on to the next article. That'd be a good way to prepare for being 30. Try to maybe internalize all the things that (briefly) make my brain dance. I will never not have a sieve for a memory, but at least I can finally, this year, acknowledge the fact that I need the crutch of writing things down, because no, April, you will not (and have not, ever) remember on your own.

I'd like to get back to a reasonable state of health. I'm honestly not sure if I'll ever have the cocky, easy body confidence I had before I got sick. I do not take for granted my ability to keep going. I'm still having late waves of malaise and dizziness and thick, gooey headedness from time to time, although I barely notice, unless it's really bad, and even then, I deal. I deal with it really well. And I have been doing more better than worse. The doctors still think it's just some sort of bacterial infection that my immune system can't reach, or it's some iteration of post-viral fatigue, or it's something else? but you're probably going to be ok? you're not getting worse, right? I never really managed to get answers, and I'm running out of a desire to keep searching as I get better at managing/better. 

For the past year and a half I've embraced the doubt and anxiety and sloth that was the natural result of being sick and tired and unable to control any damn thing about it and it's led to a holy crapload of new emotional baggage and 30 pounds. With S's help, my emotional baggage is being turned to emotional maturity and with time maybe I'll be able to turn 30 pounds back into muscles and the ability to walk/run/bike the way I used to. For all of our sakes. 

We're moving. 3 miles away. In with S's parents. In May. I feel about this a loud screeching in my head while I'm nodding and smiling. It's actually going to be, I think, ok. They have a mostly unfinished basement with one medium sized finished room and a bathroom. So, we're going to move in there. The one room will be kitchen/living room/bedroom, and then, um. I don't know yet how exactly we're going to handle this. It's a good damn thing I love my husband so much, and believe in him with all my heart, because that's why we're doing this--he's going back to school this fall full-time to get an RN. My man's going to be a nurse. He's going to be the best nurse in the world. But it's expensive, and he'll be quitting his job, and, there we have it. Two years or so of living in a one room basement and pinching pennies because I love the man and would do anything to make his dreams come true. And honestly, yeah, underneath the screeching I do realize this is a good call. It'll be nice to be so close to his family, and it's not as if we'll spend all our time there sequestered in a dark, windowless room. Their house is in the country, and it's welcoming enough to imagine evenings in the hammock and walks up grassy hills, and I know for a fact his mom will try to feed us all the time even when we have (an itty bitty, in our bedroom) kitchen of our own in the basement, and I know it'll be good to be able to be near to his dad if his health deteriorates and I know it's the best thing for right now, and I know it'll set us up well for the next stage of life which just may include a big ol' house and kids and genuine adultness, but the logistics and the general tragedy of moving from an airy, comfortable two bedroom apartment full of Things We Use! to a one room, dark and damp basement with very little space to take the Things We Use out of their boxed is a heavy one. 

So anyway, that's what's going on these days. I'm turning 29 tomorrow and next month we're going underground and I really hope I'll be able to make it home from work this afternoon without death.  

surviving

I wore my jacket inside out this morning and my hair is good today and I got my way, anyway, and I'm glad I'm a human being, and my grandpa's in the hospital, and I'm so glad my begonia kind of survived the winter.

long morning

I had to cut a chunk of pine-pitched hair off, because the branch that fell on me during a windy afternoon. Someone is eating grilled cheese at 8:00am and the stacks elevator smells like jelly beans or maybe cigar smoke, and I'm kind of feeling like I'm running on low-power. We are about to move into a time of change.

punching bag again

I’m relieved that I’ve acquired a fake work nemesis again. Since my last one left in May there’s been a bottling up of artificial outrage and practical jokes under my skin. It helps it really helps.

things that have happened

An unexpected five day weekend due to a combo of heavy snow and a Friday off for spring break, a recovery from the bad days and a return to gloopy-headed normalcy, a doctor's appointment, a missed opportunity, an existential crisis, a feeling of blorpiness, an afternoon of games and cupcakes, an agreement for what-happens-next (that's a whole big thing, and I'll get into it later), bacon and eggs, a good day, a sick husband, and melting tenderness.

good at something

The best part about a sick husband is leftover chicken noodle soup for lunch the next day. I'm kind of really good at making comfort food soup.

snowed

I'm snowed in today with a foot of the thick wet, horizontal, 34° stuff. It has had quite impeccable timing, because it's spring break, and therefore dull and quiet at work, and because yesterday was a very, very, very bad day in the body of April and though I'm not doing much better today, I am relieved to be typing this from in bed rather than at my desk. I'm operating under the assumption that my suffering has a limit and that I'm earning decades of good karma through these past 16 months of firey malaise. Just wait til I'm better, guys. I'll be huge. Also, because yesterday was really remarkably miserable, even for me, I'm toying with the fantasy that I'm boomeranging, and am about to come back out on the other side, the war in my immune system having finally come to a head. Maybe I feel so sick because I'm actually fighting this time. Maybe I'm reverse tracking the descent that happened an autumn ago. That would be more fair than being kicked when I'm down, because I'm over the whole martyr thing.

