The week before Christmas I was struck with a deadly attack of needing to play a piano. I took lessons from the age of nine to nineteen, and after quitting lessons (due to the demands of schoolwork) my daily practice ground to an eventual halt with my move last year to piano-less South Bend. (Not that there are no pianos in South Bend, but there were none to which I had access, having had to leave my own upright at home for lack of storage space and the inallowability of playing it in an apartment complex.)
So just before Christmas, when job stress became unbearable and sleep came with a fight, I felt the muscles in my arms and torso and hands and fingers aching to pour their energy into cool smooth keys. My body longed to engage in music. So I took the piano books I'd brought from home, just in case, and after work one day slipped up to the Community Room on the third floor, a vast open room which when not in use lies empty and boasts a piano. I dragged up a chair, opened a Grieg sonata, and attempted for the first time in more than a year to play something besides the simple melody I'd written in high school.
It was, of course, a disaster. Like trying to dredge your memory for fragments of a forgotten language when suddenly faced with a native Spanish-speaker in a half-emergency situation. Music I had once nearly memorized (or, in the case of Debussy, had completely memorized so that even when I couldn't find my place on the page my body remembered to play) I had to sight read. I picked over the songs for half an hour in frustration, then finally hit some sort of stride and ended in a decent tone. Roger the maintenance man came upon me playing, encouraged me, then sensitively left me alone to my struggles. I left slightly disheartened but resolved to continue relearning to ride the bicycle, as it were.
Then tonight I sat down to play my own piano, the piano that knew my fingers and my feet on the pedals from the time I was a child. It went almost like a dream. There were still rough spots that I had to stop and squint at, but the difference playing my own piano was astonishing. And when I played "Claire de Lune," my favorite piece, it was how I imagine old lovers who parted under necessary circumstances coming back together...cautiously, a little warily, with a longing and a touch of sweetness and remembered love. There were spaces where I'd never really gotten it right and had to work over with careful attention, and other places where the music and I had meshed so completely that I couldn't ever forget it. Overall it was a little clumsy, a little halting here and there, but still beautiful.
And complementarily enough, my sister's half-grown cat fell asleep next to the piano, listening.
It's been long enough that I've gone without music. I can't afford more lessons, but I can practice what I once learned. It'll have to be in the Community Room until I get my first house and can transport my childhood piano out to South Bend.
I have missed music.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Thursday, December 29, 2005
the necessity of poetry
You can see what I've indulged in from my Borders gift card: the complete (well, it says "complete" but we all know it isn't) poems of James Wright, and A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far by Adrienne Rich.
I like James Wright because he could be categorized as "confessional" (a term which I despise anyway, misapplied as it is to woman poets honest about their lives and their worlds and the world, making it sound as if they had something to be ashamed of, telling their lives in strands of burning words, holding language accountable for its glossed persecution of the experience of women rendered to silence) -- Wright writes with a tenderness and self-awareness and sensitivity that I appreciate. He has a good strong use of metaphor and a consciousness of the natural world that, very simply, work. An emptiness comes through in his poetry that is at times almost Japanese. So I like him.
Adrienne Rich I love. More than any other poet, she inspires me to write.
So I'm sitting in a quiet house for once -- my parents gone (to work? on errands? they left no note), my sister sleeping, the menagerie of animals for once at peace. It's nice, to be alone and quiet in the house. I'm used to living alone, I'm accustomed to cherishing my space, to waking up and breathing and knowing that mine is the only breath in the rooms that are my own. Living alone is a sort of wild dream, something I can't always believe, that makes me glow with happiness.
It has its funny aspects. I've largely stopped reacting at all when I drop something or hurt myself through moments of uncoordinated stupidity. The other week I spent a few minutes putting a huge stack of CDs back into their enormous CD carrier, then when I went to stand up to put it away the carrier ricocheted off my knees and bounced into my face and cut my lip. I put the carrier down, reached for a tissue, and pressed it to the cut until the bleeding had mostly stopped. Then I put the carrier away. Throughout the whole incident I didn't make a sound. Why would I? There was no one to hear.
Then last week I was cleaning up the kitchen and set a clean glass on the edge of the counter and turned toward the living room to fetch a tissue because I felt a sneeze coming on. In the process of turning I bumped the glass and heard it drop to the floor behind me and shatter. I turned around, looked at the mess, then went to get the tissue. After mopping up my nose, I returned to the kitchen and got out the broom and swept up the shards of glass lying all over the floor. No swearing. No anger. No reaction even. Something that once was highly unusual and is becoming more of a norm.
Maybe it will change when I get a cat. Part of the lack of reaction, as I mentioned, is the lack of audience. It seems far more functional just to clean up the mess than to get mad about it. But then all the reactions I don't indulge get packed in somewhere inside me and periodically I have a sort of insane meltdown to let it all out (and those are times when I'm glad there is no audience). But all of it takes place in the emptiness of my own rooms and although it would sometimes be nice to have someone there to say, "Sarah. It's no big deal. Calm down," or to laugh at the humor of the situation, or to put a pair of reassuring arms around me and let me fall apart if I want, there's a joy in taking responsibility for my actions, all of them, and a joy in knowing that I can live on no one's initiative but my own.
This does not excuse me from a need for community. One of my New Year's resolutions is to attend church three Sundays of every month, to build community. And I'm starting to build community at work. Man is a social being, and I can't deny my place in society among other human beings. But it is wonderful, so deliciously wonderful, to have my own tower to retreat to. Mike at work says that being an extrovert or introvert has nothing to do with being outgoing or shy and everything to do with what energizes you: people or solitude. So while I'm outgoing and engaging and love being around people, I am energized by solitude. I need to back out of society quite often, actually, to recharge my batteries and reorient myself to life.
So living alone is perfect for what I need, and emerging from my tower is necessary as well.
And so is reading poetry.
I like James Wright because he could be categorized as "confessional" (a term which I despise anyway, misapplied as it is to woman poets honest about their lives and their worlds and the world, making it sound as if they had something to be ashamed of, telling their lives in strands of burning words, holding language accountable for its glossed persecution of the experience of women rendered to silence) -- Wright writes with a tenderness and self-awareness and sensitivity that I appreciate. He has a good strong use of metaphor and a consciousness of the natural world that, very simply, work. An emptiness comes through in his poetry that is at times almost Japanese. So I like him.
Adrienne Rich I love. More than any other poet, she inspires me to write.
So I'm sitting in a quiet house for once -- my parents gone (to work? on errands? they left no note), my sister sleeping, the menagerie of animals for once at peace. It's nice, to be alone and quiet in the house. I'm used to living alone, I'm accustomed to cherishing my space, to waking up and breathing and knowing that mine is the only breath in the rooms that are my own. Living alone is a sort of wild dream, something I can't always believe, that makes me glow with happiness.
It has its funny aspects. I've largely stopped reacting at all when I drop something or hurt myself through moments of uncoordinated stupidity. The other week I spent a few minutes putting a huge stack of CDs back into their enormous CD carrier, then when I went to stand up to put it away the carrier ricocheted off my knees and bounced into my face and cut my lip. I put the carrier down, reached for a tissue, and pressed it to the cut until the bleeding had mostly stopped. Then I put the carrier away. Throughout the whole incident I didn't make a sound. Why would I? There was no one to hear.
Then last week I was cleaning up the kitchen and set a clean glass on the edge of the counter and turned toward the living room to fetch a tissue because I felt a sneeze coming on. In the process of turning I bumped the glass and heard it drop to the floor behind me and shatter. I turned around, looked at the mess, then went to get the tissue. After mopping up my nose, I returned to the kitchen and got out the broom and swept up the shards of glass lying all over the floor. No swearing. No anger. No reaction even. Something that once was highly unusual and is becoming more of a norm.
Maybe it will change when I get a cat. Part of the lack of reaction, as I mentioned, is the lack of audience. It seems far more functional just to clean up the mess than to get mad about it. But then all the reactions I don't indulge get packed in somewhere inside me and periodically I have a sort of insane meltdown to let it all out (and those are times when I'm glad there is no audience). But all of it takes place in the emptiness of my own rooms and although it would sometimes be nice to have someone there to say, "Sarah. It's no big deal. Calm down," or to laugh at the humor of the situation, or to put a pair of reassuring arms around me and let me fall apart if I want, there's a joy in taking responsibility for my actions, all of them, and a joy in knowing that I can live on no one's initiative but my own.
This does not excuse me from a need for community. One of my New Year's resolutions is to attend church three Sundays of every month, to build community. And I'm starting to build community at work. Man is a social being, and I can't deny my place in society among other human beings. But it is wonderful, so deliciously wonderful, to have my own tower to retreat to. Mike at work says that being an extrovert or introvert has nothing to do with being outgoing or shy and everything to do with what energizes you: people or solitude. So while I'm outgoing and engaging and love being around people, I am energized by solitude. I need to back out of society quite often, actually, to recharge my batteries and reorient myself to life.
So living alone is perfect for what I need, and emerging from my tower is necessary as well.
And so is reading poetry.
Integrity
the quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; entirety --Webster
A wild patience has taken me this far
as if I had to bring to shore
a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor
old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books
tossed in the prow
some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades.
Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through.
Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain
in a sun blotted like unspoken anger
behind a casual mist.
This length of daylight
this far north, in this
forty-ninth year of my life
is critical.
The light is critical: of me, of this
long-dreamed, involuntary landing
on the arm of an inland sea.
The glitter of the shoal
depleting into shadow
I recognize: the stand of pines
violet-black really, green in the old postcard
but really I have nothing but myself
to go by; nothing
stands in the realm of pure necessity
except what my hands can hold.
Nothing but myself?...My selves.
After so long, this answer.
As if I had always known
I steer the boat in, simply.
The motor dying on the pebbles
cicadas taking up the hum
dropped in the silence.
Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere--
even from a broken web.
The cabin in the stand of pines
is still for sale. I know this. Know the print
of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked that door,
then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis
back on the trellis
for no one's sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards
the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails
emptied that kettle one last time
are these two hands
and they have caught the baby leaping
from between trembling legs
and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
and stroked the sweated temples
and steered the boat here through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve.
~Adrienne Rich, 1978
A wild patience has taken me this far
as if I had to bring to shore
a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor
old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books
tossed in the prow
some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades.
Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through.
Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain
in a sun blotted like unspoken anger
behind a casual mist.
This length of daylight
this far north, in this
forty-ninth year of my life
is critical.
The light is critical: of me, of this
long-dreamed, involuntary landing
on the arm of an inland sea.
The glitter of the shoal
depleting into shadow
I recognize: the stand of pines
violet-black really, green in the old postcard
but really I have nothing but myself
to go by; nothing
stands in the realm of pure necessity
except what my hands can hold.
Nothing but myself?...My selves.
After so long, this answer.
As if I had always known
I steer the boat in, simply.
The motor dying on the pebbles
cicadas taking up the hum
dropped in the silence.
Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere--
even from a broken web.
The cabin in the stand of pines
is still for sale. I know this. Know the print
of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked that door,
then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis
back on the trellis
for no one's sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards
the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails
emptied that kettle one last time
are these two hands
and they have caught the baby leaping
from between trembling legs
and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
and stroked the sweated temples
and steered the boat here through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve.
~Adrienne Rich, 1978
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Trying to Pray
This time, I have left my body behind me, crying
In its dark thorns.
Still,
There are good things in this world.
It is dusk.
It is the good darkness
Of women's hands that touch loaves.
The spirit of a tree begins to move.
I touch leaves.
I close my eyes, and think of water.
~James Wright
In its dark thorns.
Still,
There are good things in this world.
It is dusk.
It is the good darkness
Of women's hands that touch loaves.
The spirit of a tree begins to move.
I touch leaves.
I close my eyes, and think of water.
~James Wright
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
post-Christmas craziness
I love Christmas. While it didn't feel quite fair to have Christmas on a Sunday, we more than made do (Mom and Dad went to church while I shamelessly stayed home with Laura and Keith to catch a late-morning nap -- very necessary to make up for the two and a half hours of sleep caught the night before due to present-wrapping and early rising to look at the tree). I asked for a number of intensely practical things that I never feel justified in putting into my budget -- new towels, cloth showercurtains, a Swiffer duster -- and I got them all, plus some (a new phone with a working answering machine! and a nice 3-qt saucepan, and jersey knit sheets, mmmmm). Laura gave me a GORGEOUS coat from her place of employ, Banana Republic, Keith gave me a scrumptious gift card to Borders (which I am going to spend today, the hole has burned through my pocket and into my skin), and Boss Meg gave me a FABULOUS monthly/weekly planner which will be absolutely indispensible as I move on to my new job.
I visited with church people and friends yesterday, and today am spending time with my beloved Eigh Ann after my post-Christmas shopping spree. Among the things I need (aside from the eight or so books that I do not yet own, imagine!) are gloves and a scarf to match the new coat, and new jeans.
It's so nice to be at home, taking a break from work. Since Christmas and New Year's fall on a Sunday, we get to take two weekdays off of our choice, and I took in addition three personal days (personal days! how adult! how career-oriented!) so that I get the whole week to myself to spend on my native soil with friends and family. So so good.
Even though I'm having dreams about cute guys who select other girls over me. Meh.
Oo but yesterday I saw a preview for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and those views of Johnny Depp more than sustained me.
I visited with church people and friends yesterday, and today am spending time with my beloved Eigh Ann after my post-Christmas shopping spree. Among the things I need (aside from the eight or so books that I do not yet own, imagine!) are gloves and a scarf to match the new coat, and new jeans.
It's so nice to be at home, taking a break from work. Since Christmas and New Year's fall on a Sunday, we get to take two weekdays off of our choice, and I took in addition three personal days (personal days! how adult! how career-oriented!) so that I get the whole week to myself to spend on my native soil with friends and family. So so good.
Even though I'm having dreams about cute guys who select other girls over me. Meh.
Oo but yesterday I saw a preview for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and those views of Johnny Depp more than sustained me.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
who's surprised?
| Your Reputation Is: Maneater |
 |
Saturday, December 17, 2005
nevertheless, hello
Holy smokies, it's been awhile since I've updated.
The reason for this is simple: My life has been turned into some ghastly sort of one-dimensional hell where I drift in the-ghost-of-Marley fashion with my jaw bandaged shut in order to stifle the moans of despair. I have kept myself at a level of near-complete exhaustion in order to deaden myself, with the result that I have no brain cells left for blogging.
And it's all because of work. Work has become as difficult as it could imaginably be at every facet.
Now, lest you think I am about to launch into a barrage of complaints, allow me to say that I am not in true despair. I just have to hang in there. I know that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"; but boy howdy, I'm tired. And I wish to explain to my beloved readers why.
The Center for the Homeless in South Bend is a sort of national phenomenon. It's not a soup kitchen, or a shelter; it seeks to end homelessness for its guests by giving them all classes and programs to address and fix why they're homeless. People can get their GEDs, acquire sponsored internships and externships around the community, pay off debt, learn about themselves, and find homes, all while having their basic needs met and their basic bills paid by living for free at the Center.
In its fifteen-ish years of existence, the Center has expanded a great deal, rather beyond its original vision, and so it is in the process of hashing out what its current vision and purpose are supposed to be. So there's been a lot of turnover as various people have left, and as a new leadership is establishing itself; and overall, as with all revolutions, things are in a state of temporary chaos as the new order begins to gain its balance.
This puts a lot of burdens of adjustment on all the staff, and the PEDS program where Meg and I work is no exception. We're undergoing a lot of changes anyway -- changes to the curriculum, changes in our supervisor, changes in the enrollees to the program, changes in the number of volunteers (on whom we rely -- a day with five toddlers and three infants and without help is almost impossible) and now changes in the program assistant, as Meg looks for a replacement for me in preparation for my move to the administrative branch.
As other children have left, Meg and I have taken on five new children, all very young and very needy. Two of the infants do not sleep when the older children do, so now there is no point in the day wherein Meg and I get a break. We have no lunchbreak, and with the vanishing of the volunteers (mostly college students) for their long Christmas breaks, we have had to beg for help from the already overworked staff in order to be able to put all the children down for a nap in under an hour and a half. Meg and I agreed yesterday that we are so busy taking care of kids all day long that we don't have time to run to the bathroom or even put on chapstick. We're desperately overworked and overwrought just trying to get through each day.
So I've pretty much shut down into survival mode. No emotional response to anything, no deep thinking. I come home deadpan from work every day and shuffle around the apartment putting off going to bed, then get up so tired I see flashes of light as I stagger to the bathroom to shower, and drag myself to work.
At least I can say there's a light at the end of the tunnel -- I get to start my new job once my replacement in PEDS has been found. It's much worse for Meg as she tries to keep the program running by herself. Hopefully the new hire will have more energy and boundless enthusiasm.
I do love the Center. I love working there and I love the people who work there and live there. Last week I sang a duet with one of the case managers at the Center's holiday talent show and it went over extremely well, and it was nice to come out of the woodwork and be part of the community there. Last week also some of the staff got together after work at the Fiddler's for fun and socialization, making me fall in love even more with the staff. I am optimistic about everything working out in the end for everyone else's benefit. It's just a roughish road getting to where we need to be.
So simple exhaustion is the reason for my long silence. Today I took an entire Saturday to go nowhere and do nothing but relax and clean. Tomorrow Meg and I are getting together to bake cookies, and when I come home I will finish wrapping presents for the people for whom I can afford to buy presents. It's going to be a lovely Christmas, I think -- not because of lavish gifts (tons of bills for various things -- hopitalization, car tax, car rental -- have just arrived, tightening the screws down on my already squeaking budget) but because this year I can spend Christmas at home with my family. That in itself is comfort and joy.
The reason for this is simple: My life has been turned into some ghastly sort of one-dimensional hell where I drift in the-ghost-of-Marley fashion with my jaw bandaged shut in order to stifle the moans of despair. I have kept myself at a level of near-complete exhaustion in order to deaden myself, with the result that I have no brain cells left for blogging.
And it's all because of work. Work has become as difficult as it could imaginably be at every facet.
