i'm already losing

I thought about those pesky New Year's resolutions today. I don't like making them and yet this year I went out on that limb. And a wobbly weak one it is. I almost have no plans to keep any of the ideas I thought were so fantastic a few weeks ago. Take Obama for instance. It's pretty exciting to me to hear all the good news coming from his camp. I believe in him the way people first believed in Bill Clinton. I was never swayed by that smoothe talker, but Obama looks like what our future should be. He's all shiny and pretty like a new penny. But, my working for him seems like a dream and a far distance wish. And yet the idea I had was simply somethink akin to making phone calls for him with a high pitched excited hope lingering through all those fiber optics and cell towers. I barely have time to shower these days. My world is spinning just a little too fast. It's not a bad thing, just a hurried thing and I can't imagine adding one more thing to the growing pile. It's time for things to slow down, for me to take time out and smell the fresh scent of new babies being born because it seems like they're starting to come out of people's ears, but I can't slow down and I don't really want to. We'll see about Obama, but for right now the writing has lost hope and exercise- what's that? It's why I don't make those resolutions in the first place. But then again, if I hadn't what would be lurking over my shoulder rather than bettering myself?

why i haven't written

"Maybe he'll be a writer," said my friend's husband about their brand new baby boy.
"Why a writer," I asked.
"Don't most writers have really bad childhoods?" he asked.
He was joking about the horrible life his child would live if he didn't automatically love water. This river guide and whitewater daredevil assumes that a child of his who doesn't swim on command is down for some real disappointment and better learn to pen those frustrations. I offered my reading abilities. And then his sentiment coalesced in my mind.
I've just been so darn happy- so up that writing has no misery to nourish it. I'm sure that my contentment has even put some people on edge. It's hard for me to harbor sadness, regret or angst anymore. And sometimes I can't listen to other's. All was glistening and tinged with the music of the spheres. Then tiny things starting creeping in. Not all humanity is good. Not everyone serves to better this world. And this, this is what nourishes my melancholy now- the disillusionment of reality.

It's our duty and our right I think to go through pain, to live in it and survive it and when we come out of it we're changed so that we vow to "do no harm." And I caution this with the fact that I do not mean that you begin putting bumper stickers on your car about angels flying and whirled peas. I mean that you think before you speak, you include those you don't want to and you surround yourself with those you respect. And I do this and I did this and life was a giddy. And then it backfired. I won't be deterred from my hopeful selflessness. It's hopeful because it's not perfect. I will simply have to be more cautious and let the disappointment be penned rather than stabbed. And since it takes a sad and reflective moment to make me write, I can't help but as the question "What would I rather be; happy and wordless or melancholy and prolific?"

in which i'm totally a techie, but still a girl

I got a new phone. Not because I needed one, but because it needed me. My phone, my wonderful old flip phone (my first) was just making me sad. I loved him so much when he was pushed into my hands, but this new one, this upgraded, uptraded one is all sparkly and wonderful and I'm sorry, but I haven't looked back at the little Motorola that had no camera, could not recieve pictures and voice calling or bluetooth - what are those. But my new baby, my baby rzr is all pink and all girl even though she does eveything the grey ones do. You go girl. And if I had you number I would totally text you cause that stuff is cool yo. I will say though that I do love it when cool phones are totally free. Want to see a picture of my Christams tree? Send me your number.

in which i mourn my melancholy

I want to be sad. I want to wallow in it. I wish I could cry, let it out, release the blockade. But nothing that bad has happened. It's just the tiny little things that after some time start to make me wish that crawling into bed were still my default answer. Bed sounds wrong right now, so sedentary, so almost permenant and that isn't who I am anymore.

Plans got canceled, juggling was done and still people let me down, machines let down. I've had this thought before and it's come up more recently. Sometimes I just want to be someone else's priority. The me, the now, the independence is good. It's great actually, but sometimes- like when my car dies -I want to be the destination that someone runs to, the person that someone wants to rescue. It's the just little things I need help with sometimes and that sometimes is now.

because sometimes i think it

In some ways I feel like a stranger to myself. Because constant contentment has never been part of me- never even a fleeting thought- that sometimes I don't know if it's real. But it is. It all is. And yet nothing has really changed. A friend on the phone tonight said, "You sound sad." "I'm not," I insisted. Twice. It's just such a knee jerk reaction- from me, from my friends- to assume that I am melancholy. What I am at this moment is me, whatever word that describes me (is there one?) I just am. I feel like now, like this day, this moment- even when the tiredness in my voice is read wrong- that I can finally just be still. I guess it's a little like a Buddhist feels after so much meditation- calm, OK with the now. And yet I've done no meditation. I haven't even changed my diet. Should I call this Nirvana or Enlightenment? I don't know. I think what I really am right now is normal. I think I finally feel what most humans feel from the day they are born. It just took me 30 years to get there. So is this my rebirth? In some ways yes. I finally understand that days flow like a river through our lives and that conscience movement of time does not have to be an obstacle, but a serene knowledge of consistency. I've been a time fighter, but now time just is. If I go on a walk, great. If I spend an hour watching TV, awesome. If I finish a book, good job. And stress- I hardly know her. Sure there are things on my plate, deadlines, commitments, friends, family- and my answer to them is "OK, I've got stuff to do, let's do it." And that is the part of me that feels so foreign, so other. I've always been a procrastinator, a tomorrow-is-another-day, even (mostly) a dreader. I'm now a today girl and today and tomorrow and even yesterday are good, really really good. And hope that this feeling, even now when I just want a nap, is something I can hold on to for much, much longer. And dare I say- share it.

