today a woman who works at sephora finally taught me how to put on eyeliner.
in return, i explained how the federal student loan debt relief programs work.
the barter system is alive and well!
(except that, oh wait, i then bought said eyeliner. and concealer. and eyelid primer. and a foundation brush. and oh good grief, what was i thinking? i don't even know what eyelid primer is!)
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
55
just a few of the highlights of the weekend, in pictorial & gerundial form:
ferrying (across the ohio river to liz's family reunion. not pictured: blowing bubbles through a hula hoop, coaxing a toothy smile from a baby, building lego structures for audrey monsters to knock down, eating a ton of red velvet cake, seeing liz!)
dogwalking (not pictured and not a highlight: cleaning up after hurricane habie, whose casualties this weekend included another pair of work shoes, some face powder, and a lampshade)
eating the first tomato from the tomato plant five seconds after picking it (and then licking the juice off my wrist)
not pictured because it won't happen for another hour and seventeen minutes: watching mad men!
ferrying (across the ohio river to liz's family reunion. not pictured: blowing bubbles through a hula hoop, coaxing a toothy smile from a baby, building lego structures for audrey monsters to knock down, eating a ton of red velvet cake, seeing liz!)
dogwalking (not pictured and not a highlight: cleaning up after hurricane habie, whose casualties this weekend included another pair of work shoes, some face powder, and a lampshade)
eating the first tomato from the tomato plant five seconds after picking it (and then licking the juice off my wrist)
not pictured because it won't happen for another hour and seventeen minutes: watching mad men!
Saturday, July 17, 2010
54
if one--purely hypothetically, mind you--read the new york times weddings & celebrations announcements every week, then one would have seen this announcement last month. even though the times usually runs announcements of people who have ties to ny, you can see why they made an exception this time. there is a goat! in the picture!
in addition to being apple-cheeked and flaxen-haired and posing in front of a hay bale, the bride is getting a masters in folklore AND herding goats at a farm AND working on a documentary about coal mining. after reading this last month, i may have had a slight existential crisis that went something like MYLIFEISSOBORINGWHYAMINOTONAGOATFARMRIGHTNOWBEINGSUPERQUIRKYANDADORBS.
seriously, it was ugly there for a while. i usually absentmindedly read the announcements to glean random information about people i'll never think of again, revelling in the brief glimpse behind the curtain of total strangers' lives. and yet this one stuck in my craw. the goats! the masters in a subject i didn't know existed! the community organizing! the baby goats baby goats baby goats!
(this photo may or may not have been saved to my desktop)
eventually, i got on with my own goat-free life, reassured by the fact that this was the first appearance of a goat in the announcements in all theweeks months years that i've been reading them, and so i wouldn't have to deal with this crushing goat-induced life envy for a long time yet. that time would pass and eventually the dream of having a herd of kids bleating and tottering after me as i did whatever folklorists do while saving the environment on the side would subside. because although i'm sure the factcheckers verified that this woman actually exists, people don't really have lives like this, right? right. i could chalk it up to some sort of fluke and put it out of mind, never to return.
.
.
.
.
.
but the goat gods have said HA!!! because i just opened up this week's announcements and saw this one.
seriously, it was ugly there for a while. i usually absentmindedly read the announcements to glean random information about people i'll never think of again, revelling in the brief glimpse behind the curtain of total strangers' lives. and yet this one stuck in my craw. the goats! the masters in a subject i didn't know existed! the community organizing! the baby goats baby goats baby goats!
eventually, i got on with my own goat-free life, reassured by the fact that this was the first appearance of a goat in the announcements in all the
.
.
.
.
.
but the goat gods have said HA!!! because i just opened up this week's announcements and saw this one.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
53
how it happens:
you wake up late. you putter. you take the dog on a walk. you take a midday nap. you watch a movie on the computer, content to have a really lazy day after a really long week. and then the dog starts whining. and climbing on the coffee table. and climbing on you. and you take her outside, but you realize that it's not that she has to pee (although she does). no no, she needs to be doing this:
and so you load her in the car and drive the half an hour to the nearest off-leash dog park. on the way it starts to rain a little, but by the time you've gotten there it's stopped. and at first you two are the only ones there, and so you play tag. but then other people arrive, confessing that they were at their windows just waiting for the rain to end. and you watch her play with a maddie, a stella, an aries. with a bulldog that can't stop rolling in a mud puddle, a great dane puppy that's practically falling over its own legs, a boston terrier that's ruling the whole park. around and around they run, and they topple, and they knock over all water bowls in sight. you're running around, and then you're sitting on a rock and one dog comes up for a scratch behind the ears and then another jumps up next to you and by the time you leave two hours later, you are dirtier than the dog:
and you drive home and wash off and feed the dog, who's already plodding to couch. and then you head to couch too, and watch episodes of arrested development (franklin!) and then you rouse yourself, finally, and head to the kitchen. you boil some milk and let it cool and stir in a powder from a packet with directions only in french and pour and turn the dial and right now you have this:
but tomorrow morning, after three hours in the fridge to cool, you'll have homemade yogurt.
and it's only after you wipe the counters and load and start the dishwasher that you realize that you've forgotten to eat dinner. you had a late lunch, but that was hours ago, and you're hungry, but not too hungry. and you look in the fridge but there's not much there except store-bought yogurt and you can't bear that when you know what's coming tomorrow. you think about a tomato mozzarella basil sandwich except you never made it to the farmer's market this morning to pick up more tomatoes. and then you see them, all lined up in one of the drawers in the fridge. they're a little soft but still good, at least for the night. and so you find the peeler and stand over the trashcan and start peeling. and peeling. and peeling. and then you look for a cutting board but they're in the dishwasher so you cut them directly on the counter. and you chop and chop some more. add a little sea salt, and you're done with "dinner":
and that's how you find yourself eating four cucumbers at just shy of eleven o'clock on a saturday night.
you wake up late. you putter. you take the dog on a walk. you take a midday nap. you watch a movie on the computer, content to have a really lazy day after a really long week. and then the dog starts whining. and climbing on the coffee table. and climbing on you. and you take her outside, but you realize that it's not that she has to pee (although she does). no no, she needs to be doing this:
and so you load her in the car and drive the half an hour to the nearest off-leash dog park. on the way it starts to rain a little, but by the time you've gotten there it's stopped. and at first you two are the only ones there, and so you play tag. but then other people arrive, confessing that they were at their windows just waiting for the rain to end. and you watch her play with a maddie, a stella, an aries. with a bulldog that can't stop rolling in a mud puddle, a great dane puppy that's practically falling over its own legs, a boston terrier that's ruling the whole park. around and around they run, and they topple, and they knock over all water bowls in sight. you're running around, and then you're sitting on a rock and one dog comes up for a scratch behind the ears and then another jumps up next to you and by the time you leave two hours later, you are dirtier than the dog:
and you drive home and wash off and feed the dog, who's already plodding to couch. and then you head to couch too, and watch episodes of arrested development (franklin!) and then you rouse yourself, finally, and head to the kitchen. you boil some milk and let it cool and stir in a powder from a packet with directions only in french and pour and turn the dial and right now you have this:
but tomorrow morning, after three hours in the fridge to cool, you'll have homemade yogurt.
and it's only after you wipe the counters and load and start the dishwasher that you realize that you've forgotten to eat dinner. you had a late lunch, but that was hours ago, and you're hungry, but not too hungry. and you look in the fridge but there's not much there except store-bought yogurt and you can't bear that when you know what's coming tomorrow. you think about a tomato mozzarella basil sandwich except you never made it to the farmer's market this morning to pick up more tomatoes. and then you see them, all lined up in one of the drawers in the fridge. they're a little soft but still good, at least for the night. and so you find the peeler and stand over the trashcan and start peeling. and peeling. and peeling. and then you look for a cutting board but they're in the dishwasher so you cut them directly on the counter. and you chop and chop some more. add a little sea salt, and you're done with "dinner":
and that's how you find yourself eating four cucumbers at just shy of eleven o'clock on a saturday night.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
52
there are perfect days: one on hydra in 2002 where i browned in the sun for hours, breaking only to jump off the cement slabs jutting out of the rocky beach into water so blue i couldn't believe it was real even as i was swimming in it; late septembers, before harvest, with the sun setting as you drive upvalley; not guilty verdicts . . .
and there are incredibly lousy ones too, that i'm not even going to enumerate because can we say bummer?, but chances are they involve some combination of crying clients and awful phone conversations and just plain really bad news.
oh man, yuck yuck yuck last paragraph.
but so there are these two poles, but lucky we don't live at the poles that often. when you add eggs to a hot mixture, like boiling chocolate, you have to temper it in order to prevent the eggs from scrambling: you have to add just a little of the hot liquid to warm the eggs enough. and then you stir stir stir and slowly add a little more, and so on and so forth. because if you dump them in together it's just too much of a shock.
okay, there was a metaphor in here somewhere, but it got lost because now all i can do is think of baking. of turning on the kitchenaid and throwing things together and putting them in a dark hot oven with a bit of mystery as to what will emerge 45 minutes later.
but yeah, you need a little of both, slowly, so as not to shock the system.
today wasn't perfect. there was an overslept alarm, clients who didn't get what they (and i) wanted, a weird smell in my car that i can't trace. but there was a stretch this afternoon/evening where i couldn't think of anything else i'd want to be doing. or not doing, since at first i lay on the couch in the dark with the air conditioner on full blast, reading while habie slept on my feet. and then there was a little putzing around the plants (nasturtiums! nasturtiums are sprouting!) and a little cooking in the kitchen, and it all sounds mundane now, trying to describe it. but at the time, it was just lovely. and the eggs didn't scramble, whatever that runaway metaphor means by now.
also, roasted chickpeas? 100% habie-approved
and there are incredibly lousy ones too, that i'm not even going to enumerate because can we say bummer?, but chances are they involve some combination of crying clients and awful phone conversations and just plain really bad news.
