the story of my life

Yesterday the next-door neighbors' son asked me out to lunch.

To celebrate his forty-seventh birthday.

I kindly turned him down in favor of housecleaning. He came back anyway when he thought I wasn't looking to pour salt on my front step.

Sighhh.

home again, home again

It's back to Michigan and back to work for me.

I had a lovely Christmas with my folks, which was really, really nice. For the past couple of years Christmas hasn't felt like Christmas, and it's been...well, discouraging at the least, but more like a kind of headspin. I've always thrown myself into the Christmas spirit with a passion; this year I didn't decorate even a smidgen, and didn't bother with a tree. I guess it's one of the things about growing up I'll have to get used to. Nothing's the same anymore.

But still, I had a wonderful time at home, and wasn't quite ready to come back to my life. Thankfully it's only a two-day week at work, so the weekend draws nigh and I can dedicate a good portion of my time to housecleaning, which is top of the desperately needed to-do list.

The good thing about coming home, always, is Simon. There's something about having a pet who is completely and thoroughly Yours. My folks have three cats, one of which has been my favorite of the family kitties for years, and they were sweet and cute and delightful, but they weren't mine. I missed Simon. I missed his alert attention to everything I do, the way he comes and finds me when he's been doing something else for awhile, the way he comes to me when I call him, the way he stops whatever he's doing when I talk to him and rolls on the floor, the way he cuddles up to me at night, the way he shoves his head in my face and rattles my skull with his purr in the mornings. So coming home last night and seeing him was fantastic (he was purring so hard it choked him), and a nice balm to what has been a terrible grief of living in a house alone.

I'm looking forward to cleaning out the kitchen so that I can start my cooking again. Now that I have that wonderful meat cleaver, some of the recipes I had to shunt aside are now possibilities.

Now I just need a grill.

picture me with a slightly deranged grin.

I got a meat cleaver!!!

let all mortal flesh keep silence

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God -- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'" From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came from Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

~John 1:1-18 (NIV)

Allelu Yah.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded
For with blessing in His hand
Christ our God to earth descending
Comes our homage to demand.

King of kings yet born of Mary
As of old on earth He stood
God of gods in human likeness
In the body and the blood:
He will give to all the people
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way
As the light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At his feet the six winged seraph
Cherubim with sleepless eye
Veil their faces to the presence
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

I Wake to Grief, and Take My Waking Slow

I wake to grief, and take my waking slow.
The morning brings you no unfailing love;
I cannot tell you what I do not know.

I wish that I could tell you how to go,
that wisdom kills what longing cannot move;
but I wake to grief myself, and take it slow.

There ought to be some way for love to grow,
a releasing of celebratory doves –
but I cannot tell you what I do not know.

If I could bring you peace, dear heart, I’d show
you how many of your fears I could remove;
so I wake to grief, and take my waking slow.

My faith was something simple, long ago,
is simple still, but grown with pain enough
that I cannot tell you what I do not know.

The world parades its fancies in a glow
of farcical illusions none can prove;
and so I wake to grief, and take my waking slow.
I cannot tell you, love, what I don’t know.

* With acknowledgments to Theodore Roethke for the first (and repeated) line, and to W. H. Auden for the third (and repeated) line.

rrrrgh.

Med switches are the pits. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm not on the old crap. But I'm so tired and so irritable I can barely live with myself, and I'm not good for anything at the present moment.

Does it feel like it's almost Christmas to you? It doesn't to me. I thought the extra week we'd have, since Thanksgiving was early, would have me all in the mood and prepared. But I'm just not. I got all my shopping done, and now I need to wrap presents and bake cookies. And those little tasks feel just about insurmountable.

Auugggghhh. Help.

exhausted

I drove up to Ann Arbor yesterday to visit my general practitioner at the University of Michigan, and finally got some decent medical help.

Turns out my instincts weren't off track; Dr. Fine prescribed me regular Zyrtec again, so that my stomach doesn't need to go all haywire from a decongestant that I don't need. He also put me back on Wellbutrin, which I've used in the past and which has, at the very least, never given me bad side effects.

This past weekend was rough. I had stopped taking Cymbalta, which was actually kind of stupid, since with that antidepressant a person needs to be weaned off it, or suffer withdrawal; so I suffered withdrawal. But it was kind of a Scylla and Charybdis situation, because when I broke down and did take it on Saturday, I felt much worse. Bah.

So I spent most of the weekend an edgy, nervous wreck, popping Benadryl to calm me down. Fortunately I spent nearly all that time with my boss's family, so I had some support and distraction from how crappy I felt.

Today I'm just tired. The seven-hour round trip was a long drive, though worth it, and med switches are always interesting. My poor body doesn't know which end is up, and wants to spend the time curled up in bed. However, duty calls, so I'm going to plow through the day as best I can, and hit the hay super early tonight.

Good things are happening, though; last night for the first time in forever I actually cooked dinner -- an activity which I've sorely missed, but haven't had the energy to attempt. And it was nice to spend a quiet evening at home with my kitty -- he missed me while I was gone, and was all darling and sweet and purry. And so glad to have me back that he spent the night pressed as close to me as he could get, and patiently waited out my tossings and turnings.

My office has returned to its pigsty state, so cleaning it will be the focus of my activities today. And at some point, when I'm home, I really need to shovel out the driveway. My car bravely plowed its way out this morning, but I do need to clear the path, and I feel that the physical labor will do me good.

Yawn.

my life is a farcical drama

I've said many times that a lot of the events I undergo from time to time resemble something you'd watch on TV. Case in point:

Bad Apples, or, My Drama with the Doctor

I have been feeling poorly for quite some time -- since just before I moved, in fact. Granted, the stress of living in the Crack House would get to anyone, but it really took a nasty toll on my depression. Moving helped a little bit, but then, accounting for the stress of the move itself, the bulk of which I did alone (though I thank the Good God for the help I had with the heavy stuff), and then the following "settling in," which has taken forever due to the limited space in my new abode, the general stress of attending my beloved sister's lovely wedding, and the financial crunch I've been in, I've just felt down in the dumps since September.

The antidepressants I have been taking since April are no longer effective; I feel like the proverbial crap nearly all the time, and have recognized in my increasing agitation and horrible dreams (which didn't start till I began taking the stuff) a negative reaction to my medication. I had a bad reaction to an antidepressant before, and I can tell the difference between chemical and biological based on that experience (and a couple of others).

Not to mention some sort of stomach bug that has plagued me for a couple of weeks. It feels mostly like post-nasal drip, which, combined with the chemical stuff and the insomnia, have reduced me to a state of general mal-being.

So I made an appointment with my doctor. I happened to have made the appointment before the stomach troubles started, to do a med check, and then decided to include my recent illness when I got there.

Here's where things took a wild turn for the absurd.

When I first began seeing this physician, his staff informed me that if I were five or more minutes late, they would have to reschedule me. With that in mind, I prepared yesterday to leave twenty minutes early for the appointment to ensure a timely arrival. Unfortunately, the receptionist (who is generally wonderful, but doesn't always know how to handle new situations) paged me just as I was putting on my coat to pass me a new client call, and the person on the phone was in hysterics. Being that I'm in the business of people, I took the call, calmed the caller as best I could, and left immediately following my hanging up.

I called the doctor's office to let them know that I would be about three minutes late. They said that if I were any later than that, I would have to reschedule. I drove as quickly as I could, considering that all of the people in front of me had taken it into their heads to drive ten miles an hour below the speed limit. When the clock said I was four minutes late, I gave up, unhappily called the doctor's office to reschedule and then returned to the office.

My boss saw me upset when I returned, and, as he has taken me into a fatherly consideration generally, he decided to call the doctor's office to see if they could get me in that day anyhow.

There was an emotional explosion from the doctor's office. Although M'sieur had merely called to see if I could get an appointment that day, and requested nothing further, they alleged a HIPPA violation on his part, said he was requesting a disclosure of information (he wasn't), and threatened us with their attorney, regardless of the fact that I was standing right there and authorized them to talk to him once they started getting nasty. They were excessively discourteous.

Now, I understand confidentiality. I work for a lawyer. I have had relatives of clients call the office out of concern, and have always told them, kindly and courteously, why I could not disclose any information to them. But when anyone calls wanting to make an appointment for someone, I make the appointment. There's no confidentiality violation there. And if I'm ever in doubt, I let them know -- again, kindly and courteously. And nine times out of ten people respond well to what I tell them.

So their reaction was more than a little overboard. The escalation took me by surprise; however, they did arrange to see me that afternoon, through, I believe, their attorney.

Naturally I was upset and nervous about going there at all, but I did want my appointment. The staff there wouldn't speak to me, and then the doctor told me that because of that day's events, they could no longer keep me as a patient.

I had rather awful flashbacks to when I lost my job over a year ago -- the doctor's manner was exactly the same as the CEO back then: fakey-nice, falsely cheerful, patronizing, and insinuating that everything was my fault and I had inconvenienced the whole office and they simply couldn't keep someone who was as thoughtless and selfish as I was to throw off the whole schedule for the day. He also denied the five-minute window of lateness, and said I could have been ten or fifteen minutes late and it would have been fine, and they would have seen me if I had come in; he had nothing to say except to continue denying the five-minute rule when I informed him that that rule was given to me by his staff since my initial visit as a new patient, in addition to its reiteration by them that afternoon when I had first called. I became rather highly upset. I tried to tell him the problems I'd been having with my health, and his answer was immediately to prescribe an intensive medication used to treat bipolar disorder, to deal with what he called "an extreme episode" -- never mind that my state at the time was a direct result of the situation with his office.