baby mine

In a word- explosion. It’s the best way to describe it. I was sitting at my dining room table when the tiny trickle started. I sat listening for seconds thinking that it was just a new sound in another apartment. And then it was a gush, a flood, a waterfall and it was close and I ran and I screamed.

In the same chair tonight I sat while my best friend said, “Are you sitting down?” At first the thought was a tiny trickle in my mind and then the words she spoke confirmed the gush, the flood, the waterfall.

In one week two things in my life have cracked wide open. The first- my bathroom ceiling. The second- my social sphere. You see, the Object of my affection (or better my old affection, my sometimes wanderlust, my sometimes passing thought) is moving across the country to reside within a very short afternoon drive. This spins my world around, maybe even more so than my bathroom ceiling spitting on me when I pee.

My first reaction to both was a lot of bad words along with the feeling of unsteadiness like trying to water ski- the feeling of gliding, of skimming along- was within my grasp, but a little painful to achieve.

The Object has just been so perfectly out of reach, so perfectly placed on a pedestal that resided across the universe. He has been a routine for several years, a once a year face-to-face meeting, a fluttering chasm of feelings, an unhealthy amount of obsessive time wasted and then slightly forgotten. I’m a creature of habit. I like my bathroom with a dry ceiling and I like my un-gettable gets to stay un-gettable. My bathroom will be fixed, that’s what I pay rent for, but my brain pays my heat in panic attacks and that’s not good for anyone.

reaction

I need you sometimes just to be what I fall into. I don’t want to mutter in the low times anymore. It’s too dark there and I’ve been there too long. I like this lightness now, this floating I’ve been feeling. It doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes need you to be the blanket, my wrap around. Because we all need something that makes the ground softer just like moss on a forest floor that dampens the fall of acorns or pinecones- being the equal and opposite force that stops their fall. And it is what I need now, just something I can curl into and lie still with, something that only needs me to be still and quiet- my equal and opposite.

insider trading

I didn’t go to bed on Sunday night because of a boy from London. When I heard London, my ears perked up and my attention remained on him searching for an accent. There was none. He’s American, but a boy who loves London is a boy I could listen to. And he had kind eyes.

We stayed up- a group of us –until the sun came up. I watched green appear on the trees outside the window as I squinted against the increasing light. The notion of sleep was silly. I was still reworking all the words, all the questions, all the answers.

We turned the night into generalizations that turned personal. It started easily and innocently with a hypothetical, a question about what lies behind the curtain of a boy’s mind. He spilled all the secrets, said he shouldn’t be divulging so much. We ate up every word, hung on them.

“Why him and not me,” he asked at one point.

“It’s just a personal choice. It’s like why her and not me,” I replied.

“OK. I get it,” he said and with that I let him go, but we kept talking, almost endlessly about everything.

“I’m sensitive, but straight,” he cautioned us.

“I’m quoting you on that one.” He didn’t know how serious I was. I thought about leaving him my card- an arrow to this blog- a window inside my head. I hinted all night to him, but we had entered the friend zone. I could have- so many times- just slipped in beside him, turned his face to mine. I didn’t- claiming all the insecurities he had released in his conversations. In three hours I knew more about his heart, his feelings, his fears of love than I know about my closest friends. And that felt good. And he made me laugh. With his frankness and openness. I wish that I had said more to him than “bye,” in the morning- more than, “Have fun in London.”

in which i talk about nothing

When you're single you wake up in the morning alone quite often.  When you wake up in the morning alone quite often you are fairly quiet and routinized. unless, of course, a friend calls you in the morning and as you answer the phone you realize you can't talk.  This happened a few months ago when I came down with a really bad case of I-have-no-voice-yet-my-job-requires-my-voice-throat-thing.  When I told a friend that I really didn't know how bad my voice was until I got to work, she was surprised.  "You don't talk in the morning?" she quipped, confused.  "Who did you want me to talk to?"  I replied to her-married-self.  "You don't talk to yourself?  I do a lot of self talk."  "Um, no," was my raspy answer. 
 