This snow is sticking to everything, and making me nervous about S having to drive into work for the evening shift, but it's also muffling, and distracting, and turning all the trees into cotton bushes, and so far it hasn't weighed down our power lines to the breaking point, and so far S is still at home and nuzzling me and bringing me muffins in bed. I don't have to pretend! 

digging a bit

Things that are good today:

• my lips
• the orange in my desk drawer

red

I have the hardest time remembering what the word 'sanguine' means.

that's it

Oh yikes I think Monday was the highlight of my week and it's been nosediving since. I have been easily maddened this week, by nothing for lunch and by unjustified patience and by my body not behaving the way a 28 year old woman's body should and by not hearing back from the latest doctor I'm begging for help. The malaise has been strong this week because/in spite of the fact that I've been amping up my physical activity. Because I HAVE to. I am not built to be still. So I have been dragging around on short runs and doing exercise dvds and stretching out all my bunched muscles. I honestly don't know the roots of my sickness so I honestly don't know whether or not I'm pulling a trigger by pushing my body to sweat a little. But I'm kind of up against a wall because I am so goddamn tired of feeling sick. And this week I haven't even had a break of weightlessness and optimism. I'M PROBABLY MAKING MYSELF WORSE. I CAN'T WIN. It's been a week wherein the acting like I'm the good kind of April during the day/in public has totally emptied out all of my reserves and when I'm with S in the evenings I have only wanted to be unconscious or to flail at him with my fists because I'm so mad. Because he ate the last of the quiche I was saving for lunch today even though he didn't know that but I'm mad anyway because he's too nice to me and that's IT.

please rince out the sink

Many reasons to love working in a library, chief among them how quickly the rince/rinse debacle in the staff lounge was resolved.

recovering

I am paying for/not paying for a series of excesses, in my arms, in my forehead, elsewhere. But I think I'm getting my mojo back. I think my bounding into the room is getting more reliable. This weekend we bought a new blender and tan corduroy pants, and we may or may not have been speaking German.

every week

The parts that happen over and over again I really start to relish. I plan ahead all week to Friday after work, with a list in my pocket and a pile of canvas bags on my passenger seat. I listen to the week's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast in the car on the way to the food co-op for the first half of the list, and the bigger store a block from home for the rest. I take a heady amount of satisfaction in my ability to stock the kitchen with the right amounts of things, to not forget the foods I know S wants, to always have a spare bottle of dish soap when the one on the sink runs out. I have this part of growing up under control. I carry all the bags into the apartment in one trip even if it's impractical and I unpack and sit at the table sipping kombucha as the podcast winds down. It always ends with the what's-making-us-happy segment and I fit right in.
Saturday morning is another one. S leaves for work at 7:30 and I'm up, too, sipping the coffee he made for me and eating eggs wrapped in a tortilla with almost-too-much hot sauce. This morning, as it has been for a few weeks now, I'm reading a charming Debora Geary book thanks to my sister's generous kindle, and listening to Delta Rae (you wouldn't regret it if you bought their album, or borrowed it from me).
I've always been someone who relishes in the little, the present, the simple. I am capable of flash and exuberance and on the good days, adventures, but my default way to find joy is in a gentle-ish routine and a piling up of the little satisfactions and the little victories into a sweet stew of whole souls and deep breaths. 

loved

I say this a lot and I mean this a lot: I am very loved. My husband is a jackpot. He is brave and assertive and honest and kind and sexy and above all willing to choose to love me and choose to work at our marriage everyday. He is the type of man to give me a sweet card just because it's a Wednesday, or to cook a romantic dinner just because he feels like it. Valentine's Day is NOT the pinnacle of loveyness in our home. It was off the charts yesterday, with mixed veggies and kielbasa and chocolate souffles and pink roses and whiskey and Sherlock on Netflix (OMG), but the thing is we are off the charts pretty often. When we get to spend an evening together, it's always a clinging, joyful thing and there's so much meat to our relationship (heh). I am incredibly lucky to be married to someone who is so full of depth and heart and who sees and magnifies my own depth and heart. We're really, really well suited to each other. I'm bragging. I can't help it. Have you met him?!

self

My boobs look good today and my eyes are green, and I'm pleased on both counts.

paint thinner

S has been perma-gone this week, and I won't see him today/tomorrow until at least 2:00am. I am awfully dependent on that wall of warm steel. I did get an hour of his time yesterday, and that was well placed, because I haven't been knocking on wood often enough, I guess, and I had a bad body day, just after starting to say things about doing better than last month. I didn't even recognize myself in the mirror for a heartbeat, and that's a sure way to tell how bad it is. On my good days I have a lot of spark in me and on the rough ones I'm pretty shellacked over. At the moment we're working under the assumption that I have a chronic bacterial infection, and if that is the case... it's still there. I can't quit, though. We're pretty stuck together, my body and me. Not to say that I haven't been happy, though, even in the face of alleged bacteria and a too busy husband. I have been. I've been listening to loud music in the car and taking long, curative baths, and I've been charmed by and deeply appreciative of some of the lovely people I work with, and have been reading books about witches, and as I mentioned, I had a lot of tacos this week, and Jimmy John's for lunch yesterday. I'm really not miserable. I'm actually really enjoying the things I can enjoy, and reveling in the good days. Oh god, the character growth. I think I'd be a whole lot more grateful for it if I were on the other side and not still in the middle.

