6.30.2011
lemonade out of stress
So... any tips on how to, like, make lemonade out of stress? Turn boo-stress to eustress? Ha. I am going to need some help here. Two of my three stress relief valves (my lover and my best friend) are gone for the next ten days, and the third (my mom) will be gone for about five of them. I don't even know what it means to be self-contained anymore. Once I started letting it--I mean, me--all hang out it's just kept hanging. I have become a person who revels in the company of others. I don't regret this. But man. Without physical access to my VIPs I'm going to be kind of floundering for the next week or so. This is the time to be self-soothing. I am needing to work on picking the pace up with that. WITHOUT repeated visits to Taco Bell and dark, angsty teenage-style scribblings. Although Taco Bell is delicious (I will stand by this) and at least my scribblings wouldn't be about friendlessness and lovelessness and hopelessness. Just, you know, stupid grown up things like money and jobs and wedding planning. We can find a compromise here.
6.29.2011
not waiting well
WHY is today THIS Wednesday? I'd so much rather it be NEXT Wednesday. Or hell, the Wednesday after that! I'm exhausting myself with pique.
6.28.2011
tatoos and cellulite
Every time I go to a waterpark I come home with a few new stereotypes to add to my arsenal.
6.27.2011
to the right
Today I parted my hair a little to the right of center, wondering why I always go to the left. Oh yes, it's because of that streak of silver right there, growing out of an old scar and getting a head start (ha) on the rest of my scalp.
I beat a train across town on my bike this morning. We rode parallel for three miles. I did a bit of flying.
This was the weekend of wedding registries. I kept staying up til 1:00 looking up product reviews. Boom, Kohl's. Boom. With money being what it is (where is it??) I do hope this registry thing will actually work for us. I would like it if you buy me soft towels.
On Friday evening my family had a bonfire and an almost-three year old kept wriggling all over me in the grass and making me laugh. The part before he's mine and it's still cute and endearing to hear the 'hey April, hey April, hey April!' is a savory one.
Also this weekend while I was at the grocery store the produce stocker stopped me and asked to take a picture of my shirt, because he thought it was hilarious. It is hilarious. And I don't know, I'd never had a stranger want to take my picture before and something about it made my back straighter.
It is a GRAY day today. I wouldn't mind that if it weren't for the fact that S's band is playing at a waterpark this evening and I scored a free ticket to come along. I guess you can never quite always line up the brilliantly hot days with the rare times they'd be appropriate. I'll try not to complain. They'll play rain or whine. I mean, rain or shine.
I beat a train across town on my bike this morning. We rode parallel for three miles. I did a bit of flying.
This was the weekend of wedding registries. I kept staying up til 1:00 looking up product reviews. Boom, Kohl's. Boom. With money being what it is (where is it??) I do hope this registry thing will actually work for us. I would like it if you buy me soft towels.
On Friday evening my family had a bonfire and an almost-three year old kept wriggling all over me in the grass and making me laugh. The part before he's mine and it's still cute and endearing to hear the 'hey April, hey April, hey April!' is a savory one.
Also this weekend while I was at the grocery store the produce stocker stopped me and asked to take a picture of my shirt, because he thought it was hilarious. It is hilarious. And I don't know, I'd never had a stranger want to take my picture before and something about it made my back straighter.
It is a GRAY day today. I wouldn't mind that if it weren't for the fact that S's band is playing at a waterpark this evening and I scored a free ticket to come along. I guess you can never quite always line up the brilliantly hot days with the rare times they'd be appropriate. I'll try not to complain. They'll play rain or whine. I mean, rain or shine.
6.24.2011
warming up
I get a pleased and plump feeling when I discover a pattern about myself, a coherence between what I'd in the past just been brushing off as my random flailings.
My newest realization is that I need some time to feel overwhelmed and incapable of a new task before I get to it. This has happened over and over with all the wedding planning bustle. At the first mention of something like designing invitations, planning ceremony details, creating a gift registry, I'd clam up and feel completely incapable of producing something I like or ever measuring up to scratch. But the fun thing is that if I give myself plenty of time and lots of opportunity to google and ask questions and think through these tasks, well. I find myself always rising to the occasion. I don't think I'll ever be able to skip that interim step, though. The days or weeks of a buzzing sort of panic and feeling of I COULDN'T POSSIBLY seem a permanent part of me. And it's a shame for people like my mom and S who get front row seats to the 'I CAN'T DO THIS I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I WANT' show. But I sort of like my warm-up period. And I like that it has an end.
My newest realization is that I need some time to feel overwhelmed and incapable of a new task before I get to it. This has happened over and over with all the wedding planning bustle. At the first mention of something like designing invitations, planning ceremony details, creating a gift registry, I'd clam up and feel completely incapable of producing something I like or ever measuring up to scratch. But the fun thing is that if I give myself plenty of time and lots of opportunity to google and ask questions and think through these tasks, well. I find myself always rising to the occasion. I don't think I'll ever be able to skip that interim step, though. The days or weeks of a buzzing sort of panic and feeling of I COULDN'T POSSIBLY seem a permanent part of me. And it's a shame for people like my mom and S who get front row seats to the 'I CAN'T DO THIS I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I WANT' show. But I sort of like my warm-up period. And I like that it has an end.
6.23.2011
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
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
6.21.2011
excuses
I'm using a doctor's appointment as an excuse to sleep in tomorrow and my sunburnt lips as an excuse to layer on and then chew off strawberry lip balm. And using the formatting wedding invitations as an excuse to spend much of my morning... wait, what?!
6.20.2011
894 miles later
I'm bleary and puffy and my blue color shows so much more vivid when I'm home. But oh, there's nothing like a weekend at a lakehouse with my childhood friends to make me think that perhaps humans are all meant to live so near bodies of water and also, to make me think with a bit of wonderment that I really did have fantastic taste when I was a kid.
I'm not just saying that because they threw me a surprise bridal shower on the deck overlooking the lake Saturday afternoon.
And of course one rather weighty other reminder I got this weekend... of the growing strength and burning warmth of the tether connecting me and S, and the way it's begun to feel so WEIRD to be in my own separate orbit, if only for three days. I think I'm pretty sure we're meant to go on adventures together. From here on out.
I'm not just saying that because if he'd have been with me on the long drive home when my eyes began to droop and smart I could have let him take the wheel. I'm not just saying that.
I'm not just saying that because they threw me a surprise bridal shower on the deck overlooking the lake Saturday afternoon.
And of course one rather weighty other reminder I got this weekend... of the growing strength and burning warmth of the tether connecting me and S, and the way it's begun to feel so WEIRD to be in my own separate orbit, if only for three days. I think I'm pretty sure we're meant to go on adventures together. From here on out.
I'm not just saying that because if he'd have been with me on the long drive home when my eyes began to droop and smart I could have let him take the wheel. I'm not just saying that.
6.16.2011
whew
My themes this week have been good posture, wishing it wasn't so goddamn hard to grow up, denial, and colored pencils. I expect my themes for this upcoming weekend to be more like Finger Lakes, good food and wine, laughter, and singing loudly at the top of my voice in my car. (WHEW.)
6.15.2011
aw heck
As in, aw heck, there's gotta be a better way to spend my time than lighting a fire under someone's ass and immediately fighting wildly to put it out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)