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.