oh man, yuck yuck yuck last paragraph.
but so there are these two poles, but lucky we don't live at the poles that often. when you add eggs to a hot mixture, like boiling chocolate, you have to temper it in order to prevent the eggs from scrambling: you have to add just a little of the hot liquid to warm the eggs enough. and then you stir stir stir and slowly add a little more, and so on and so forth. because if you dump them in together it's just too much of a shock.
okay, there was a metaphor in here somewhere, but it got lost because now all i can do is think of baking. of turning on the kitchenaid and throwing things together and putting them in a dark hot oven with a bit of mystery as to what will emerge 45 minutes later.
but yeah, you need a little of both, slowly, so as not to shock the system.
today wasn't perfect. there was an overslept alarm, clients who didn't get what they (and i) wanted, a weird smell in my car that i can't trace. but there was a stretch this afternoon/evening where i couldn't think of anything else i'd want to be doing. or not doing, since at first i lay on the couch in the dark with the air conditioner on full blast, reading while habie slept on my feet. and then there was a little putzing around the plants (nasturtiums! nasturtiums are sprouting!) and a little cooking in the kitchen, and it all sounds mundane now, trying to describe it. but at the time, it was just lovely. and the eggs didn't scramble, whatever that runaway metaphor means by now.
also, roasted chickpeas? 100% habie-approved
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
51
scene at work today
lady in corridor at courthouse: pssst, pssst! hey you! hey courtney!
me, frazzled and loaded down with files, and i should have been nicer, but i hate being psst'ed at!: ma'am, my name's not courtney.
lady, slightly confused: ohhhh. (pause) it's luann right?
* * * * * * * * * *
it's the end of the fiscal year here in the bluegrass, and so there's been lots of crunching the numbers. in the eight and a half months that i've been an esquire, i've handled over 500 cases. and i've been called a lot of things in FY 2009-10, but this, this was the first "luann."
i had a lot more to say here, about trying new things in june like i planned, about going to new dog parks and speaking spanish to clients and mom visits and making yogurt for the first time. about open houses and exercise videos and organizing filing cabinets. and letting habie off leash, adopting a koala, and conferences in lexington. okay, one of those things may not have actually happened.
but, i planned to write about all of this, and then i got a call from a friend at a bar, and so i went out on a wednesday evening, for the first time in june. check check check.
you know, as much upheaval as june has brought, i wouldn't have it any other way. here's hoping july brings as much newness.
lady in corridor at courthouse: pssst, pssst! hey you! hey courtney!
me, frazzled and loaded down with files, and i should have been nicer, but i hate being psst'ed at!: ma'am, my name's not courtney.
lady, slightly confused: ohhhh. (pause) it's luann right?
* * * * * * * * * *
it's the end of the fiscal year here in the bluegrass, and so there's been lots of crunching the numbers. in the eight and a half months that i've been an esquire, i've handled over 500 cases. and i've been called a lot of things in FY 2009-10, but this, this was the first "luann."
i had a lot more to say here, about trying new things in june like i planned, about going to new dog parks and speaking spanish to clients and mom visits and making yogurt for the first time. about open houses and exercise videos and organizing filing cabinets. and letting habie off leash, adopting a koala, and conferences in lexington. okay, one of those things may not have actually happened.
but, i planned to write about all of this, and then i got a call from a friend at a bar, and so i went out on a wednesday evening, for the first time in june. check check check.
you know, as much upheaval as june has brought, i wouldn't have it any other way. here's hoping july brings as much newness.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
50
i've recently been in--i don't want to call it a rut, since that's one step away from self-help, so i'll just refer to it as a--lull. too much internetting, netflix on demanding and cereal for dinnering, too little anything else. and while i always like to think of myself as a lazybones, the truth is, it gets old pretty fast and then i find myself trying to unlazy myself while still looking up things online, which means that the google searches just get more and more random.
but i digress. so anyways, this lull = pretty lame. and because my love of resolutions is already well-documented, i decided that a new month was a perfect time to shake things up/turn over a new leaf/name your own change cliche. so i have to do one new thing a day. it doesn't have to be big, but it has to be all new.
yesterday, i cooked black beans from scratch for the first time. from the dry bag, i mean. this actually started the night before with the whole sorting and soaking. sorting through a bag of dry beans looking for outliers was weirdly engrossing. maybe too engrossing. toward the end i even left in one or two slightly-shriveled beans on purpose because i felt a little creepy, like i was playing my very own mini game of natural selection and couldn't handle the responsibility of choosing which dry beans would get to evolve. margaret cho had an absolutely terrible sitcom in the 90s that i of course watched, and one scene has stuck with me the 15/16 years since: the nutty (wikipedia describes her as zany but wise) grandmother gets a nielsen box, and at first she loves the power, but then the pressure of being at least a little responsible for the survival of television shows gets to her and she goes nuts, flipping through every channel, unable to stop on a single show lest the others suffer. i feel like i've written about this story before, but i still think about it every few weeks. so yeah, i felt that way about sifting through the beans.
they turned out pretty good but not great, but that didn't really matter, since figuring it out was the real point. when i said that the new thing could be small, i really wasn't exaggerating.
for the first two-thirds of today, it looked like my new thing was going to be learning how to put freon in my car. well, the learning part is still hypothetical, but i watched the guy at auto zone do it and asked him about a dozen dumb questions and now proudly own my very own hose so that next time i can fly solo. it's embarrassing how little i know about auto maintenance and repair. six months ago, when my battery died at sonic while i was sitting in my car playing solitaire on my phone and i had to be bailed out by a sixteen year old girl, the entire rescue operation was nearly derailed when i couldn't find the lever that pops the hood. and sure, it is hidden, but come on, cotes, come on. so when i learned what kind of refrigerant my car took and where the valve was and how the heck the contents of the can get in the valve, i was pretty darn proud and basically ready to call it a day, newness-wise.
but then! oh ho! i got home and opened the mail and what was inside but a homemade gnome mask, courtesy of bruns but probably not the brosephs. sometimes i wonder if i long ago affected my love of gnomes, just to have a "thing." but then i think back to second grade, when i used to look anxiously outside on cloudy days, desperately willing it to rain so that we could stay inside and watch david, the gnome (hmm, i wonder if gnomes being vegetarian influenced me at all. i do often find myself longing to ride foxes around a forest . . .), and i realize that no, i just really love gnomes. and now i get to BE one!
so my new new thing of today = wearing a gnome mask around the house and trying to see if it freaks out habie. did you know that dishes are more fun when done wearing a gnome mask? true fact. there was also a gnome mask photoshoot, where i tried valiantly to be the gnome. it turns out to be much much harder than one might think.
however, angry non-botoxed gnome? i got that one DOWN.
but i digress. so anyways, this lull = pretty lame. and because my love of resolutions is already well-documented, i decided that a new month was a perfect time to shake things up/turn over a new leaf/name your own change cliche. so i have to do one new thing a day. it doesn't have to be big, but it has to be all new.
yesterday, i cooked black beans from scratch for the first time. from the dry bag, i mean. this actually started the night before with the whole sorting and soaking. sorting through a bag of dry beans looking for outliers was weirdly engrossing. maybe too engrossing. toward the end i even left in one or two slightly-shriveled beans on purpose because i felt a little creepy, like i was playing my very own mini game of natural selection and couldn't handle the responsibility of choosing which dry beans would get to evolve. margaret cho had an absolutely terrible sitcom in the 90s that i of course watched, and one scene has stuck with me the 15/16 years since: the nutty (wikipedia describes her as zany but wise) grandmother gets a nielsen box, and at first she loves the power, but then the pressure of being at least a little responsible for the survival of television shows gets to her and she goes nuts, flipping through every channel, unable to stop on a single show lest the others suffer. i feel like i've written about this story before, but i still think about it every few weeks. so yeah, i felt that way about sifting through the beans.
they turned out pretty good but not great, but that didn't really matter, since figuring it out was the real point. when i said that the new thing could be small, i really wasn't exaggerating.
for the first two-thirds of today, it looked like my new thing was going to be learning how to put freon in my car. well, the learning part is still hypothetical, but i watched the guy at auto zone do it and asked him about a dozen dumb questions and now proudly own my very own hose so that next time i can fly solo. it's embarrassing how little i know about auto maintenance and repair. six months ago, when my battery died at sonic while i was sitting in my car playing solitaire on my phone and i had to be bailed out by a sixteen year old girl, the entire rescue operation was nearly derailed when i couldn't find the lever that pops the hood. and sure, it is hidden, but come on, cotes, come on. so when i learned what kind of refrigerant my car took and where the valve was and how the heck the contents of the can get in the valve, i was pretty darn proud and basically ready to call it a day, newness-wise.
but then! oh ho! i got home and opened the mail and what was inside but a homemade gnome mask, courtesy of bruns but probably not the brosephs. sometimes i wonder if i long ago affected my love of gnomes, just to have a "thing." but then i think back to second grade, when i used to look anxiously outside on cloudy days, desperately willing it to rain so that we could stay inside and watch david, the gnome (hmm, i wonder if gnomes being vegetarian influenced me at all. i do often find myself longing to ride foxes around a forest . . .), and i realize that no, i just really love gnomes. and now i get to BE one!
so my new new thing of today = wearing a gnome mask around the house and trying to see if it freaks out habie. did you know that dishes are more fun when done wearing a gnome mask? true fact. there was also a gnome mask photoshoot, where i tried valiantly to be the gnome. it turns out to be much much harder than one might think.
however, angry non-botoxed gnome? i got that one DOWN.