Do people do this?  Do you talk to yourself in the morning?  If you had no one to roll over to and ask for a morning kiss or announce the annoyance of their snoring the previous night, would you just talk to the wall?  I wouldn't.  I don't.  I get up, put on the coffee, do bathroom things, get dressed, fix coffee and lunch and goodby.  There is no chat time with the silverware, no fluffing the pillows ego with ohs and ahs.  I don't even respond when Matt Lauer says absurd things like claiming that VA Tech. should have locked down the campus after the first two shootings.  Hindsight Mr. Carmen Sandiego is 20/20. 
 
And so, this morning I awoke not knowing that I had a frog in my throat.  It's gone now- left behind is post nasal drip (yummy!), but I'm still wondering if I should create a morning song routine or a one minute monologue.  Maybe I should do scales or tell my-single-self "I'm good enough, smart enough, and doggonit people like me!"

with friends you get oreos

I’m housesitting. It seems in the recent past I’ve become the single girl who house and baby-sits. I knew a girl like me when I was 25, she was 32, I didn’t like the look of her life- working to be a teacher and paying her debts by housesitting and babysitting. Even if she did housesit for some famously rich people, I didn’t like the look of that aspect of her life. And yet…

My friend L. and her husband live -in my mind- in Egypt. It takes 30 minutes, $1.25 in tolls and a lot of gas to get to their house. And my life- is in the city. (I’ve told L. this so if she reads it she’ll know I still love her). It is soul sucking to drive this far away from humanity. And yet, humanity is creeping toward them. They have everything you’re cheesed out, chain store heart could want. You name it (TGIFridays) they’ve (Barnes and Noble) got (Babies R Us) it (Outback).

I hate the one main road aspect of suburbs, the endless traffic, the siding, the siding, the siding, the Wal-Mart, the siding and the utter uncityness of it all. In my perfect world, there would be city and there were be country and suburbs would not exist. My perfect world does not exist- yet.

What’s strange about house-sitting for your friends is that you know this person very well, might have even slept over before, but now, their house is yours. You pretend that the deer head in the living room is your deer head. Wait, no, actually you don’t. You watch TV nonstop because their 42-inch TV with surround sound seems better than your 32 inch TV with surround sound. Plus they have On Demand and so you have to watch like 10 movies before they get back.

And you eat their food. As a food lover, this part is fun. Except L. does not really “cook” and therefore there is nothing to “work” with in her kitchen. Even though I’m single, my fridge is packed with things, ready at any moment to host a dinner party (even though I never do). L.’s fridge on the other hand has a cheese drawer with a Costco amount of processed cheese (for the dog), pre-shredded cheese and some deli meat (ham I believe). There is also some flat ginger ale, yogurt, pudding cups, applesauce cups, beer, a few potatoes, half a red pepper, a bag a carrots, a questionable cucumber and a door of condiments. (Did I mention that I love L. because I do, I love her). What can I do with this stuff? I could make something. I could, but that would require opening things that have not been opened and using all of something that there is only one of. That is the thing about housesitting, you get to eat the food, but there are rules about it. So, I’ve feasted on eggs and toast (forgot the eggs in the fridge list) and Oreos. The one good thing L. does is stock Oreos in a cookie jar (because she doesn’t really bake either) and I am now addicted to Oreos.

It’s strange to have a friend whom you adore and with whom you’ve shared many a meal and yet their kitchen essentials look nothing like your kitchen essentials. And so I wonder how it is that we are friends at all. Maybe it’s that I feed her, literally, and she feeds me, emotionally. Somehow, somewhere there is balance. There always is, or at least there’s Oreos.

pulling my leg

“This is gonna sound really weird,” I said, “but I requested the one who pulled my leg a lot.”

“You told me you liked that before,” she responded without a hint of strangeness.

“It’s my favorite part. I look forward to it the whole time.”

We were going for a full spa day including facials, massages and pedicures and when I told my best friend that I had requested a certain masseuse, the previous conversation occurred. She told me that I should request more leg pulling if it really was my favorite, but I said I couldn’t. “How can you say, ‘I really like it when you pull my legs.’ It just sounds weird,” I told her. And kinky and I believe massages are anything but kinky.

The spa day was a thirtieth year treat for the two of us. I had gotten a 2 for 1 special and thought that the best birthday present for my best friend would be one that I could enjoy too. And I did. A lot. I even think I fell asleep a little and I may have snored. My apologies to my sweet, leg pulling masseuse for that one. I’m sure I’m not the first.

“Did you ask her to pull your leg?” PK asked when we were through and heading in for the decallusing of our feet.

“No,” I simply said. “I just couldn’t, but I did enjoy it when she did.”

I was worn out. The toxins must have been revving through my body for months because that massage made me go home and fall asleep for several hours and my poor best friend was stuck in my house watching Marie Antoinette while I snored even though no one was pulling my leg.