currently

nature's air freshener

I have a christmas tree in the passenger seat of my car. I put it in there to drive it to the boy scouts or whoever takes old trees when you live in the city, only then I couldn't find where their collection place was and there was this tree in my car, and it was all dried up but it smelled good and there was nothing to do with it anyway but let it stay there. every time I'm walking to my car I start hysterically laughing at the idea that I have a christmas tree in the passenger seat. I kind of like it. the other day one of my coworkers and I went to happy hour and he had to sit in the back like we were driving miss daisy. when he asked for an explanation -- I think what he actually said is what is wrong with you????!!! -- I said, "well, I put the tree in the car a week and a half ago--" and then I couldn't finish the sentence because I suddenly realized the absurdity of it and I got laughing so hard I couldn't talk. I guess I'll have to pitch it into the woods behind the barn.

things that are good

• on new years day I'm running down the sidewalk, a few blocks from my house, and ahead a white suburban has its reverse lights on. I slow down to see if the driver sees me and he does, and waves me on. I turbo past and he calls "happy new year!" out the window. "you too!" I reply. it's simple, but good.

• at the barn, I finally meet the new barn manager, who moved in sometime in early december, bringing with him his seven beautiful horses -- rocky mountain horses mostly, plus a tennessee walker and a kentucky mountain horse. all of them are in good weight, mannerly when fed, well-groomed. the barn manager's name is jim; he's probably in his mid-sixties, and has the easy air of a person who's spent his whole life with horses. we shake hands and he asks me which horse is mine, and then he admires my rubber boots, which are plaid cowboy-style boots I'm wearing only because the soles of my normal ones have totally worn through. "hold my shoulder so I can see the bottom," he says, and then he picks up my foot just like you'd pick up a horse hoof and checks out my shoes. "hardly been worn," he declares, as he backs up a step. he appraises me. "look at you! you look good. those boots, and you've got a wrangler butt."

I have never heard the term 'wrangler butt' but I know instantly what he means, and I will take it.

• we have a quick & dirty lady date sunday, because I can't get out of orchestra rehearsal until just before 10 PM. j & I watch downton and polish off a bottle of white wine, which we drink ostensibly for its germ-killing qualities.

• tonight at the barn, I hang out with a one-day-old colt, who's the spitting image of his mama. after initial shyness, he comes and sniffs my hand, but runs away when I try to rub his neck.

• in the span of just a few days, I receive two care packages from two of my finest lady friends and both of them make me choke up in profound gratitude, because somehow my life is full of extraordinary people who are willing to come hold my hand and lead me out of my darkest places.

rachel's package is an utter novelty, mailed in a bottle, the stamps hand-canceled. inside there's candy and coffee and a few wonderful little trinkets, a pair of fuzzy socks, the sweetest letter. I drink the coffee a few days later, in the car on my way to mt. hood, and it makes me really, really happy.

katie's package is a sizable box that appears at my door, stuffed under my doormat by the mailman, who understands my neighborhood. in it is everything she's picked up for me in the last four years, none of which she's ever gotten around to sending. each thing is labeled with a sticky note. on the tiny "Pimp Your Pumpkin" decorating kit she writes, happy halloween 2010!. she sends a book along, saying, I read this a few years ago and loved it so much I had to send it to you immediately.
I laugh for ten minutes straight.

inside is a card that says

the sex & the city movie was on tv last night and I watched some of it. there's a scene where carrie is in bed and too depressed to get up. samantha brings her breakfast and carrie doesn't want to eat. samantha feeds carrie while she sits up a little. while I was watching it, I thought THAT is what jess and I would do for each other. I could have used it in the fall, and you could use it now. just know that in spirit, I am sitting at your bedside and feeding you breakfast. maybe even bacon.

