Saturday, August 23, 2008

Does anyone have a beached whale I can borrow?

Every year around this time - the time when I am so sick of feeling like I reside in a German sauna where one is not only uncomfortable because of the insane heat that disallows breath, but is also uncomfortable because one is awkwardly looking (read "trying not to look") at the extremely hairy, heavy set man in the one-size-fits-all speedo and his topless wife, both of whom must be at least 72 years old (Can boobs really hang that low? I'm talking about him, not her..), and where one, in said sauna, can only smell European "old person" (which happens, I just read, to not exist - old people do not have a distinctive smell; they simply bathe less often because they don't give a shit about offending anyone) mixed with mildewy egg water that the couple keeps ladling over the hot rocks..- I go a little crazy.

In short, I've had enough of the summer heat.

It makes me cranky.

And it can't be that it's just hot, like El Paso's manageable heat that feels like God has pointed the world's biggest hairdryer (duh, it's God's hairdryer) in one's face. It has to be 90% humid, too. It's so humid that I think beached whales could survive out of the water here, if they could tolerate the heat that is.

Anyway. This happens every year. Every year I reach this breaking point. Every year I fall on my knees and beg the earth goddess to throw me a freaking bone. Then I pout for the next 4 months until December when it cools off to a chilly 65 degrees and I whine about wanting to go swimming. "Where," I beg in an angelic sniveling voice, "Where oh where is Fall?"

This year I am going to be more proactive. I've decided that since the Metroplex sidesteps the pleasantries of Fall and careens head-first into the dead of "winter", I will have to simulate my own in-between season. Here's a list of what I need on hand to be successful:

* one pumpkin spice candle
* several silk orange, yellow, and brown leaves
* several real orange, yellow, and brown leaves (for stomping)
* a bag of candy corn
* a bag of kettle corn
* a hay bale or two
* apples and a large wash tub
* a bouquet of unsharpened pencils
* a pleasant looking scarecrow (not the scary kind that can sometimes be mistaken for an actual person)
* a taxidermied crow
* a pot of chrysanthemums
* maize

Or I could simply walk down the seasonal aisle at Hobby Lobby.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Make, make a ______________.

Thanks to Heather Armstrong's friends, I can't get this out of my head. I wouldn't be me if I didn't share the pain and cut it in half. So here you go:


And a rip rap rippity doo.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Reality

I've almost survived my first week back at work. Monday I thought I was sure to die a slow agonizing death, complete with hair tearing and teeth gnashing. I welcomed it. Tuesday felt better. I let go of the certain death strangle hold and allowed myself to simply bang my head into the nearest wall.. every three minutes. Yesterday I lost myself for three whole hours and found myself eating a stupid amount of sushi - odd for me - while teetering on the edge of what would soon be a stunning panic attack. And today I'm playing hooky-- sipping flavored coffee at my kitchen table, holding a posture that would make Miss Manners proud, delicately ignoring the crime scene that is my living room.

So things are going better than expected.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Unity

by Pablo Neruda

There is something dense, united, settled in the depths,
repeating its number, its identical sign.
How it is noted that stones have touched time,
in their refined matter there is an odor of age,
of water brought by the sea, from salt and sleep.

I'm encircled by a single thing, a single movement:
a mineral weight, a honeyed light
cling to the sound of the word "noche":
the tint of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
things of leather, of wood, of wool,
archaic, faded, uniform,
collect around me like walls.

I work quietly, wheeling over myself,
a crow over death, a crow in mourning.
I mediate, isolated in the spread of seasons,
centric, encircled by a silent geometry:
a partial temperature drifts down from the sky,
a distant empire of confused unities
reunites encircling me.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

It's good to be a stick in the mud..

When I was a kid, I spent lots of summertime at my Mimi's house in a Texas country farm town called Crosbyton, population 1,874. It was during these summers that I found myself getting into the most marvelous mischiefs.

In my defense, Crosbyton's only form of entertainment was (and is still) "making the drag" which meant that you drove your car pick-up from city limit to city limit (2 or 3 miles) on the main road all the way to the Dairy Queen, then turned around to make the drag again. On a good night, you ran into someone you knew and gossiped with them while leaning on the tail gate of a pick-up. On a bad night you ran into someone you didn't know which meant you probably hated them and your night was sure to end in some sort of tractor chicken race or ass kickin' or spontaneous warehouse dance routine or something..

But even though Crosbyton is not an ideal place to go for entertainment, there were times that were SO much fun. For some reason- probably because I am lamenting the end of another summer- I was remembering some of those fun times that only happen when you are a kid in a small town during the summer.

For example, I remember a particularly rainy summer day - one that left so much water in the bar ditch that if you had an inner tube, you could probably float the length of the drag (How did we never have one?)- we decided to play outside. The rain had left the empty (but plowed) field in front of Mimi's house the consistency of warm pudding. My cousin, my brother, and I looked at each other, all of us thinking the exact same thing.