Now, lest you think I am about to launch into a barrage of complaints, allow me to say that I am not in true despair. I just have to hang in there. I know that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"; but boy howdy, I'm tired. And I wish to explain to my beloved readers why.
The Center for the Homeless in South Bend is a sort of national phenomenon. It's not a soup kitchen, or a shelter; it seeks to end homelessness for its guests by giving them all classes and programs to address and fix why they're homeless. People can get their GEDs, acquire sponsored internships and externships around the community, pay off debt, learn about themselves, and find homes, all while having their basic needs met and their basic bills paid by living for free at the Center.
In its fifteen-ish years of existence, the Center has expanded a great deal, rather beyond its original vision, and so it is in the process of hashing out what its current vision and purpose are supposed to be. So there's been a lot of turnover as various people have left, and as a new leadership is establishing itself; and overall, as with all revolutions, things are in a state of temporary chaos as the new order begins to gain its balance.
This puts a lot of burdens of adjustment on all the staff, and the PEDS program where Meg and I work is no exception. We're undergoing a lot of changes anyway -- changes to the curriculum, changes in our supervisor, changes in the enrollees to the program, changes in the number of volunteers (on whom we rely -- a day with five toddlers and three infants and without help is almost impossible) and now changes in the program assistant, as Meg looks for a replacement for me in preparation for my move to the administrative branch.
As other children have left, Meg and I have taken on five new children, all very young and very needy. Two of the infants do not sleep when the older children do, so now there is no point in the day wherein Meg and I get a break. We have no lunchbreak, and with the vanishing of the volunteers (mostly college students) for their long Christmas breaks, we have had to beg for help from the already overworked staff in order to be able to put all the children down for a nap in under an hour and a half. Meg and I agreed yesterday that we are so busy taking care of kids all day long that we don't have time to run to the bathroom or even put on chapstick. We're desperately overworked and overwrought just trying to get through each day.
So I've pretty much shut down into survival mode. No emotional response to anything, no deep thinking. I come home deadpan from work every day and shuffle around the apartment putting off going to bed, then get up so tired I see flashes of light as I stagger to the bathroom to shower, and drag myself to work.
At least I can say there's a light at the end of the tunnel -- I get to start my new job once my replacement in PEDS has been found. It's much worse for Meg as she tries to keep the program running by herself. Hopefully the new hire will have more energy and boundless enthusiasm.
I do love the Center. I love working there and I love the people who work there and live there. Last week I sang a duet with one of the case managers at the Center's holiday talent show and it went over extremely well, and it was nice to come out of the woodwork and be part of the community there. Last week also some of the staff got together after work at the Fiddler's for fun and socialization, making me fall in love even more with the staff. I am optimistic about everything working out in the end for everyone else's benefit. It's just a roughish road getting to where we need to be.
So simple exhaustion is the reason for my long silence. Today I took an entire Saturday to go nowhere and do nothing but relax and clean. Tomorrow Meg and I are getting together to bake cookies, and when I come home I will finish wrapping presents for the people for whom I can afford to buy presents. It's going to be a lovely Christmas, I think -- not because of lavish gifts (tons of bills for various things -- hopitalization, car tax, car rental -- have just arrived, tightening the screws down on my already squeaking budget) but because this year I can spend Christmas at home with my family. That in itself is comfort and joy.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
o tannenbaum
Yesterday I pulled sturdy jeans over a pair of old nylons, layered up in sweaters, donned the only hat that becomes me, and headed up to Michigan to fetch myself a fine-lookin' tree with Boss Meg and her husband Phillip.
Christmas tree selection, transportation, and installation is possibly a greater difficulty to the modern single woman than the pointlessness of hanging mistletoe. A dear friend (an attached young man) once asked, "Why do all these TV shows and movies make a big deal out of single women having to drag Christmas trees into their apartments through their windows?" Because it's the starkest thing about the single life. A woman can be content, even satisfied, with her life as a Singleton; but managing a Christmas tree by herself throws into sharp relief the inherent wrongness of having to navigate life alone. There should be someone to help her with the damn tree. When there isn't, it goes beyond a feeling of cosmic mockery and violates the sensibility that lies at the marrow of Christmas: connection. Divine connection to humanity, human connection to humanity. A woman falling back on her own resources to set up her isolated celebration of connection is a terribly ironic tragedy.
I've been blessed so far by not having to set up makeshift pulleys out my living room window. Last year when I couldn't go home for any of the holidays because of the demands of retail, my parents visited for Thanksgiving and brought with them a Scotch pine to set up in my living room. (One of these days I'll post on the necessity of having parents, even and especially as an adult, and how glad I am that my parents maintain an active involvement in my life, or I might be lost.) They helped me purchase the lights, the ornaments, the tinsel. I decorated it alone, but even though I cried as I did it, I did not feel abandoned.
This year I could not have done it without Meg and Phillip. And I had a wonderful time. We drove to a Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere, which supplies its customers with saws and hayrides (horse- or tractor-drawn) to the tree fields, where you can wander at will and select your very own tree. Phillip cut mine down for me (a tall, full Douglas fir -- I'm drawn to triangular trees the way some people are drawn to certain body types), and we hauled our trees back to meet the next hayride and headed to the home base where our trees were mechanically shaken free of dead needles, measured, priced, and bundled. Then we went into a log-cabin style general store for complimentary hot cocoa and to pay for the trees. Phillip strapped the trees to the top of their SUV and we returned to their place for chili and tree decoration, after which they drove my tree to my apartment, carried it upstairs, and went about the messy business of setting it up in my living room.
I had already rearranged all the furniture to accomodate the beautiful annual intruder, but we hadn't factored on the difficulty of forcing the tree into my ancient tree stand. In the end my living room carpet was littered with branches, bark, sawdust, pinesap, needles, and twigs as Meg and Phillip hacked away at interfering tree limbs. (At one point Phillip was doing the sawing while Meg and I straddled the still-bundled tree to keep it still, and I laughed and said, "Meg, we're having a treesome!")
So now I have armfuls of fir boughs to adorn the apartment, a clean carpet, and a fully decorated tree. Every family decorates differently; mine favors large colored lights, some of which randomly blink (and the first half-hour or forty-five minutes of tree decoration involves unscrewing and moving bulbs around to eliminate clusters of one color throughout the branches) and no particular theme to the ornaments. The tree is a hodgepodge of homemade, inherited, bought, and acquired ornaments placed to fill its spaces, some hung as far back as possible, layered over with silver tinsel icicles (no garland for me!) and topped with an angel. The overall effect is friendly, warm, and delightful; my favorite evening advent activity is to turn off all lights in the house except the tree just before bed, and sit listening to Christmas music or in silence, watching the tree and the needly patterns of colored light it throws against the white walls and ceiling.
It's still odd, decorating by myself and for myself, but this year I feel I have friends with which to share it. Next weekend sometime Meg and I are getting together for a Christmas cookie-baking bonanza (such fun, to swap recipes), and she'll be stopping by during the week to see what I've done with the tree. I'll have Colette over soon, and I'm pretty sure I can drag MP over for some insane Christmas cheer.
This is a new and glowing facet to celebrating Christmas: sharing and experiencing the traditions of fully grown friends. Everyone has a different story, and story, as Leigh Ann and I enthusiastically discuss, is life.
So I'm single. So I'm living alone. But I didn't have to wrestle my tree in place by myself, and I am beginning to feel more and more connected where I am.
And my tree is fragrant and gorgeous.
Christmas tree selection, transportation, and installation is possibly a greater difficulty to the modern single woman than the pointlessness of hanging mistletoe. A dear friend (an attached young man) once asked, "Why do all these TV shows and movies make a big deal out of single women having to drag Christmas trees into their apartments through their windows?" Because it's the starkest thing about the single life. A woman can be content, even satisfied, with her life as a Singleton; but managing a Christmas tree by herself throws into sharp relief the inherent wrongness of having to navigate life alone. There should be someone to help her with the damn tree. When there isn't, it goes beyond a feeling of cosmic mockery and violates the sensibility that lies at the marrow of Christmas: connection. Divine connection to humanity, human connection to humanity. A woman falling back on her own resources to set up her isolated celebration of connection is a terribly ironic tragedy.
I've been blessed so far by not having to set up makeshift pulleys out my living room window. Last year when I couldn't go home for any of the holidays because of the demands of retail, my parents visited for Thanksgiving and brought with them a Scotch pine to set up in my living room. (One of these days I'll post on the necessity of having parents, even and especially as an adult, and how glad I am that my parents maintain an active involvement in my life, or I might be lost.) They helped me purchase the lights, the ornaments, the tinsel. I decorated it alone, but even though I cried as I did it, I did not feel abandoned.
This year I could not have done it without Meg and Phillip. And I had a wonderful time. We drove to a Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere, which supplies its customers with saws and hayrides (horse- or tractor-drawn) to the tree fields, where you can wander at will and select your very own tree. Phillip cut mine down for me (a tall, full Douglas fir -- I'm drawn to triangular trees the way some people are drawn to certain body types), and we hauled our trees back to meet the next hayride and headed to the home base where our trees were mechanically shaken free of dead needles, measured, priced, and bundled. Then we went into a log-cabin style general store for complimentary hot cocoa and to pay for the trees. Phillip strapped the trees to the top of their SUV and we returned to their place for chili and tree decoration, after which they drove my tree to my apartment, carried it upstairs, and went about the messy business of setting it up in my living room.
I had already rearranged all the furniture to accomodate the beautiful annual intruder, but we hadn't factored on the difficulty of forcing the tree into my ancient tree stand. In the end my living room carpet was littered with branches, bark, sawdust, pinesap, needles, and twigs as Meg and Phillip hacked away at interfering tree limbs. (At one point Phillip was doing the sawing while Meg and I straddled the still-bundled tree to keep it still, and I laughed and said, "Meg, we're having a treesome!")
So now I have armfuls of fir boughs to adorn the apartment, a clean carpet, and a fully decorated tree. Every family decorates differently; mine favors large colored lights, some of which randomly blink (and the first half-hour or forty-five minutes of tree decoration involves unscrewing and moving bulbs around to eliminate clusters of one color throughout the branches) and no particular theme to the ornaments. The tree is a hodgepodge of homemade, inherited, bought, and acquired ornaments placed to fill its spaces, some hung as far back as possible, layered over with silver tinsel icicles (no garland for me!) and topped with an angel. The overall effect is friendly, warm, and delightful; my favorite evening advent activity is to turn off all lights in the house except the tree just before bed, and sit listening to Christmas music or in silence, watching the tree and the needly patterns of colored light it throws against the white walls and ceiling.
It's still odd, decorating by myself and for myself, but this year I feel I have friends with which to share it. Next weekend sometime Meg and I are getting together for a Christmas cookie-baking bonanza (such fun, to swap recipes), and she'll be stopping by during the week to see what I've done with the tree. I'll have Colette over soon, and I'm pretty sure I can drag MP over for some insane Christmas cheer.
This is a new and glowing facet to celebrating Christmas: sharing and experiencing the traditions of fully grown friends. Everyone has a different story, and story, as Leigh Ann and I enthusiastically discuss, is life.
So I'm single. So I'm living alone. But I didn't have to wrestle my tree in place by myself, and I am beginning to feel more and more connected where I am.
And my tree is fragrant and gorgeous.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Enter Henrietta
My cute, sassy 2001 Toyota Corolla Sport. Yes, in the span of sixty hours I got a new car. Here's a frame-by-frame:
Friday. The call comes from Gurley Leep about Earl's totalled status. I freak out. My grandparents promise to help. I ride back to Erie with Mom and Dad feeling sick. Dad calls a friend from church for car-buying tips. The guy tells him he usually gets them off Ebay.
Saturday. Doug e-mails Dad a link to a 2001 Toyota Corolla Sport on the Ebay market, fantastically priced and in great condition. I see the pictures. I read a list of the car's assets. I fall in love. Dad calls the seller (who lives in Rochester, NY) to ask a few questions. Dad calls Pap-pap to tell him about the car. Dad wants to drive the car before he buys it. I spend the entire day chewing my nails.
Sunday. Dad calls the seller again. Pap-pap calls with his approval (necessary because Pap-pap is footing all of the money for the car, part a gift and part a loan). Mom, Dad, and I drive to Rochester. We test drive the car. I am wildly in love with the car. I name her Henrietta Brighton-Jones. We buy the car. We drive her to North East. We arrive there at 8:00 p.m. I finish packing the rental car and start out in it for South Bend at 9:00 p.m.
Monday. At midnight I am still driving. I pull over at the western edge of Ohio at 1:00 a.m. for a nap because I am so tired I am shaking and feeling close to vomiting. I arrive at my apartment at 3:45 a.m. I fall asleep an hour later. My alarm goes off at 7:00 a.m. I sleep for another hour. I arrive at work forty minutes late. I make it through the day. I go to bed at 9:00 p.m. for ten hours of sleep.
Tuesday. Mom and Dad drive Henrietta to me. Dad and I return the rental car while Mom helps Meg at work. I drive Henrietta back to work. We have dinner at the Fiddler's, then part ways so Mom and Dad can get home before midnight. I drive Henrietta home and hash out the details of repayment with my grandparents (I'm paying back eighty-eight percent of the cost of the car, which will have me making payments to them for the next five years. This basically means I'll be living in my current lifestyle -- no extra frills or fun stuff, definitely not a new chair and probably not even a new mattress for a long time -- even after my raise. This stings a little, particularly about the mattress because my back HURTS all the time now, but at least they're not charging me interest, which with their loans they usually do. My grandfather was a banker). I sit back excited to watch Bones and House. Or maybe just Bones, depending on how tired I am.
So Henrietta is white, snazzy, with a CD player and a stick shift and cruise control. I have wanted a stick ever since I learned to drive one. I can't believe that I have the car of my dreams. For this I am exceedingly grateful. And she definitely has "get-up-and-go." Earl was faithful, but certainly not speedy (zero to thirty in ten seconds). Henrietta grips the road and jumps.
I have an amazing family and a great car.
Happy happy happy.
Tired.
Friday. The call comes from Gurley Leep about Earl's totalled status. I freak out. My grandparents promise to help. I ride back to Erie with Mom and Dad feeling sick. Dad calls a friend from church for car-buying tips. The guy tells him he usually gets them off Ebay.
Saturday. Doug e-mails Dad a link to a 2001 Toyota Corolla Sport on the Ebay market, fantastically priced and in great condition. I see the pictures. I read a list of the car's assets. I fall in love. Dad calls the seller (who lives in Rochester, NY) to ask a few questions. Dad calls Pap-pap to tell him about the car. Dad wants to drive the car before he buys it. I spend the entire day chewing my nails.
Sunday. Dad calls the seller again. Pap-pap calls with his approval (necessary because Pap-pap is footing all of the money for the car, part a gift and part a loan). Mom, Dad, and I drive to Rochester. We test drive the car. I am wildly in love with the car. I name her Henrietta Brighton-Jones. We buy the car. We drive her to North East. We arrive there at 8:00 p.m. I finish packing the rental car and start out in it for South Bend at 9:00 p.m.
Monday. At midnight I am still driving. I pull over at the western edge of Ohio at 1:00 a.m. for a nap because I am so tired I am shaking and feeling close to vomiting. I arrive at my apartment at 3:45 a.m. I fall asleep an hour later. My alarm goes off at 7:00 a.m. I sleep for another hour. I arrive at work forty minutes late. I make it through the day. I go to bed at 9:00 p.m. for ten hours of sleep.
Tuesday. Mom and Dad drive Henrietta to me. Dad and I return the rental car while Mom helps Meg at work. I drive Henrietta back to work. We have dinner at the Fiddler's, then part ways so Mom and Dad can get home before midnight. I drive Henrietta home and hash out the details of repayment with my grandparents (I'm paying back eighty-eight percent of the cost of the car, which will have me making payments to them for the next five years. This basically means I'll be living in my current lifestyle -- no extra frills or fun stuff, definitely not a new chair and probably not even a new mattress for a long time -- even after my raise. This stings a little, particularly about the mattress because my back HURTS all the time now, but at least they're not charging me interest, which with their loans they usually do. My grandfather was a banker). I sit back excited to watch Bones and House. Or maybe just Bones, depending on how tired I am.
So Henrietta is white, snazzy, with a CD player and a stick shift and cruise control. I have wanted a stick ever since I learned to drive one. I can't believe that I have the car of my dreams. For this I am exceedingly grateful. And she definitely has "get-up-and-go." Earl was faithful, but certainly not speedy (zero to thirty in ten seconds). Henrietta grips the road and jumps.
I have an amazing family and a great car.
Happy happy happy.
Tired.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
good night, sweet prince
They're totalling my car.
Apparently on the close inspection that he should have done the minute I drove to the dealership with my damaged Earl four weeks ago, the inspection/estimate guy decided yesterday that the cost to repair outweighs the value of the eleven-year-old minivan. So I'm sitting back waiting for a call from the insurance company.
This frustrates me for a number of reasons. First, my old Earl has been a faithful vehicle. So I'm sad. But more than this, the insurance company should have declared total loss at least a month ago. Instead they farted around denying me the money I needed for a rental (they said they'd pay for the three days it would take to repair the as-then-assessed damages, but no more, sticking me with the bill for another five days since the soonest they would let me take my car in was Thanksgiving week, when I was due to travel to visit family), and then the estimate guy waited till FRIDAY (I dropped my car off on Monday) to call me to tell me he's putting a hold on my car until he can hear back from the insurance company about totalling it.
So now I have to scramble to find a new car before the cost of the rental puts me in the poorhouse. My grandparents were great, though -- I got the phone call yesterday at their house, and was so upset that I buckled onto the floor and started crying (I seriously don't have the money for this and I sure as hell have never bought a car before); poor Mom thought someone had died -- and my tough, practical, Scots-Irish grandmother came and knelt in front of me on the floor and took my hands firmly and said, "You're a good kid, and you've been making it on your own. I am so proud of you. Your grandfather and I will help you with a new car. And don't be too proud to accept it." I sniffled and said, "Thanks, I'll pay you back," and she said sharply, "No you will not. If we help you, you won't pay anything back." And my gruff German-Scots-Irish pap-pap growled, "Sure, honey. We'll help you." And Grandma started flipping through the 2006 Consumer Report looking for reliable automobiles while Pap-pap gave me advice on taxes and told me to run my hands up under the dashboard of any used vehicle I consider to look for flood silt.