Monday, May 17, 2010
49
there are serial monogamists. serial killers. serial ports. i think i may be a serial topicist. instead of relationships, victims, or computer data, my stock in trade is some finite subject, something that i can tumble headfirst into for a day, a week, maaybe a fortnight before finding a new area to explore.
i don't think i started out wanting to go from thing to thing. there was a kid in middle school who only ate tuna fish sandwiches and mac and cheese. that's it. all the time. and yes, he was a little pasty, but i couldn't help but envy him a little. not for what he ate, but that he had committed to these two foods and managed to persist through the tedium. like the postal service, only instead of rain or sleet, it was neither strawberry season nor christmas cookies . . .
looking back, i realize that he probably didn't think of it that way, or that much. but i did. and later on i tried to figure out my own tuna fish and mac and cheese. there was the semester of peanut butter and jelly and diet cokes in high school; when i first discovered hummus, i ate it with broccoli and a bagel every day for lunch for months. but there'd always come a moment when i'd open up the brown sack or set the plate down and realize that i couldn't bear it anymore. my fixation always had an expiration point; it was a matter of when, not if.
it's not just with food, either. i jumped from afterschool activity to extracurricular with hardly a glance back. when i got to college, there were people who had started dancing at the age of three, or who had picked up a tennis racket at six and fallen in love. they had been doing whatever for so long that it had left an imprint. even when they were away from the studio/court/potter's wheel, you could tell--by the way they moved, by the way they argued a point in class--what they did was who they were. and while i'm glad i've been involved with (in roughly chronological order): dance; soccer; karate; art; choir; poetry; flute (ha! that was very very shortlived); theater; tennis; journalism; debate; and local politics, nothing really ever stuck.
recently, it's been like hobbies on meth (oh kentucky and your influence on me. number of things i've described as "X on meth" since moving here: innumerable). the timeline between first glance and final look is even more compressed, so that between breakfast and dinner i can discover something, become entranced, and completely lose interest. short, sweet, and leaving me with a metallic taste in my mouth.
two weekends ago, i was really nervous about something upcoming. and my mom called and asked what i had been doing that sunday to prepare. "um, reading flight attendant blogs," i said, and there was silence "hello" i asked. "you still there?" another long pause, and then a sigh. "i was hoping i had heard you wrong," she said. but she hadn't. did you know flight attendant blogs were a thing? i'm not sure it's organized enough to rate as a subculture, but there's certainly lingo to learn. nonrevs are airline employees or family/friends of who are flying for free. this is opposed to deadheading, which is where a flight attendant or pilot is flying for free and not working because the airline needs them to go somewhere else to pick up their next shift. only you don't work a shift, you work a line, if you're lucky enough to have enough seniority to bid for one. otherwise you're on reserve.
oh good grief. and that's just a couple (okay, three . . . plus) hours of reading's worth.
it's not like i've ever had a deep-seated desire to be a flight attendant, and many of the blogs aren't even very interesting. but once i stumble upon one, i can't just let it be. i have to dig deeper and deeper and make connections and decipher references. i have to be able to put everything into context so that it's not completely unknown anymore. and then i move on.
this weekend, the newest object of overly intense (yet shortlived) affection was the tv show, "bones." one minute it's a lazy rainy saturday afternoon and i'm idly looking for something to watch on netflix on demand and don't have the attention span for a whole movie. and then before i know it, it's sunday night and i'm almost done with the first season. and it's not like i even really love the show. i mean, i don't hate it, but it's way too heavy on the gore and super biased toward law enforcement. but yet i can't keep from clicking "next episode." and the show's has five seasons and counting! only who knows if i'll make it that far, because partway through the third season the switch could flip and all of a sudden i'll lose all interest.
i keep a list of things i want to try someday. everything from automotive repair to quilting to making my own yogurt and it only gets more random from there. maybe i need to pick something off the list and just commit to sticking to it for a while. not pick anything so easy to master. say, two to three hours a week for the next six months. well, maybe three months is more realistic. and then, at the end of the three months, i can see if i'm still interested, if there's still more to go. because as briefly-but-intensely satisfying as total consumption of a tiny thing is, steady progress at something bigger tests different muscles. time to embrace the slow burn.
i'm still going to keep watching "bones" in the meantime though.
i don't think i started out wanting to go from thing to thing. there was a kid in middle school who only ate tuna fish sandwiches and mac and cheese. that's it. all the time. and yes, he was a little pasty, but i couldn't help but envy him a little. not for what he ate, but that he had committed to these two foods and managed to persist through the tedium. like the postal service, only instead of rain or sleet, it was neither strawberry season nor christmas cookies . . .
looking back, i realize that he probably didn't think of it that way, or that much. but i did. and later on i tried to figure out my own tuna fish and mac and cheese. there was the semester of peanut butter and jelly and diet cokes in high school; when i first discovered hummus, i ate it with broccoli and a bagel every day for lunch for months. but there'd always come a moment when i'd open up the brown sack or set the plate down and realize that i couldn't bear it anymore. my fixation always had an expiration point; it was a matter of when, not if.
it's not just with food, either. i jumped from afterschool activity to extracurricular with hardly a glance back. when i got to college, there were people who had started dancing at the age of three, or who had picked up a tennis racket at six and fallen in love. they had been doing whatever for so long that it had left an imprint. even when they were away from the studio/court/potter's wheel, you could tell--by the way they moved, by the way they argued a point in class--what they did was who they were. and while i'm glad i've been involved with (in roughly chronological order): dance; soccer; karate; art; choir; poetry; flute (ha! that was very very shortlived); theater; tennis; journalism; debate; and local politics, nothing really ever stuck.
recently, it's been like hobbies on meth (oh kentucky and your influence on me. number of things i've described as "X on meth" since moving here: innumerable). the timeline between first glance and final look is even more compressed, so that between breakfast and dinner i can discover something, become entranced, and completely lose interest. short, sweet, and leaving me with a metallic taste in my mouth.
two weekends ago, i was really nervous about something upcoming. and my mom called and asked what i had been doing that sunday to prepare. "um, reading flight attendant blogs," i said, and there was silence "hello" i asked. "you still there?" another long pause, and then a sigh. "i was hoping i had heard you wrong," she said. but she hadn't. did you know flight attendant blogs were a thing? i'm not sure it's organized enough to rate as a subculture, but there's certainly lingo to learn. nonrevs are airline employees or family/friends of who are flying for free. this is opposed to deadheading, which is where a flight attendant or pilot is flying for free and not working because the airline needs them to go somewhere else to pick up their next shift. only you don't work a shift, you work a line, if you're lucky enough to have enough seniority to bid for one. otherwise you're on reserve.
oh good grief. and that's just a couple (okay, three . . . plus) hours of reading's worth.
it's not like i've ever had a deep-seated desire to be a flight attendant, and many of the blogs aren't even very interesting. but once i stumble upon one, i can't just let it be. i have to dig deeper and deeper and make connections and decipher references. i have to be able to put everything into context so that it's not completely unknown anymore. and then i move on.
this weekend, the newest object of overly intense (yet shortlived) affection was the tv show, "bones." one minute it's a lazy rainy saturday afternoon and i'm idly looking for something to watch on netflix on demand and don't have the attention span for a whole movie. and then before i know it, it's sunday night and i'm almost done with the first season. and it's not like i even really love the show. i mean, i don't hate it, but it's way too heavy on the gore and super biased toward law enforcement. but yet i can't keep from clicking "next episode." and the show's has five seasons and counting! only who knows if i'll make it that far, because partway through the third season the switch could flip and all of a sudden i'll lose all interest.
i keep a list of things i want to try someday. everything from automotive repair to quilting to making my own yogurt and it only gets more random from there. maybe i need to pick something off the list and just commit to sticking to it for a while. not pick anything so easy to master. say, two to three hours a week for the next six months. well, maybe three months is more realistic. and then, at the end of the three months, i can see if i'm still interested, if there's still more to go. because as briefly-but-intensely satisfying as total consumption of a tiny thing is, steady progress at something bigger tests different muscles. time to embrace the slow burn.
i'm still going to keep watching "bones" in the meantime though.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
48 (your moment of zen)
it's been a long week which was preceded by another long week which followed a whirlwind vacation (and flying back into nashville during the flood) and even though it's only wednesday night, i'm so ready for the weekend i can hardly bear it.
but then, i catch a glimpse of habie. tongue out, grin stretching from huntington beach to hudson bay. and even though she's absolutely bonkers (dear habes, do you really need to wake me up at 5:30 am crying because i won't play with you at that very moment? and could we maybe stop hurdling the neighbor's fence?), she reminds me that for some, nothing is better than the drive home on a wednesday afternoon.
but then, i catch a glimpse of habie. tongue out, grin stretching from huntington beach to hudson bay. and even though she's absolutely bonkers (dear habes, do you really need to wake me up at 5:30 am crying because i won't play with you at that very moment? and could we maybe stop hurdling the neighbor's fence?), she reminds me that for some, nothing is better than the drive home on a wednesday afternoon.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
47
of course i love libraries. the hometown one played a large part in my childhood; when i was four or so, i remember always making a beeline to one shelf to see if there were any new books in a series about swedish triplets that liked to walk up hills (they had amazing names too, and i just spent five minutes on google trying to find them, but unfortunately computerized search results don't respond well to this sort of search query). i had a little problem with returning books on time, and once was so desperate that i opened a new card with a fake name (my two middle names--i was eleven and no one asked me for ID). public libraries are miraculous, and i thank andrew carnegie all the time (and try not to dwell on the whole strike busting/pinkerton/unsafe working conditions thing).
but oh, how i love used bookstores too, especially ones chockful of broken-spine paperbacks from the seventies. libraries allow you to try out books without risk; used bookstores put some money on the wager. growing up, just blocks from the virtuous library was volume one, which smelled of yellowed cheap paper and featured a cranky cat who took over the carpeted counter. the children's section was so-so, the psychology section was full of self-help castoffs, the military history area was frighteningly complete, but where volume one shined was in pulp. you didn't go to volume one looking for a particular book, unless that book happened to be a dean koontz that you hadn't gotten around to.
volume one's exchange policy was one book for every five you turned in, with records of credit carefully marked on index cards. for a long time, my mom tried to control the input/output, not letting me get a book unless i turned some in. but then there was the sweet valley twins incident, where i bought back a book that already had my name in pencil on the title page "because i missed it so much" and after then she threw up her hands and stopped forcing trades.
and really, that's the point of used bookstores: you throw some back, but you also stock up. you don't have to keep a book on your shelves that you're done with, but you also don't have a looming due date. and because the books are yours, not on loan, you don't have to be quite as careful. you can dogear the pages. you can read in the bath.