I've always done my best to be an intelligent patient. I know my body and my state of mind better than anyone else, so I had a lot of things I wanted to tell him -- that my agitation seems chemical in nature, that I believe I've been having a bad reaction to my meds, that the dreams correlate with the start of my taking said meds, that I further believe my stomach problems stem from the allergy medication he prescribed, which contains a decongestant which I don't need, since I'm not congested. But he wasn't interested in listening (which of course upset me further; he wanted to treat all of my symptoms as psychological backwash when I believe they're not completely interrelated); he just wanted to get me out of there. He seemed worried enough about my emotional state, made an appointment for me for today, and asked if I were going to do "anything stupid" that night. I curtly assured him I wouldn't.

I never respond well to injustice. I firmly believe that if my boss hadn't had "attorney" in front of his name, their reaction would have been more polite. And any doctor's office that responds that badly to an attorney isn't one I want to have treating me. It raises my suspicions regarding whether they've had problems in the past.

So, although the doctor said he wouldn't "let me go" until "we've gotten through this," I canceled my appointments for today and Monday (pleasantly, I might add. They'll never be justified in saying that I was rude). I don't want to see him again. And I'd rather be the one to make the call to leave, and not wait for them to say, "Okay, you seem better now, so..." No thanks. I don't trust his medical judgments at this point; I was being treated as a problem, not a patient, and I will not be taking that bipolar medication, when all I needed was a simple med switch, and when I've been wondering if it's time to stop taking antidepressants at all, if my reaction to the meds which helped me when I first started taking them is my body telling me, no more; you're all right now. Depression has been situational for me historically anyway; I was on antidepressants temporarily in college, and then, through the course of therapy, taken off them altogether, and didn't have to start taking them again until things began going downhill at the Center. But these are things the doctor didn't seem willing to discuss.

Furthermore, he seemed on board with the way his staff had handled the situation, and I won't be treated by a facility that sees fit to be so incredibly discourteous to someone who cares about my wellbeing, even if they aren't sure they can talk to him.

Altogether, the events of yesterday were insane. But at least life is never boring. I figure that something like this would have come up eventually, and on the whole, I'd prefer to find out now rather than later. I haven't been impressed lately with the doctor's treatment anyway. So it seems Providence took a step in and gave me a nudge.

The general physician I've seen before at the University of Michigan has scheduled me for an appointment on Monday, and I look forward to seeing him. He's top of the line, pleasant, courteous, competent, and enjoys my input.

Oh yes; and my boss is the one who e-mailed him to ask if he could see me soon. Rather than freak out over bogus HIPPA violations, he had his staff call me to get me in. Nice, eh?

And I'm feeling, though tired and worn out from yesterday, in a decent frame of mind today. Bless my parents, and my bosses. They've been extremely supportive.

So there you have it, folks. The continuation of my strange little life.

insomnia

Something doesn't want me to sleep.

It's been going on like this for months. Every night I have completely insane dreams about people I haven't seen in years, full of uncertainty and worry and all sorts of negative emotions, then I wake up two or three times throughout the night, then I can't fall back asleep, then the house starts making bizarre noises that wake me up again once I do.

Last night I took a Benadryl and went to bed at 9:30, dead tired and hoping for a little rest. But every hour on the hour my furnace kicked on and made loud rattling noises that woke me instantly, I was too hot, then too cold, I couldn't fall asleep again, my dreams got worse when I did, and then the furnace kicked back on.

And of course, this morning the furnace was quiet as a purring kitten.

But hey, the shadows under my eyes look artistic.

the new Christmas spirit, part 14

I'm running this one backward to save bytes. You all know how it goes.

The (New) Twelve Days of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
twelve break-up speeches
eleven bland excuses
ten busy signals
nine days of silence
eight awkward kisses
seven nervous stutters
six shy glances
five cell phone rings!
Four doctored photos
three romance surveys
two stilted emails
and a nudge on eHarmony!

more home improvements

So my house stories bore you. Too bad. :) I have nothing else of particular interest to report, and I'm currently obsessed with nesting, so there you have it. I'm not sorry not to have horrific mouse stories or psychotic neighbors or anything else to relate, although those sorts of things are certainly more entertaining than tales of my sewing conquests.

Come to think of it, though, here are a couple of things that aren't totally dull:

1.) An eighty-year-old woman died in my bedroom a number of years ago. The house, however, radiates peace, so I believe she didn't suffer.

2.) My basement is hung with merry curtains of cobwebs which give me the dry heaves, so I never use it.

3.) This past weekend I found a cigarette butt on the path leading from my porch to the car. I didn't put it there. The middle-aged son of my next-door neighbors is a little odd, so I suspect he was standing out there in the evening looking in my one blindless living room window. That's my best guess. I don't feel threatened or anything, just mildly nauseated. I hung miniblinds to take care of that issue.

Onto the boring stuff!

I have crowned myself the Curtain Queen. They're all finished. Red curtains for my study, gorgeous linenesque yellow-green curtains for my bathroom. Which meant I was able to hang the remaining curtains in my bedroom. Altogether, it looks lovely. The study is transformed from a hideous spare room into a place of relatively cozy comfort. The bedroom is perfect (aside from one glaring empty white wall, but I'll be hanging a large picture to alleviate that). The living room is picked up and vacuumed, the dishes are washed.

All I have left is the general lightweight clutter. In a house as small as mine, even the slightest bit of clutter on any floor or flat surface makes the whole place look completely messy, since there isn't much open space to make it look as small as it really is. Which means I'll have to be the consummate housekeeper.

I wish my kitchen weren't so ugly. Maybe I'll paint the cupboards.

And I have to set up my computer. Now that the study isn't blugh, I want to be able to take up my writing again.

hobbit hole

This weekend I finally pulled the stops out and worked hard on my house.

I moved all of the stuff that I had been storing in the study through the adjoining door into the garage.

I rearranged furniture in the study to accommodate my antique rocking chair, so that I didn't have to, as I thought I would, store it in the garage as well.

I looked at and seriously hated the hideous door connecting the study to the garage, which takes up a lot of the end wall of the narrow room and makes the whole thing look incredibly tacky. That door is made of the cheapest possible material which has obviously splintered, and looks like it was unceremoniously forced into the jamb. Altogether so ugly it's depressing. So I dug out a set of garnet sheets that Boss Lady had given me, ripped out the stitches on the top ends, ran a spare curtain rod through it (one that I had saved from when I made my living room curtains in the spring, but it was too wide for the windows and I never throw anything away that I can help), trimmed the bottom, grabbed my portable sewing machine, sewed a quick seam, mounted the curtain rod's hardware, and hung the curtain over the door. I then placed an antique captain's chair in front of it -- light enough for quick and easy moving when I want to use the door, but heavy enough to lend a sense of permanence to that end of the room. The dark red curtain gives the room a little splash of elegance, covers the ugly door, and traps the cold draft running in around the badly fitted edges.

I retrieved a very long, wrought iron curtain rod I've had lying around for a year or so and a designer shower curtain bestowed upon me by Boss Lady, forced the curtain onto the rod, and mounted it over my wide, doorless bedroom closet. It's a good closet, but a closet is a closet and viewing its innards from the rest of the room gave the bedroom a sort of unwanted ghetto chic. The curtain goes with the colors in the room and gives the room a sort of finished touch. It's stiff enough not to float around on the breeze of the heating vent and to act almost as a door itself when one ducks around it.

I solved the dual dilemma of what to do with this lovely antique suitcase I had bought as a bed for Simon which he never uses, and what to do with all the little stuffed animals people keep giving me (I refused to buy one of those horrible stuffed animal nets that hang from the ceiling, and at the same time, at the age of twenty-six, I also refused to pile them all over the bed). I opened the suitcase, which has a lovely red sateen lining, set a potted plant in one corner, and arranged the stuffed animals around the plant. It's sitting on one of my dressers in the bedroom and looks a lot more adult and nicely whimsical.

I cleaned the entire bedroom. I put away all the clothes, picked up all the clutter, and vacuumed. The result: beautiful. Finally, a finished room. Simon spent the entirety of yesterday in it.

That was only Saturday. Yesterday I went shopping for a few necessaries, which included a seam ripper. I took the fitted sheet from the garnet set and ripped out all the stitches (which took forever), then trimmed it into a square and cut out panels for curtains in the study windows to match the curtain over the door. I hemmed all the panels and cut out strips to sew into loops which I will attach to the top of the panels and through which I will run the curtain rods. These will give the study its final touch, and grant me some much-needed privacy, as I am uncomfortable sitting in lighted rooms at night into which anyone outside can see.

So I made a lot of progress yesterday which two months in a depressive funk had, till this weekend, prevented. Somehow it was much easier with Christmas music playing in the background.

Tonight: finish the curtains, wash a few more dishes, and hang a miniblind over the last bare living room window. Also cook dinner (creamed chicken and biscuits. Heavenly).

by the heels

A legal secretary's life makes for some interesting experiences. Foremost on my list at the moment is skirting the antiquated practices of the Indiana filing system.