So I've decided I want a Toyota Corolla -- affordable, reliable, cheap to repair, long-lasting, safe -- and Mom and Dad and their friends and our family are helping me locate some. So within a week I should have a new car.
The good thing is I get an extra paycheck in December, which should cover the cost of the rental. And I'm actually pretty excited about a new(er) car. I'm just glad I don't have to do everything myself (another sucky singleness factor, especially with home base so far away).
Oo, and my parents are giving me my favorite of their three cats, adorable black-as-velvet Simon who doesn't prefer the company of so many cats and would probably benefit from living with only one person. He strayed into our yard two Easters ago and I made first contact with him (I was sitting in the yard with Kristin Born, then Bell, late one evening when I saw this gorgeous slender black cat hanging around under one of the cars, so I crouched down and started rubbing my fingers together and crooning. He paced frantically back and forth like he wanted to come running but was afraid, then suddenly gathered all his courage and shot over and scooted under my hand and froze. Then when I kept crooning and started stroking his head, he relaxed all over and kicked up a raspy loud purr that you wouldn't believe and started rolling around in ecstasy in the dirt. Within a week he was formally adopted into our zoo/family). So after Christmas I'm taking him back to South Bend.
This will put me two closer to achieving my five By The Time I'm Thirty-One I Will Have goals. Those goals are: a house, a new car, a cat, a dog, and a king-size bed.
Three to go.
Apparently on the close inspection that he should have done the minute I drove to the dealership with my damaged Earl four weeks ago, the inspection/estimate guy decided yesterday that the cost to repair outweighs the value of the eleven-year-old minivan. So I'm sitting back waiting for a call from the insurance company.
This frustrates me for a number of reasons. First, my old Earl has been a faithful vehicle. So I'm sad. But more than this, the insurance company should have declared total loss at least a month ago. Instead they farted around denying me the money I needed for a rental (they said they'd pay for the three days it would take to repair the as-then-assessed damages, but no more, sticking me with the bill for another five days since the soonest they would let me take my car in was Thanksgiving week, when I was due to travel to visit family), and then the estimate guy waited till FRIDAY (I dropped my car off on Monday) to call me to tell me he's putting a hold on my car until he can hear back from the insurance company about totalling it.
So now I have to scramble to find a new car before the cost of the rental puts me in the poorhouse. My grandparents were great, though -- I got the phone call yesterday at their house, and was so upset that I buckled onto the floor and started crying (I seriously don't have the money for this and I sure as hell have never bought a car before); poor Mom thought someone had died -- and my tough, practical, Scots-Irish grandmother came and knelt in front of me on the floor and took my hands firmly and said, "You're a good kid, and you've been making it on your own. I am so proud of you. Your grandfather and I will help you with a new car. And don't be too proud to accept it." I sniffled and said, "Thanks, I'll pay you back," and she said sharply, "No you will not. If we help you, you won't pay anything back." And my gruff German-Scots-Irish pap-pap growled, "Sure, honey. We'll help you." And Grandma started flipping through the 2006 Consumer Report looking for reliable automobiles while Pap-pap gave me advice on taxes and told me to run my hands up under the dashboard of any used vehicle I consider to look for flood silt.
So I've decided I want a Toyota Corolla -- affordable, reliable, cheap to repair, long-lasting, safe -- and Mom and Dad and their friends and our family are helping me locate some. So within a week I should have a new car.
The good thing is I get an extra paycheck in December, which should cover the cost of the rental. And I'm actually pretty excited about a new(er) car. I'm just glad I don't have to do everything myself (another sucky singleness factor, especially with home base so far away).
Oo, and my parents are giving me my favorite of their three cats, adorable black-as-velvet Simon who doesn't prefer the company of so many cats and would probably benefit from living with only one person. He strayed into our yard two Easters ago and I made first contact with him (I was sitting in the yard with Kristin Born, then Bell, late one evening when I saw this gorgeous slender black cat hanging around under one of the cars, so I crouched down and started rubbing my fingers together and crooning. He paced frantically back and forth like he wanted to come running but was afraid, then suddenly gathered all his courage and shot over and scooted under my hand and froze. Then when I kept crooning and started stroking his head, he relaxed all over and kicked up a raspy loud purr that you wouldn't believe and started rolling around in ecstasy in the dirt. Within a week he was formally adopted into our zoo/family). So after Christmas I'm taking him back to South Bend.
This will put me two closer to achieving my five By The Time I'm Thirty-One I Will Have goals. Those goals are: a house, a new car, a cat, a dog, and a king-size bed.
Three to go.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
this is me doing okay.
I found my first facial line.
There are three, actually. Very fine, but clear. One parallelling the curve of my upper right lip, the other two side-by-side at the left-hand corner of my mouth. I have been noticing for the past month or so that when I smile (yes, I check myself out in mirrors and my car windows when I'm unlocking the door) the smile quirks back into set, predestined curves. But then after a four-hour laugh session at Don Pablo's with the incorrigible and hilarious MP, I got home and noticed while getting ready to wash my face that the laugh lines...were still there. And I wasn't smiling.
A smile-free night of semi-restful sleep (I have just decided that my mattress sucks, which is the reason I wake up tired and sore every morning) found the lines...still there.
I have two feelings about this. The first is, of course, a combination of hollow regret and desperate panic (will I meet the man who wants to marry me BEFORE my skin collapses into dewlaps?) because I think, I'm not eighteen anymore. The fresh unworn skin is becoming a little less supple, a little more set, like overworked clay.
The other feeling is...pride. I hated being eighteen. I have always wanted to be a grown-up. I have always felt a little too old for my age (and have been told at least a thousand times that I am, even this year), and now I've reached the point where I've lived enough to have it carved, just the tiniest bit, into my skin. My body is beginning to catch up and take me where I've always wanted to go. And I'm proud because the lines, the first to appear and tell me that however young I am, I'm getting older, were born of laughter. In high school I had small white frown-spots at the corners of my mouth from not smiling, from feeling heavy-laden and sad; in college I started to shove away sadness and embrace joy. And the lines that tell me where the smile is going to go show me that I've won what is for me an old war. I have a leg up on time. I'm going into age laughing.
There are years of reasons why this is a miracle. I was reared in my adolescence by a fanatic youth pastor who taught me that I was horrible, who trained me to hate myself and to think that God hated me for not being perfect. I used to lie awake every night weeping, casting around in my mind for every single minute thing I had done wrong that day and desperately begging for God's forgiveness, believing he would cast me into hell and withhold his love from me because I was human. I believed for the entirety of the most formative years of my life that God detested me, was disappointed in me, would never be satisfied with me, thought I was disgusting, and loved me only in spite of myself because he was God but would much rather he didn't have to. I was afraid. I was in despair. I didn't particularly want to live. I didn't think I could make it on my own. I thought that if God could only love me because he was God, no one else could love me. I was alone.
But in college I learned that my fellow human beings could, and did, love me. And so did God. My favorite bathroom stall in North Hall my freshman year (left-hand side, second door from the front) had Zephaniah 3:17 hanging in it. Every time I took a pee, it affirmed to me in curly cheerful letters, "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. / He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." I started to uncurl my fingers and loosen my hold on the idea that I was worthless, good-for-nothing, better off dead. I began to laugh.
When my sister went through her debilitating illness, I learned to stave off the anguish and despair with laughter. Wild sometimes, hollow sometimes, forced sometimes, but still healing. Even when I was angriest at God, I found something I'd forgotten, something that vanished sometime after I turned eight. I found joy. And I held onto it. I met people I could laugh with, and I found faith that everything would work out.
And it has. It's not a happily-ever-after ending, of course -- not yet. But it's still good. When I was eighteen I had my whole life planned out. Now at twenty-four I don't have plans at all. None of them panned out the way I thought. And I couldn't be happier about it. Sure, there are nights when I wish my battered stuffed Eeyore was a solid, breathing, warm human man; sure, there are mornings when the thought of wiping one more horrible slug-dripping nose or changing one more shitty diaper or holding one more kid in the throes of a temper tantrum over something stupid like "It's time to brush your teeth" makes me want to pull the covers back over my head and deny the daylight; but at every moment I'm in a season. Something new is just around the corner.
Not all of it will be enjoyable (in fact I have an appointment after Thanksgiving to see if I have a stomach ulcer, which I doubt but who knows?), but everything will be okay. I'm doing what I didn't think possible, even two years ago: I'm relatively emotionally stable, I have a good job (which is getting better -- in mid-January I'm going to be, not Administrative Coordinator, but Director of Events, some Marketing, and some PR -- I'll be writing press releases and I get a thirty percent raise and an extra week of paid vacation and an office!!!), I find pleasure in living alone, I find pleasure in spending time with the few trusted friends I've made here. I find pleasure in being.
Yesterday I opened my Bible at random to Psalm 37: "If the LORD delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand." Yesterday I laughed so hard with Marianne that my abs hurt more than they do after my daily workout. Yesterday I found my first facial lines. Today the lines were still there, and today I looked out my window at the hard, bright, shallow sunshine on the bare bright trees and I loved my life and this season and the God who brought me to it. I put on my coat, my favorite scarf, and my warm ugly gloves and went out into the day at the death of the year (this coldness before the snow flies, when the leaves are packed in sharp-smelling banks along the curb and the land is stark and bare, is my favorite time of year), and found Colette, and walked around the neighborhood, talking.
Maybe every second doesn't find me jumping up and down in elation -- that's not life. Maybe every morning doesn't find me burning with delight to be awake, maybe every afternoon doesn't find me suppressing a song because I'm filled to bursting with happiness. But every minute finds me alive. Every minute finds me upheld. And when I turn my faithful, as-yet-unrepaired old Earl nosefirst down the driveway wherever I'm going each day, I can look down the uneven bricks of Ashland St. and up at the flat November sky and think, I'm doing okay.
I'm not getting younger, and I'm not where I thought I would be. But where I am is better. Facial lines and all.
There are three, actually. Very fine, but clear. One parallelling the curve of my upper right lip, the other two side-by-side at the left-hand corner of my mouth. I have been noticing for the past month or so that when I smile (yes, I check myself out in mirrors and my car windows when I'm unlocking the door) the smile quirks back into set, predestined curves. But then after a four-hour laugh session at Don Pablo's with the incorrigible and hilarious MP, I got home and noticed while getting ready to wash my face that the laugh lines...were still there. And I wasn't smiling.
A smile-free night of semi-restful sleep (I have just decided that my mattress sucks, which is the reason I wake up tired and sore every morning) found the lines...still there.
I have two feelings about this. The first is, of course, a combination of hollow regret and desperate panic (will I meet the man who wants to marry me BEFORE my skin collapses into dewlaps?) because I think, I'm not eighteen anymore. The fresh unworn skin is becoming a little less supple, a little more set, like overworked clay.
The other feeling is...pride. I hated being eighteen. I have always wanted to be a grown-up. I have always felt a little too old for my age (and have been told at least a thousand times that I am, even this year), and now I've reached the point where I've lived enough to have it carved, just the tiniest bit, into my skin. My body is beginning to catch up and take me where I've always wanted to go. And I'm proud because the lines, the first to appear and tell me that however young I am, I'm getting older, were born of laughter. In high school I had small white frown-spots at the corners of my mouth from not smiling, from feeling heavy-laden and sad; in college I started to shove away sadness and embrace joy. And the lines that tell me where the smile is going to go show me that I've won what is for me an old war. I have a leg up on time. I'm going into age laughing.
There are years of reasons why this is a miracle. I was reared in my adolescence by a fanatic youth pastor who taught me that I was horrible, who trained me to hate myself and to think that God hated me for not being perfect. I used to lie awake every night weeping, casting around in my mind for every single minute thing I had done wrong that day and desperately begging for God's forgiveness, believing he would cast me into hell and withhold his love from me because I was human. I believed for the entirety of the most formative years of my life that God detested me, was disappointed in me, would never be satisfied with me, thought I was disgusting, and loved me only in spite of myself because he was God but would much rather he didn't have to. I was afraid. I was in despair. I didn't particularly want to live. I didn't think I could make it on my own. I thought that if God could only love me because he was God, no one else could love me. I was alone.
But in college I learned that my fellow human beings could, and did, love me. And so did God. My favorite bathroom stall in North Hall my freshman year (left-hand side, second door from the front) had Zephaniah 3:17 hanging in it. Every time I took a pee, it affirmed to me in curly cheerful letters, "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. / He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." I started to uncurl my fingers and loosen my hold on the idea that I was worthless, good-for-nothing, better off dead. I began to laugh.
When my sister went through her debilitating illness, I learned to stave off the anguish and despair with laughter. Wild sometimes, hollow sometimes, forced sometimes, but still healing. Even when I was angriest at God, I found something I'd forgotten, something that vanished sometime after I turned eight. I found joy. And I held onto it. I met people I could laugh with, and I found faith that everything would work out.
And it has. It's not a happily-ever-after ending, of course -- not yet. But it's still good. When I was eighteen I had my whole life planned out. Now at twenty-four I don't have plans at all. None of them panned out the way I thought. And I couldn't be happier about it. Sure, there are nights when I wish my battered stuffed Eeyore was a solid, breathing, warm human man; sure, there are mornings when the thought of wiping one more horrible slug-dripping nose or changing one more shitty diaper or holding one more kid in the throes of a temper tantrum over something stupid like "It's time to brush your teeth" makes me want to pull the covers back over my head and deny the daylight; but at every moment I'm in a season. Something new is just around the corner.
Not all of it will be enjoyable (in fact I have an appointment after Thanksgiving to see if I have a stomach ulcer, which I doubt but who knows?), but everything will be okay. I'm doing what I didn't think possible, even two years ago: I'm relatively emotionally stable, I have a good job (which is getting better -- in mid-January I'm going to be, not Administrative Coordinator, but Director of Events, some Marketing, and some PR -- I'll be writing press releases and I get a thirty percent raise and an extra week of paid vacation and an office!!!), I find pleasure in living alone, I find pleasure in spending time with the few trusted friends I've made here. I find pleasure in being.
Yesterday I opened my Bible at random to Psalm 37: "If the LORD delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand." Yesterday I laughed so hard with Marianne that my abs hurt more than they do after my daily workout. Yesterday I found my first facial lines. Today the lines were still there, and today I looked out my window at the hard, bright, shallow sunshine on the bare bright trees and I loved my life and this season and the God who brought me to it. I put on my coat, my favorite scarf, and my warm ugly gloves and went out into the day at the death of the year (this coldness before the snow flies, when the leaves are packed in sharp-smelling banks along the curb and the land is stark and bare, is my favorite time of year), and found Colette, and walked around the neighborhood, talking.
Maybe every second doesn't find me jumping up and down in elation -- that's not life. Maybe every morning doesn't find me burning with delight to be awake, maybe every afternoon doesn't find me suppressing a song because I'm filled to bursting with happiness. But every minute finds me alive. Every minute finds me upheld. And when I turn my faithful, as-yet-unrepaired old Earl nosefirst down the driveway wherever I'm going each day, I can look down the uneven bricks of Ashland St. and up at the flat November sky and think, I'm doing okay.
I'm not getting younger, and I'm not where I thought I would be. But where I am is better. Facial lines and all.
Friday, November 11, 2005
la la la la la
Just had a fantastic evening hanging out with former roommate Marianne -- I sometimes forget how lovely and essential it is to spend time with someone who has known you well for a long while, whose company you really enjoy. (Shout out, MP!)
Also some really exciting news on the promotion, which I'll go into further over the weekend. Right now I'm tired and have to get up early on a Saturday for a conference on baby sign language. Wheee.
Also some really exciting news on the promotion, which I'll go into further over the weekend. Right now I'm tired and have to get up early on a Saturday for a conference on baby sign language. Wheee.
Monday, November 07, 2005
yak
So I'm recovering from a weekend of nasty illness and took a sick day today to give me a chance to get back to as normal as possible.
Last week a wicked stomach bug ran rampant at the Center, and Friday afternoon I caught it. When I got home from work I emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet (my toilet has an old-fashioned base shaped in cross-section rather like a flower, which makes it conveniently easy to grip when in the throes of retching), and went to bed. Apparently bored with the dash-for-the-bathroom routine, I had my stomach put a little blood into the vomit and treated myself to a trip to the ER where after being ignored for hours I was put onto an IV and drugged senseless. My two angels through this ordeal were Colette and her coworker Tona -- Colette drove me to the hospital and Tona met us there -- and they lugged my stuff around and told stories and fetched me things like heated blankets and cups of ice.
After about six hours I was still having trouble keeping water down and the nurse was all for admitting me for the night, but by then I had one clear and ever-so-stubborn thought in my muddled head: Go home. That was about all I could manage to say: "Wan' go home." So Colette drove me home, then filled my prescriptions (I did say angel, yes?) while I dragged myself up the stairs and collapsed into bed.
So the rest of the weekend my stomach was irritable and sore, and I lay around feeling generally miserable and weak and with the idea that I really ought to be eating something, but I was afraid I couldn't get it down. Then came today, when I felt reasonably sure of my stomach lining and managed to make a nice chicken soup that tasted insanely delicious.
So my NaNoWriMo project is sadly sadly behind, but I can sit up without every abdominal muscle clenching in pain, so I think I'll call that progress.
And tomorrow it's back to the gremlins.
Last week a wicked stomach bug ran rampant at the Center, and Friday afternoon I caught it. When I got home from work I emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet (my toilet has an old-fashioned base shaped in cross-section rather like a flower, which makes it conveniently easy to grip when in the throes of retching), and went to bed. Apparently bored with the dash-for-the-bathroom routine, I had my stomach put a little blood into the vomit and treated myself to a trip to the ER where after being ignored for hours I was put onto an IV and drugged senseless. My two angels through this ordeal were Colette and her coworker Tona -- Colette drove me to the hospital and Tona met us there -- and they lugged my stuff around and told stories and fetched me things like heated blankets and cups of ice.