(there are a lot of people who are horrified by anything less than a white-gloved handling of books. they never lose book jackets and always use a bookmark. i don't mind these people, but i know they mind me. because when i read, i devour. pages are turned down, notes are scrawled in the margins, spines are cracked so as to hold open with one hand. it is a full-contact sport and sometimes there are fouls. pretty much the only lines i draw are: 1) no burning and 2) no boring holes or hollowing out to turn into cutesy art project.)
there aren't a lot of bookstores in hoptown, although the kroger has a decent selection of bestsellers and walmart has an amish fiction area. there is, however, a used bookstore (smell is just right; cat is named gatsby, although he's more gargantuan than disgruntled). about two-thirds of the inventory is romance novels, while most of the other third is trashy mysteries, which is where i hang. i've been doing a pretty impressive job of keeping a trade cycle going, but every now and then i refuse to return one. on my last visit this saturday, i bought the poisonwood bible even though i've read it twice and know that my mom has a copy because i wanted one for my own shelves. although it'll take a while to get there, since the reusable grocery bagful of books sits next to my coffee table for at least a week. i pull one out, start it, decide i'm not in the mood, and toss (yes, literally. calm thyself collectors) it back to marinate for a couple more days.
it's been just a day and a half since i brought the last bag home, and i've already read two cover to cover and parts of three more. the first couple of days with the bag are like thanksgiving--eat long past the point of hunger. but now that the workweek's starting again, my pace'll slow. everything will get chewed more in smaller bites. i'll fall asleep on the couch with dog at my feet and book split upside down on the arm. sooner or later, i'll realize that i'm on the last one in the bag, and then i'll decide which ones are staying and which are going. and then i'll wait for the next payday and start all over.
volume one closed a while back. for a while, another bookstore took its place, but it wasn't a used bookstore and everything seemed too clean and curated. that store closed too, and now the space is something else entirely. and every time i return and pass by second street, i mourn the loss. because the library taught me to read, but volume one made me a book owner, torn covers and all.
but oh, how i love used bookstores too, especially ones chockful of broken-spine paperbacks from the seventies. libraries allow you to try out books without risk; used bookstores put some money on the wager. growing up, just blocks from the virtuous library was volume one, which smelled of yellowed cheap paper and featured a cranky cat who took over the carpeted counter. the children's section was so-so, the psychology section was full of self-help castoffs, the military history area was frighteningly complete, but where volume one shined was in pulp. you didn't go to volume one looking for a particular book, unless that book happened to be a dean koontz that you hadn't gotten around to.
volume one's exchange policy was one book for every five you turned in, with records of credit carefully marked on index cards. for a long time, my mom tried to control the input/output, not letting me get a book unless i turned some in. but then there was the sweet valley twins incident, where i bought back a book that already had my name in pencil on the title page "because i missed it so much" and after then she threw up her hands and stopped forcing trades.
and really, that's the point of used bookstores: you throw some back, but you also stock up. you don't have to keep a book on your shelves that you're done with, but you also don't have a looming due date. and because the books are yours, not on loan, you don't have to be quite as careful. you can dogear the pages. you can read in the bath.
(there are a lot of people who are horrified by anything less than a white-gloved handling of books. they never lose book jackets and always use a bookmark. i don't mind these people, but i know they mind me. because when i read, i devour. pages are turned down, notes are scrawled in the margins, spines are cracked so as to hold open with one hand. it is a full-contact sport and sometimes there are fouls. pretty much the only lines i draw are: 1) no burning and 2) no boring holes or hollowing out to turn into cutesy art project.)
there aren't a lot of bookstores in hoptown, although the kroger has a decent selection of bestsellers and walmart has an amish fiction area. there is, however, a used bookstore (smell is just right; cat is named gatsby, although he's more gargantuan than disgruntled). about two-thirds of the inventory is romance novels, while most of the other third is trashy mysteries, which is where i hang. i've been doing a pretty impressive job of keeping a trade cycle going, but every now and then i refuse to return one. on my last visit this saturday, i bought the poisonwood bible even though i've read it twice and know that my mom has a copy because i wanted one for my own shelves. although it'll take a while to get there, since the reusable grocery bagful of books sits next to my coffee table for at least a week. i pull one out, start it, decide i'm not in the mood, and toss (yes, literally. calm thyself collectors) it back to marinate for a couple more days.
it's been just a day and a half since i brought the last bag home, and i've already read two cover to cover and parts of three more. the first couple of days with the bag are like thanksgiving--eat long past the point of hunger. but now that the workweek's starting again, my pace'll slow. everything will get chewed more in smaller bites. i'll fall asleep on the couch with dog at my feet and book split upside down on the arm. sooner or later, i'll realize that i'm on the last one in the bag, and then i'll decide which ones are staying and which are going. and then i'll wait for the next payday and start all over.
volume one closed a while back. for a while, another bookstore took its place, but it wasn't a used bookstore and everything seemed too clean and curated. that store closed too, and now the space is something else entirely. and every time i return and pass by second street, i mourn the loss. because the library taught me to read, but volume one made me a book owner, torn covers and all.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
46
habes and i (okay, fine, me, but she was definitely amenable) decided to start our own easter tradition and went down to an off-leash dog park in nashville today. yes, i drove over an hour each way for a large fenced-in area (there were plans to get chipotle too, but apparently the burritos were observing the holiday. chipotle! you're killing me!)
within thirty seconds of unleashing, habie had gotten into it with an airedale who was not a fan of the HCMM lick assault. and then she jumped up on a guy who made the mistake of sitting on a bench with a free lap. at this point, it feels like the whole park is looking at us. looking and judging. because before we showed up everyone was getting along so nicely. i was thisclose to leaving.
but we didn't leave, because dammit i drove to another state to get to this park and we were going to get our gas's worth. and so i calmed down and habie calmed down and this basset hound toddled over and all of a sudden habie was surrounded by about three or four dogs who apparently liked nothing more than to have my dog lick their bellies clean. hey, whatever works. the airedale's owner told me that her dog was a bully and i apologized to the guy on the bench and then a new puppy showed up and everyone headed over to sniff and i realized that this was not going to be a repeat of the first obedience class. we were not going to fail the dog park.
because it's just the two of us, so often, and because i am neurotic, i worry all the time about habie, worry that i've messed up somehow, that she's horribly behaved, that i can't do this. and yes, she's totally spoiled. and yes, she refuses to learn the "off!" command, which can be mortifying. but today was a revelation: my dog is just fine. we are okay. and that's definitely a tradition i'd like to keep.
within thirty seconds of unleashing, habie had gotten into it with an airedale who was not a fan of the HCMM lick assault. and then she jumped up on a guy who made the mistake of sitting on a bench with a free lap. at this point, it feels like the whole park is looking at us. looking and judging. because before we showed up everyone was getting along so nicely. i was thisclose to leaving.
but we didn't leave, because dammit i drove to another state to get to this park and we were going to get our gas's worth. and so i calmed down and habie calmed down and this basset hound toddled over and all of a sudden habie was surrounded by about three or four dogs who apparently liked nothing more than to have my dog lick their bellies clean. hey, whatever works. the airedale's owner told me that her dog was a bully and i apologized to the guy on the bench and then a new puppy showed up and everyone headed over to sniff and i realized that this was not going to be a repeat of the first obedience class. we were not going to fail the dog park.
because it's just the two of us, so often, and because i am neurotic, i worry all the time about habie, worry that i've messed up somehow, that she's horribly behaved, that i can't do this. and yes, she's totally spoiled. and yes, she refuses to learn the "off!" command, which can be mortifying. but today was a revelation: my dog is just fine. we are okay. and that's definitely a tradition i'd like to keep.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
45
sure, you could read about a girl and a dog in kentucky. orrrr, you could read about my mom, who trekked sixteen miles in snow and sleet and hail and fell twice today and is still going to get up and do it again tomorrow (hopefully with fewer falls and better weather) in northern spain.
keep on truckin', moms!
keep on truckin', moms!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
44
next week my mom leaves to walk 180 miles of the camino de santiago de compostela pilgrimage, across spain. when she first told me that she was going to be walking a dozen miles a day and sleeping in monasteries at night, all the while carrying everything she needed on her back, i thought she was crazy. i mean, sure, i've read a walk in the woods, but as much as i want to like bill bryson, i've never ever dreamed of trekking the appalachian trail.
but oh, today, the sun came out for the first time in a long while and warmed everything, and i rolled down the three windows that work, and it was sublime. there was a man walking on the side of the road, and for a second i thought about pulling over and doing the same. only there were clients to see and paperwork to get through and so i kept driving, alas. and if the streets of hoptown are good for walking, then oh those backroads in northern spain . . .
beside envying her for the scenery she'll get to see, i am jealous of the time my mom gets. time to walk, time to watch, time after time. i am lucky enough to have getaways planned: baltimore next weekend(!!!) and home and southern california in late april. but both are whirlwind: countable in hours for one and a single hand of days for the other. everything is jampacked, and though i come back from these trips with a full heart, sometimes emptiness is what i crave.