See, nearly all basic Indiana forms -- minute sheets (required for all filings; since the clerks don't like actually flipping through documents to determine what they are, every filing requires a minute sheet detailing what the filing is), summonses, subpoenas, attorney's appearances -- are given to the attorney's office in advance and the secretary, or attorney, has to fill them out manually. This means with a typewriter. So, each time one of these forms needs filing, I have to type, over and over, the case name, the case number, the Court number, and then the body of the text.

This wastes a considerable amount of my time. Michigan rallied itself to twenty-first century technology and put all of its basic forms in computer format. If my boss only practiced law in one state, I probably wouldn't notice or mind; but the juxtaposition of 2007 and 1955 wriggles under my skin.

I've done a few things with office forms already; my boss is an old-fashioned guy, and many of the internal office forms that we use had to be done manually as well. Late this summer I grew tired of using the typewriter for every little thing, and so I took the forms that we had and designed them in the computer. Now the clerical work goes MUCH faster.

So my challenge lately has been designing all of the Indiana forms in the computer as well. I actually enjoy doing it -- there's something about the organization required, and the perfection of getting every detail just right, that satisfies my little Virgo soul. I've had a lot of fun creating all of these forms from a single table, splitting or joining table cells as necessary, and locking the permanent ones in so that all I have to do is tab from one typing cell to another.

They actually look pretty great. My boss prefers to use the typewriter himself, so he wasn't that impressed, but I'm excited for my sake. Now I can save a bunch of minute sheets as master forms for each case and save myself the typing of every caption every time I have to use one.

One of the things I love about our computer-oriented generation is that it doesn't require much training to figure stuff out; all I did when I first started playing with WordPerfect (I know, most computer people hate WordPerfect, but I have found it to be rather easy to work with, if a little outmoded and unreliable in some respects) was go to the Michigan forms and hit a lot of buttons to see how they'd done their work, and then I was able to reproduce it in my own documents.

Brain surgery? No, of course not. But these are little things I like to do to ease my own tasks. I find them tremendously fulfilling. And I laugh at myself when I find that I'm procrastinating on work by doing other work. One of the signs of loving your job, I guess.

a consumer's priorities

Dear CVS:

I would like to applaud you for the many efforts you make to enhance the lives of your customers. Your pharmaceutical staff in particular are all extremely helpful, polite, kind, and gifted with excellent senses of humor. I tip my metaphorical hat to you in regard to this phenomenal accomplishment.

I also appreciate the efforts you make to provide consumers with your own generic equivalents of name brand products. While I wouldn't call you, exactly, a cheap date, you're far more affordable than many of the name-brand products you carry. As my pocketbook is tight, I certainly appreciate the option to purchase less expensive, though no less in quality, products.

I must, however, point out the singular reason why I elected not to purchase your product equivalent to Vaseline Intensive Care Body Lotion last night. I was standing in front of the lotions debating on the prices, and noticed your store brand, equal, you said, to Vaseline Intensive Care Advanced Healing. As I like this lotion, but couldn't find the name brand on the shelf, I was deliberating on whether to purchase your brand, or the Vaseline Intensive Rescue, which I hadn't tried before but looked similar. In order to compare them, I picked up your bottle of lotion and turned it to the back to read the product description.

I was, I must confess, disappointed, CVS. Your product description was looking good, until my dismayed eyes stumbled on the words. You wrote, "It's healing effects [do such and such] to relieve..."

CVS, I have a degree in English. But I never needed that degree to distinguish between "its" and "it's." These are, I must say, relatively elementary concepts for professionals. "Its" is an adjective, CVS. A possessive. "It's" is a contraction abbreviating "it is." Clearly your product description contained an error that should have been caught by someone long before it went to print on your bottles. I would have thought that you would have people in marketing paid for just this sort of thing.

In the end, therefore, I chose to give Vaseline my money. Of course you made a profit on it, and I do not begrudge you that; you are, as I said before, an excellent company with a pharmacy that I have yet to see outranked in terms of promptness and service. But I do admit that I expected a little more from you in terms of marketing grammar based on that reputation for excellence.

This is not written to lambaste you or to call you a poor company; I will certainly continue frequenting your branch in Granger. I simply felt obligated to point out an error that denotes a certain lack of attention in one of your departments, and thus connotes a slip in professional language, or even a lack of education, which is extremely unfortunate for you, and, I confess, makes me feel a bit disappointed and even sad.

You may, in future, want to have someone with experience regarding and a vast knowledge of the English language and its rules to oversee what you print on your labels. It's an important facet in your sales.

Yours very warmly,

Sarah

the new Christmas spirit, part 13

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
Thy leaves are so unchanging
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
Thy leaves are so unchanging
Thou represent’st my single state
That year to year doth not abate.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
They leaves are so unchanging.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
O wilt thou not appease me?
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
O wilt thou not appease me?
I long to hold somebody tight
Before thy glowing colored lights
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
O wilt thou not appease me?

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
Thou twinklest so brightly
O Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree
Thou twinklest so brightly
Thou art a beacon, bright and clear
That my true love is drawing near
O Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree
Thou twinklest so brightly

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
I love thee for thy comfort!
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
I love thee for thy comfort!
Thou bringest back the memory
Of childhood and family
O Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree
I love thee for thy comfort!

the new Christmas spirit, part 12

Deck the halls with mistletoe
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Kiss someone that you don't know
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Don we now that date apparel
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Troll the Christmas single's carol
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!

See the scotch and wine before us
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Strike the bar and join the chorus
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Follow me in merry measure
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Flirt in hopes of Christmas pleasure
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!

Fast away old failure passes
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Hail new love, ye lads and lasses
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Sing we hopeful all together
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
For romance that time will weather
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!

the new Christmas spirit, part 11

Here we come a-matchmaking among the neon green
Here we come a-clubbing, so better to be seen
Love and joy come to you
and to you that romance too
And God bless you and send you a date this year
And God send you a date this year.

We are not nightly drunkards that vomit on your floor
But we are lonely singles whom you have seen before
Love and joy come to you
and to you that romance too
And God bless you and send you a date this year
And God send you a date this year.

the new Christmas spirit, part 10

Have yourself a single little Christmas
pet your cat tonight
From now on let your troubles all be out of sight

Have yourself a single little Christmas
scratch your kitty’s chin
What companion could you ever want but him?

Once again as in recent days, good and decent days of yore
That faithful pet who is dear to you draws a tear from you once more

Through the years you both will be together
since the Fates allow
He will eat the tinsel while you laugh aloud
So have yourself a single little Christmas now

the new Christmas spirit, part 9

(See comments to Part 6 for parts 7 & 8.)

I’m dreaming of a hitched Christmas
It must be just around the bend
Where the bed is queen-sized, the house is dream-sized
And cuddles on the couch will never end.

I’m dreaming of a hitched Christmas
with each love-and-diamond TV glitch
May your days be merry and rich
and may all your Christmases be hitched.

the new Christmas spirit, part 6

This one's written in earnest. I love you, Mom and Dad.

P.S. Think of "Tender Tennessee Christmas."

Back-at-Home Christmas

Come on, fortune slip, tell me of romance strong and bright
Can’t you hear the prayers of every single heart tonight?
Match.com’s calling, Christmas love falling, somebody said it’s true and deep
But it doesn’t matter, joy's not a ladder
I’m gonna choose to keep

Another tender back-at-home Christmas, the only Christmas for me
Where the love circles around me like the gifts around our tree
Well I’m told there’s more gold in a man’s hand to hold than alone I will ever see;
but a tender back-at-home Christmas is the only Christmas for me.

Every now and then I get a wand’ring urge to see
Maybe New York City, lots of singles there like me
There’s a parade there, I’ll have it made there
Bring home a guy for New Year’s Eve
Sure sounds exciting, awfully inviting, still, I think I’m gonna keep

Another tender back-at-home Christmas, the only Christmas for me
Where the love circles around me like the gifts around our tree
Well I’m told I’m not bold, that love has no foothold, it’s a lonely way to be;
but a tender back-at-home Christmas is the only Christmas for me.

Well I’m told there’s more gold in a man’s hand to hold than alone I will ever see;
But a tender back-at-home Christmas is the only Christmas for me.

the new Christmas spirit, part 5

Sleigh Ride

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling, whee!
Oh yes it’s a lovely day for a ride in a sleigh with just me!
Outside the snow is falling, the weather is calling to me;
Oh yes it’s a lovely day for a ride in a sleigh with just me!

Giddyup, giddyup, giddyup, I’ll go!
I’ll soak in the show
I’m riding in a wonderland of snow
Giddyup, giddyup, giddyup it’s grand
With a frostbitten hand
I’m riding along to the song of a wintry fairyland!

My cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy am I
I’m huddled down in the sleigh bed like a nice little daybed outside!
I’ll take that road before me and tell a story or three
Oh yes it’s a lovely day for a ride in a sleigh with just me!

There’s a party somewhere for all of the married folks
But I’ll head down to the pub for some cold beers and smokes
I’ll be singing the songs I love to sing without a single stop
While across my sweater the Guinness will slop – slop slop slop!

There’s a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy
When I’m hit on by a really old and bearded guy
It’ll really be like a picture print by Vincent Van Gogh
These wonderful things are the things that set my heart aglow!

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling, whee!
Oh yes it’s a lovely day for a ride in a sleigh with just me!
I’ll take that road before me and tell a story or three
Oh yes it’s a lovely day for a ride in a sleigh with just me!

the new Christmas spirit, part 4

This one's bitter.