I think maybe this is why I'm single. these people are what boys are up against. frankly, they don't stand a chance.

fucking with your chemical components

last thursday I shuffled into the east interstate kaiser permanente campus in a hooded sweatshirt and a wrinkled pair of jeans, my hair unwashed, to talk to my doctor about how sometimes I'm so sad it takes me an hour and a half to get out of bed. (also, I had to get a pap smear. neither one of these two things is something you want to do first thing in the morning before work). she was, as always, very efficient and kind and fifteen minutes later I walked out with a wellbutrin prescription, which was filled at the pharmacy counter by an alarmingly good-looking pharmacist. why is it when you don't wash your hair there is always a good-looking unmarried pharmacist, seriously.

I think most of us have this idea that our essential nature is something greater than the sum of the chemicals in our brains. we can understand logically that what for lack of a better word produces us is the firing of neurons and the mixing of chemicals and the strange mysteries of the body. I think most of us, though, in our secret heart of hearts, believe that our essential personhood is a thing that transcends all of that somehow.

taking a pill that fucks with your dopamine receptors in order to revert you back into a functional human is a reminder that your essential personhood is largely out of your hands.

the (surprising) sisterhood of the brokenhearted

although the sting of it has more or less subsided, I still think very often of last year's relationship that almost was. if the right sequence of songs come through my headphones I still shed a tear or two. the residual sadness I feel is probably a weight I will bear forever: a tiny knot made of regret, loss, and disappointment. in short, I frequently wonder after and miss my friend. I think (and accept) that maybe I always will.

but sometimes I think that what growth looks like is this: I occasionally think of his girlfriend fiancée as a kind of sister, rather than as a rival. I mean, if human beings were logical and if the world made sense, she and I would have banded together against the thing which so deeply wounded us both; we'd have stood tall, a pair of mighty ladies, and said, "well, we both got fucked," and we'd have dusted our hands off and given each other a consoling hug and gotten the hell out of dodge. sometimes in my quiet desolation I have imagined that rather than hating me, she wonders after me instead. after all, this shit happened to both of us. in slowly trudging down the path of healing, I sometimes imagine giving her a hug. I'm so sorry, I think to myself. we both got so hurt, and what for? I wonder about the two of us girls, playing tug of war over somebody who set all three of us up to be broken. and now they are to be married. it will always be a puzzle to me.

life is full of contradictions. he will always be my short-lived but nevertheless dear old friend, a kindred spirit, a person who woke me up. no matter what time passes or the hurts I have sustained, the truth is that even now, I would be a safe haven for him in a storm. that is -- dopamine receptors be damned -- my essential personhood. but sometimes I am grown up enough to wish her the best in that life they have, despite everything, chosen to have together. when I look back and wonder what it all means, the tiny part of me that's healed hopes that whatever he learned from me is something good she gets to hold on to. the sisterhood is precious to me. I wish I had never broken it.

a recent middle of the night meal
a bowl of trader joe's o's
two pieces of deli cheddar cheese
marshmallows

some tasks I have run for our giovanni
hot and sour soup delivery
hot and sour soup delivery
drive to and from spray tan
hot and sour soup delivery

things I fantasize about when I consider taking the whole week off at thanksgiving
staying in bed
watching korean tv
pajamas
hot chocolate
sleep
knitting
no human contact

what I will probably actually be doing the week of thanksgiving
running projections for a disney show with the symphony and trying to look professional while I sing along under my breath

a decent metaphor for my heart
two and a half years ago I was knocked down as I was trying to maneuver several hundred pounds of hay. on my right thigh I have a scar from being forcefully slammed into the lip of the little truck I was driving. it's a visible dent, the width of maybe two fingers. it's fully healed, just dented. if I push on it, it produces a very dull ache.

I believe this is how this thing with g will always be: a thing that will heal with time but will somehow, also, always hurt.

recent google searches
how to build a balloon arch
balloon arch tape
red chuck taylors
fraggle rock theme song
piriformis spasm
bob woodruff hairpiece
peter dinklage

single word said recently to the opera timpanist which subsequently made him crack up
frankenberry

top 5 favorite candies, as requested by the timpanist
cadbury cream eggs
laffy taffy (strawberry or cherry only, none of that banana-flavored shit)
charleston chew
valomilk
gummi sour apple rings

bottom 5, as requested by no one
peeps
candy corn
jelly beans
red vines
necco wafers

backstage noises I have been asked to make in the past seven years, onomotopoeia style
boom
rumble
ding
crank
bang bang bang

the general consensus
still sad

a probably true thing
I'm going to have to write my way out of this.