After about six hours I was still having trouble keeping water down and the nurse was all for admitting me for the night, but by then I had one clear and ever-so-stubborn thought in my muddled head: Go home. That was about all I could manage to say: "Wan' go home." So Colette drove me home, then filled my prescriptions (I did say angel, yes?) while I dragged myself up the stairs and collapsed into bed.
So the rest of the weekend my stomach was irritable and sore, and I lay around feeling generally miserable and weak and with the idea that I really ought to be eating something, but I was afraid I couldn't get it down. Then came today, when I felt reasonably sure of my stomach lining and managed to make a nice chicken soup that tasted insanely delicious.
So my NaNoWriMo project is sadly sadly behind, but I can sit up without every abdominal muscle clenching in pain, so I think I'll call that progress.
And tomorrow it's back to the gremlins.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
the update
I'm sure most of you have stopped clicking on my link because it's been so damn long since I posted. For which I apologize, but yes, Matt, you were right, things have been busy.
So, first the update on the busyness, then the tag (thanks Susie!).
Things at work:
Last week the executive director of the Center for the Homeless (a very outgoing, rather scattered man in his early thirties) approached me and said, "So you've been here for about six months, and I wanted to check on you and see how things are going...and to ask if there was anything else at the Center you'd be interested in doing."
Thinking he was after me to get more involved in extra-work activities, I said, "Can I ask what you had in mind?"
To which he replied, "Administrative coordinator."
And I sort of reeled for half a second (oh wow, he meant what other JOB?) and said, "Okay. What's involved with that?"
So pretty much I'd be his personal assistant, lots of secretarial work (phone calls, filing, organizing his schedule, reminding him of all his tasks) and some extra organizing activities, plus a role as the guy's right-hand gal able to advise him on ideas. Frankly, running to get a guy's coffee (which I doubt I'd have to do) doesn't knock my socks off, but on the other hand I would get to meet EVERYONE (because this guy knows EVERYONE in South Bend), so it would be a huge networking opportunity, and a launching pad toward any career in the community that I would want. There's also a ten to twenty percent pay raise involved (v. good), and I would get to wear nice clothes again, interact with adults, learn all there is to know about the inner workings of the Center (satisfying my life drive to know everything), and help make decisions.
I've been getting stressed and burned out on the children front -- the kids I most love are turning three and leaving the program soon, and really when it comes down to it what I love about my current position is the administrative and development aspect, not so much the day to day grind of wiping snotty noses, cleaning dirty asses, and maintaining a ridiculously patient persona. So this looks like a perfect opportunity.
And naturally I've been losing sleep over it, because Boss Meg is burning out too and this is a heavy blow to her. We're an amazing partnership, think along the same lines, complement each other's strengths, have the same sense of humor, and it's going to be extremely hard to let that go. Also to yield up some of my professional independence.
But I think it's the next right thing.
And I'm going to have to satisfy the tag in a later post; the parental units are visiting this weekend (which is wonderful and also another reason I've been insanely busy, up late every night cleaning) and I want to spend time with them.
Oo, Linds, since you asked -- I had taken a nearly year-long hiatus on writing (sad) -- the last thing I'd really written was that half-baked poem I posted in July -- but the other weekend I sat down and wrote a new fragment for my Clytemnestra project. And it felt wonderful. When I talked to Dr. Price at homecoming he remembered the project and asked after it, and said, "You really need to write that. It has legs." Which pretty neatly bolstered my confidence. Anyway, it's once again a work in progress.
Anything new to send me?
So, first the update on the busyness, then the tag (thanks Susie!).
Things at work:
Last week the executive director of the Center for the Homeless (a very outgoing, rather scattered man in his early thirties) approached me and said, "So you've been here for about six months, and I wanted to check on you and see how things are going...and to ask if there was anything else at the Center you'd be interested in doing."
Thinking he was after me to get more involved in extra-work activities, I said, "Can I ask what you had in mind?"
To which he replied, "Administrative coordinator."
And I sort of reeled for half a second (oh wow, he meant what other JOB?) and said, "Okay. What's involved with that?"
So pretty much I'd be his personal assistant, lots of secretarial work (phone calls, filing, organizing his schedule, reminding him of all his tasks) and some extra organizing activities, plus a role as the guy's right-hand gal able to advise him on ideas. Frankly, running to get a guy's coffee (which I doubt I'd have to do) doesn't knock my socks off, but on the other hand I would get to meet EVERYONE (because this guy knows EVERYONE in South Bend), so it would be a huge networking opportunity, and a launching pad toward any career in the community that I would want. There's also a ten to twenty percent pay raise involved (v. good), and I would get to wear nice clothes again, interact with adults, learn all there is to know about the inner workings of the Center (satisfying my life drive to know everything), and help make decisions.
I've been getting stressed and burned out on the children front -- the kids I most love are turning three and leaving the program soon, and really when it comes down to it what I love about my current position is the administrative and development aspect, not so much the day to day grind of wiping snotty noses, cleaning dirty asses, and maintaining a ridiculously patient persona. So this looks like a perfect opportunity.
And naturally I've been losing sleep over it, because Boss Meg is burning out too and this is a heavy blow to her. We're an amazing partnership, think along the same lines, complement each other's strengths, have the same sense of humor, and it's going to be extremely hard to let that go. Also to yield up some of my professional independence.
But I think it's the next right thing.
And I'm going to have to satisfy the tag in a later post; the parental units are visiting this weekend (which is wonderful and also another reason I've been insanely busy, up late every night cleaning) and I want to spend time with them.
Oo, Linds, since you asked -- I had taken a nearly year-long hiatus on writing (sad) -- the last thing I'd really written was that half-baked poem I posted in July -- but the other weekend I sat down and wrote a new fragment for my Clytemnestra project. And it felt wonderful. When I talked to Dr. Price at homecoming he remembered the project and asked after it, and said, "You really need to write that. It has legs." Which pretty neatly bolstered my confidence. Anyway, it's once again a work in progress.
Anything new to send me?
Saturday, October 15, 2005
but it pours
This week was something sort of hellish. On no night could I get a decent amount of rest for the life of me, though I went to bed at ten o'clock with the regularity of a healthy octogenarian's bowels. So I was unprepared for most of the normal upsets and wears and tears of my job, and stressed, and easily frustrated.
Not to mention a nice little fender bender on Tuesday night, the result of the most insane act of idiocy I've witnessed on the road to date. A woman who'd turned the WRONG WAY onto a one-way street swung around into the middle lane at an intersection, then, as I came up behind her on the left, turned left FROM THE MIDDLE LANE into the intersection, right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and lay on the horn for a good five seconds, to no effect. My poor Earl smacked his right front bumper into her left rear door. Plastic headlight and turn signal covers shattered all over the asphalt. My radiator slowly leaking fluid. Me so silently outraged and irate that my passenger (a coworker whom I was driving home) told me later she feared I would throttle the offending driver right there in the street.
I wish I could draw a diagram for you. The blatant stupidity jacked my blood pressure sky-high, even more than if I had been remotely at fault. A quick phone call to 911 (first 911 call I've ever made) brought a police car to the scene in about ten seconds, and since no one was injured and the damage minimal, the officer just did an official exchange of information, gave us some advice, and left. I could barely look the Stupid Woman Who Drove in Front of Me in the face, but I didn't kill her, attempted to be pacified by her frantic overtalkative woe-is-me-what-a-bad-week attempts to appease me, and left. Now I'm just waiting for her insurance company to call me and send somebody to look over my poor baby to assess the cost. At least I don't have to pay for any of the damage.
This weekend is a Note Dame home game, and I have happily holed myself up hermit- or grizzly bear-like in my apartment for the weekend, knowing that if I wanted to leave it would take me hours to get anywhere, and everything would be twice as expensive. (Oh yes. God help you if you want to fill your gas tank on a home game weekend: The prices are ten to twenty cents higher per gallon.)
Boss Meg and Jess (the coworker whom I drove home) have noticed that my Inner Bitch is snarling and rattling the bars of my ribcage -- not in how I treat people, but in my general attitude. She had a lot of free reign in college (though she didn't fool the people who knew me), and even when I worked retail; but now that I'm in social work, and with small children at that, I've stuffed her into a tight drum of controlled kindness. She's in a rage. Sometimes I've found myself longing to really have it out with Slightly Psycho Kevin, the only really hateable person I know, just to blow off steam. (But I haven't because that isn't my place and would open up a suppurating and unpleasant can of long-living worms.)
A good thing I've started working out every day after work with Meg. Without that physical outlet for pent-up aggression, I don't really know what I'd do besides slowly disintegrate.
Which is largely why I'm a.) healthy as a horse and getting steadily stronger, and b.) blowing most of my extra money on really nice-smelling Yankee Candles. Aromatherapy, my friends. It's vital.
Not to mention a nice little fender bender on Tuesday night, the result of the most insane act of idiocy I've witnessed on the road to date. A woman who'd turned the WRONG WAY onto a one-way street swung around into the middle lane at an intersection, then, as I came up behind her on the left, turned left FROM THE MIDDLE LANE into the intersection, right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and lay on the horn for a good five seconds, to no effect. My poor Earl smacked his right front bumper into her left rear door. Plastic headlight and turn signal covers shattered all over the asphalt. My radiator slowly leaking fluid. Me so silently outraged and irate that my passenger (a coworker whom I was driving home) told me later she feared I would throttle the offending driver right there in the street.
I wish I could draw a diagram for you. The blatant stupidity jacked my blood pressure sky-high, even more than if I had been remotely at fault. A quick phone call to 911 (first 911 call I've ever made) brought a police car to the scene in about ten seconds, and since no one was injured and the damage minimal, the officer just did an official exchange of information, gave us some advice, and left. I could barely look the Stupid Woman Who Drove in Front of Me in the face, but I didn't kill her, attempted to be pacified by her frantic overtalkative woe-is-me-what-a-bad-week attempts to appease me, and left. Now I'm just waiting for her insurance company to call me and send somebody to look over my poor baby to assess the cost. At least I don't have to pay for any of the damage.
This weekend is a Note Dame home game, and I have happily holed myself up hermit- or grizzly bear-like in my apartment for the weekend, knowing that if I wanted to leave it would take me hours to get anywhere, and everything would be twice as expensive. (Oh yes. God help you if you want to fill your gas tank on a home game weekend: The prices are ten to twenty cents higher per gallon.)
Boss Meg and Jess (the coworker whom I drove home) have noticed that my Inner Bitch is snarling and rattling the bars of my ribcage -- not in how I treat people, but in my general attitude. She had a lot of free reign in college (though she didn't fool the people who knew me), and even when I worked retail; but now that I'm in social work, and with small children at that, I've stuffed her into a tight drum of controlled kindness. She's in a rage. Sometimes I've found myself longing to really have it out with Slightly Psycho Kevin, the only really hateable person I know, just to blow off steam. (But I haven't because that isn't my place and would open up a suppurating and unpleasant can of long-living worms.)
A good thing I've started working out every day after work with Meg. Without that physical outlet for pent-up aggression, I don't really know what I'd do besides slowly disintegrate.
Which is largely why I'm a.) healthy as a horse and getting steadily stronger, and b.) blowing most of my extra money on really nice-smelling Yankee Candles. Aromatherapy, my friends. It's vital.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
dearly beloveds
Homecoming was perfect. I got to see nearly everyone I had hoped to see, and it was rejuvenating and healing to spend time with people whom I love ridiculously. Also good to be seen by those who have known me for some time. There's a lovely, warm comfort to being with old friends who know you well.
A wonderful weekend. Thanks all!
(And Kellie Donnelly, you left your lotion and hand cleanser in my purse. Just so you know.)
A wonderful weekend. Thanks all!
(And Kellie Donnelly, you left your lotion and hand cleanser in my purse. Just so you know.)
Monday, September 26, 2005
rorschack eggs
The egg I dropped into the frying pan this morning assumed the perfect shape of a STEALTH bomber.
It tasted fine, though.
It tasted fine, though.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
call me a cat
And I just caught Mouse Number Two, this time with some cleverness and cunning. It poked its head around the bookshelf as I sat on my couch journalling, and sneaked along the baseboard and around the corner to the kitchen. I waited a moment, then followed. It wasn't caught in the glue trap laid along the wall just around the corner. Puzzled, I checked my other empty trap in the kitchen behind the stove, then inspected its path to see how it had escaped.
It occurred to me that the mouse was running on the molding, not the bare floor, so I tipped the glue trap at an angle from molding to floor, and went on a hunt around the kitchen.
As I opened the pantry door, a little brown furriness darted behind the stove. I waited, and then with a jerk it ran over the tipped trap and caught.
So now Mouse Number Two is feeling a little colder and I'm thinking if there are more than two mice in this apartment, I am quickly going to lose my reluctance to give them a sound blow to the head to finish the whole business right away, so as not to waste good Gladware.
Meowwr.
It occurred to me that the mouse was running on the molding, not the bare floor, so I tipped the glue trap at an angle from molding to floor, and went on a hunt around the kitchen.
As I opened the pantry door, a little brown furriness darted behind the stove. I waited, and then with a jerk it ran over the tipped trap and caught.
So now Mouse Number Two is feeling a little colder and I'm thinking if there are more than two mice in this apartment, I am quickly going to lose my reluctance to give them a sound blow to the head to finish the whole business right away, so as not to waste good Gladware.
Meowwr.
a conversation with my father
Me: Hi, Daddy.
Dad: Hey, Sarah B., I just got your message.
Me: Yeah, um...what do I do?
Dad: Well, how bad is it? Did it chew through the whole wire?
Me: Hang on, checking...yeah, it chewed through an entire wire. So the speaker only has one wire intact.
Dad: Well...hm...it's a little hard for me to walk you through it step-by-step...
Me: I know, you can't even see the damage. But there are little bits of copper strewn everywhere and the speaker is definitely not working.
Dad: Do you know anyone you could take it to?
Me: Yeah, my boss's husband is good with this kind of stuff. You think that'll do it?
Dad: Yeah, I think so. Hey, what did you mean when you said the mouse is currently freezing to death?
Me: I mean I put it in the freezer.
So yes, I had a mouse this past week. Monday evening I was sitting on the couch watching TV when a furry black thing scuttled across the baseboard and disappeared behind the entertainment center. I shrieked (wondering if it was perhaps the biggest cockroach on the planet), grabbed a stool, and climbed on it to peer behind the entertainment center. There it was, terrified by the volume of my yell, and there I was, paralyzed. I put in a call to my mother and then to my landlord, who happened to be at Target at that very moment buying mousetraps for his own house. So he brought me some flat glue traps, the kind that catch but don't kill (grr, I hate doing the dirty work myself), and Wednesday afternoon I came home to find it lodged in a corner, its back legs caught in the trap and the glue full of copper wire pieces from the stereo speaker next to which it was lying.
My massive guilt trip evaporated then and there. I had decided in advance that freezing to death was the most humane way of disposing of the mouse (as opposed to smashing it or doing as my landlord suggested, which was to throw the whole thing in the trash: "You'll hear it moving around for awhile, but it'll die eventually" -- what?! -- and the glue prevents you from freeing the mouse in one piece, so I couldn't drive it twenty miles to a field and let it go) and so I lifted the trap with a spatula into a disposable Gladware container, covered it in plastic wrap, and popped it in on top of the icebox.
It's too bad mice are vermin. This particular little mouse was very very cute -- a long, alert face and bright eyes and dark brown fur, much more preferable than the nasty boorish sluggish smelly "domesticated" variety -- and if I had found his little poops in my toilet instead of my pantry, I believe we could have set up a tidy, peaceable coexistence. Instead he crapped on my flour and ate one of my speaker wires. Sorry, little buddy; time to go.
So I'm listening to George Winston with one speaker, which is adequate but one-dimensional. Boss Meg's husband Phillip will fix the devastated speaker for me, so I'm taking it to work with me tomorrow.
Dad: Hey, Sarah B., I just got your message.
Me: Yeah, um...what do I do?
Dad: Well, how bad is it? Did it chew through the whole wire?
Me: Hang on, checking...yeah, it chewed through an entire wire. So the speaker only has one wire intact.
Dad: Well...hm...it's a little hard for me to walk you through it step-by-step...
Me: I know, you can't even see the damage. But there are little bits of copper strewn everywhere and the speaker is definitely not working.
Dad: Do you know anyone you could take it to?
Me: Yeah, my boss's husband is good with this kind of stuff. You think that'll do it?
Dad: Yeah, I think so. Hey, what did you mean when you said the mouse is currently freezing to death?
Me: I mean I put it in the freezer.
So yes, I had a mouse this past week. Monday evening I was sitting on the couch watching TV when a furry black thing scuttled across the baseboard and disappeared behind the entertainment center. I shrieked (wondering if it was perhaps the biggest cockroach on the planet), grabbed a stool, and climbed on it to peer behind the entertainment center. There it was, terrified by the volume of my yell, and there I was, paralyzed. I put in a call to my mother and then to my landlord, who happened to be at Target at that very moment buying mousetraps for his own house. So he brought me some flat glue traps, the kind that catch but don't kill (grr, I hate doing the dirty work myself), and Wednesday afternoon I came home to find it lodged in a corner, its back legs caught in the trap and the glue full of copper wire pieces from the stereo speaker next to which it was lying.
My massive guilt trip evaporated then and there. I had decided in advance that freezing to death was the most humane way of disposing of the mouse (as opposed to smashing it or doing as my landlord suggested, which was to throw the whole thing in the trash: "You'll hear it moving around for awhile, but it'll die eventually" -- what?! -- and the glue prevents you from freeing the mouse in one piece, so I couldn't drive it twenty miles to a field and let it go) and so I lifted the trap with a spatula into a disposable Gladware container, covered it in plastic wrap, and popped it in on top of the icebox.