The (New) Christmas Song

Dinner heating in the microwave
Jack Frost nipping at my nose
Money gone that no skinflint can save
Kinda hope the choir members froze

Everybody knows
Christmas specials and some mistletoe
Give me thoughts of suicide
In my bed stemming tears as they flow
I sleep alone and wish I’d died

If only Santa on his sleigh
Would bring me my true love gift-wrapped on his sleigh
But instead I know, deep down, that I
Will toast my parents’ health and try hard not to cry.

And so I’m offering this simple phrase
To all us single gals tonight
Although it’s been said, many times, anyways:
Merry Christmas – we’re all right.

the new Christmas spirit, part 3

Sleigh bells ring, are you listenin’?
In the lane snow is glistening
A beautiful sight, I’m happy tonight
Walking in a winter wonderland

Gone far hence is the sparrow
On a fence is a scarecrow
He’s single like me, but I’m warmer than he
Walking in a winter wonderland.

In the meadow I can build a snowman
and pretend that he is Parson Brown.
He’ll say, “Are you married?” I’ll say, “No, man!
I’m happy hitting bars all over town!”

Later on I will slouch in the crook of the couch
I'll stifle a groan, 'cause it’s better alone,
Walking in a winter wonderland.

the new Christmas spirit, part 2

C'mon! Celebrate!


Oh the weather outside is frightful
But my cat is so delightful
And since I’ve no place to go
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Oh it doesn’t show signs of stopping
And my knitting keeps me hopping
The heat is turned way down low
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

While I watch TV every night
I eat Stouffers and drink cheap wine
No one calls me but I’m all right
'Cause everything I have is mine!

Oh the evening is slowly dying
But I never (really!) thought of crying
'Cause in the morning, to work I’ll go
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

for the papercut in paradise, for the lizard skins in ypsilanti

Winter is here, and I don't know about you-all, but that means papercuts. Horrible nasty ones, like all the papers are lying in silent wait until that one moment you're not paying quite good enough attention, and they metamorphosize into knives and slice your skin to the bone.

For years I tried everything I could think of. The best, thickest, creamiest lotions, from every brand-name store I could imagine. My pocket money ran out, and the papercuts ran on. My hands began to look like I spent my free time arm-wrestling with cats or weeding briar patches or juggling razor blades.

Until I found it. Or, rather, received it in my Christmas stocking. Santa, aka Mom, was smart.

I got a little plastic tube of Vaseline.

Papercuts betware! Petroleum jelly is your Kryptonite!

Ladies and gents, this stuff is magic. And if you buy it at Wal-Mart from the travel section, a tube costs you only ten cents. If you object to Wal-Mart, you can go to CVS for a slightly bigger tube at a dollar-fifty. A little tube lasts for months; "a little dab'll do ya," as my mom says; and it's also usable on chapped lips or other parts of the body, like elbows and heels. It provides a protective coat that doesn't soak all the way into your skin and doesn't dry out and doesn't go away unless you wash your hands. It's scentless, so if you're like me and hate all the fission-powered scents out there that rock into your nostrils and blow your sinuses apart like atom bombs, you're safe. This is the perfect skin care tool.

Of course, there's probably something deadly and terrible about it that will give me cancer of the fingers in thirty years. But in the meantime, my paper cuts have diminished by something outrageous like ninety percent. My pocketbook isn't gasping from the punishing prices of Bath & Body Works. And my hands look like hands again.

the new Christmas spirit

Unattached for the holidays, hooray! But because every Christmas song has to do with boring old-hat things like love, companionship and family, I thought I'd add my own touch...


Dashing through the snow
in a one-horse open sleigh
o’er the fields I go
screaming all the way
Bobtail’s bells don’t ring
The reins are quite a fright
I don’t know how to drive this thing
but at least I’m out tonight!

Chorus
Single bells, single bells
single all the way
O what fun it is to ride
in a cold two-person sleigh!
(Repeat)

A day or two ago
all the couples took a ride
just because I lived solo
didn’t mean that I would hide!
I was feeling pretty swank
till the traces came undone
I flew into a drifted bank
and walked back home alone! Hey!
(Chorus)

settled

It's winter again. Outside it's cold and snowing, and on my walk to the post office to get the office mail I realized that I really need warmer shoes, so, despite my renewed hatred of shopping, particularly at this time of year, it looks like a trip to Ye Olde Malle looms inevitably in my immediate future.

I enjoy the cold. I love the briskness of the stark clear nights when every wisp of humidity has evaporated into the freezing atmosphere and you can see every star. I love the heavy snowfalling air on the swirl days, when visibility retreats shivering to the end of your nose. I really love that I live less than five minutes away from my job -- though I don't love the nagging knowledge that I'll have to shovel a path across the yard to my car in the mornings. But it's winter, it's snowing, it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, and it's so much better this year than last year when we were wearing T-shirts until January. This feels normal. It feels right.

It also reminds me that I've been at this job for just over sixteen months, and it's hard for me to believe I've ever worked anywhere else. I came in this morning after our Thanksgiving break ready to rock and roll, and I've already accomplished a bunch of little things around the office, and I'm preparing to roll up my sleeves and dig into the paperwork. I like getting up in the morning and coming to work. The office is always fast-paced, the clients are usually irritating, a lot of the attorneys are rude, but the fly-around stress is enjoyable for all of that. When I go home at the end of the day, I feel that I've done something.

I have grown up with the knowledge that I never wanted to enter the business world. I don't like all the phone calls and the emails, the ladder climbing and the futile ambition -- I don't like career. My bent has always been toward writing and the arts, which, sadly, no longer pay the bills. When I decided against teaching and decided against grad school, I felt a little lost, a little desperate -- I knew I didn't belong in the fields I had rejected, but I knew also that I didn't want a business career, and I didn't know where that left me.

So I bounced around just paying the bills. Looking back, I can't quite believe I did what I did, working nine months doing two part-time jobs in basic retail without health insurance -- I would never, ever do that again. But I learned so much, and really came into my own then, and I'm glad I chose it, and glad too that God was so vigilant and gracious during that year, and the years that followed.

I was so unhappy in my job doing events at the Center. It was everything I hated about business, combined with a whole lotta other crap I've blogged about before. But even without the negative environment and the nastiness and the conniving and the politics, I just didn't like the job. But I felt well and truly stuck -- what else was I supposed to do?

And now I'm here. I do secretarial work, sure, and it's not glamorous and there's no ladder-climbing, which matters to some people, but it's important work, it's stable, and I love it, and I love my bosses. I can't imagine doing anything else. I am fairly certain, as certain as one can be in life, that I'm going to be here for a long number of years, and that thought energizes me.

The bottom line is, I'm proud of my job. I hear people sneer at it when they think I can't hear, or demean other people in secretarial positions in my presence ("so-and-so is only a secretary"), and I know plenty of others who hold back the criticisms like levvies hold back the sea even if they don't say anything, who think I'm wasting my time and talents doing menial labor when I could be doing something so much better. These people don't have to say anything; their opinion comes screaming across the emotional barometer like a hurricane-force wind, even as they say faintly, "Well, I'm glad you're happy..." while their eyebrows contradict the idea that my happiness in such a job is even possible, any more than my happiness as a prostitute would be possible.

But I'm proud of my job. It takes a lot of mental acuity to do it well, and a great deal of attentiveness to someone else's style and someone else's needs, and a knowledge of someone else's habits to the point where I can know what he's going to need, whether a document or a file or a cup of coffee or someone on the telephone, before he knows it himself. It takes a tremendous amount of skill, a deft application of known factors and creativity, to make oneself an invisible presence of crucial importance for the smooth functioning of an office. And I can do just that. I can be there at his elbow with a cup of my excellent coffee just when he's becoming cognisant that he wants some, I can put the files for his next appointment on his desk and he never notices, I can have received a telephone call from some company we subpoenaed saying one little phrase was wrong and have it corrected and ready for him to sign before he even gets the message, I can receive entered orders back from the Court and have them served on all the interested parties before he's even seen the mail.

I can also get away with a lot. I know how he works, and so I know how to interrupt him when he's busy with something important. I can bug him about certain phone calls or documents that need to be made. I can make suggestions that he ordinarily wouldn't consider, and he'll consider them. In short, we work well together, and it's usually fun, and almost always rewarding.

If he were a horrible boss, the job would be thankless and wretched. But he notices, he always thanks me for everything, so my bid to be invisible never quite works -- which makes it, therefore, a challenge, a goal...and a cheerfully sneaky one.

And I'm smart. There are a lot of dumb secretaries out there. I've met them. Dumb and drab. But he's leaving more and more of the documents in my hands, giving me less and less instruction, and it's because, as he told me early on in the job, "You have a brain and you use it."

I'm no lawyer, but I'm getting snatches of the law, and it's fun and interesting, though nothing I'd choose for my own career. I like where I am, much as I liked chiefing makeup crew in my college theater days -- it's background work, but it's no less important for all that. And I prefer making others' performances possible.

I also have the opportunity to connect with other background workers like myself. Some of them are truly fantastic, and the ones who aren't make themselves the butt of good jokes. The really good ones know their place, know that they're not the lawyer or the judge, but know even better that the lawyer or the judge couldn't do his/her job without that competent, friendly secretary taking care of the small stuff.