i haven't been out of the country for over four years, haven't crossed an ocean for five. and though i've been incredibly lucky to get to see beautiful places, what i am most grateful is how long i got to spend in some of them. a month in paris, another month in greece, over four in hyderabad: sure, it's not the same as packing up and moving there, but by the end, i stopped feeling like such a tourist and more of a person spending some time there. i had my favorite cafe/ beach/tailor, and i also had afternoons where i stayed in and took a nap and didn't have to feel guilty that i was missing out. i really am a creature of habit. newness is okay, so long as i can cobble a routine together. when i was in frankfort, i had the same thing for breakfast each day in the hotel dining room, and rather than tire of it, i clung to my strawberry yogurt and rice krispies at 8 am pattern. like a little anchor thrown off the side of the ship to remind you that the sea is not as bottomless as it might feel.
there are so many places i want to see in this lifetime, but it's okay if i don't get to them all, so long as the ones i do reach leave a mark. because the vignettes that stick are never from the museums or ruins or starred guidebook attractions. they're from the spaces between. the way the rain smelled on the cobblestones as i walked through the latin quartier to french class. how the sunbathers on the beach looked like shrinking neon ants as i drifted in the aegean, farther and farther from shore. the washing machine in the dorm in hyderbad, which was in a bathroom and shook so violently during the spin cycle that i would have sit on top of it and flex my legs against the sink to prevent the machine from traveling across the tile floor.
i don't know if i'll ever make it to the camino, but i hope my days of going and staying, or at least going and traveling at footspeed, aren't too far off. iceland, i can hear you calling . . .
but oh, today, the sun came out for the first time in a long while and warmed everything, and i rolled down the three windows that work, and it was sublime. there was a man walking on the side of the road, and for a second i thought about pulling over and doing the same. only there were clients to see and paperwork to get through and so i kept driving, alas. and if the streets of hoptown are good for walking, then oh those backroads in northern spain . . .
beside envying her for the scenery she'll get to see, i am jealous of the time my mom gets. time to walk, time to watch, time after time. i am lucky enough to have getaways planned: baltimore next weekend(!!!) and home and southern california in late april. but both are whirlwind: countable in hours for one and a single hand of days for the other. everything is jampacked, and though i come back from these trips with a full heart, sometimes emptiness is what i crave.
i haven't been out of the country for over four years, haven't crossed an ocean for five. and though i've been incredibly lucky to get to see beautiful places, what i am most grateful is how long i got to spend in some of them. a month in paris, another month in greece, over four in hyderabad: sure, it's not the same as packing up and moving there, but by the end, i stopped feeling like such a tourist and more of a person spending some time there. i had my favorite cafe/ beach/tailor, and i also had afternoons where i stayed in and took a nap and didn't have to feel guilty that i was missing out. i really am a creature of habit. newness is okay, so long as i can cobble a routine together. when i was in frankfort, i had the same thing for breakfast each day in the hotel dining room, and rather than tire of it, i clung to my strawberry yogurt and rice krispies at 8 am pattern. like a little anchor thrown off the side of the ship to remind you that the sea is not as bottomless as it might feel.
there are so many places i want to see in this lifetime, but it's okay if i don't get to them all, so long as the ones i do reach leave a mark. because the vignettes that stick are never from the museums or ruins or starred guidebook attractions. they're from the spaces between. the way the rain smelled on the cobblestones as i walked through the latin quartier to french class. how the sunbathers on the beach looked like shrinking neon ants as i drifted in the aegean, farther and farther from shore. the washing machine in the dorm in hyderbad, which was in a bathroom and shook so violently during the spin cycle that i would have sit on top of it and flex my legs against the sink to prevent the machine from traveling across the tile floor.
i don't know if i'll ever make it to the camino, but i hope my days of going and staying, or at least going and traveling at footspeed, aren't too far off. iceland, i can hear you calling . . .
Monday, March 8, 2010
43
on hour 2.5 of the four-hour return trip from st. louis last night, i started thinking about harper's index--the last page of every harper's magazine (not to be confused with harper's bazaar, as i used to. in my alterna-reality, harper was both a snob and a sucker for expensive shoes) that uses stats to pointedly comment on the folly of our times. it was pitch black; my cell phone had died; i was somewhere outside carbondale in southern illinois and the gas light had been on for ten miles with no sign of a station in sight. i turned the radio off to conserve fumes and began counting up the last week:
and really, the last week wasn't about food, or even how much i missed habie (so so much. number of times i looked at photos of her on my phone: >55). if there's any one word that could describe a week of training and a trip to see one of my dearest friends, it'd be: abstraction.
instead of going to work and hanging out with my dog, i spent a workweek talking about what happens after i get to work and more than one (or ten) conversation articulating to my captive audience just how much i like hanging out with my dog. and there's always that moment in the talking about doing something--rather than the actual doing--where you get impatient and just want to hurry up already and do, but it's helpful, too. many of my days feel eerily similar to the ones before and after it, differentiated only in the details (subway for lunch or did i remember to pack something? platform black mary janes or the flats version? eight cases on the docket or seven?). and sure, sometimes something happens and a tuesday feels like a wednesday or vice versa, but when oftentimes the only reason i know the day is to tell what court i'm in, it can feel a little hamster wheelish.
pure vacations are about getting away from the day-to-day, but working ones are about reapproaching it. because there's a lot i could do to shake up the quotidian and make it not so, well, quotidian. and then this weekend was a pure vacation, and it was glorious, filled with concerts and plays and zoos and brunches. i had never been to st. louis before so there was no possible set plan to adhere to. on saturday, em was driving me around the different neighborhoods, and she suggested that we stop at a cathedral that's pretty.
pretty doesn't even remotely begin to cover it. you walk in and are immediately confronted with golden mosaics gilding every inch of the wall. and then you keep going into the main area (the nave?), and the mosaics keep going, only now they're not just gold but blue and red and the dome rises so high that you can't make out the individual tiles but you know it's covered in them, too. you lean your head back as far as it can go and all you can see is tiled (number of individual glass pieces: 41.5 million) and you're struck dumb, because whatever you were expecting, you didn't expect all this:
- number of miles traveled: >900
- states visited: 4
- number of times i ate out the week before: 2
- number of times i dined out the week of: 12
- percentage of those meals where i had pad see ew with tofu: 16.67%
- actual spiciness level of pad see ew ordered, respectively: 3, 2
- in-retrospect spiciness level i should have ordered: 2, 3
- number of mini krackel bars consumed during tuesday's training session: 7
and really, the last week wasn't about food, or even how much i missed habie (so so much. number of times i looked at photos of her on my phone: >55). if there's any one word that could describe a week of training and a trip to see one of my dearest friends, it'd be: abstraction.
instead of going to work and hanging out with my dog, i spent a workweek talking about what happens after i get to work and more than one (or ten) conversation articulating to my captive audience just how much i like hanging out with my dog. and there's always that moment in the talking about doing something--rather than the actual doing--where you get impatient and just want to hurry up already and do, but it's helpful, too. many of my days feel eerily similar to the ones before and after it, differentiated only in the details (subway for lunch or did i remember to pack something? platform black mary janes or the flats version? eight cases on the docket or seven?). and sure, sometimes something happens and a tuesday feels like a wednesday or vice versa, but when oftentimes the only reason i know the day is to tell what court i'm in, it can feel a little hamster wheelish.
pure vacations are about getting away from the day-to-day, but working ones are about reapproaching it. because there's a lot i could do to shake up the quotidian and make it not so, well, quotidian. and then this weekend was a pure vacation, and it was glorious, filled with concerts and plays and zoos and brunches. i had never been to st. louis before so there was no possible set plan to adhere to. on saturday, em was driving me around the different neighborhoods, and she suggested that we stop at a cathedral that's pretty.
pretty doesn't even remotely begin to cover it. you walk in and are immediately confronted with golden mosaics gilding every inch of the wall. and then you keep going into the main area (the nave?), and the mosaics keep going, only now they're not just gold but blue and red and the dome rises so high that you can't make out the individual tiles but you know it's covered in them, too. you lean your head back as far as it can go and all you can see is tiled (number of individual glass pieces: 41.5 million) and you're struck dumb, because whatever you were expecting, you didn't expect all this:
and the unexpected: that has made all the difference.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
42
(is it weird of me to say that there's a photo of me as a little girl where i have the same look?)
habie turns one tomorrow. and because we're big on birthdays in the hcmm/cwmm household, and because, well, to paraphrase loretta from moonstruck, "ma, i love her awful," i've been thinking a lot about the big day. on my way home from dinner last night, i started reflecting on how her first birthday means that i've now had habie for half her life, that we've made it through six months together, and how i wondered if i could put into (non-schmaltzy) words how transformative it's been, how i feel like a better person every time i look down at her and realize that she's not only alive, she's thriving, how every night, when she settles down on the bed with her back pressed against mine, i fall asleep within minutes. (okay, totally failing on the non-schmaltzy part.)
and then i got home from dinner, and in addition to pooping in the house, ripping the curtain down from the front door, and shredding the contents of the trash can, habie had also managed to chew open a bottle of antidepressants and eat two or three. i didn't know beforehand, but antidepressants are really dangerous for dogs. cue panic.
she's fine now, but there were a tense couple of hours, and may i never ever ever again have to force open my dog's mouth and pour a hydrogen peroxide/milk solution down her throat. i didn't cry throughout the whole thing, couldn't take the time or energy or distraction, but after it was over and she crawled up on the bed, i lay beside her, listening to her heartbeat, making sure that it wasn't too fast, tracing the wrinkles on her head until she went to sleep. it was only then that i realized how clenched my jaw was, how tight everything was, how terrified i really had been.
i got habie the day i moved into my house, a week after moving to kentucky, and so everything that's gone right or wrong or been too hard or strange or weird or just plain incomprehensible has had her in the background, a constant reminder that this too shall pass and soon i will be home on the couch listening to her snore. this place makes more sense through her lens: she is my kentucky dog who loves red trucks and tracks helicopters across the sky as they return to fort campbell. she gets me out of bed when i am tired, forces me outside when i'd rather stay in. because of her, i can land a stuffed animal squarely between the dining room table and chair and find and attach a leash in the pitch-black of three am. she isn't easy, but loving her is the simplest thing i've ever done.
so happy happy happy birthday, habie. even when you are bad, you are still the best. you may not eat puppy food anymore, but you're still a baby to me. now, please: next time just stick to the shoes, okay?