It's too bad mice are vermin. This particular little mouse was very very cute -- a long, alert face and bright eyes and dark brown fur, much more preferable than the nasty boorish sluggish smelly "domesticated" variety -- and if I had found his little poops in my toilet instead of my pantry, I believe we could have set up a tidy, peaceable coexistence. Instead he crapped on my flour and ate one of my speaker wires. Sorry, little buddy; time to go.
So I'm listening to George Winston with one speaker, which is adequate but one-dimensional. Boss Meg's husband Phillip will fix the devastated speaker for me, so I'm taking it to work with me tomorrow.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
a disclaimer
Life has been a little depressing lately...I'm exhausted with no apparent cause (I've been taking iron supplements and have decided to add a meat dish every week to my diet to avoid anemia), haven't been sleeping well, and have no energy.
I've begun cracking into my Bible in the mornings again (I've needed that pretty desperately) and exercise regularly, so hopefully with my improvements in diet I'll be picking up the pace again.
Really I think my exhaustion stems from my job. I love my work, I love the kids, I love what Meg and I are trying to do; but it's an exhausting job. All day every day I have to remain patient, calm, and loving for 6-8 very small children whose mental/emotional wellbeing partially depends upon my attitude and how attentive and vigilant I am for them. This keeps me on my guard every second.
Plus it was a long summer with only one steady volunteer on only Monday and Wednesday mornings. Meg and I have been planning and executing lessons (Yes, we do lessons: This is an early intervention classroom, not a daycare) all morning every morning by ourselves since June. All summer we've been upbeat about it, refusing to admit how hard our job has been, plowing through until we can get a break. Finally more volunteers are returning with the start of the academic year; but not many are coming in the mornings when we do our lessons and need the most help: Therefore we're not getting much of a break. But even a slight bit of help has the weight of the summer leaning on me -- rather like plowing through a semester refusing to get sick because of the workload for school, then going home for fall break and catching pneumonia, the flu, or some ungodly horrible cold. Only this is manifesting itself not in illness but utter, bone-deep mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.
I am dead tired. When I come home I barely have enough energy to make something for dinner before I sink into the couch and stare vacantly at the TV until bedtime. My entire apartment needs a thorough cleaning; my plants need regular watering; my refrigerator could stand a purge; but I can't do it.
It upsets me when people assume that most of my negligence of a social life is due to some internal rudeness or irresponsibility or callous disregard. First, my job is my life. I love it, and I will not leave it until my work there is pretty much through, and while I have it I must necessarily have early bedtimes and low-key weekends, since any time not at work is time recuperating from that day and preparing for the next. I'm in social work. If I show up groggy or grumpy children who have already endured more insecurity than I have ever endured in my life will suffer for it. I cannot do that to them. Thus, my night life is g.o.n.e. Kiss it goodbye, friends; I already have.
I am happy to meet people for dinner. I miss a lot of the folks I used to see regularly. But I can't jump into clubbing clothes and hit the bars on a work night. I doubt I can even jump into clubbing clothes and hit the bars on a weekend night. At ten o'clock my vision starts fuzzing. It's the nature of my current life.
Second, I am by nature an introvert. I do not believe this characteristic is the negative hurdle-to-be-overcome that contemporary society would have us believe. It is merely a fact. By nature I avoid oversocializing with people -- not because I dislike people, but because being with people, however fun and necessary and wholesome (and it is fun and necessary and wholesome) drains my resources. It has nothing to do with the people and everything to do with how I'm wired. When I'm at a mental/physical/emotional ebb, I heal by being alone. And I've been in a mental/physical/emotional low tide for a long time.
So friends, please don't take offense if I neglect you. I love you, and apologize for neglecting you, and hope not to neglect you soon. In the meantime, if you think of me, kindly pray that more morning volunteers will show up to help Meg and me, because until then it looks like my social life (which, may I reiterate, is sometimes just as much work for me as my job) is kerplut.
And in the meantime, I'm going to bed.
I've begun cracking into my Bible in the mornings again (I've needed that pretty desperately) and exercise regularly, so hopefully with my improvements in diet I'll be picking up the pace again.
Really I think my exhaustion stems from my job. I love my work, I love the kids, I love what Meg and I are trying to do; but it's an exhausting job. All day every day I have to remain patient, calm, and loving for 6-8 very small children whose mental/emotional wellbeing partially depends upon my attitude and how attentive and vigilant I am for them. This keeps me on my guard every second.
Plus it was a long summer with only one steady volunteer on only Monday and Wednesday mornings. Meg and I have been planning and executing lessons (Yes, we do lessons: This is an early intervention classroom, not a daycare) all morning every morning by ourselves since June. All summer we've been upbeat about it, refusing to admit how hard our job has been, plowing through until we can get a break. Finally more volunteers are returning with the start of the academic year; but not many are coming in the mornings when we do our lessons and need the most help: Therefore we're not getting much of a break. But even a slight bit of help has the weight of the summer leaning on me -- rather like plowing through a semester refusing to get sick because of the workload for school, then going home for fall break and catching pneumonia, the flu, or some ungodly horrible cold. Only this is manifesting itself not in illness but utter, bone-deep mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.
I am dead tired. When I come home I barely have enough energy to make something for dinner before I sink into the couch and stare vacantly at the TV until bedtime. My entire apartment needs a thorough cleaning; my plants need regular watering; my refrigerator could stand a purge; but I can't do it.
It upsets me when people assume that most of my negligence of a social life is due to some internal rudeness or irresponsibility or callous disregard. First, my job is my life. I love it, and I will not leave it until my work there is pretty much through, and while I have it I must necessarily have early bedtimes and low-key weekends, since any time not at work is time recuperating from that day and preparing for the next. I'm in social work. If I show up groggy or grumpy children who have already endured more insecurity than I have ever endured in my life will suffer for it. I cannot do that to them. Thus, my night life is g.o.n.e. Kiss it goodbye, friends; I already have.
I am happy to meet people for dinner. I miss a lot of the folks I used to see regularly. But I can't jump into clubbing clothes and hit the bars on a work night. I doubt I can even jump into clubbing clothes and hit the bars on a weekend night. At ten o'clock my vision starts fuzzing. It's the nature of my current life.
Second, I am by nature an introvert. I do not believe this characteristic is the negative hurdle-to-be-overcome that contemporary society would have us believe. It is merely a fact. By nature I avoid oversocializing with people -- not because I dislike people, but because being with people, however fun and necessary and wholesome (and it is fun and necessary and wholesome) drains my resources. It has nothing to do with the people and everything to do with how I'm wired. When I'm at a mental/physical/emotional ebb, I heal by being alone. And I've been in a mental/physical/emotional low tide for a long time.
So friends, please don't take offense if I neglect you. I love you, and apologize for neglecting you, and hope not to neglect you soon. In the meantime, if you think of me, kindly pray that more morning volunteers will show up to help Meg and me, because until then it looks like my social life (which, may I reiterate, is sometimes just as much work for me as my job) is kerplut.
And in the meantime, I'm going to bed.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
fall cleaning
I made a delightful discovery yesterday when depositing my birthday money into my checking account: I have much more money there than I had thought.
Much more really isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but the end of the month usually finds me scraping the bottom of the financial barrel because my spending habits have never been stellar. Well...actually my spending habits are great for the economy, but my saving habits suck.
But so far this month I've been practically miserly, not buying anything but groceries and staying in a lot to watch Buffy. (My birthday shopping spree at the Grove doesn't count, as it used up money that didn't come from my paycheck.)
So I can relax a little bit and enjoy the not-spending that is September.
Today my apartment was fifty-eight degrees when I woke up (again, up and about before nine -- huzzah!) and even though I didn't feel I'd had the best night's sleep, just rolling out from under the covers into delightful briskness had me completely energized. Which means I get to partially accomplish my goal of reorganizing and cleaning my entire apartment this weekend. The clutter has been accumulating and it's driving me bonkers.
Boss Meg and I have been working out consistently after work on MWF; yesterday's workout was fantastic (although sadly I sweat like Niagara Falls, thanks Dad) and I've finally found the perfect height on the exercise bike so that my knees aren't burning two minutes into the routine.
The two of us managed to get through the end of August and part of September without hearing someone ask us, "Are you sisters???" But this week we were deluged; it's gotten to the point where we either start laughing as soon as it's asked, or suppress impatient groans. I mean seriously. She's Greek-Italian and I'm Scots-Irish-German. We're two pretty white girls with big smiles and brown hair, and that's where the resemblance ends. Although I do look a little more like her sister than her own sister does.
My mango yogurt ice went over fabulously at La-Di-Ta; I met two new young women who a.) don't mind at all our various differences in personality and background (which rocks) and b.) apparently know all the young people in South Bend, so I've been threatened with a social life, which sounds grrrreat. They exclaimed over the delicate flavors and beautiful presentation (at the recipe's direction, I served the ice with sprigs of mint) and asked, "You made this?" Which of course made me smile.
Bring on the cleaning. I'm wearing ancient, huge, patched, faded jeans and a bandana. Brace yourself, clutter. Te goberno!
Much more really isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but the end of the month usually finds me scraping the bottom of the financial barrel because my spending habits have never been stellar. Well...actually my spending habits are great for the economy, but my saving habits suck.
But so far this month I've been practically miserly, not buying anything but groceries and staying in a lot to watch Buffy. (My birthday shopping spree at the Grove doesn't count, as it used up money that didn't come from my paycheck.)
So I can relax a little bit and enjoy the not-spending that is September.
Today my apartment was fifty-eight degrees when I woke up (again, up and about before nine -- huzzah!) and even though I didn't feel I'd had the best night's sleep, just rolling out from under the covers into delightful briskness had me completely energized. Which means I get to partially accomplish my goal of reorganizing and cleaning my entire apartment this weekend. The clutter has been accumulating and it's driving me bonkers.
Boss Meg and I have been working out consistently after work on MWF; yesterday's workout was fantastic (although sadly I sweat like Niagara Falls, thanks Dad) and I've finally found the perfect height on the exercise bike so that my knees aren't burning two minutes into the routine.
The two of us managed to get through the end of August and part of September without hearing someone ask us, "Are you sisters???" But this week we were deluged; it's gotten to the point where we either start laughing as soon as it's asked, or suppress impatient groans. I mean seriously. She's Greek-Italian and I'm Scots-Irish-German. We're two pretty white girls with big smiles and brown hair, and that's where the resemblance ends. Although I do look a little more like her sister than her own sister does.
My mango yogurt ice went over fabulously at La-Di-Ta; I met two new young women who a.) don't mind at all our various differences in personality and background (which rocks) and b.) apparently know all the young people in South Bend, so I've been threatened with a social life, which sounds grrrreat. They exclaimed over the delicate flavors and beautiful presentation (at the recipe's direction, I served the ice with sprigs of mint) and asked, "You made this?" Which of course made me smile.
Bring on the cleaning. I'm wearing ancient, huge, patched, faded jeans and a bandana. Brace yourself, clutter. Te goberno!
Thursday, September 15, 2005
la-di-ta
Temperatures last night bottomed out at a welcome fifty-something degrees, so that when I woke groggily to the insistence of my alarm this morning my apartment registered at a blissful fifty-nine. With the sun filtering through slowly yellowing leaves on the street outside my living room window, and yellow-brown leaves scattered over the sidewalk, it definitely bespoke the coming of autumn.
Colder weather brings out the best in me. I like summer while it lasts, but the heat and the humidity make me feel bloated, lethargic, and stupid. When I wake up and get cold feet walking across my kitchen floor to put on the kettle, and the air bites at my bare legs, I feel energized, chipper, ready to take on anything. I think I'm going to get up an hour earlier on these fall mornings so that I can take a long constitutional in the vinegar-tangy air before work. My ideal temperature is sixty-five, my ideal day a late September Saturday when I can dig out my shapeless red barn coat, stuff the pockets with apples, and wander at will through the trees.
On a social note, tonight begins the inception of La-Di-Ta ("Living Alone -- Dining Together"), a single women's dinner group started up by Colette and one of her coworkers. Six women comprise the group, and every Thursday we shift hostesses and get together at one gal's place for a sit-down-together-and-chat meal. Everyone brings something so the hostess only has to worry about the entree.
Tonight I'm in charge of dessert. My oven knob caved, so while I'm waiting for my spastic landlord to replace it, I'm cooking a lot of soup, stovetop curry, and cold food. For tonight's sweet-tooth indulgence I selected a Mango Yogurt Ice recipe from my vegetarian cookbook. Everything went smoothly; I just have to stop by the house to make sure it froze as it was supposed to. I'm not sure it's enough for six women, so since I'm doing my laundry before dinner and the laundromat is located in a Martin's plaza, I'll swing by the grocery store for some mixed fruit.
I'm actually terribly nervous. I do very well cooking for myself, but I've never made anything sweet for anyone besides my Ann Taylor coworkers last Christmas (I'm not a big dessert person, so I never make any for myself). I want it to taste good, to turn out perfectly, and to be enough for everyone. But I'm sure the ladies will be forgiving in the event that perfection is unattainable.
Here goes!
Colder weather brings out the best in me. I like summer while it lasts, but the heat and the humidity make me feel bloated, lethargic, and stupid. When I wake up and get cold feet walking across my kitchen floor to put on the kettle, and the air bites at my bare legs, I feel energized, chipper, ready to take on anything. I think I'm going to get up an hour earlier on these fall mornings so that I can take a long constitutional in the vinegar-tangy air before work. My ideal temperature is sixty-five, my ideal day a late September Saturday when I can dig out my shapeless red barn coat, stuff the pockets with apples, and wander at will through the trees.
On a social note, tonight begins the inception of La-Di-Ta ("Living Alone -- Dining Together"), a single women's dinner group started up by Colette and one of her coworkers. Six women comprise the group, and every Thursday we shift hostesses and get together at one gal's place for a sit-down-together-and-chat meal. Everyone brings something so the hostess only has to worry about the entree.
Tonight I'm in charge of dessert. My oven knob caved, so while I'm waiting for my spastic landlord to replace it, I'm cooking a lot of soup, stovetop curry, and cold food. For tonight's sweet-tooth indulgence I selected a Mango Yogurt Ice recipe from my vegetarian cookbook. Everything went smoothly; I just have to stop by the house to make sure it froze as it was supposed to. I'm not sure it's enough for six women, so since I'm doing my laundry before dinner and the laundromat is located in a Martin's plaza, I'll swing by the grocery store for some mixed fruit.
I'm actually terribly nervous. I do very well cooking for myself, but I've never made anything sweet for anyone besides my Ann Taylor coworkers last Christmas (I'm not a big dessert person, so I never make any for myself). I want it to taste good, to turn out perfectly, and to be enough for everyone. But I'm sure the ladies will be forgiving in the event that perfection is unattainable.
Here goes!
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
a year older
Yesterday I turned twenty-four.
I've been looking forward to this birthday since about February, when I decided that twenty-four is a.) going to be the best year of my life so far and b.) closer to being a settled, "real" adult than twenty-three. At twenty-four I think it's beginning to look like I have a clue...or if not a clue, then at least a plan that happens to be working out so far.
It's also the age my mother was when she gave birth to me. My life has taken dramatically different turns from hers: Not married right out of college (not even dating), not holding my first child in my arms. One thing, though, we have in common: I moved far away from family to start a life of my own.
I'd planned to be incredibly reflective, but as it turns out that's all I have to say about turning twenty-four. My birthday itself was a great deal of fun in a relaxing, low-key way. I went out for some excellent deep-dish pizza with Colette, came home and watched the season premieres of Bones and House while on the phone with Leigh Ann, broke open a bottle of mead (which I highly recommend: honey wine is sweet, flavorful, and rich) and contentedly watched the day end. I'm glad, as I'm glad of most things lately, to be a year older and to find nothing to wish for, having all that I want (besides a raise, let's be honest).
This past weekend I caught a ride East to visit my sister and her fiance in New Wilmington -- and it was perfect. I didn't get to see enough of Laura, as she spent most of the weekend working, but my future brother-in-law doesn't mind shopping, so we spent some intensive hours at the Grove City Outlets, where I bought eight T-shirts, three long-sleeved T-shirts, and two tanktops (nearly all of them for work), a garlic press, three pairs of underwear, and a cheap VHS edition of E.T. I consider this my birthday shopping spree, and was profoundly happy that it took place in a state without clothing tax. It was absolutely rejuvenating to be back in Western PA for thirty hours, among old hills, small farm towns, and a slower pace of life. I needed that time in the landscape of my home.
Thanks everyone for your good wishes! Life is, as usual, lovely.
I've been looking forward to this birthday since about February, when I decided that twenty-four is a.) going to be the best year of my life so far and b.) closer to being a settled, "real" adult than twenty-three. At twenty-four I think it's beginning to look like I have a clue...or if not a clue, then at least a plan that happens to be working out so far.
It's also the age my mother was when she gave birth to me. My life has taken dramatically different turns from hers: Not married right out of college (not even dating), not holding my first child in my arms. One thing, though, we have in common: I moved far away from family to start a life of my own.
I'd planned to be incredibly reflective, but as it turns out that's all I have to say about turning twenty-four. My birthday itself was a great deal of fun in a relaxing, low-key way. I went out for some excellent deep-dish pizza with Colette, came home and watched the season premieres of Bones and House while on the phone with Leigh Ann, broke open a bottle of mead (which I highly recommend: honey wine is sweet, flavorful, and rich) and contentedly watched the day end. I'm glad, as I'm glad of most things lately, to be a year older and to find nothing to wish for, having all that I want (besides a raise, let's be honest).
This past weekend I caught a ride East to visit my sister and her fiance in New Wilmington -- and it was perfect. I didn't get to see enough of Laura, as she spent most of the weekend working, but my future brother-in-law doesn't mind shopping, so we spent some intensive hours at the Grove City Outlets, where I bought eight T-shirts, three long-sleeved T-shirts, and two tanktops (nearly all of them for work), a garlic press, three pairs of underwear, and a cheap VHS edition of E.T. I consider this my birthday shopping spree, and was profoundly happy that it took place in a state without clothing tax. It was absolutely rejuvenating to be back in Western PA for thirty hours, among old hills, small farm towns, and a slower pace of life. I needed that time in the landscape of my home.