So where I am is perfect for me. I'm paying the bills doing work I enjoy and believe in. And meanwhile I have plans for my computer and my fingers and the words and stories that flashpoint through my busy brain, and those aren't career goals; they're Alpine ambitions, divine callings, and I do keep the two separate, and they fit interestingly well together, like pieces of an insane puzzle that match just as your head is starting to ache and your eyes begin to cross.

So for the time being, here I stay, well and proudly.

worried friends

If I don't check in with John about once a week, hilarity ensues. Here's a voicemail left for me this weekend:

Oh where oh where could my Sarah be?
Oh where oh where could she beee?
She might be missing and I would be sad
Oh where could Sarah be?

If I don't hear from her in twenty-four hours
I'm gonna call the policeandmakeamissingpersons repoooorrrrt
Oh call me back or I will be blue
Oh Sarah please call meee!

After I laughed till I coughed, I played it for all of my friends. And I called him back.

office machinery

Copier and I are having issues today.

I've learned over the past year, mostly, how to deal with its quirks and foibles. I've learned the appropriate moments for sweet-talking it, the appropriate moments for threatening it, and the appropriate moments for dousing it with curses. I know how to push down the back hinge so the paper won't jam feeding through, and how to grab the paper with the speed of lightning if I forget to push down the hinge. I know how to fiddle with all its knobs and dials with the smooth skill of a nurse or a horse doctor.

But today we're having problems, Copier and I. It doesn't have a name yet because it keeps switching genders. I'll have to pick a gender-neutral name for it...one that is easily switched from male to female. But for now it's just Copier.

And it HATES me. Today it's pseudo-jamming -- not actually jamming but you can't convince the machine of that, so it shuts itself down and I have to wait three minutes for it to come back on before I can continue copying the massive depositions that I need to get filed and served on the other counsel today. This will of course involve a drive to Court in this bleary head-fogging weather, and I can't get moving until fricking Copier decides to get these things copied without acting like a Pomeranian forced into cold muddy snow.

It's a very familial relationship, this one. I hate the copier passionately, call it all sorts of foul names and threaten it with all sorts of grisly ends, but let anyone else in the office criticize my Copier and I bristle and call it my baby.

Guess I just get lonely in my office and need something to talk to.

Gah! It just jammed again. *$^&%*@^.

Harboring a vendetta against the electric company really gets you nowhere. It's not as if you can change service, so if they screw up, they don't care. The best you can do is use as little electricity as possible.

This is a monopoly in practice. And this is why monopolies are bad. What am I going to do, go Plain?

But I WILL turn off the lights every time I leave a room.

home improvement

Yesterday I washed all my dishes. They really needed washing -- I was running out of them altogether. (Yes, yes, put me in a new environment and I celebrate by living in squalor.) I then tackled my bedroom and hung the ginormous mirror, the little wall shelves, and the pictures. It looks more like my room now.

This move has taken a lot out of me. It's been quite a month. I moved under extreme duress, had only ten days to get all my stuff out of the apartment and into the house, got it done, took no time off from work to do so, went to the Cayman Islands for Laura's (gorgeous, perfect) wedding which involved my first flights (and those out of the country too, fortunately to a laid-back English-speaking island, whee!), and then back home for much sleep and recovery.

So with all of that activity, I'm bushed on all life-facets. Physically, emotionally, mentally exhausted. I'm told that this pervasive fatigue is part of the job here, since this is, after all, my first full year working at the office, and the job's constant demands and high pace tend to drain your resources so that you're staggering around blearily by the year's end. Between Friday and Sunday I got 24 hours of sleep, and I'm still backpedaling.

Which makes me very, very glad for coffee. I stood in my sparkling kitchen yesterday vainly admiring my own coffee as it sat in the glass French press, so perfectly black that I couldn't see through it even when I held it up to the light. So strong that it banished caffeine deprivation headaches instantly, and woke the soul with the aroma of life.

I'm in charge of coffee-making at the office, too (I know what you're thinking. Don't even pretend you're not thinking it), and that mostly because I'm such an unforgivable elitist that I can't stand anyone else's coffee and have ground down (haHA) the system of the office drip-maker to pure perfection through careful trial and error. And when you hold the pot up to the bright window (or as bright as it gets here these gray November days when there are only like four hours of daylight), you can't see through the gorgeous liquid, so dark it blurs the lines that distinguish brown from black.

Ahh. Monday's best pacifier. Coffee.

Tonight I plan to drag my tired ass home, after finally working up the energy to trek to the stores in Mishawaka on my quest for home necessities like curtain-hanging hardware. And trash bags. It's so easy now to put off whatever I don't screamingly need, because I can get the absolute necessities at the teeny grocery store in town. It's so easy to live my whole life in Michigan just because I don't want to drive down to Indiana. But one must eventually break out of Hobbiton to get those modern goods.

I'm running out of nails, too. Lots of pictures have been hung. And my house is starting to look, a little bit, like home.

old made new

This morning sometime between five and seven I was awakened by the sound of a gunshot.

In my old apartment, I would have mentally bolted upright (though physically remained inert) and tried to calculate how far away the shot came from and listened intently for the wailing of sirens indicating police involvement and therefore the commitment of a crime. I would have sweated in bed until I knew that things had calmed down. I may have arisen and sneaked about my apartment in the dark, clutching Patsy (my shotgun) and peering out the windows.

(Note: Many of you probably already know this, but in the event that you don't: If there's something dangerous going on outside, or you're worried that something dangerous is going on outside, turn off your lights. If you have to look out your windows, make sure your house is completely dark before you do. It increases your ability to see outside, and hugely decreases anyone's ability to see in. Staying away from the windows is better, but a darkened house is always a good idea. Show your face in the window with a light on, even if the light is in another room, and you present a wonderful target.)

This morning, however, I dragged one eye open and concentrated for a second before groggily thinking, "November fifteenth. Oh yeah. First day of hunting season." And went right back to sleep.

Small town living is the best -- I'm so unconcerned for my physical safety (though, yes, I still lock all my doors; I'm not that unconcerned) that I allow my rational brain to kick in before plunging into a world of instinct and my years of training as a cop's daughter.

And where I'm living is closely on the border of country living, so there are always people in the woods. Even the horses across the street were unconcerned by the shot reports. And the cops might be the ones taking a day off to go hunting.

Bodily Betrayal

I can't tell you how many euphemisms we have heard or invented over the years. Here's a shortlist of where I am today...

1. Entertaining Aunt Flo.
2. Surfing the crimson tide.
3. On the rag.
4. Enduring That Time of the Month.
5. On my cycle.
6. Cramping it.
7. Internally bleeding.
8. Under the influence of the moon.
9. Suffering from the Silent/Woman's Curse.
10. Going through the monthlies.
11. DYING.

I love being a woman. But I do dread the monthly moments when my whole body turns on itself like a bad allergy and plunges me into a whole lotta pain. It's like all the alarms and wires are going off: Fatigue, nausea, gastrointestinal misery, bloating, cramps, bad skin, bad dreams, swollen feet, headaches, absentmindedness, depression, irritability, lower back pain, hot flashes, feverishness, lightheadedness, sluggishness. All for one little unfertilized cell.

Ridiculous. Insane. Yesterday I barely spoke to anyone, because anything I did say sounded bitchy and edgy, and I wasn't even mad. There's nothing rational about this, and nothing controllable; you just feel miserable and the mood swings are abrupt and puzzling.

But that's part of being a woman too: learning to roll with it, trying not to be horrible to people, and understanding that whatever you're feeling is all hormonal.

Biological persecution. Blah.

Speaking of cycles, though, reminds me of a conversation I had with friends over the summer as we walked through a park along the polluted St. Joe River and made fun of my former place of employment. The place was in the process of changing its longstanding motto, "Where Miracles Become Reality," to "Ending the Cycle of Homelessness." As we discussed the multitudinous, vast, innumerable administration problems that negate that bold new motto, I laughed and said, "Shouldn't it really be Pedaling the Cycle of Homelessness?"

So yeah, I haven't badmouthed that place on my blog in over a year, and have been extraordinarily careful to be vague and political about the whole thing because I never know who's reading, but hey. Some things are too good not to share.

And I'm proud to have been booted off that ship. Looking back, I can't believe I wasn't fired sooner. Not for bad job performance (almost nobody, outside of a few fiery and dedicated case managers, performs his or her job well at that place and the notion of teamwork -- though not cliquishness -- is dead, and under the circumstances I did my job quite well), but for some of my less politically careful statements (and the desire of someone from a prominent South Bend family to have my position). I actually said during a meeting, "Why are we dedicating so much time and effort to doing these little news articles to inflate this place's good reputation? It's all smoke and mirrors. Why aren't we actually doing what our mission says we're doing? Because then we wouldn't have to be scrambling to make this place look good; its reputation would speak for itself."

Oh yeah. When I told Boss-Man about that one, he sat back and stared at me in a combination of shock, pride and amusement. "And it took them four months to get rid of you?" he said at last.

Nobody was fooled by what happened to me. The people who were actively participating in getting rid of me, and the ones who were in the know and didn't forewarn me while pretending to be my friends, naturally lied their asses off and expressed their "sincere" condolences and offered "to have coffee" sometime because "we're all still friends here," but couldn't look me in the face afterward; and the people who were as ambushed by it as I was -- residents included -- knew exactly what was going on. "It's because you get along with us," one resident told me. "You don't look down on us or separate yourself from us; you talk to us, you listen to us, and you don't act like you're too good for us. They hate that up there. They keep themselves all separate and they can't stand when someone doesn't fit into their little club."