Thursday, February 25, 2010
41
i'm trying to stay up late enough to find out who wins the gold in ladies figure skating, not because i'm so invested (really! i swear i'm not!) but because this is the grandmommy of winter olympic events, and since i've already spent a week and a half committed to this international spectacle, i might as well see this thing through. only i fell asleep at 9:30 the last two nights, so it's a little hard to not look longingly toward my bed and trashy mystery on the bedside table.
maybe going to bed would be the smartest thing to do, because it's definitely been a "and sometimes the bear gets you" kind of day. is that even the right phrase? i get that one confused with the one from casey at bat, "there is no joy in mudville" and the aforementioned "sometimes the ups outnumber the downs" from cartoon robin hood when i'm trying to steal words to express things going awry.
there are a ton of signs that i'm getting older, but the clearest one of today is that the thing that made me feel best about today was scrubbing my bathtub. i don't like doing housework, and i'm certainly the slowest vacuumer in the west (seriously? is it supposed to be so hard? there's always a moment in the middle where i give up and lie on the floor and think that there is no possible way that i will ever finish, that the vacuum will have to just become a permanent fixture in the living room and that eventually the habie hair in the corners will grow until a new habie springs forth, demanding just as many walks and belly rubs, and as much as i want another dog, i don't think parthenogenesis is the way to go), but there is a satisfaction that comes with the work, with knowing that it makes a difference, even if just temporarily.
okay, anecdotal tangent that's too confusing if tucked in a double set of parentheses: when i was studying abroad in hyderabad, i was in the university library--a large open concrete room--one day early in the semester, so not only was i the only white girl in the room, but people on campus hadn't stopped staring yet. i'm sitting there, sweating and willing this slow machine to please please please start working because i just want to read my email. when it finally works, i open one from my friend that contains a link. and that page takes another oh, six or seven minutes to load, and at this point i realize that this is madness, that the heat and humidity and rickety dial-up are not going to ever concede, but my stubborn side just keeps holding on. and then miracle of miracles, it's finally up, and it's this.
and reading it, i start to smile, and then laugh, and then really really laugh, and then i'm cotackling and it still doesn't stop, so that tears start running down my face and the people who were only pretending not to look are now openly staring at me. when i finish the article, i actually run out of the building, because really, at this point, i cannot make any more of a scene, and so why not give the public a good exit.
and now, filed with tamarind so sour my tongue burns and buses full of women in burqas with bejeweled feet poking from underneath and the seven-year-old who made my clothes at the local tailor under "what i remember of india" is little ethel and her prehensile claw.
i am not going to make it to eleven o'clock. not even the kiss and cry's going to keep me up. time for me to put this day to bed and hope that the scrubbing and the dish washing and the laundry doing have served to shift the balance, put the bear back in its (hopefully olsen-free) cave.
maybe going to bed would be the smartest thing to do, because it's definitely been a "and sometimes the bear gets you" kind of day. is that even the right phrase? i get that one confused with the one from casey at bat, "there is no joy in mudville" and the aforementioned "sometimes the ups outnumber the downs" from cartoon robin hood when i'm trying to steal words to express things going awry.
there are a ton of signs that i'm getting older, but the clearest one of today is that the thing that made me feel best about today was scrubbing my bathtub. i don't like doing housework, and i'm certainly the slowest vacuumer in the west (seriously? is it supposed to be so hard? there's always a moment in the middle where i give up and lie on the floor and think that there is no possible way that i will ever finish, that the vacuum will have to just become a permanent fixture in the living room and that eventually the habie hair in the corners will grow until a new habie springs forth, demanding just as many walks and belly rubs, and as much as i want another dog, i don't think parthenogenesis is the way to go), but there is a satisfaction that comes with the work, with knowing that it makes a difference, even if just temporarily.
okay, anecdotal tangent that's too confusing if tucked in a double set of parentheses: when i was studying abroad in hyderabad, i was in the university library--a large open concrete room--one day early in the semester, so not only was i the only white girl in the room, but people on campus hadn't stopped staring yet. i'm sitting there, sweating and willing this slow machine to please please please start working because i just want to read my email. when it finally works, i open one from my friend that contains a link. and that page takes another oh, six or seven minutes to load, and at this point i realize that this is madness, that the heat and humidity and rickety dial-up are not going to ever concede, but my stubborn side just keeps holding on. and then miracle of miracles, it's finally up, and it's this.
and reading it, i start to smile, and then laugh, and then really really laugh, and then i'm cotackling and it still doesn't stop, so that tears start running down my face and the people who were only pretending not to look are now openly staring at me. when i finish the article, i actually run out of the building, because really, at this point, i cannot make any more of a scene, and so why not give the public a good exit.
and now, filed with tamarind so sour my tongue burns and buses full of women in burqas with bejeweled feet poking from underneath and the seven-year-old who made my clothes at the local tailor under "what i remember of india" is little ethel and her prehensile claw.
i am not going to make it to eleven o'clock. not even the kiss and cry's going to keep me up. time for me to put this day to bed and hope that the scrubbing and the dish washing and the laundry doing have served to shift the balance, put the bear back in its (hopefully olsen-free) cave.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
40
i spent the torino olympics at my mom's house, underemployed and anxiously waiting to see if law schools would accept me. when i think back to that year, that lost year between seventeen straight years of school and the next three, it really should be called the year of the craft. because when one is burnt out from too much lit crit and holocaust theory and idyllic liberal arts college, and one has a disposable income for the first time in her life, then one's friends get packages in the mail with cookies in their likenesses and decoupaged lightswitch plates.
oh those lightswitch plates. i would sit in front of the tv, watching curling or skiing or whatever was on that night, and i'd be surrounded by hundreds of glossy magazine pages, organized by color because really, what else did i have to do other than cut out tiny pieces of paper and mod podge them to wood?
i'm not sure that i have any better of an answer to that question four years later, but the mod podge is in the office and i'm in the living room and so no crafts will be attempted this olympics. and law schools were gotten into, attended, and graduated from, but i'm still sitting on a couch glued to whatever nbc decides to show me that night. well, watching whatever sport is on and counting down the minutes until figure skating is on (growing up in the nancy kerrigan/tonya harding era, i went through a wee figure skating obsession for a while. okay, not so wee. all right, i watched non-olympic, non-championship meets. fine, fine, fine, i went to the campbell's champions on ice show. um, three years in a row. and i'd say that i'm over all of that, and i certainly haven't stayed in the mix of things. but there may have been some youtubing of some of my favorite old routines earlier in the evening . . .).
but maybe i'm missing the point with mod podge ennui, because it's not always how much or how little things have changed since a prior benchmark. it's that you've gotten to a new measuring point at all. winter olympics come every four years (except for that glorious 1992/94 funfest), and four years ago i was already out of college. which isn't surprising, since my five year reunion is coming up in just a few months. and if it's five years since college, then everything that happened in college is even further back. that awful rainjacket that i bought when i was going abroad, the one currently hanging in my coat closet--even though it seems impossible that this is true, when i subtract fall of 2003 from winter of 2010, i realize that it's been with me for over six years. six years of thinking a rainjacket is stupid and continuing to pack and unpack it anyway.
i'm not someone who usually freaks out about time passing. but i turn 27 in 2010, and apparently 27 is my scary age. not that it's the edge of the cliff or the peak of the hill, and goodness knows i hatehatehate those people who anguish over the first wrinkle (check) or gray hair (check), but my brain has 27 conflated with grown-up, and considering that during my mom's visit last weekend she cleaned my floors and paid for my groceries, i'm pretty sure that whatever grown-up is, this ain't it.
so fine, i'll readjust. i've done it before. when i was in first grade, the sixth graders were impossibly big and tall and swaggering, and then i was one of them, only i was short and wore planet hollywood boxers as shorts. and then going off to college was the line, and i did that, but learning to play flip cup and "discovering" derrida don't an adult make. and so now the line'll get pushed back further, so that by the time of the sochi games i'll have a financial "portfolio" and a clear career path and a new hometown. and if that doesn't make me feel grown-up, then there's always 2018. but that location is still TBD, and so i'll give myself a break right now, tousle the oh-so-soft ears of the dog snoring next to me, eat some more homemade bread (surely that's worth some adult points?) and be very grateful that the nagano games era of braces and badly dyed hair is long long past.
oh those lightswitch plates. i would sit in front of the tv, watching curling or skiing or whatever was on that night, and i'd be surrounded by hundreds of glossy magazine pages, organized by color because really, what else did i have to do other than cut out tiny pieces of paper and mod podge them to wood?
i'm not sure that i have any better of an answer to that question four years later, but the mod podge is in the office and i'm in the living room and so no crafts will be attempted this olympics. and law schools were gotten into, attended, and graduated from, but i'm still sitting on a couch glued to whatever nbc decides to show me that night. well, watching whatever sport is on and counting down the minutes until figure skating is on (growing up in the nancy kerrigan/tonya harding era, i went through a wee figure skating obsession for a while. okay, not so wee. all right, i watched non-olympic, non-championship meets. fine, fine, fine, i went to the campbell's champions on ice show. um, three years in a row. and i'd say that i'm over all of that, and i certainly haven't stayed in the mix of things. but there may have been some youtubing of some of my favorite old routines earlier in the evening . . .).