Thanks everyone for your good wishes! Life is, as usual, lovely.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
the post in which I confess to like being single
I like being single.
I like it a lot.
It's been a dawning comprehension over the last couple of months, moving to a conscious realization over the last couple of weeks, blooming to a solid awareness over the last couple of days. Given a choice, at the moment, I think I would choose to stay as I am.
Oh, not forever -- "it is not good for [man/woman/a person/me] to be alone" and all that -- but for now. When I find my life completely satisfying. When I have so much to do and learn, and so much to read. When I look around and see that everything is good, as it is.
When I was younger I thought I would never have the capability to be/live alone, as in single (I'm not actually "alone"; I have faith an family and friends and plants). But that's what has happened, and it's very very good.
A blessing. This, for the time being, is my blessing. Something to cherish and protect, something to make me smile with my whole being, until the next blessing.
I like it a lot.
It's been a dawning comprehension over the last couple of months, moving to a conscious realization over the last couple of weeks, blooming to a solid awareness over the last couple of days. Given a choice, at the moment, I think I would choose to stay as I am.
Oh, not forever -- "it is not good for [man/woman/a person/me] to be alone" and all that -- but for now. When I find my life completely satisfying. When I have so much to do and learn, and so much to read. When I look around and see that everything is good, as it is.
When I was younger I thought I would never have the capability to be/live alone, as in single (I'm not actually "alone"; I have faith an family and friends and plants). But that's what has happened, and it's very very good.
A blessing. This, for the time being, is my blessing. Something to cherish and protect, something to make me smile with my whole being, until the next blessing.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
planning tracks for the grove
So I'm still sick, home from work actually, which wasn't as difficult to achieve as I'd always thought. Meg and I were worried about me infecting the kids, so we called Boss-Boss Beth who got very agitated on our behalf and came up with half a million ideas for helpers and substitutes over the next few days.
"Everyone gets sick," she fumed. "You ought to have a substitute. And you both are taking a vacation at Christmastime. I'm ordering you!"
Well. All righty then. So today the symptoms are milder and I am (if you can believe it) all Buffy' and Angel'd out. I've watched almost the entire fourth season of B and the first season of A for the past five days straight. My brains began sloshing about in my skull last night, so I decided to call a TV-free day today and do things like blog and wash dishes and listen to George Winston and Chopin.
So. Homecoming. Once again, due to the finances of travel, I faced the difficult decision between the North East Wine Fest (the weekend prior to Homecoming) and Homecoming at Grove City. The Wine Fest has infinite charm (and infinite wine), but the Grove has old friends with whom I seldom have the opportunity to connect. So, friends trumped wine and I'm planning to make tracks for the Grove in a few weeks.
I also think this is the last year I can crash in someone's room. After this I won't know anybody who's still attending, so friends, if we make plans for Homecoming next year, why don't we make them way in advance so we can reserve a cheap motel room cheap?
"Everyone gets sick," she fumed. "You ought to have a substitute. And you both are taking a vacation at Christmastime. I'm ordering you!"
Well. All righty then. So today the symptoms are milder and I am (if you can believe it) all Buffy' and Angel'd out. I've watched almost the entire fourth season of B and the first season of A for the past five days straight. My brains began sloshing about in my skull last night, so I decided to call a TV-free day today and do things like blog and wash dishes and listen to George Winston and Chopin.
So. Homecoming. Once again, due to the finances of travel, I faced the difficult decision between the North East Wine Fest (the weekend prior to Homecoming) and Homecoming at Grove City. The Wine Fest has infinite charm (and infinite wine), but the Grove has old friends with whom I seldom have the opportunity to connect. So, friends trumped wine and I'm planning to make tracks for the Grove in a few weeks.
I also think this is the last year I can crash in someone's room. After this I won't know anybody who's still attending, so friends, if we make plans for Homecoming next year, why don't we make them way in advance so we can reserve a cheap motel room cheap?
Sunday, September 04, 2005
the healing power of chicken
Recognizing that my posts tend to ramble, I will attempt to keep this concise and clear. (This is how you should never, never start a paper.) This blog will have three parts.
1. Notification and apology to all my friends: I've turned on word verification for comments. I'm tired of random comment spam.
2. Nara, my favorite two-year-old at work, on Thursday demonstrated the impossible. The kids had discovered a wagon left in the courtyard during their outdoor free play time, and organized themselves into puller, pulled, and pusher. The teamwork as they navigated the curves in the path was adorable.
Then Nara started pulling everyone else. Raziel, Antonio, and Kristopher sat in the wagon while she pulled them around and around the circle. Meg and I looked on amazed. I laughingly asked Nara if I could have a ride, to which she responded, "You cain't have a ride! My kids in there!" (She has Mother Hen and Matriarch embedded into her personality.)
But then Meg had everyone climb out and climbed in herself, and Nara pulled 135-lb Meg halfway around the circle. Then Meg climbed out and I climbed in. She pulled 160-lb me partway around the circle. Then 25-lb Christopher and 35-lb Kristopher climbed in with me, and she dragged the 220-lb three of us -- five times her own body weight -- about a foot.
I think she's going to take over the world.
3. Chicken broth. This morning I woke up unspeakably nauseous and could barely bring myself to sip water. But then I remembered the boullion granules on my spice rack. I made a cup of chicken broth. Bliss. Digestive healing heaven.
Why? What makes chicken broth a cure-all for upset stomachs?
Well. I'm just glad it works.
1. Notification and apology to all my friends: I've turned on word verification for comments. I'm tired of random comment spam.
2. Nara, my favorite two-year-old at work, on Thursday demonstrated the impossible. The kids had discovered a wagon left in the courtyard during their outdoor free play time, and organized themselves into puller, pulled, and pusher. The teamwork as they navigated the curves in the path was adorable.
Then Nara started pulling everyone else. Raziel, Antonio, and Kristopher sat in the wagon while she pulled them around and around the circle. Meg and I looked on amazed. I laughingly asked Nara if I could have a ride, to which she responded, "You cain't have a ride! My kids in there!" (She has Mother Hen and Matriarch embedded into her personality.)
But then Meg had everyone climb out and climbed in herself, and Nara pulled 135-lb Meg halfway around the circle. Then Meg climbed out and I climbed in. She pulled 160-lb me partway around the circle. Then 25-lb Christopher and 35-lb Kristopher climbed in with me, and she dragged the 220-lb three of us -- five times her own body weight -- about a foot.
I think she's going to take over the world.
3. Chicken broth. This morning I woke up unspeakably nauseous and could barely bring myself to sip water. But then I remembered the boullion granules on my spice rack. I made a cup of chicken broth. Bliss. Digestive healing heaven.
Why? What makes chicken broth a cure-all for upset stomachs?
Well. I'm just glad it works.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
a little plague for the weekend
Yesterday I woke up with a fever and a nasty sore throat. I came home early from work (God bless my courageous boss), slept for a few hours, decided I should call a doctor, found one that had Saturday hours AND took my crappy insurance, and rolled out of bed at 6:30 this morning after a terrible night's sleep to wait for an hour and a half in the waiting room stuck watching a 72-hour Michael Landon marathon, which struck me as supremely unfair.
The nurse who took me back to the exam room asked why I'd come in, and I reeled off a list of my symptoms (sore throat, swollen painful glands, fever, joint and muscle aches, cold extremities, headache), and when she returned with a swab to do the strep test she said, "You gave that description really well. Are you a medical student?"
I didn't say, "No, I'm a hypochondriac and I watch House." Instead I smiled and said, "No...but thanks. I check a lot of online websites." And gave myself bonus points for sounding educated while running a fever of 101.5 before ten in the morning.
I paid through the nose for the medication (half of which the doctor's office gave me in samples; I'm grateful), bought myself necessary BRAT diet goodies like bananas, applesauce, and ginger ale, and returned home to find that my fever had spiked to 103.5, at which I panicked and called the doctor's office. They kindly gave me a schedule for Tylenol doses, which has helped dramatically.
It's really the only downside of living alone -- when you're sick no one knows, and no one is there to brush your nasty unwashed hair off your sweaty sickie forehead and tell you, Drink this; everything's going to be all right.
So I called my mom and Leigh Ann and spent the rest of the day watching Buffy and Angel. It's not like having family closeby, but it'll do.
And I didn't once hallucinate. Which I consider to be a good thing.
The nurse who took me back to the exam room asked why I'd come in, and I reeled off a list of my symptoms (sore throat, swollen painful glands, fever, joint and muscle aches, cold extremities, headache), and when she returned with a swab to do the strep test she said, "You gave that description really well. Are you a medical student?"
I didn't say, "No, I'm a hypochondriac and I watch House." Instead I smiled and said, "No...but thanks. I check a lot of online websites." And gave myself bonus points for sounding educated while running a fever of 101.5 before ten in the morning.
I paid through the nose for the medication (half of which the doctor's office gave me in samples; I'm grateful), bought myself necessary BRAT diet goodies like bananas, applesauce, and ginger ale, and returned home to find that my fever had spiked to 103.5, at which I panicked and called the doctor's office. They kindly gave me a schedule for Tylenol doses, which has helped dramatically.
It's really the only downside of living alone -- when you're sick no one knows, and no one is there to brush your nasty unwashed hair off your sweaty sickie forehead and tell you, Drink this; everything's going to be all right.
So I called my mom and Leigh Ann and spent the rest of the day watching Buffy and Angel. It's not like having family closeby, but it'll do.
And I didn't once hallucinate. Which I consider to be a good thing.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
paying through the eyeballs...and a social commentary
I actually cried while filling up my car today. A full tank cost me fifty dollars. When the price skyrocketed above three per gallon, I didn't notice. I knew it was getting worse, but for God's sake, I can't afford this.
I can remember when gas was eighty-nine cents a gallon.
A good plateful of Thai curry helped me forget my woes for awhile (and gave me a runny nose). I cooked jasmine rice for the first time to accompany the curry, and I'm never going back. You know the amazing goodness of Chinese restaurant rice? One of their secrets is, of course, that they steam theirs. Sadly I don't have a steamer/rice cooker. But the other secret is that they use jasmine rice. I always wished I could cook rice so good I could eat it plain and cold from the little cardboard box in the refrigerator (I love cold Chinese), but thought it was completely beyond the realm of my ability. Not so. As soon as I opened the bag to dig my measuring cup inside, that sweet fragrance wafted up and took me straight back to the China Jade in North East. Heaven.
I also cooked with fish sauce. It adds great flavor, but is Very Stinky.
Leigh Ann had this marvelous idea -- since we won't be seeing each other as often now that I work and she's in grad school in D.C. and we can't allow our whole friendship to be based around Buffy every time we see each other -- of mailing me the contemporary Buffy and Angel seasons one at a time; I will watch them, mail them back, and get the next season. Meanwhile we will correspond about them.
This is taking loving a show to a bizarre level. But it's totally made my evening, when I could sit and savor the delectable artistic cheesiness that is Buffy.
Ooooo, and the new season of House premieres on my birthday!
I had no Close Encounters of the Psycho Kind when coming home from work today; it seems that Kevin is hiding or at least out of sight whenever I march past his door on the way to my own. It seems the same evening I shut the door in his face Colette visited him to tell him that there is no chance for him ever to get back together with her. So hopefully he's thoroughly depressed and planning to move.
Today at work the buzz centered around some local shoe store which donated fifty crappy art kits to the homeless kids at the Center and wanted publicity for it. So our whole morning was shot waiting around for the camera people to arrive, and then trying to help our two-year-olds to hold still and not be frightened of the many strange adults milling around with flash bulbs.
I'm not sneering at the donation. Crappy or not, art kits are something our kids don't have to take home with them, till today. But the self-congratulatory oo-look-at-me-doing-something-good makes me ill. Two slickly dressed representatives of the shoe company arrived wearing suits and stood in the middle of the photographs and then hung around shaking hands and giving their full name AND job title when introducing themselves and saying saccharine schmoozy things like, "Well, we hope the kids enjoy the art kits as much as we enjoyed donating them."
At that point I had to grab a kid and make for indoors muttering something about a diaper. It's not like they gave the Center half a million dollars. And how exactly does one enjoy donating something? It's like enjoying pouring a bowl of cereal. You just do it. The kids being happy with the gift is what you enjoy, but the slick reps didn't stick around for that part.
Plus it threw our kids off routine so that they were insecure and cranky the rest of the day (our classroom is about the only routine that most of these kids get). The whole experience was topped off by the random appearance of a Chik-Fil-A cow in full "Eat Mor Chikin" signboard regalia, which frightened our infants to tears. (People dressed in huge fuzzy animal outfits have always given me the creeps too.) At that point I wondered what dimension of reality I had suddenly wandered into and started checking along the baseboards for the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East.
Rrrgh.
So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ~Matthew 6:2-4
I just can't wait for Christmastime. Maybe I'll spend the whole month of December dressed as Santa Claus so people can't see me scowling behind the curly fake beard. It also might help our kids not to be afraid of morons in suits. (The only suited creature I've ever loved is the Grove City Gorilla, who chased the kid in the wheelchair -- yes, at Grove City he was THE kid in the wheelchair -- and humped him with an orange traffic cone, and who leaped onto the stage at the Class of 2004 Senior Dinner in the middle of Nancy Paxton's goodbye speech, gave us a silent victory sign with both arms, jumped off the stage, and ran out a side door. I loved that guy.)
I can remember when gas was eighty-nine cents a gallon.
A good plateful of Thai curry helped me forget my woes for awhile (and gave me a runny nose). I cooked jasmine rice for the first time to accompany the curry, and I'm never going back. You know the amazing goodness of Chinese restaurant rice? One of their secrets is, of course, that they steam theirs. Sadly I don't have a steamer/rice cooker. But the other secret is that they use jasmine rice. I always wished I could cook rice so good I could eat it plain and cold from the little cardboard box in the refrigerator (I love cold Chinese), but thought it was completely beyond the realm of my ability. Not so. As soon as I opened the bag to dig my measuring cup inside, that sweet fragrance wafted up and took me straight back to the China Jade in North East. Heaven.
I also cooked with fish sauce. It adds great flavor, but is Very Stinky.
Leigh Ann had this marvelous idea -- since we won't be seeing each other as often now that I work and she's in grad school in D.C. and we can't allow our whole friendship to be based around Buffy every time we see each other -- of mailing me the contemporary Buffy and Angel seasons one at a time; I will watch them, mail them back, and get the next season. Meanwhile we will correspond about them.
This is taking loving a show to a bizarre level. But it's totally made my evening, when I could sit and savor the delectable artistic cheesiness that is Buffy.
Ooooo, and the new season of House premieres on my birthday!
I had no Close Encounters of the Psycho Kind when coming home from work today; it seems that Kevin is hiding or at least out of sight whenever I march past his door on the way to my own. It seems the same evening I shut the door in his face Colette visited him to tell him that there is no chance for him ever to get back together with her. So hopefully he's thoroughly depressed and planning to move.
Today at work the buzz centered around some local shoe store which donated fifty crappy art kits to the homeless kids at the Center and wanted publicity for it. So our whole morning was shot waiting around for the camera people to arrive, and then trying to help our two-year-olds to hold still and not be frightened of the many strange adults milling around with flash bulbs.
I'm not sneering at the donation. Crappy or not, art kits are something our kids don't have to take home with them, till today. But the self-congratulatory oo-look-at-me-doing-something-good makes me ill. Two slickly dressed representatives of the shoe company arrived wearing suits and stood in the middle of the photographs and then hung around shaking hands and giving their full name AND job title when introducing themselves and saying saccharine schmoozy things like, "Well, we hope the kids enjoy the art kits as much as we enjoyed donating them."
At that point I had to grab a kid and make for indoors muttering something about a diaper. It's not like they gave the Center half a million dollars. And how exactly does one enjoy donating something? It's like enjoying pouring a bowl of cereal. You just do it. The kids being happy with the gift is what you enjoy, but the slick reps didn't stick around for that part.
Plus it threw our kids off routine so that they were insecure and cranky the rest of the day (our classroom is about the only routine that most of these kids get). The whole experience was topped off by the random appearance of a Chik-Fil-A cow in full "Eat Mor Chikin" signboard regalia, which frightened our infants to tears. (People dressed in huge fuzzy animal outfits have always given me the creeps too.) At that point I wondered what dimension of reality I had suddenly wandered into and started checking along the baseboards for the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East.
Rrrgh.
So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ~Matthew 6:2-4
I just can't wait for Christmastime. Maybe I'll spend the whole month of December dressed as Santa Claus so people can't see me scowling behind the curly fake beard. It also might help our kids not to be afraid of morons in suits. (The only suited creature I've ever loved is the Grove City Gorilla, who chased the kid in the wheelchair -- yes, at Grove City he was THE kid in the wheelchair -- and humped him with an orange traffic cone, and who leaped onto the stage at the Class of 2004 Senior Dinner in the middle of Nancy Paxton's goodbye speech, gave us a silent victory sign with both arms, jumped off the stage, and ran out a side door. I loved that guy.)
Monday, August 29, 2005
long post in which I conclude tentatively victorious
When I drove home from work (late today, as Boss Meg and I have started working out after work on MWF in the tiny and deserted exercise room in the not-as-creepy-as-I-had-expected downstairs -- yay fitness!) I saw Slightly Psycho Kevin pulling into the driveway just ahead of me on his bike.
Oh shit, I thought. And crossed myself.
Yes, Colette's Evil Ex has moved into the apartment that she deserted in order to move to a Kevin-Free house across the alley and down the street. Meaning that he is now my downstairs neighbor.
No problem, I thought, right? He hates me (as I've been committing the heinous sin of Spending Time With Her when he's the only person she should ever want to be around...this is a textbook case of emotional abuse, kids...text.book.) and I'm not remotely fond of him. Therefore we'll ignore each other and everything will be awkward but okay.
Not so. Saturday I'm on the phone wearing nothing, as the phone rang while I was in the tub shaving the old legs, and I didn't bother robing up to clamber out and chat with John (I love living alone). Then the doorbell rings. I logically deduce who it isn't (Colette, not while Kevin is moved in) and then logically deduce who it is. I ask John to stay on the phone. I throw on an unseasonally heavy but completely cover-me-up-and-disguise-my-gender terrycloth robe and tromp down the stairs to the door. Oh look. I'm right. It's Kevin.