So much for trying to make a difference. I was excited when I was first brought on the job, not only for my position, but for the opportunities I thought I would have to speak up for the residents, having worked closely with them, and help things in that shaky, unstable environment to change. I had a lot of ideas, a lot of passion, and a great pride in where I worked and why. Not for its shining (ha! tarnished and crumbling) reputation, or for the goody two-shoes points I earned from members of the community by displaying my humanitarian work, but for the ways I could labor alongside people and help make their lives better in practical ways and communicate for them at meetings. That's why I was there. Not for some sort of personal prestige and inflated self-image, or for power (a lot of people my age sold themselves out for positions of power there. Power. At a homeless shelter. Ironic?), but for the daily interactions, the opportunities to present ideas that would help the machine run so that the people could focus on what they needed to do, and not worry about their daily living in a fast-running-down and badly organized facility.

So that didn't work. I was extremely naive then about the ambitions and two-faced political natures of the people who work in those kinds of jobs. I was extremely naive about what I could get away with saying and what I "shouldn't" say; I assumed everyone else was as committed and idealistic and driven toward change as I was, and that any kind of reformist statements I would make, any reformist ideas I would have, would be welcomed with willing ears and open eyes and likemindedness and eager hands. I've learned better, the hard way. I've learned that the factions and scheming and nastiness I witnessed in high school don't really stay there when people grow up; some folks carry those things with them. I've learned that goodness is not always a windfall against harm.

Take me back, though, and I'd do it all over again. Because I also learned that conscience is not something to be compromised, regardless of others' disapproval or rationalization for why they behave in the cruel ways that they do. Ask anyone who had a hand in what happened to me, and they'd tell you something different. They'd present the silly list that was read to me the day I was fired as to everything I was doing wrong, which they had been keeping (and in many of the instances, half-inventing, or leaving out distinguishing truths) for quite some time, unbeknownst to me. They'd list all the reasons I didn't fit in, wasn't part of the team, was a really nice girl who tried her hardest but just couldn't hack the job and they regret that they had to let me go, etc. But they'd also know better, somewhere deep down there, even if they didn't really care. Funny how none of them could quite meet my eyes, or even the eyes of my real friends there; when I've had a hand in letting someone go, they good and deserved it, and I was angry and had justice backing me up, and I could look them in the face any day, any time, because I knew I was right. That element was noticeably absent from those who did the same to me when I left my old job.

But I'm a little older, a little wiser, as a result -- I learned I don't work well in environments that are centered around politics, because I hate keeping my mouth shut when something needs to be said just to save my own skin or keep from looking bad. I've also learned to read bad signs, and that I can get out of a bad job before it crashes on me. And I've learned that people are even less trustworthy than I thought, and I let fewer people get to know me. That last one's a bit cynical, perhaps, but realistic. It helps to know your friends, and only trust a few of them. I've done some weeding out since then, and my life is smaller, more ordinary, and much more stable.

And I will almost always speak my mind. I see no point in going with the current just because that's the safe thing to do. I never have. And I learned that's probably not going to change, whatever the consequences. Because my conscience is clear -- and that matters more than other people's approval, or good opinion, or job stability.

I am so blessed to work in an environment now where that kind of thinking is the common bond.

grr. argh.

I have come to an enmitical understanding with the dog next door.

He belongs to my landlord's daughter. She's nice, but more than a bit standoffish, and her dog is ugly and mean. Having failed thrice to win him over, I decided to ignore him and let him live in his yard, while I lived peaceably next door.

The problem is, he likes to live in my yard. Either he's a Houdini escape artist, or he is allowed to run freely about the neighborhood. I came home from work on Friday to find him in my driveway, and when I got out of the car, he took issue with the fact that I was standing on my property and charged toward me barking and snarling with his hackles up.

That certain something snapped in my head -- the certain something that asserts itself forcefully in the presence of ill-mannered children and ill-mannered dogs. I stood my ground, calmly stared him down, and ordered him off my property.

Well, he stopped short (he's a scared dog, which is what makes him mean) about five feet from me, still snarling and barking, and then I, still calmly, started walking toward him. He shot off toward his yard and then turned and continued to bark. I very deliberately walked right up to the property line -- no further -- and watched him. He came no closer.

I waited about a minute, then turned to walk back to my porch (all I wanted was dinner, not to have a pissing contest with the dog who thinks he owns everything), and right away he started to follow me with his operatic solo of barking and growling. I turned to face him again. He shot back into his own yard. I turned around. He started after me.

This went on for about ten minutes, with me occasionally chasing him out of my yard. But eventually he got the message, I backed up to my porch and into my house, and that was that.

Until yesterday when I was sitting on my porch and saw him loping into my driveway.

Well, having just finished a quick reading of Julie of the Wolves, I was in a power-aggression mode anyway, and I did what the wolves did. After I leapt to my feet with a loud stomping noise, at which he raced back into his yard and turned to bark endlessly, I narrowed my eyes at him and leaned forward.

And he went away. He circled his owner's car and disappeared onto her porch. I smiled.

Sigh. I must be starving for some kind of confrontation if I enjoy having spats with the neighbor's dog. But it's all about winning, with these kinds of critters. I have been fortunate in never having had a bad experience with a ferocious dog in my childhood, so I'm pretty much completely without fear of canines, and love almost all of them -- but give me one who tries to boss me around on my territory, and I'll show him who's really in charge.

the waves

It's funny how states of mind come and go, weave themselves in and out of existence in a cyclical pattern like the tides.

Last weekend I flew to the Cayman Islands to witness my sister's wedding. It was beautiful, she was beautiful, she was radiant and smiling and her husband had tears in his eyes and the reception was lovely and the sunset stunning, and a good time was had by all (except perhaps by his creepy hateful mother who spent most of the reception looking glumly like someone had died, bollux to her). I'm not the biggest fan of the beaches or the suncombed seas; I prefer the quiet mystery of forest, the bark and leaf smell of trees, the stone smell of hills, a sky shrouded in branches and a wind peppered by the whispers of foliage and the chattercalls of birds. But I still enjoyed myself.

And something interesting happened there, walking barefoot on the beach in early November scanning the shores for shells and bits of glass and coral -- a habit long borne of living on the lakeshore at home, one that calms and focuses me -- something happened, sitting in a tropical dress that cost me four dollars at Old Navy and had the courtly French proprietor of our inn offering my father a million dollar dowry if he could have me for a second wife (what is it with me and these jocular polygamous marriages?). Something happened, toasting my sister and watching her move along the dance floor with her husband, with my parents interlocked nearby, and my sister's married friends on her other side.

I was happy alone.

Weddings are usually a signal to my subconscious to plunge itself into a subterranean sea of sadness and self-pity. At most weddings, however happy I am for the bride and groom, the yin balancing-opposite-factor in me gets up next to the Lion and the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and starts singing, If I only had a date... Or, if the self-pity is really bad, mate.

But I learned in the Caymans something that all of the rejections of the past couple of years had obscured -- I am a quality woman. The serving staff were more attentive than they needed to be at any restaurant we attended, whether or not I was even wearing makeup. I smiled, I laughed, I was gracious, I was perfectly comfortable in my own skin. I was happy. And when I wasn't happy, it was because I missed being in my own house with my own cat in the solitude that I love. The flights back into the States, which I made on my own, were totally fine, because I was relaxed and believed -- no, reveled -- in my own independence (an unusual state of mind for a new experience -- new things tend to stress me out).

And I returned to my beloved Michigan happy. It hasn't worn off yet. The horrifying grief of singleness has, for the time being, gone. I like falling asleep alone in my single bed between my scarlet flannel sheets (mmm, weather finally cold enough for flannel sheets). I like waking alone in the mornings, enjoying my coffee alone, showering alone. I like my quiet, solitary evenings with my cat. I look forward to having a house settled enough (I have so much stuff, and the new house has less floor and wall space than the old apartment -- much creativity, and some downsizing, needed) to cook my incredible meals in my quiet kitchen with a Yankee candle burning and enjoy the results alone (I'm getting fat from too much eating out -- it's like the restaurant foods pack in unnecessary calories just because -- ickgh).

Maybe it's fall -- it's hard for me to feel lonely or unhappy during the dying of the year. It's hard to feel despondent when all around there's the beauty of the resting fields, the leaves showing their true colors hidden by summer's cholophyll, the smell of vinegar and wet grass and naked bark and the first hints of snow. It's a time to celebrate aloneness and introspection and the pure happiness of being.

Maybe it's that I know that I'm loved by my family, and by the people that surround me. Maybe it's that I know I'm loved by my God, and am grateful just to have been brought to a small harbor of rest. The grief has been long, and turbulent, and hard, fraught with a few sharp hopes quickly dashed in unkind ways, and it's lovely, really lovely, not to care about them anymore, but to feel the goodness of my life, and to realize that, whatever may be, my single state is not a result of some lack in myself. It's a time to focus on my callings and my gifts -- I'm starting to write again, I can't wait to start cooking and baking (it's hummus night tonight, a return to an old favorite; and as far as baking is concerned, my new stove is pure joy), and my home is so peaceful and safe that I can sleep again at night, and relax when I come home.