but maybe i'm missing the point with mod podge ennui, because it's not always how much or how little things have changed since a prior benchmark. it's that you've gotten to a new measuring point at all. winter olympics come every four years (except for that glorious 1992/94 funfest), and four years ago i was already out of college. which isn't surprising, since my five year reunion is coming up in just a few months. and if it's five years since college, then everything that happened in college is even further back. that awful rainjacket that i bought when i was going abroad, the one currently hanging in my coat closet--even though it seems impossible that this is true, when i subtract fall of 2003 from winter of 2010, i realize that it's been with me for over six years. six years of thinking a rainjacket is stupid and continuing to pack and unpack it anyway.
i'm not someone who usually freaks out about time passing. but i turn 27 in 2010, and apparently 27 is my scary age. not that it's the edge of the cliff or the peak of the hill, and goodness knows i hatehatehate those people who anguish over the first wrinkle (check) or gray hair (check), but my brain has 27 conflated with grown-up, and considering that during my mom's visit last weekend she cleaned my floors and paid for my groceries, i'm pretty sure that whatever grown-up is, this ain't it.
so fine, i'll readjust. i've done it before. when i was in first grade, the sixth graders were impossibly big and tall and swaggering, and then i was one of them, only i was short and wore planet hollywood boxers as shorts. and then going off to college was the line, and i did that, but learning to play flip cup and "discovering" derrida don't an adult make. and so now the line'll get pushed back further, so that by the time of the sochi games i'll have a financial "portfolio" and a clear career path and a new hometown. and if that doesn't make me feel grown-up, then there's always 2018. but that location is still TBD, and so i'll give myself a break right now, tousle the oh-so-soft ears of the dog snoring next to me, eat some more homemade bread (surely that's worth some adult points?) and be very grateful that the nagano games era of braces and badly dyed hair is long long past.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
39
i am really really really glad that i finally figured out that the "redneck karaoke" i'm going to on saturday isn't officially called that, but has merely earned the nickname because of the influx of attendees from the county over. because oh my, could that have been disasterous.
also, in the animated robin hood (which is easily in my movie top 5, and firm top 5 rather than in the 5/6/7/8 positions, which swap places every season, or however often i reevaluate random rankings, which usually coincides with long solo car trips), the rooster plays a song while everyone's in the debtor's prison with the lyric, "sometimes the ups outnumber the downs, but not in nottingham." this gets stuck in my head whenever i'm moping. but this has not been one of those times: in fact, the ups have been outnumbering the downs pretty steadily all week. good job thus far, february. keep it up! (please?)
and finally, to be completely honest, the above two paragraphs are just an excuse to get to a photo of the habes, who celebrates her fifth month with me tomorrow and her first birthday at the beginning of march, and who is still the cutest most incorrigible dog i know, even/especially when she snatches the lid to the peanut butter jar off the counter and leads me all around the house in chase (and then twenty minutes later conks out next to me while i watch trashy tv, stirring only to snore)
also, in the animated robin hood (which is easily in my movie top 5, and firm top 5 rather than in the 5/6/7/8 positions, which swap places every season, or however often i reevaluate random rankings, which usually coincides with long solo car trips), the rooster plays a song while everyone's in the debtor's prison with the lyric, "sometimes the ups outnumber the downs, but not in nottingham." this gets stuck in my head whenever i'm moping. but this has not been one of those times: in fact, the ups have been outnumbering the downs pretty steadily all week. good job thus far, february. keep it up! (please?)
and finally, to be completely honest, the above two paragraphs are just an excuse to get to a photo of the habes, who celebrates her fifth month with me tomorrow and her first birthday at the beginning of march, and who is still the cutest most incorrigible dog i know, even/especially when she snatches the lid to the peanut butter jar off the counter and leads me all around the house in chase (and then twenty minutes later conks out next to me while i watch trashy tv, stirring only to snore)
(look at those tiny golden eyelashes! says the still-smitten mama)
Thursday, January 28, 2010
38
while chopping onions this evening, i started thinking about time and realized that it's almost six months since surgery. and then i figured out that it's exactly six months since the bar: a half a year ago to the day i was sitting in the hotel in between day one and day two, soaking my hand, which throbbed after handwriting forty-odd pages and trying to calm myself down enough to regroup, refocus, and not just turn the tv to celebreality in defeat. and then i realized that the bar has had far more of an effect on me than surgery did. i mean, one caused tremors of significance that are still felt to this day. the other one just took out a piece of skull. but that's as it should be, i think. i can go days without thinking about what happened, reminded only by the alfalfa-like tufts that poke through my ponytail. and this is all miraculous and remarkable and a tribute to modern medicine, but it's also such a good reminder of my sister's tattoo: this too shall pass. because six months ago to the day i was freaking out about duty owed to trespassers, but six months ago tomorrow afternoon, i was driving back to lexington, suddenly aware of what would be happening the next week and utterly consumed with both fear and fear of the fear.
and really, fear is a funny funny beast. because in order to be afraid, you have to draw lines, you have to order and sort: the acceptable and the unacceptable. the invited and the unwanted. in order to be afraid of x, we must prefer not-x. people are afraid of the dark because light is the norm. roller coasters are exhilarating precisely because we're not living our lives on them. and when the big scary comes along, it seems immovable, unstoppable, and that's why it's the big scary--because we worry that this awful thing is going to muscle its way in and become the new norm. and logic and rationality be damned, or at least silenced.
when i was younger (less than half the age i am now), i was paralyzed by my fear of the intruder. paralyzed. and i would lie in bed for hours, unable to sleep, listening to every tiny squeak and groan of the old wooden floors. my mom would come into my room and place her hand on my pajamaed heart. "listen in here," she'd say, "your body knows the difference between what is real and what is false. fear can put on a good intuition mask, but it's not perfect, and it's your job to listen carefully and tell the difference. because you know, even if you don't know you know."
and at the time i would keen and wail and insist that she was wrong, that i did i DID know the difference, and this was definitely the real thing. but it wasn't, since i'm still here. and, like most always, she was right: there is a difference. and as the years have passed, i've gotten a lot better at telling the two apart, and i've also now outsourced a lot of the detection to the four-legged space heater that sleeps two feet away. because she (ear-piercingly) lets me know when something's up, even if that something is my neighbors rolling trashcans to the curb at five am. so that now i am in the role of reassurer, rubbing her ears and telling her that it's all going to be all right, that there's a lot that can count as a norm even if it's not our favorite thing in the world. after all, we will still be okay even if the neighbors are eejits. we will go back to sleep for another two hours and return to our puppy dreams (of puppies, by puppies, whatever the case may be).
and really, that's how it's ended up with the whole surgery business: was it my favorite thing? no, but it was doable (for UCSF) and liveable throughable, and so general anesthesia and craniotomies and recovery in the ICU (with lots of apple juice and graham crackers) have all gotten added, if not to the norm list, then to one of its appendices. the big bad isn't so much of either--more of a medium unpleasant. and then it's over and months pass and it's hard to remember being so captivated by something that ended up so barely significant in the long run.
and really, that's how the bar is, too. because as unpleasant the alternative to passing is, it's doable and liveable throughable and maybe it takes longer than six months, but eventually the beast is a little beastie, more suited to a terminex commercial than paralysis (and, perhaps one day, a pixar movie). making the big beasts a little smaller: that seems to be the job of time and hindsight and context and all that jazz. because six months from today, i'll be probably chopping onions at the same spot (in shorts rather than preparing for "the storm of the century," let's hope), and i'll reshuffle and recalibrate and add another appendix of formerly-thought-intolerables.
maybe though, life, it could be a slightly-smaller appendix next time?
and really, fear is a funny funny beast. because in order to be afraid, you have to draw lines, you have to order and sort: the acceptable and the unacceptable. the invited and the unwanted. in order to be afraid of x, we must prefer not-x. people are afraid of the dark because light is the norm. roller coasters are exhilarating precisely because we're not living our lives on them. and when the big scary comes along, it seems immovable, unstoppable, and that's why it's the big scary--because we worry that this awful thing is going to muscle its way in and become the new norm. and logic and rationality be damned, or at least silenced.
when i was younger (less than half the age i am now), i was paralyzed by my fear of the intruder. paralyzed. and i would lie in bed for hours, unable to sleep, listening to every tiny squeak and groan of the old wooden floors. my mom would come into my room and place her hand on my pajamaed heart. "listen in here," she'd say, "your body knows the difference between what is real and what is false. fear can put on a good intuition mask, but it's not perfect, and it's your job to listen carefully and tell the difference. because you know, even if you don't know you know."
and at the time i would keen and wail and insist that she was wrong, that i did i DID know the difference, and this was definitely the real thing. but it wasn't, since i'm still here. and, like most always, she was right: there is a difference. and as the years have passed, i've gotten a lot better at telling the two apart, and i've also now outsourced a lot of the detection to the four-legged space heater that sleeps two feet away. because she (ear-piercingly) lets me know when something's up, even if that something is my neighbors rolling trashcans to the curb at five am. so that now i am in the role of reassurer, rubbing her ears and telling her that it's all going to be all right, that there's a lot that can count as a norm even if it's not our favorite thing in the world. after all, we will still be okay even if the neighbors are eejits. we will go back to sleep for another two hours and return to our puppy dreams (of puppies, by puppies, whatever the case may be).
and really, that's how it's ended up with the whole surgery business: was it my favorite thing? no, but it was doable (for UCSF) and liveable throughable, and so general anesthesia and craniotomies and recovery in the ICU (with lots of apple juice and graham crackers) have all gotten added, if not to the norm list, then to one of its appendices. the big bad isn't so much of either--more of a medium unpleasant. and then it's over and months pass and it's hard to remember being so captivated by something that ended up so barely significant in the long run.
and really, that's how the bar is, too. because as unpleasant the alternative to passing is, it's doable and liveable throughable and maybe it takes longer than six months, but eventually the beast is a little beastie, more suited to a terminex commercial than paralysis (and, perhaps one day, a pixar movie). making the big beasts a little smaller: that seems to be the job of time and hindsight and context and all that jazz. because six months from today, i'll be probably chopping onions at the same spot (in shorts rather than preparing for "the storm of the century," let's hope), and i'll reshuffle and recalibrate and add another appendix of formerly-thought-intolerables.
maybe though, life, it could be a slightly-smaller appendix next time?