I open the door and lean out and proceed to be brusque and almost rude. He looks innocently bewildered, and "just wants to talk with me, but he'll let me go because I look busy," to which I answer, "Yeah, I'm on the phone." (The Stories I Could Tell about this guy.) I close the conversation, shut the door, and listen to John laughing on the other end.
Crap, I think. He won't settle for ignoring me. As he has no respect for other human beings (not just from Colette's stories but from what I've witnessed firsthand), I can't expect him to settle for being ignored.
So I prepare a speech. I think very hard about how much Slightly Psycho Kevin I want in my life. (He's been tracking down all of Colette's friends and complaining about Colette and trying to garner sympathy. He has some sort of sociopsychopathological disease.) I decide I don't want him in my life at all. I prepare, and recite the speech in my head for two days.
I delivered it this afternoon when I parked my car and found him waiting on the porch in front of my door.
Here's a rough script of what happened. Picture me not raising my voice or reacting to anything he says, which is precisely true to what happened.
SPK (Slightly Psycho Kevin), looking at me too intently: I got the feeling when I rang your doorbell on Saturday that there was some tension there.
Me: Yep.
SPK: Is that because of what's going on between me and Colette?
Me: Yep.
SPK: Because when I rang your doorbell, I got the feeling that you were thinking, "What the hell are you doing here?"
Me: Pretty much.
SPK: Why would that be?
Me (adapting speech): Kevin, I think it's going to be awkward with you living here. I'll talk about the weather to you, I'll say hello and goodbye, but I am not going to discuss Colette with you.
SPK: I'm not here to probe you for information. [Proceeds to ask me general questions that probe me for information.]
Me: Kevin, I just said I'm not going to talk about Colette with you. Please respect that.
SPK: I mean, the whole thing just hit me like a hammer. I just came from her house and she won't talk to me, and...
Me: Kevin, you're talking about Colette.
SPK: I'm not asking you for anything specific.
Me: I'm not telling you anything general.
SPK (looking confused): I just want to know if there's hope of reconciliation.
Me: I'm not the person to ask.
SPK: Because she won't discuss anything with me...and I was always respectful. I wasn't abusive or manipulative...
Me: Kevin, you're talking about Colette.
SPK: I'm telling you my feelings.
Me: I don't want to hear them.
SPK: Why, because you're friends with her?
Me: That's right.
SPK: It makes me wonder, since you have such animosity towards me, what she must have said to give you such a skewed perspective of me.
Me: I'm not going to tell you.
SPK: Have you ever been in my position before?
Me: Yes.
SPK: Where someone has up and broken your heart?
Me: Yep. It's a common human experience.
SPK (taken aback): Well...yeah, I mean I'm sure it is, but...I've been talking to strangers about it, and they can relate, I've found warmth there, where I haven't had reason to expect it. And I come knocking on your door, and I'm your neighbor, and I'm hurting, and you're cold.
Me (shrugging): I'm not a good crying shoulder.
SPK: Why do you think that is?
Me: Because I've been in this situation before, where exes come asking me for advice. I don't do that.
SPK (looking suddenly mad): Do you have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to guys?
Me: Do I have a chip...? I'm going upstairs. [I turn and walk up the porch steps toward my door.]
SPK: I mean, I mean, we've had good conversations in the past.
Me (turning around): Neighborly conversations. Yes. I can have neighborly conversations with you. But I don't see the point of your ringing my doorbell. I know Colette much better than I know you, and I like it that way.
SPK: So should I say hello when I see you, should I bother with the niceties?
Me (shrugging): If you don't feel moved to say hello, it won't bother me.
SPK: I guess there are two kinds of people in the world -- people who respond to you with human warmth, and people who don't.
Me: Looks like you'll find the latter in me.
SPK (looking really helpless and furious): So I'll just say hello.
Me: Hello is fine. Hello is plenty. Take care, Kevin. [I close the door behind me and walk upstairs shaky, headachey, but snickering.]
The vibes this guy gives off would make a cobra nervous. Here he is, thirty-five, almost middle-aged, and can't handle being dumped. And can't respect a veritable stranger (moi) who tells him she won't discuss something with him. He tried to browbeat, manipulate, insult, and cajole me into pitying him and listening to him and giving him advice and information.
And there was a time not so long ago when his tactics would have worked and I would have found myself unhappily and uncomfortably sitting down with him to discuss what he did wrong, what his approach ought to be, what Colette has said about him, what chances he has. The way he's treated Colette -- even in my presence -- has led me to want to slap him up and down and have a restraining order put on him. (I was over at her house in Kalamazoo for the weekend of the Fourth, when they were semi-broken-up for the twelfth time in a year, and she and I returned late at night from an outing and found him waiting in her driveway, because he had called without leaving messages all weekend and sent her a long nasty e-mail, to none of which she responded, so he came to her house WHILE she had an out-of-town guest and proceeded to fight with her for the better part of four hours while I sat in the house wondering if she would be safe, and what the hell I was supposed to do.) And he thinks he can bully me into telling him all about her and taking his side.
No. effing. way. I thought hard about what role I can possibly play in this insane and all-too-common drama, and that can only be as Colette's friend. I owe nothing to Kevin. In fact I dislike Kevin. He has all of his family and all of his friends...and all of her friends (because Colette told me, after I went to her apartment to fill her in on what happened, that I'm the first person to refuse to talk to him about it)...and random strangers. He could stand a good dose of being alone. Like for the rest of his life.
So it's going to be uncomfortable around my house for awhile, because I'm not going to back down (in fact the plan is not to talk to him at all anymore, and if he tries to talk to me, simply to walk away) and I'm not exactly sure what he's going to do. He is aware of all my goings and comings, as his door along the porch has a nice clear view of mine. I'm a little concerned for my safety, not badly (I don't think he would break into my apartment), but I do suspect he might try to waylay me, either conversationally or somehow physically, especially once it becomes clear that I'm not going to be his friend.
But there's always my landlord, and always the police.
And better yet, there's prayer.
I hate being involved in any kind of direct way with conflicts such as this. Hopefully he'll move out. I don't want him around. He's icky and I've just really pissed him off, and plan to continue doing so, firmly and without ire. I really have no idea how he's going to react.
But he's not getting the better of me. Colette, her decisions are her own; I hope the best for her (freedom! respect! a full life! joy!) and will always urge her in that direction; and only she can get rid of Kevin. I believe she can do it for herself: she is strong and smart, and has strong and supportive friends and family. Me, that's as involved as it's healthy and right for me to get (unless I think she's in danger). He might keep trying to bully her, but he can expect total non-capitulation from me. And I know the right trees up which to bark should the situation call for barking.
Oh shit, I thought. And crossed myself.
Yes, Colette's Evil Ex has moved into the apartment that she deserted in order to move to a Kevin-Free house across the alley and down the street. Meaning that he is now my downstairs neighbor.
No problem, I thought, right? He hates me (as I've been committing the heinous sin of Spending Time With Her when he's the only person she should ever want to be around...this is a textbook case of emotional abuse, kids...text.book.) and I'm not remotely fond of him. Therefore we'll ignore each other and everything will be awkward but okay.
Not so. Saturday I'm on the phone wearing nothing, as the phone rang while I was in the tub shaving the old legs, and I didn't bother robing up to clamber out and chat with John (I love living alone). Then the doorbell rings. I logically deduce who it isn't (Colette, not while Kevin is moved in) and then logically deduce who it is. I ask John to stay on the phone. I throw on an unseasonally heavy but completely cover-me-up-and-disguise-my-gender terrycloth robe and tromp down the stairs to the door. Oh look. I'm right. It's Kevin.
I open the door and lean out and proceed to be brusque and almost rude. He looks innocently bewildered, and "just wants to talk with me, but he'll let me go because I look busy," to which I answer, "Yeah, I'm on the phone." (The Stories I Could Tell about this guy.) I close the conversation, shut the door, and listen to John laughing on the other end.
Crap, I think. He won't settle for ignoring me. As he has no respect for other human beings (not just from Colette's stories but from what I've witnessed firsthand), I can't expect him to settle for being ignored.
So I prepare a speech. I think very hard about how much Slightly Psycho Kevin I want in my life. (He's been tracking down all of Colette's friends and complaining about Colette and trying to garner sympathy. He has some sort of sociopsychopathological disease.) I decide I don't want him in my life at all. I prepare, and recite the speech in my head for two days.
I delivered it this afternoon when I parked my car and found him waiting on the porch in front of my door.
Here's a rough script of what happened. Picture me not raising my voice or reacting to anything he says, which is precisely true to what happened.
SPK (Slightly Psycho Kevin), looking at me too intently: I got the feeling when I rang your doorbell on Saturday that there was some tension there.
Me: Yep.
SPK: Is that because of what's going on between me and Colette?
Me: Yep.
SPK: Because when I rang your doorbell, I got the feeling that you were thinking, "What the hell are you doing here?"
Me: Pretty much.
SPK: Why would that be?
Me (adapting speech): Kevin, I think it's going to be awkward with you living here. I'll talk about the weather to you, I'll say hello and goodbye, but I am not going to discuss Colette with you.
SPK: I'm not here to probe you for information. [Proceeds to ask me general questions that probe me for information.]
Me: Kevin, I just said I'm not going to talk about Colette with you. Please respect that.
SPK: I mean, the whole thing just hit me like a hammer. I just came from her house and she won't talk to me, and...
Me: Kevin, you're talking about Colette.
SPK: I'm not asking you for anything specific.
Me: I'm not telling you anything general.
SPK (looking confused): I just want to know if there's hope of reconciliation.
Me: I'm not the person to ask.
SPK: Because she won't discuss anything with me...and I was always respectful. I wasn't abusive or manipulative...
Me: Kevin, you're talking about Colette.
SPK: I'm telling you my feelings.
Me: I don't want to hear them.
SPK: Why, because you're friends with her?
Me: That's right.
SPK: It makes me wonder, since you have such animosity towards me, what she must have said to give you such a skewed perspective of me.
Me: I'm not going to tell you.
SPK: Have you ever been in my position before?
Me: Yes.
SPK: Where someone has up and broken your heart?
Me: Yep. It's a common human experience.
SPK (taken aback): Well...yeah, I mean I'm sure it is, but...I've been talking to strangers about it, and they can relate, I've found warmth there, where I haven't had reason to expect it. And I come knocking on your door, and I'm your neighbor, and I'm hurting, and you're cold.
Me (shrugging): I'm not a good crying shoulder.
SPK: Why do you think that is?
Me: Because I've been in this situation before, where exes come asking me for advice. I don't do that.
SPK (looking suddenly mad): Do you have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to guys?
Me: Do I have a chip...? I'm going upstairs. [I turn and walk up the porch steps toward my door.]
SPK: I mean, I mean, we've had good conversations in the past.
Me (turning around): Neighborly conversations. Yes. I can have neighborly conversations with you. But I don't see the point of your ringing my doorbell. I know Colette much better than I know you, and I like it that way.
SPK: So should I say hello when I see you, should I bother with the niceties?
Me (shrugging): If you don't feel moved to say hello, it won't bother me.
SPK: I guess there are two kinds of people in the world -- people who respond to you with human warmth, and people who don't.
Me: Looks like you'll find the latter in me.
SPK (looking really helpless and furious): So I'll just say hello.
Me: Hello is fine. Hello is plenty. Take care, Kevin. [I close the door behind me and walk upstairs shaky, headachey, but snickering.]
The vibes this guy gives off would make a cobra nervous. Here he is, thirty-five, almost middle-aged, and can't handle being dumped. And can't respect a veritable stranger (moi) who tells him she won't discuss something with him. He tried to browbeat, manipulate, insult, and cajole me into pitying him and listening to him and giving him advice and information.
And there was a time not so long ago when his tactics would have worked and I would have found myself unhappily and uncomfortably sitting down with him to discuss what he did wrong, what his approach ought to be, what Colette has said about him, what chances he has. The way he's treated Colette -- even in my presence -- has led me to want to slap him up and down and have a restraining order put on him. (I was over at her house in Kalamazoo for the weekend of the Fourth, when they were semi-broken-up for the twelfth time in a year, and she and I returned late at night from an outing and found him waiting in her driveway, because he had called without leaving messages all weekend and sent her a long nasty e-mail, to none of which she responded, so he came to her house WHILE she had an out-of-town guest and proceeded to fight with her for the better part of four hours while I sat in the house wondering if she would be safe, and what the hell I was supposed to do.) And he thinks he can bully me into telling him all about her and taking his side.
No. effing. way. I thought hard about what role I can possibly play in this insane and all-too-common drama, and that can only be as Colette's friend. I owe nothing to Kevin. In fact I dislike Kevin. He has all of his family and all of his friends...and all of her friends (because Colette told me, after I went to her apartment to fill her in on what happened, that I'm the first person to refuse to talk to him about it)...and random strangers. He could stand a good dose of being alone. Like for the rest of his life.
So it's going to be uncomfortable around my house for awhile, because I'm not going to back down (in fact the plan is not to talk to him at all anymore, and if he tries to talk to me, simply to walk away) and I'm not exactly sure what he's going to do. He is aware of all my goings and comings, as his door along the porch has a nice clear view of mine. I'm a little concerned for my safety, not badly (I don't think he would break into my apartment), but I do suspect he might try to waylay me, either conversationally or somehow physically, especially once it becomes clear that I'm not going to be his friend.
But there's always my landlord, and always the police.
And better yet, there's prayer.
I hate being involved in any kind of direct way with conflicts such as this. Hopefully he'll move out. I don't want him around. He's icky and I've just really pissed him off, and plan to continue doing so, firmly and without ire. I really have no idea how he's going to react.
But he's not getting the better of me. Colette, her decisions are her own; I hope the best for her (freedom! respect! a full life! joy!) and will always urge her in that direction; and only she can get rid of Kevin. I believe she can do it for herself: she is strong and smart, and has strong and supportive friends and family. Me, that's as involved as it's healthy and right for me to get (unless I think she's in danger). He might keep trying to bully her, but he can expect total non-capitulation from me. And I know the right trees up which to bark should the situation call for barking.
Friday, August 26, 2005
did i also mention...
It's eight o'clock on a Saturday morning and I'm up and brewing coffee, having had a wonderful night's rest.
A large part of me can't wait for middle age, when going to bed at ten or eleven on a Friday night is just something you do. I like my Saturday mornings, I like turning in relatively early, I like waking up well-rested with an entire day ahead of me and sitting around letting the morning slowly unfold while I sip coffee and lounge.
Mom said sometime last month, "I know, I couldn't wait to be forty because then I could act the way I've always wanted to act" -- be a homebody, hold get-togethers that start at seven and end at nine-thirty, go to bed early, wake up early.
I hear you, Mom.
So over the summer I have blossomed into a wonderful cook. My forays into vegetarianism are turning into settlements, something slightly more permanent and less clap-board based than a squatter's hut but not quite the huge impressive I-refuse-to-go-anywhere solidity of a middle-class development house. Vegetarian (or whole food) eating is something I've wanted to explore for awhile -- not just Boca burgers and soy crumbles, but the real combination eating deal, beans and rice and lots of spices. My cookbook has been a great place to start -- the introduction talks about nearly every kind of food that a vegetarian would consume, how to prepare them, where to find them. And the recipes are delicious.
I have no ethical reservations about eating meat. I order meat quite frequently when I'm dining out and think fondly of colder weather to come, which means beef stroganoff. But for a few reasons -- my health, my finances, and the intimidation I feel when trying to master my mother's recipes -- I'm liking this new swing in my diet.
Also, having switched to soy milk, I find myself in greatly reduced intestinal discomfort. I think I started becoming lactose intolerant at Grove City, but always thought it was stress. When I stayed at Colette's house earlier this summer, which contained only soy milk, I found I liked the way it tastes and decided to give it a try. Pure intestinal bliss.
The beans are another matter. But they taste so good, and I've had so much fun cooking with new spices and new ingredients (like tahini). And I've discovered a love for fresh cooked beets.
A large part of me can't wait for middle age, when going to bed at ten or eleven on a Friday night is just something you do. I like my Saturday mornings, I like turning in relatively early, I like waking up well-rested with an entire day ahead of me and sitting around letting the morning slowly unfold while I sip coffee and lounge.
Mom said sometime last month, "I know, I couldn't wait to be forty because then I could act the way I've always wanted to act" -- be a homebody, hold get-togethers that start at seven and end at nine-thirty, go to bed early, wake up early.
I hear you, Mom.
So over the summer I have blossomed into a wonderful cook. My forays into vegetarianism are turning into settlements, something slightly more permanent and less clap-board based than a squatter's hut but not quite the huge impressive I-refuse-to-go-anywhere solidity of a middle-class development house. Vegetarian (or whole food) eating is something I've wanted to explore for awhile -- not just Boca burgers and soy crumbles, but the real combination eating deal, beans and rice and lots of spices. My cookbook has been a great place to start -- the introduction talks about nearly every kind of food that a vegetarian would consume, how to prepare them, where to find them. And the recipes are delicious.
I have no ethical reservations about eating meat. I order meat quite frequently when I'm dining out and think fondly of colder weather to come, which means beef stroganoff. But for a few reasons -- my health, my finances, and the intimidation I feel when trying to master my mother's recipes -- I'm liking this new swing in my diet.
Also, having switched to soy milk, I find myself in greatly reduced intestinal discomfort. I think I started becoming lactose intolerant at Grove City, but always thought it was stress. When I stayed at Colette's house earlier this summer, which contained only soy milk, I found I liked the way it tastes and decided to give it a try. Pure intestinal bliss.
The beans are another matter. But they taste so good, and I've had so much fun cooking with new spices and new ingredients (like tahini). And I've discovered a love for fresh cooked beets.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
and life is really -- yes, really -- good.