Of course this tranquility, this unexpected contentment, won't last. It will ebb, to be replaced by the grief, or the anger, or the anxiety, one of these days, and probably sooner than later, because I really don't think (although I'm beginning to wonder) that this solitary state is what I was meant for, and is, most times, uncomfortable at best, and agonizing at worst. But I'll enjoy the peace to the marrow while it lasts. This tide's been a long one coming in.

veni vidi vici

I closed down the thrice-blasted mall last night (I HATE the mall -- it seems my adolescent eschewance of shopping malls has been exacerbated over time by having once nearly lived in one working my bones to the bone when I first moved to South Bend), but I came away triumphant. I have my jewelry (necklace, earrings: Target. Ring, bracelets: Macy's). I have my bustiere (Target). I have my shoes (Macy's).

The end does not cover the journey of the means. I hit Target first, then scoured the mall looking tired and focused and slightly panicked, marching from store to store, then finally decided on Macy's half an hour before the mall closed.

Then I stayed up way too late winding down. My feet hurt and my brain was wired.

But I did it! Thank God. Nothing like waiting till the last minute...which, as I realized in college, I will always do until that system fails me. (Know thyself.)

Tonight: laundry and packing.

I'm still at work, procrastinating on going shopping. I need shoes, jewelry & appropriate undergarments (ones that you can't see under the dress) for my sister's wedding. I have only tonight to get them. I have put it off until now.

I elude the stereotype of women who love to shop for clothes. I'd rather wear into threadbare oblivion the ones I have and live in a bookstore, dressed in rags.

january in october

It's snowing in my freezer.

I have never had this happen before. I knew it was pretty cold in there, and I've been fiddling with the temperature controls in the fridge for the past couple of weeks, trying to bring it down to a less Arctic temperature, since everything in the fridge has been freezing and there are enough icicles hanging off the shelves to look like Christmas.

I figured I'd worked it all out. Until I opened the freezer yesterday and was greeted by a snowdrift.

It's not even ice crystals. It's real, honest-to-God SNOW. I packed a pot full of it, freezing my hands in the process, giggling at the thought that if I only had company, I could surprise them with a snowball fight.

But alack and alas, I was the only one home, and the cat would only have been frightened and upset if I'd chucked a chunk of powdered water at him.

So it's winter early in my house.

moving along the ground

Figuring a few things out, which I think is good. I've been feeling directionless -- not jobwise, but lifewise (because sometimes the two are different things). I think I have a few, not real answers, but suggestions, like signposts or a compass needle that I finally (but only maybe) understand how to read.

Also, life without the internet at home has been goading me back to a mental chowing down on books -- one can only watch so much TV on DVD, however excellent the shows. Oo and pushing me back toward writing. Very exciting.

There are parts of me that I feel like I'm getting back. It's a kind of...relief. An easing in the tension. And it makes the aloneness not matter as much.

Every once in awhile these lyrics run through my head:

Joy at the start
fear in the journey
joy in the coming home
A part of the heart
gets lost in the learning
somewhere along the road.

rag-and-bone shop

I’ve been dreaming, the last week, about all my grade school crushes.

Each night’s strange mini-movie features a different boy. In all of them we’re all grown up now but somehow still in high school, and trying to escape strange circumstances. Last night’s was truly bizarro: My best friend, my crush, and I were on a field trip with our classmates to an amusement park at the edge of the world (and I do mean edge – it was right on the brink of a cliff, like the Cliffs of Dover), and the main ride was this huge version of those ships that you get in and it swings up back and forth, higher and higher, until you fly all the way around the circle (the amusement park back home calls it the Pirate’s Ship); only the one in the dream didn’t have any seats. You held on by handlebars and relied on your strength to keep you from falling and flying out to sea before plunging to your death in the surf at the cliffs’ feet.

I fell. I died but I didn’t die. Sea gulls were involved. A huge storm came up and everyone was running and hiding – the storm was alive and personal and going after individuals with lightning bolts. Crush and I had this unspoken, intense sexual energy between us. Best friend wasn’t picking up on it; she liked him too and they had a history. We wound up back at her house somehow. Then we were lost in the iron streets of a sort of post-apocalyptic/futuristic Pittsburgh by a river. There were unfamiliar designs of automobiles and a wacked-out bridge that worked by artificial gravity where you kind of stuck to the sides (like Minority Report). We were skyborn, floating above the bridge and looking down on the city. We bought ice cream. I think there were hovercraft. I don’t remember what happened after that.

Beats being chased night after night by murderous persons unknown.

But why all these old crushes? It’s very weird. Seriously, a different one every night. And I haven’t thought about these guys at all in years. But suddenly they’re there, every facial detail, every angle of their bodies, the way their hair lies, things I didn’t know I remembered, but made older, too.

It makes me miss them, and miss high school, and wonder how they’re doing. I’m not accustomed to nostalgia. I hated high school and was terribly glad to leave it and start my real life. So it’s putting me in a pensive mood, and I’m not sure what to do with it. Maybe it’s merely my subconscious delving into the roots of my occasionally-surfacing loneliness, as none of those crushes were more than secret, cherished yearnings...and none of my subsequent attempts at relationships with possibly, actually interested men have ever panned out.

What a funhouse.

I laughed three times yesterday. Real laughs. Spontaneous ones. They felt like balloons being let into the sky, when the hand holding the string forgets what it's doing. Watching each one rise, I felt surprised, like I should look down at myself and figure out where it came from (my navel? my ribcage?). And they looked so pretty against the blue, I felt happy. And that surprised me too.

lost and found

When I came home from work yesterday Simon wasn't there to greet me at the door.

Now, this might not seem like much, but in Sarah-Simon world it's the equivalent of the sun failing to rise. My kitty is always there to greet me at the door. Always.

Maybe he's taking a nap, I thought. He'll be along in a second, as soon as he hears my footsteps.

Nope. I started to call him. He didn't come. In Sarah-Simon world his failing to come when I call is like the sun rising black. So then I started to worry. Someone had mown my lawn for me -- was it my landlord? Did he come into the house and somehow let Simon out? Did Simon get into the basement and crawl out through one of the glassless windows?

My calls became a little more frantic. I searched under the bed. I checked the bathroom. I glanced in the library. No kitty. My calls became desperate.

Then I forced myself to calm down, because I thought I'd heard a faint miaow. I called again, and heard it for certain -- somewhere in the house. I followed the noise into the library and he was definitely somewhere in the (tiny, tiny) room. But I couldn't see him. I kept calling.

And found him trapped behind one of the bookcases.

It was in the corner, balanced across the corner so that there was a little triangulation of space behind it. Simon was sounding pretty frantic himself by then, and terrified, but talking to him in soothing tones, I started pulling books off the shelf so I could move it, wondering all the time how on earth he got back there. There's no way in along the walls or the floor. My best guess was that he tried jumping on the top shelf from one of the other shelves, overshot himself, and fell down (six feet) to the floor behind the case.

I started wiggling the bookcase, and Simon started trying to get out. I was worried that he had hurt himself, and that I would accidentally wiggle the heavy case on a paw or tail. I said, "Look out!" -- one of my catch-phrases that he actually understands, whenever I say that in a certain tone of voice, he always moves out of the way -- and he retreated to the very back of the corner. I tugged and yanked until there was just enough space for a slinking cat and called him to come. He wormed his way out (talk about trust: He looked a little doubtful of the fit but came because I called him) and ran into the kitchen. I followed and loved him up and fed him dinner.

He wasn't hurt, just a little traumatized and clingy. I have no idea how long he'd been back there -- anywhere from five minutes to six hours, since I'd come home at lunch and left him wandering free.

Stupid cat. I told him, as I slumped into a chair, "You've had more brilliant moments...as in, any other moment in your life."

But he seemed relaxed by the end of the evening -- even did, for the first time since moving in to the new house, his Floppy Love Kitty routine where he flops on the floor and writhes around, as Mary O'Hara writes in Green Grass of Wyoming, "in an ecstasy of love."

So all's well that ends well -- as long as he tries no more bookshelf acrobatics.

old house

I learned the other day from my new next-door neighbor Gordon that some years back an eighty-one-year-old woman died of a heart attack in my bedroom.

Surprisingly, however, this doesn't creep me out. The house is perfectly at peace with itself, and the bedroom especially so. I've actually been sleeping better in the dead woman's room these past few nights than I have for the last six months at the apartment.

So I think she died at peace. Houses hold their own atmosphere, you know? There are houses that are difficult to live in, houses with strange histories of inhabitants who fought, or were unhappy; and there are houses that are delightful to live in, houses that have absorbed their previous tenants' lives and kept them well. This little house is one of the latter.

Funny thing -- a couple of weeks ago I was driving past the stretch of road where the house lies on my way to one of the Courts to file some papers, and that little stretch is so pretty, all wooded and green and sheltered, and I thought, Ohhhh I want to live here. And when someone told me about the house for rent and I went to check it out, there it was, right where I wanted to live, and something about it called me.

I think I'm going to be very happy here.

clerk

She wore a black sweatshirt that matched her heavy eyeliner and her hair, and kept her heart in her big darkbrown eyes. She struck you as the sort of girl you wouldn't really expect to see standing behind the counter at check-out; she seemed more naturally suited for park benches in old neighborhoods, milling about with friends in wide-legged jeans strung out on chains. One of her friends might have a guitar for playing moody music, and she'd be standing or sitting listening to the conversation around her, processing everything she heard with those eyes.