insomnia

trying to go to bed at 10 after spending several weeks going to bed at 1 is the equivalent of normal people trying to fall asleep at 7 or 8 in the evening. well-intentioned but, I'm finding, impossible. my normal method for trying to overcome insomnia, particularly when I'm restless because of nerves, is to lie very still and count, slowly, to 300. I usually begin to nod off in the 90s and my counting gets all wonky and then, poof, I'm sleeping. the rule is, if I get to 300, I'm allowed to get up and do stuff for awhile because it's clear I'm not going to fall immediately to sleep. I remember the night I devised this: it was late august 2005, the night before I began working as the receptionist for a staffing agency. I was nervous and I didn't want to get up early the next morning, and I lay in bed forever and ever, fidgeting, unable to sleep. I thought, I'm never going to sleep if I can't stay still.

tonight I got to come home at a normal hour for the first time in nearly a week. I left the office at a quarter to five and I've been home ever since. after so many long days at work, the empty space is almost crippling. you get into this groove, even if it's exhausting, and popping out of it even for a day or two is a challenge. sometimes I work as much as I do just because it's easier to keep the momentum going. once I begin to slow down, it's hard to gear up again. tonight I watched the last episodes of the first season of game of thrones, and when I was finished I sort of scratched my head. washed some dishes, ate an egg sandwich. now what? there are a billion errands, but my car keeps stalling out and besides, don't I want to be home for half a second?

my edges are really frayed right now from so many weeks of long hard days. I'm lonely today, a rare emotion in an ordinarily solitary soul. my loneliness isn't about wanting company so much as it is about wanting a particular kind of company. I don't even want to talk; I just want to sit in companionable silence. want a little love, want to be understood. there isn't anything to appease it. I found myself earlier heaped in a ball on my bed, staring at the flower print on my duvet, saying dully to myself, "no one is going to save you from this feeling but you." if this doesn't sound like your idea of a fun night off, you're not alone.

the exterminator came for the ants today. afterwards my landlord sent me an email which contained a thinly veiled accusation that the ants were actually my own fault, which my logical brain recognizes as patently absurd (I am a very tidy person by nature, and besides, the ants have been here since my very first morning), but in my semi-frazzled emotional state I took the accusation to heart, and it upset me a lot. my landlord is kind of an uptight person, and I think she's been suspicious of me since our very first meeting, when, because scott was ungraciously kicking me out of his condo, I told her that I would rent the apartment sight unseen. it was in a neighborhood I liked, at a price I could afford, and I had nowhere else to go.

when I was a small child, my mother, my grandmother, and I lived in a rowhome in irvington, a suburb just outside baltimore city. we lived on the top floor, in what I remember to be essentially just a long hallway; my mother's bedroom at the top of the steps, and then the kitchen (where I have a vivid memory of standing on a chair in an apron, helping my mother at the stove). then my bedroom, with its yellow curtains, and then my grandmother's room at the end of the hall, its windows facing the street. at night, my grandmother would get into bed and then I would be expected to walk down the hall and kiss her goodnight. I was very young, 4 or 5. she would always put pond's cold cream on her face before she went to bed, and I would have to go and kiss her on her lotioned cheek. my memory of this was already quite vivid when last week, I bought myself a container of cold cream, because I've been experimenting with different ways of washing my face. in the bath one night I opened the container, and -- what a miracle our olfactory system is, and time such an illusion; there I was once again in that bedroom, the wooden headboard up against the wall, the light from the streetlamp shining through the window, my grandmother in bed before me. those are the streetlamps I still picture when I remember my mother reading to me from robert louis stephenson's a child's garden of verses, her favorite of the verses being the one called "the lamplighter."