I guess it's been awhile since I've posted on how I'm actually doing. I haven't even journalled about it much...have I been hoarding my happiness? Raking it all up like Ebenezer Scrooge and hiding it from the world, from myself? Well...yes.
I think a large part of me has felt guilty for not missing academia. For the past three years, since I switched from English Secondary Education to English, I thought of grad school as what I was born for. But then I didn't want to go. I opted for a year of bottom-feeding retail jobs over applying to graduate schools. I was ashamed, but also relieved and happy, at Notre Dame's rejection. It left me extremely confused, wondering if I'm still smart, if I'm an intellectual anymore; extremely guilty, wondering if I should despise myself for not missing syllabi, reading assignments, or term papers, wondering if I'm cutting off and throwing away some integral part of myself in (temporarily at least) abandoning the academic scene; extremely ashamed, for having failed at doing something (getting into grad school and being an instant success) when I've never failed at anything before.
A lot of those doubts I'm still working through. But I've come to a full realization of how satisfied with my life I am. It makes me more confident at meeting people -- especially having a job that I'm proud of. I'm not a misplaced cynical intellect grubbing the system while sneering at it (not that that is bad; it was dissatisfying to me because I like to believe in what I do); I'm a pioneer in the social services field and I'll tell anyone who asks about the visions I'm working to achieve.
I love what I do.
Today our most beautiful, energetic, and vigorous child, a two-year-old girl named Dajenara and called Nara unless we're trying to get her attention, was helping me wipe up some spilled water. After we'd thrown the wet paper towels away, I said, "Nara, can I give you a hug??" She yelled, "YES!" and hurled herself at me; I picked her up and swung her around and said, "I LIKE giving you hugs!" and she shouted, "I like giving YOU hugs!!!" and squeezed me so hard around the neck I choked on her shoulder.
She can be a royal pain, she can be frustrating, she can be so headstrong it makes your teeth hurt -- she's an extraordinary human being -- but she is by far the child who makes me realize how much I love what I do. I think of her big shining eyes and her gorgeous smile and her mischievous grin, her spunk and her spontaneity, her tendencies to organize the flock around her and take care of (and bully) her fellow children, her exuberance for life, and I feel so privileged to have the total trust of this awesome little person that I grin a big happy smile into the dark before I fall asleep at night.
I can't tell you what I'll be doing in ten years, or twenty, whether I'll ever be married, whether I'll have children -- anything. But I can tell you that I don't care. What I'm doing in the present is so worthwhile and fulfilling that I have confidence in the goodness of the future, without needing to think about any of it.
I have timeline goals, which helps. They are:
1. To have a house, a king-sized bed, a cat, a dog, and a new car by the time I'm thirty;
2. To embark on two years of teaching English in a rural Chinese village when I turn thirty-five;
3. To get my Master's and PhD before I'm fifty;
4. To write and teach till I'm too old to leave the house.
The rest I don't need to know about, or care about, or worry about, until it happens. What's going on now is good enough for now.
For a girl who has always banked her happiness on the future, and hated the present, this is quite a miraculous step.
I think a large part of me has felt guilty for not missing academia. For the past three years, since I switched from English Secondary Education to English, I thought of grad school as what I was born for. But then I didn't want to go. I opted for a year of bottom-feeding retail jobs over applying to graduate schools. I was ashamed, but also relieved and happy, at Notre Dame's rejection. It left me extremely confused, wondering if I'm still smart, if I'm an intellectual anymore; extremely guilty, wondering if I should despise myself for not missing syllabi, reading assignments, or term papers, wondering if I'm cutting off and throwing away some integral part of myself in (temporarily at least) abandoning the academic scene; extremely ashamed, for having failed at doing something (getting into grad school and being an instant success) when I've never failed at anything before.
A lot of those doubts I'm still working through. But I've come to a full realization of how satisfied with my life I am. It makes me more confident at meeting people -- especially having a job that I'm proud of. I'm not a misplaced cynical intellect grubbing the system while sneering at it (not that that is bad; it was dissatisfying to me because I like to believe in what I do); I'm a pioneer in the social services field and I'll tell anyone who asks about the visions I'm working to achieve.
I love what I do.
Today our most beautiful, energetic, and vigorous child, a two-year-old girl named Dajenara and called Nara unless we're trying to get her attention, was helping me wipe up some spilled water. After we'd thrown the wet paper towels away, I said, "Nara, can I give you a hug??" She yelled, "YES!" and hurled herself at me; I picked her up and swung her around and said, "I LIKE giving you hugs!" and she shouted, "I like giving YOU hugs!!!" and squeezed me so hard around the neck I choked on her shoulder.
She can be a royal pain, she can be frustrating, she can be so headstrong it makes your teeth hurt -- she's an extraordinary human being -- but she is by far the child who makes me realize how much I love what I do. I think of her big shining eyes and her gorgeous smile and her mischievous grin, her spunk and her spontaneity, her tendencies to organize the flock around her and take care of (and bully) her fellow children, her exuberance for life, and I feel so privileged to have the total trust of this awesome little person that I grin a big happy smile into the dark before I fall asleep at night.
I can't tell you what I'll be doing in ten years, or twenty, whether I'll ever be married, whether I'll have children -- anything. But I can tell you that I don't care. What I'm doing in the present is so worthwhile and fulfilling that I have confidence in the goodness of the future, without needing to think about any of it.
I have timeline goals, which helps. They are:
1. To have a house, a king-sized bed, a cat, a dog, and a new car by the time I'm thirty;
2. To embark on two years of teaching English in a rural Chinese village when I turn thirty-five;
3. To get my Master's and PhD before I'm fifty;
4. To write and teach till I'm too old to leave the house.
The rest I don't need to know about, or care about, or worry about, until it happens. What's going on now is good enough for now.
For a girl who has always banked her happiness on the future, and hated the present, this is quite a miraculous step.
Monday, August 22, 2005
daily life
Experienced quite a busy weekend this one past -- in a great way. Friday Colette and I swapped family and guy stories over Thai curry, then church stories over hot chocolate at the South Bend Chocolate Cafe (whose excellent dark hot chocolate is exactly like the scratch kind Mom taught us to make, with baking cocoa and sugar). Saturday I sat journalling and intensely Dealing With Issues, after which I felt much better -- the Issues have been percolating for about a month or so, and it was time and past time to take the lid off, swirl them around, and filter through them. Great stuff. Saturday night I met Meg's friend Matt while Looking Hot in a Black Skirt and had a fun two hours of theater story swapping at the Fiddler's.
Sunday was shopping at the Michigan City Outlets with Colette, where she bought work clothes and I bought a badly needed new pair of sneakers (I hear "sneakers" is an East Coast term; people around here supposedly all say "tennis shoes") which I love. I go through sneakers quickly, being rather brutal to them, and I hadn't bought a new pair in at least two years. Sadly the grey pair with green trim were unavailable in my size, so the grey pair with pink trim sufficed. I woke up excited to wear them, and after a day of chasing babies in them my feet are happily sore from *gasp* Enough Support.
While shopping with MP for a new TV last week I also purchased a new tea kettle. (I had borrowed hers for the summer.) Tea kettle shopping consists of a few dense moments of overwhelmed anguish in which one selects the desired color and handles all the display samples, wondering what on earth shade/shape/brand will do. I settled for a darling red Kitchenaid which works so beautifully that the already pleasurable ritual of preparing coffee in the morning is intensified.
It's a good life.
Sunday was shopping at the Michigan City Outlets with Colette, where she bought work clothes and I bought a badly needed new pair of sneakers (I hear "sneakers" is an East Coast term; people around here supposedly all say "tennis shoes") which I love. I go through sneakers quickly, being rather brutal to them, and I hadn't bought a new pair in at least two years. Sadly the grey pair with green trim were unavailable in my size, so the grey pair with pink trim sufficed. I woke up excited to wear them, and after a day of chasing babies in them my feet are happily sore from *gasp* Enough Support.
While shopping with MP for a new TV last week I also purchased a new tea kettle. (I had borrowed hers for the summer.) Tea kettle shopping consists of a few dense moments of overwhelmed anguish in which one selects the desired color and handles all the display samples, wondering what on earth shade/shape/brand will do. I settled for a darling red Kitchenaid which works so beautifully that the already pleasurable ritual of preparing coffee in the morning is intensified.
It's a good life.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
some peripheral venting
Unfortunately I can't air my issues with total honesty as I would like. But, in the meantime, you get a slice of my angry pie, if you care to continue reading.
A half-conclusion at which I've arrived this week is that I push most dateable guys completely out of the way because NEEDY MEN PISS ME OFF and I'm convinced that any guy I wind up dating (because I've been a magnet for the Needy Guy in the past, whimper whimper Sarah fix my problems and listen to them all while I sit here not giving a damn about your life, YUCK) will turn into one of these men. Men who stifle my emotional life because all they want is for me to tend to theirs, to shut my emotions in a closet and adopt their emotions as my own. And all I'll hear forever is I hate my job, I hate my parents, I hate my life, blah blah blah blah blah make it better, and while you're at it just sympathize with meeeeeeeee.
As Virginia Woolf wrote of Mr. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, "There he stood, demanding sympathy."
Sorry, Imaginary Dude Whom I Won't Let Into My Life. It's your job to seize your life with your own hands and forge something out of it. It doesn't have to be something world-changing, but it does have to be yours. I'm not having any part of making you who you are. You're that without me, as I am who I am independently of you. I'll be your companion, I'll share your stories and your life and I'll laugh with you and I'll be quietly sympathetic when that's really what you need and I'll build a comfortable and healthy and secure home with you; but I'm not going to sit around letting you suck the life out of me because you refuse to be content and turn your nose up at an optimistic and hopeful outlook.
Now, I am beginning to understand that not all men are like this, so my friends who know that this doesn't apply to them need not take offense. I plan to learn more about regular guys, who, I hear, populate the planet. But to the person whom I may have not yet met who plans to make me his support and mainstay, forget it. Companion. I will be an excellent companion. But I'm no Atlas. Nor do I expect you to be. My life and problems are my own. All I ask once in awhile is a hug and a genuinely meant inquiry as to my well-being and a real interest in the good things of my life, the things that make me happy. But I'm responsible for me; no one else can be. And you are responsible for you.
If you're wondering at whom this post is directed, look up a well-known Plath poem. (But don't comment about it, por favor, I need to deal with this person directly but had to post about it first.) And for further clarification: If I met you in college, you are not the object of this post.
This garbled and esoteric rant brought to you courtesy of Sarah.
A half-conclusion at which I've arrived this week is that I push most dateable guys completely out of the way because NEEDY MEN PISS ME OFF and I'm convinced that any guy I wind up dating (because I've been a magnet for the Needy Guy in the past, whimper whimper Sarah fix my problems and listen to them all while I sit here not giving a damn about your life, YUCK) will turn into one of these men. Men who stifle my emotional life because all they want is for me to tend to theirs, to shut my emotions in a closet and adopt their emotions as my own. And all I'll hear forever is I hate my job, I hate my parents, I hate my life, blah blah blah blah blah make it better, and while you're at it just sympathize with meeeeeeeee.
As Virginia Woolf wrote of Mr. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, "There he stood, demanding sympathy."
Sorry, Imaginary Dude Whom I Won't Let Into My Life. It's your job to seize your life with your own hands and forge something out of it. It doesn't have to be something world-changing, but it does have to be yours. I'm not having any part of making you who you are. You're that without me, as I am who I am independently of you. I'll be your companion, I'll share your stories and your life and I'll laugh with you and I'll be quietly sympathetic when that's really what you need and I'll build a comfortable and healthy and secure home with you; but I'm not going to sit around letting you suck the life out of me because you refuse to be content and turn your nose up at an optimistic and hopeful outlook.
Now, I am beginning to understand that not all men are like this, so my friends who know that this doesn't apply to them need not take offense. I plan to learn more about regular guys, who, I hear, populate the planet. But to the person whom I may have not yet met who plans to make me his support and mainstay, forget it. Companion. I will be an excellent companion. But I'm no Atlas. Nor do I expect you to be. My life and problems are my own. All I ask once in awhile is a hug and a genuinely meant inquiry as to my well-being and a real interest in the good things of my life, the things that make me happy. But I'm responsible for me; no one else can be. And you are responsible for you.
If you're wondering at whom this post is directed, look up a well-known Plath poem. (But don't comment about it, por favor, I need to deal with this person directly but had to post about it first.) And for further clarification: If I met you in college, you are not the object of this post.
This garbled and esoteric rant brought to you courtesy of Sarah.
Monday, August 15, 2005
processing
So much has happened in the past two weekends...not "much" as in occurrences that you could measure on a timeline of action, but changes in states of being. All in a good way, but it's taking some time to sort through how I'm doing, so no posting recently.
This next week or so is (are) going to challenge my stamina. We started a four-month-old infant in our program today and it shifts around what Meg and I are able to do. With no volunteers and seven children, it promises taxation on our emotional, mental, and physical resources.
The import of this: Early bedtimes! Hurrah!
This next week or so is (are) going to challenge my stamina. We started a four-month-old infant in our program today and it shifts around what Meg and I are able to do. With no volunteers and seven children, it promises taxation on our emotional, mental, and physical resources.
The import of this: Early bedtimes! Hurrah!
Thursday, August 11, 2005
i'm grown-up and boring -- hooray!
It's a quiet moment in the P.E.D.S. program at the South Bend Center for the Homeless, so a little-known (but soon to be famous) employee named Sarah is snatching a tidbit of precious time to blog...because when she gets home from work, she is too tired to look at a computer screen.
We've been overturning the house at work, have Meg and I, improving the educational environment for the children. Yesterday we rearranged big pieces of furniture (shelving, kiddie tables, kiddie cupboards) to make room for a Reading and Writing Center and a Music Area. We already have a Kitchen, a Workshop, and an Art Studio, and the room is now full of simple and valuable toys. We weeded out a lot of useless or nonproductive toys (or annoying toys) so that there are less toy sets with muliple pieces that just get strewn around and thrown at people. Now the kids have free access to musical instruments, books, a magnetic writing pad, chalk and markers, blocks, Legos, and Play-Doh.
We suffered from so much motivation that we even stayed late to put a few "finishing touches" (when is anything ever finished?) on the room. Normally we wait to do all the major improvements until the last Friday of the month, when we have an "In-Service Day," but most of this stuff we hate waiting for.
Meanwhile to make up for a huge sleep deficit stemming from the beginning of July, I have been going to bed at 9:30 every night this week and sleeping until seven in the morning. I'm beginning to feel, for the first time in forever, great. I think. It's been so long that it's hard to tell.
Monday and Tuesday night I read big chunks out of Angels and Insects, which I find fantastic. Last summer I decided to love A. S. Byatt no matter what, and we are very compatible as a writer-to-reader team.
AND Louise Erdrich is coming out with a new novel in September. Excitement, rapture, joy.
We've been overturning the house at work, have Meg and I, improving the educational environment for the children. Yesterday we rearranged big pieces of furniture (shelving, kiddie tables, kiddie cupboards) to make room for a Reading and Writing Center and a Music Area. We already have a Kitchen, a Workshop, and an Art Studio, and the room is now full of simple and valuable toys. We weeded out a lot of useless or nonproductive toys (or annoying toys) so that there are less toy sets with muliple pieces that just get strewn around and thrown at people. Now the kids have free access to musical instruments, books, a magnetic writing pad, chalk and markers, blocks, Legos, and Play-Doh.
We suffered from so much motivation that we even stayed late to put a few "finishing touches" (when is anything ever finished?) on the room. Normally we wait to do all the major improvements until the last Friday of the month, when we have an "In-Service Day," but most of this stuff we hate waiting for.
Meanwhile to make up for a huge sleep deficit stemming from the beginning of July, I have been going to bed at 9:30 every night this week and sleeping until seven in the morning. I'm beginning to feel, for the first time in forever, great. I think. It's been so long that it's hard to tell.
Monday and Tuesday night I read big chunks out of Angels and Insects, which I find fantastic. Last summer I decided to love A. S. Byatt no matter what, and we are very compatible as a writer-to-reader team.
AND Louise Erdrich is coming out with a new novel in September. Excitement, rapture, joy.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
lazy Saturday
I have two guests for the weekend, both of whom are sleeping on my living room floor just behind me, and have been since about one o'clock.
It's amazing how different it is to have people in the house. Even when you're doing nothing at all, even when you've just awakened from a floor nap and idly flip a book off the shelf to read it -- things you would ordinarily do alone, so are not novel -- you are still aware of the presence of another human being in your habitat.
It's quite refreshing. I have grown to love living alone, except when the weekends drag on Sunday with no prospects of doing anything; it is amazing to wake up in the empty solitude of a few sunlit rooms and boil water for coffee at your leisure. But still I enjoy the company in ways I'd forgotten. The anticipation of getting up and talking to someone. Sharing a bathroom. Staying up late talking and fighting sleep until the blood vessels in your eyes leak and the brain fuzziness reduces conversation to delirious mumbles.
It's wonderful to have people wander about your apartment looking at all your books (which are all yours). Fantastic to think that they drove six hours from Pennsylvania to spend a Saturday afternoon asleep on my floor.
Little routine-breaking miracles that braid one's internal monologues together.
It's amazing how different it is to have people in the house. Even when you're doing nothing at all, even when you've just awakened from a floor nap and idly flip a book off the shelf to read it -- things you would ordinarily do alone, so are not novel -- you are still aware of the presence of another human being in your habitat.
It's quite refreshing. I have grown to love living alone, except when the weekends drag on Sunday with no prospects of doing anything; it is amazing to wake up in the empty solitude of a few sunlit rooms and boil water for coffee at your leisure. But still I enjoy the company in ways I'd forgotten. The anticipation of getting up and talking to someone. Sharing a bathroom. Staying up late talking and fighting sleep until the blood vessels in your eyes leak and the brain fuzziness reduces conversation to delirious mumbles.
It's wonderful to have people wander about your apartment looking at all your books (which are all yours). Fantastic to think that they drove six hours from Pennsylvania to spend a Saturday afternoon asleep on my floor.
Little routine-breaking miracles that braid one's internal monologues together.
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