of all the foods

I've definitely eaten tacos four days in a row. I definitely don't have a problem with that.

big bertha

My good news is that the depressing dream I had about having to study for finals isn't true, and that I came into work this morning to find this on my book cart:

and that I'm pretty sure I'm always going to love being in the same room as my siblings two evenings in a row, and that my husband does yoga.

nodometer

I think I am very lucky because my biggest concerns are my busted odometer and malfunctioning router. It feels weird.

balance

I am still riding a wave of good mood/will/skull status. I've been paid in free ice cream and righteous indignation, and both feel more than adequate.

keeping up

This doesn't MEAN anything, but it was a slow morning at work so I ran a query to see how many individual interlibrary loan transactions I've processed since I started working here six years ago and the number is in the 53,000s. No wonder the number pad on my keyboard shows a lot of wear. Oh, I've been good here.

going on

More ups from Arrested Development sharing and merlot and getting along with someone I'd never tried to before and getting along with someone I'd never gotten a chance to before.

still a morning girl

I'm getting a lot of joy this morning, even from the slick ice chipping off a windshield. Joy from corduroys, and a quiet library, and from birthdays in winter.

humor

I looked in the mirror just now and thought, 'you look like someone with a sense of humor.' The good days are so exciting.

another week

This week has been made of witch hazel and cow colostrum (not a joke), Mad Men, salt and vinegar chips, perpetually this, phone calls to the help desk, absurdity to the point of scolding, and rubbing my eyes a lot. Also, good baked tilapia and falling off of things and a new battery for my car that I did not have to deal with. I tell you, being married has made my life so much easier. I didn't have to buy the milk or refill the napkin holder.

Two days ago my legs felt like they used to feel all the time--coiled up and ready to run/walk/bike. I really, really, really want to do that again someday. This has been such a long... everything. It's odd to be able to call this past year+ the worst time in my life and also the best, by far, the best. No wonder I'm confused.

a little of

It has been a week of aloneness for me. Half on purpose, half not. S has been busy, working or gone every evening. I haven't had an excuse to leave the apartment after burrowing in after work. I've been drinking tea and going to bed to read myself to sleep even when it's only 8:30. January is such a heavy month. There have been bright spots, like the weight of a new skein of yarn and the aforementioned tea, and the fact that although I still feel lousy (I tell you, I feel lousy), an appointment yesterday gave me a few more possible 'why's to cling to and even a few possible fixes to try. I'm venturing into the world of homeopathy, and by god, it might work. And S always comes home to me at night, and even when I'm already asleep, he is a salve. He kisses my forehead and wraps me in his arms and before I even ask (I always ask), he tells me how much he loves me and how glad he is to have found me. The doctor yesterday asked if I'm often weepy. Am I weepy! I wonder how much control I have!

balance

It's really pretty remarkable, when you think about it, that my arm knows how to keep a mug of hot tea from spilling when I'm galloping down the flight of stairs from the staff lounge.

right time, right place

TWICE in a WEEK there has been on an inopportune day an opportune gmail chat with someone I wasn't expecting, and TWICE in a WEEK it has been exactly what I needed.

sunday

Relaxed, distressed, centered, charmed, full, disappointed, emotional, grateful, asleep.

winter

There is snow on the ground that has been there for more than a week. I feel like I've been gypped. I am not living in New York for a reason. At least the skies are blue? Sometimes I wonder how much better I'd be if I were allowed to hibernate. I'm alright, though. It's been a short week and I'm well-fed.

no viable alternative

I went to NY and back for NYE and thankfully S drove the whole time both trips. I'm in deep, deep debt.

This is ridiculous. It is not fair. I'm oozing with disgust of two varieties. For the way my body crumbles on itself after late nights and post-adrenaline, for the way this office feels since coming back.

I'm sick. I haven't not been. I'm distressed. I did much better tucked away at home. I think? If money weren't an issue and if stir crazy wasn't either, maybe I shouldn't be here?

That's not true. I adjust. I always adjust. I will adjust. I can act. I will act.

My fingers are hangnailing and my legs are bouncing up and down.

I have loved, though. I am very attached. And very grateful to feel the love in return.

I know to drink a lot of water and go to bed at 9:00, and that helps. And I know that this day will go on in spite of me, and I will get a ride home from work, and I'll spend the evening with my family.

I have no idea which doctor to turn to or which vitamin to take or which offer to say no to to help my body finally heal. It's such a goddamn mess. I'll bury my nose in a cup of tea and soldier forward because I haven't yet found a viable alternative.