But there she was, ringing up the people ahead of me, and I noticed how she spoke to the customers: quietly and kindly, her voice pitched low, even-toned, her speech a little slow, thought-out. You noticed that she was really there, taking in the people, looking for their eyes, and I thought she had a singular gift of being present. It's something I'm not good at myself; I'm always in a hurry or lost in thought, never really quite here, living somewhere in my own head. I have to train my concentration on the world around me, on the moment of the here and now; but she already lived there. She had a kind of calm about her.

When my turn came, I stepped up with my arms full of milk and vegetables and set them down in front of her. She said hello in that slow, quiet voice, and as I fished around in my purse for my debit card, I felt her taking me in the same way she'd taken in the people before me. It's a strange sensation, being seen.

"That's an interesting T-shirt," she said in that same voice, a neutral sort of voice, but I heard a little pitch of concern underneath it.

I looked down, having forgotten what I was wearing. Oh yes. My deceptively cheerful, ironic, macabre bright red sweatshirt declaring in happy letters surrounded by rainbows and hearts, I Hate Myself and I Want to Die.

I smiled. "I think it's funny," I said. "All the hearts and rainbows."

And then I looked up at her, and saw in those fully present eyes that she was worried. She put on a little smile for my sake, and I was again surprised: At first glance, she's the kind of person I would have ordinarily marked down as someone who would be amused by the shirt.

I changed tacks. Still smiling, I said, "I don't wear it when I'm actually feeling that way."

She handed me my receipt and bagged my purchases, looking half skeptical, half relieved. "I'm glad," she said. "That might cause some concern for your loved ones."

I don't remember what I said to that. I thanked her as she handed me my groceries, wished her a wonderful day, and departed.

In a thoughtful mood. I've had a lot of reactions to that shirt: horror, disgust, anger, amusement, camaraderie, delight. Never that kind of open concern, especially not from a stranger.

It was a different experience. There aren't many times when you feel like you've come into contact, really met, the Other. And there are even fewer times when meeting the Other results in a realization of love. Even universal, impartial love.

I think I used to have that gift. Not of being present, but of noticing people. It's much less there with all my worries and absence from the here and now. I check out a lot. I'm brusque and concerned with my own affairs. But this girl, who looks to be a misfit in society, seems to love everyone in it -- not in a perky, chipper, irritating way, but in a considering way. And she takes the time to notice.

I wonder if she feels overwhelmed by it. By being present. That's why I leave the present so often -- it's immeasurably difficult to face other people's difficulties and heartaches and problems and panics all the time. She didn't seem afraid, though.

I usually walk into a grocery store with the intention of making my clerk's day a little better -- saying a cheerful hello, asking them how they're doing. But that day, she made mine. A single girl tends to feel a little invisible if she lives far from family. There's no one to notice if you're looking peaky, or if you're depressed; you have to declaim it outright in order for people to know. And even though I really was in a good mood that day, a stranger saw something and responded.

It was a beautiful gift.

forgetful jones

Anyone remember those skits from Sesame Street? The old, classic Sesame Street of our growing up years, I mean, not that mindless crap they put on now.

I got a call from my old landlord last night, who said, "I have something of yours that you probably really want...does Grove City College ring a bell?"

Yes, folks. I forgot my diploma.

I started laughing. The ONE THING I neglected to take with me was my college degree. I remembered everything else -- the curtain rods, the nails in the walls, even the drain trap from the bathtub. But I left my diploma.

Well, I always leave something behind on any trip I take, so why start making exceptions now? MP is kindly holding onto the proof of my BA in English until she returns from fall break.

And in the meantime, I have my study/library almost all set up (Joy! Rapture!). Boss-Man sent me home from work early yesterday to sleep, because I was the picture of Walking Death Exhaustion, and I woke up early this morning feeling rested. Still tired, but the muscles aren't as achey and I can do things like sit down and walk up stairs.

I think I might be able, for the first time since leaving home for college, to get up early and rediscover my inner morning person. I've been missing her. And a lot of joy is coming from the fact that I only have a three-minute drive to work now. That takes a lot of strain and rush out of my morning routine. Delightful.

And Simon is his cute kitty self. Out of all the boxes I have, he managed to dig out his catnip toy and bite holes all through the bag before I got home yesterday, which I found amusing: My cat is unpacked (and for himself) before I am.

On to work!

Greetings from Michigan

I am no longer a resident of South Bend. Or of the State of Indiana. (Insert Hallelujah Chorus here.)

Well, folks, I'm all moved in. It was a long and arduous weekend of packing, lifting, hauling, loading, and unloading, and of dragging furniture around in the new space, but I had plenty of amazing help with the heavy stuff on Saturday in the forms of Meg, Phillip, Pete, and a huge U-Haul (when did I get so much stuff? when?), and then yesterday I spent at the old apartment packing the rest of the things that there were neither time nor boxes for on Saturday, and yesterday evening I turned over my keys, paid the last of my dues, and made my old landlord sign a paper releasing me from the lease (having learned a thing or two in the course of my understudy as my lawyer's Secretary).

And then I was done.

I feel like I have a new lease on life (HAHAHAHAHAHA, I crack myself up). My new house is cute, small, cozy, and just about perfect for what I wanted. My yard is huge, both front and back, the neighborhood is barely a neighborhood, practically rural, and although the road itself is pretty well trafficked, the area is so beautifully quiet. And safe. I don't remember the last time a neighborhood felt safe. I actually left stuff on my porch yesterday and all night, and it was all there when I came back. There is no longer a shotgun under my bed. When I need something, I can jump in the car and drive the three minutes to town (like coffee in the morning -- I don't know where the French press went, so I've been climbing in the car in my pajamas to drive to McDonald's for my a.m. rejuvenation). It's the small town mentality -- something I haven't had since I moved away from North East.

And it's so amazingly wonderful to be the only person residing in the house. No footsteps, no loud conversations, no music, no TV leaking in through the walls. No sudden fluctuations in water temperature when I'm in the shower. No worries about my own noise. It's incredible.

Of course, that part is taking awhile to adjust to -- yesterday I would drop something on the floor and it would thud and I would automatically think, "Oh, I hope that doesn't bother...oh. The spiders." Because there's nobody underneath me. Hooray! And this morning in the shower I kept tensing, waiting for someone to flush a toilet, or run a kitchen sink...and then remembered that unless I could split myself in half or break all the laws of physics and be in two places at once, that wasn't going to happen. It's. all. mine.

My front porch is huge and great, with a nice enormous sloping overhanging roof, so no more getting wet when I step outside. The house is set far back from the road, so it's not an invasion of privacy to sit on my porch and enjoy the day.

Simon is adjusting much better than I had thought. Saturday he was confused and upset (and I had him in his crate for hours, who wouldn't be upset? but I didn't want him scooting out an open door); once I let him out, after the furniture was all moved in, he wandered among the castles of boxes and yowled pathetically and slunk about kind of afraid. But as soon as I started making the bed, he relaxed. He loves that bed. When I'm at work, he spends all of his time there napping and whatnot, and he shares it with me at night, so I imagine that for my kitty, bed = home. And so I'm guessing he figured out, Okay. She's making the bed. It smells like her and it smells like me. She's sleeping here. We're staying.

I still have so much to do. There are so many boxes that there's barely room to move around. I didn't realize how efficiently I had managed the limited space at the apartment so that the amount of stuff didn't appear to be extreme; but once it was all in boxes, I stood around looking at it going WTF? And now it's even worse because I have to dig through it all to find anything even remotely simple. And the rooms are smaller than my apartment, so there's less maneuverability.

But I have the skeletal structure of each room arranged (except the bedroom, I'm still feeling out the feng shui there), and it was delightful to eye my furniture and put out my feelers in the room and try to figure out what the room and the furniture were telling me about where they belonged. This is the great thing about houses -- if they're good houses, good living spaces, they talk to you. You work with the house to get everything organized. And your furniture helps out. It's kind of like tuning in to someone else's conversation, being a third party mediator between the space and the stuff. (Okay, the couch doesn't like being next to the writing desk, but the window is telling me that the writing desk belongs in front of it, so let's move the couch to the other corner of the room and see how the easy chair likes the corner by the writing desk. Oh yes. They're happy. Great.) So organic and lovely. I love arranging and decorating.

So my bookshelves are all beautifully arranged in my study, with the computer desk (which looks out the window, hurrah!); and the living room with the huge easy chair and loveseat and writing desk are in harmony; all of my curtains will work on my windows (SO. HAPPY. about that, I worked hard on those living room curtains); now I just have to negotiate all those damn boxes.

There are things I'm fretting about already -- I have to come by a lawnmower and a snowblower and a rake at some point in the near future, as well as change the tires on my car, and where do I have the funds for that? -- but God has provided so amply and QUICKLY for all of this, so I'm holding to hope and deciding not to panic until the first snowfall.

I'm exhausted beyond all reason, and every muscle in my body protests at my slightest movement, like my whole body is saying to my brain, "You want me to do what? Fine. I may have to respond to your electrical impulses sent along the nervous system, but I don't have to be happy about it." I'll be moving around like a little old lady for the next few days: I strained my knee and my back has a few choice things to say to me about its treatment and my feet are blistered and sore and Charlie horsing constantly and my shins are bruises from my ankles to my kneecaps.

But it was worth it. I have peace of mind, a quiet haven, and no more freaky neighbors. Or if they are freaky, they're distant.

And a study. Did I mention I have a study?

I'm quite satisfied. Even if I'll be living out of boxes for over a week.