Sunday, January 24, 2010
37
new year's resolutions are all fine and good, but they're so forward-looking. the beginning of the year is full of promise, promise that deflates like a post-birthday balloon. really, there should be ex post facto (oh yes, i went there) resolutions--ones that you make later on that still count. because 2010 thus far in terms of my original resolutions? eh. but when my retroactive resolutions are factored in, boy now we're getting somewhere. and by framing them as already-checked-off resolutions, it doesn't feel quite so "let me tell you what i've done lately" (although daily tellings were my favorite thing as a kid at the dinner table: the best part of our day, the worst part, and something we learned. bing bang boom)
new resolutions that are already successful!:
i can't wait to see what new resolutions i get to keep and make, in that order.
new resolutions that are already successful!:
- figure out a way to brush habie when it's wet and gross outside without the hair getting even more all over the place: CHECK
- 1. change into already-dirty clothes 2. put her in the empty bathtub. 3. climb in said empty bathtub 4. brush away, tossing the neverending clumps of hair in the corner of the tub behind you, so that she can't just pick it all up again 5. sing her songs when you get to the tail, since she hates that part 6. realize that the songs probably aren't making it any better 7. watch in amazement as she leaps out of tub in gravity-defying move 8. throw clothes immediately in wash without touching anything 9. vacuum the tub 10. comet the eff out of tub
- go somewhere every weekend: 4 for 4 so far
- week 1: chicago!
- week 2: nashville
- week 3: nashville x 2
- week 4: clarksville to see movie (luckily, this resolution doesn't require much in terms of "go" or "somewhere")
- find my ipod: CHECK
- use my ipod more: CHECK so far, since i only unearthed it yesterday. but dog walks in the rain are a lot more fun when david bowie comes with.
- see the jefferson davis monument: CHECK, although the elevator to the top of the 351-foot obelisk won't start running until may, soooo return visit probably needed
- cry over the "majesty" of the jefferson davis monument: there. are. no. words.
- finally get a shower curtain that actually goes to the bottom of the shower: CHECK (third time's the charm)
- con(vince) people to come visit: CHECK times 3, if i count my brother, who informed me of his visit seven hours before arriving. but lesson learned: take whatever you can get from middle meibs, because he's like a rolling stone.
- become BFFs with a waffle house lady: IN PROGRESS. let's just say that she now recognizes me. we're about two visits away from BFF-dom.
- accept that the floors won't mop themselves: CHECK, sadly.
- figure out how to occupy habie while mopping: CHECK. four (hyphenated) words: almost-empty peanut butter jar
- read a looooooooooot of trashy mysteries: CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK
- swab the inside of habie's cheek with a long Q-tip: CHECK. girl's "getting" the results of a DNA test for her birthday. i can only hope that it'll show with a 99% certainty that she's a dog.
i can't wait to see what new resolutions i get to keep and make, in that order.
Monday, January 18, 2010
36
dear habie,
i'm really sorry that i forgot to take your leash off when i left you in the car at kroger's. i had no idea that you would set off the car alarm, and i still don't understand how, but that must have sent your already-fragile nerves right off the edge. and i'm also sorry that i praised you for lying down and being calm on the drive home, now that i know that you were refraining from licking the windows only because of the rube goldberg contraption around your foot.
i'd ask for forgiveness, but as your head is burrowed against my leg right now and you're snoring softly, i think we're probably good.
love, mom
p.s. i'm also really sorry for taking a picture of your handiwork before freeing you. it was taken out of love (and amazement).
i'm really sorry that i forgot to take your leash off when i left you in the car at kroger's. i had no idea that you would set off the car alarm, and i still don't understand how, but that must have sent your already-fragile nerves right off the edge. and i'm also sorry that i praised you for lying down and being calm on the drive home, now that i know that you were refraining from licking the windows only because of the rube goldberg contraption around your foot.
i'd ask for forgiveness, but as your head is burrowed against my leg right now and you're snoring softly, i think we're probably good.
love, mom
p.s. i'm also really sorry for taking a picture of your handiwork before freeing you. it was taken out of love (and amazement).
Thursday, January 7, 2010
35
dear snow,
you've done a lovely job in your hoptown debut. two inches last night + one today = the justright level of powder covering the dead leaves. and when habie and i went outside tonight and ran around the backyard, tracking figure eights up and down until we forgot that we could see our breath--well, that was just the best. i know you've gotten a bad rap here, but i think we're going to get along just fine this winter.
love, cotes
p.s. but if your michigan counterpart prevents amy from driving down here tomorrow? oh, then things are going to get ugly. REALLY ugly. i don't want to make any threats, but just consider this:
that's all. kisses!
(editor's note: i'm sorry i had to revert to my favorite scroll-down trope. but, well, a trope ain't a trope if it ain't overused. just ask john irving about bears! or wrestling! or . . . incest. oh dear, this is not where i wanted this note to end up)
you've done a lovely job in your hoptown debut. two inches last night + one today = the justright level of powder covering the dead leaves. and when habie and i went outside tonight and ran around the backyard, tracking figure eights up and down until we forgot that we could see our breath--well, that was just the best. i know you've gotten a bad rap here, but i think we're going to get along just fine this winter.
love, cotes
p.s. but if your michigan counterpart prevents amy from driving down here tomorrow? oh, then things are going to get ugly. REALLY ugly. i don't want to make any threats, but just consider this:
that's all. kisses!
(editor's note: i'm sorry i had to revert to my favorite scroll-down trope. but, well, a trope ain't a trope if it ain't overused. just ask john irving about bears! or wrestling! or . . . incest. oh dear, this is not where i wanted this note to end up)
Sunday, January 3, 2010
34
for someone who has a creepy recall of celebrity gossip and knowledge of the most inconsequential variety, i sure have a lousy memory, especially of my own childhood. everything that i do remember is in vignette form--crystal clear but not exactly helpful in giving me any sense of what day to day life was like. and the likelihood that a vignette stuck isn't pegged to its importance at all, which is why i can't remember my sister's birth (sorry melissa!) but can perfectly picture leaning over the water fountain (white and ceramic and eight-year-old sized) in third grade and being worried that i would knock my teeth against the metal spout. it didn't even come to pass.
if something isn't attached to an anecdote, then the chances that it's lost in the ether approach 100%. i can remember about ten kids total from elementary school, which is a little embarrassing considering i spent six years there with the same names being called for roll. oh wait, i just dug up another one: in fifth grade a freckly kid who wore a black hat gathered us all together and told us that his parents' dry cleaning business had been burglarized that weekend. the teacher was there while he was telling us the story, and i have no idea why this was something that took up class time, especially when we were then told not to talk about it. i don't know even know his name, but he sat at four o'clock from me in the circle of desks, and as he told the story he darted his eyes around, unable to let them stay on anyone, anything.
and while i remember more of post-elementary, i don't remember that much more. and when i try to get a sense of how i felt, i'm left parsing the anecdotes looking for clues, trying to abstract the most concrete. what does it mean that i know that the heater kicked on that time in eleventh grade? why can i pull up my room arrangement (and rearrangement) sophomore year of college but don't even know really what i was like at the time, what i thought about the world?
in recent years, i've tried to retain more of the larger picture, and it sometimes works. but mostly it doesn't, and so in those moments where i am conscious of being incandescently happy or abjectly sad at that very moment and know i don't want to lose it, i look around and desperately try to find something to attach the feeling to. so lots of worries about finding a job after law school are now pegged to the magnets on my apartment's fridge, the feeling of the cool hardwood below my feet as i tried to figure out what i wanted (to eat, to do).
i spent new year's in chicago and had agreat phenomenal time. and there are lots of moments that i'd love to replay. but i have a sneaking suspicion that one that's going to stick is sitting on the couch early new year's afternoon, covered in a blanket and faintly hungover (in that satisfying way that reminds you of the night before but doesn't prevent you from being among the living) with a bowl game on but all my attention captured, for just a second, by the glint of the windows across the street as the sun reflected off a passing car, and how i watched the flash until it, too, went out of sight.
if something isn't attached to an anecdote, then the chances that it's lost in the ether approach 100%. i can remember about ten kids total from elementary school, which is a little embarrassing considering i spent six years there with the same names being called for roll. oh wait, i just dug up another one: in fifth grade a freckly kid who wore a black hat gathered us all together and told us that his parents' dry cleaning business had been burglarized that weekend. the teacher was there while he was telling us the story, and i have no idea why this was something that took up class time, especially when we were then told not to talk about it. i don't know even know his name, but he sat at four o'clock from me in the circle of desks, and as he told the story he darted his eyes around, unable to let them stay on anyone, anything.
and while i remember more of post-elementary, i don't remember that much more. and when i try to get a sense of how i felt, i'm left parsing the anecdotes looking for clues, trying to abstract the most concrete. what does it mean that i know that the heater kicked on that time in eleventh grade? why can i pull up my room arrangement (and rearrangement) sophomore year of college but don't even know really what i was like at the time, what i thought about the world?
in recent years, i've tried to retain more of the larger picture, and it sometimes works. but mostly it doesn't, and so in those moments where i am conscious of being incandescently happy or abjectly sad at that very moment and know i don't want to lose it, i look around and desperately try to find something to attach the feeling to. so lots of worries about finding a job after law school are now pegged to the magnets on my apartment's fridge, the feeling of the cool hardwood below my feet as i tried to figure out what i wanted (to eat, to do).
i spent new year's in chicago and had a
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