a writing teacher in college, having encountered my grandmother in a story I wrote once about the way she ate asparagus at dinner (horrifyingly), encouraged me to write about her at greater length. we lived with my her until I was 12. although everyone in the family called her 'grams,' I always called her 'ma,' which, to my constant frustration, she always pretended was really 'mom.' I only ever used 'ma' when I spoke to her, never when I spoke about her. she died in 2007, and it just struck me for the very first time that my usage of 'ma' is dead forever alongside her. good god, life. doesn't everyone die at last, and too soon.

it's 11:11 now. there are so many things to wish for. sleep chief among them.

a long weekend: sleeping until 10, brunch, john cage, horse hair, rain, blankets, movies, coffee, legos, strippers, a hangover, a glass of wine, a game of thrones, candy, letters, envelopes, bad TV, a walk, a dusty old typewriter, a conversation with an old friend, a long-overdue trip to the bank / mall / food store / library, a half-zipped riding boot, clean breeches, mud, dirt, seeds, weeds.

at the garden paul, in the plot next to mine, constructs a cold frame. I am surprised to see anyone there. my brussels sprouts have totally sprouted; the buds have opened into tiny mini cabbages. all the work to grow them and I let them go all winter. I walk over and call, "I guess it's about that time!" and paul says, "it is not! it is too damn early! why is it so warm outside?" and he has the truth of it, actually, but just the same, the peas have to go in soon.

when I write my letters in the morning, I experience a moment of panic at night. and then relief, such relief.

my hair is just about long enough for a single ponytail, for the first time in more than three years. and I still don't know: grow or cut. I just don't know.

on my computer there's a file that contains a list of every person I've ever kissed. romantically, I mean. I wrote them down about five years ago, when it occurred to me that someday I might not be able to remember. I keep it current. there's no real use for this kind of information but forgetting is maybe the thing I fear most in life.

the number of people on the list surprises me. whether it's because it's small or big, I honestly don't know.

.

I always stay up too late.

lately

• listening to hey jude on repeat
• clutching an assortment of objects in my hand while I sleep
• throwing my clothes on the floor because there's no time to pick anything up
• making haircut appointments and then canceling them because I'm not sure I want to cut my hair?
• finally not feeling guilty on nights when I don't ride, because danielle is out there riding on those nights
• endlessly reading a clash of kings because it GOES ON FOREVER
• not bothering to change into barn-friendly attire when I feed the horses at night, because I feel that coming home with hay flecked around the hem of my dress reflects my inner nature somehow
• imagining complicated blanket forts
• never hydrating enough, ever ever ever
• staying late at work, and running late night errands, and staying at the barn until 10 PM, because suddenly I realize that being thirty and single means that I get to do whatever I want with my time
• doing back-end work on two new blogs, because apparently the two I already run aren't enough?
• suffering endlessly from excruciating hip tightness, knee pain, and absolutely murderous back pain
• changing my marathon hopes to half-marathon hopes
• discovering that when you're surrounded by the right people, this struggle against pain and injury and dashed running plans, while still disappointing, is also completely manageable and okay
• waiting for spring. is it here yet?

these days

these days:

one of the cats sits directly outside my bedroom door when I am inside it. directly outside. when I open the door, his nose is pressed to the corner of the frame, waiting. he slithers off nonchalantly when I walk out, or sometimes he stands in place, directly in my way, waiting to be shooed.

I wonder very honestly how it got to be june.

I continue to be too competitive in my recreational runs; today, just after the steel bridge platform came back down, the (male) runner just behind me huffed and huffed, waiting impatiently as all the cyclists and walkers in front of us gradually trickled across. there was no use in going around -- you would just make the traffic worse -- but he went by anyway. a quarter mile later I passed him, knowing full well I was going faster than I should, because he seemed like the kind of guy who didn't want to be passed, especially by a little bit of a girl. he never caught back up.

I'm trying to convince myself that I'm really moving out of my apartment; that I really have to do it in just a few weeks. I'm living in a state of very sincere disbelief. I like my neighborhood and my apartment; I hate apartment hunting. do I have to?

The most common comment about my hair is "wow! it's growing so fast!" which happens to be true.

I am, by some divine stroke of the universe, spending a good portion of my time consumed by radiant happiness.