We ran for the mud, intending at first to only gush it between our toes and make mud pies. But the further we got into the field, the deeper the mud got, and all of a sudden we found ourselves fully clothed and floating in it. Our heads and toes were the only parts of us sticking out of the warm mud. And if there ever are perfect moments to be had in life, this was one of them. The mud was the perfect temperature -warm and spa worthy - in contrast to the chilly rain that was still falling in large drops on our faces and which conveniently provided a little drink when we felt parched - we closed our eyes, looked skyward, and opened wide. And all we could do was grin at each other - for our collective genius of having the idea of getting into the mud in the first place, for going all out and breaking the unspoken, adult "do not wade into the mud" rule, and for feeling that the world had stopped on its axis in order that we enjoy ourselves in this mud.

We spent the better part of the afternoon lolling around in our miry bliss, and even though there were consequences for ruining our clothes; and even though we had to strip down to our skivvies to be hosed off in the driveway in front of hell and creation before we were allowed into the house - losing our pride in the process; and even though mud was compacted in places on our bodies that we didn't even know existed and we were finding it for days.. Even with all of that, it was SO worth it!

We gave ourselves to the complete JOY of the moment.

It was awesome.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Adjusting Luna - tic

OK. I promised myself I would no longer use my blog as a diary where I would gripe and moan about my personal life. "Save it for the actual written diary," I told myself, "where I can safely vent without beating the hell out of myself (emotionally) for having sold my soul to the post. I should be strong enough not to need back pats in comment form."

That was the first lie.

If you've ever seen me actually write anything, you know that I use colored pens that represent specific patterns and moods. Even for work, when I am in a particularly peaceful mood I use green pen, and if I am pissed, I use my teeth to angrily pull the cap off of the red one. I have quirks and compulsions that dictate how I do everything. And even something reletively small, like chosing which cd to listen to, can become a dramatic, life altering experience for all of the fretting I do. And if I can't figure it out, I shut down..completely.

Writing it out can help. OK, not so much with cd selection, but with other things. Why I thought I could keep my personal life out of the blog is beyond me. Plus, I spent an entire afternoon covering up/tearing out the sad days from my diary so that if Jack ever found it, he wouldn't know how crazy I am. Like he wouldn't know after one crisis evening when I break down because I can't decide if I should make spaghetti for dinner or macaroni and cheese. But the diary is not working for me these days. The empowering wo-manifesto that begins it is covered in dust bunnies.

I have been successfully off of mood-altering medication for five years now. I have compensated for this by using various mind tricks.. er methods. I fend off the anxiety attacks by using mantras like, "This is anxiety. It isn't real. Breathe in. Breathe out. In and out."

The depression has been more of a trickster. I feel close to that emotion. It is the most comfortable of all of them. I have to work exceptionally hard at not welcoming "the sad", or allowing myself to dismiss it as nothing worth mentioning.

That being said, I guess I need to mention it.

I know my hormones are out of whack. They have been for more than a year. Since I miscarried Dot, I think. This isn't an excuse. A friend asked me the other day how my life has been affected (positively and/or negatively) postpartum. My answer was not OK. So I didn't mention it. And I won't here. Suffice to say that something needs to change for me, whether I go back on the meds or seek another solution.

For now, I recognize that I need to do what's best for my baby and for Rich. I'm not sure what it is, yet. But hopefully, it will come to me. Either that or work will distract me.

Work starts next week.

Escalator Temporarily Stairs.

My whole life, pretty much:

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Monday, August 4, 2008

Passing Lamentations

"Hey. Did you hear the sad news? Solzhenitsyn died today," he said.
"He did?"
"Yeah. I just heard it on NPR."
"Wow. That's really, really sad. What a significant loss," she said.
"Yeah. He wrote One day in the life of.. of.."
"Ivan Denisovich. Yes. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is the title."
"Hm. Have you read it?"
"No. You?"
"Nope."

[Moment of silence]

"I have to be honest: I didn't know he wasn't already dead," she said.

"Yeah. Me neither."

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Does anyone have a beached whale I can borrow?

Every year around this time - the time when I am so sick of feeling like I reside in a German sauna where one is not only uncomfortable because of the insane heat that disallows breath, but is also uncomfortable because one is awkwardly looking (read "trying not to look") at the extremely hairy, heavy set man in the one-size-fits-all speedo and his topless wife, both of whom must be at least 72 years old (Can boobs really hang that low? I'm talking about him, not her..), and where one, in said sauna, can only smell European "old person" (which happens, I just read, to not exist - old people do not have a distinctive smell; they simply bathe less often because they don't give a shit about offending anyone) mixed with mildewy egg water that the couple keeps ladling over the hot rocks..- I go a little crazy.

In short, I've had enough of the summer heat.

It makes me cranky.

And it can't be that it's just hot, like El Paso's manageable heat that feels like God has pointed the world's biggest hairdryer (duh, it's God's hairdryer) in one's face. It has to be 90% humid, too. It's so humid that I think beached whales could survive out of the water here, if they could tolerate the heat that is.

Anyway. This happens every year. Every year I reach this breaking point. Every year I fall on my knees and beg the earth goddess to throw me a freaking bone. Then I pout for the next 4 months until December when it cools off to a chilly 65 degrees and I whine about wanting to go swimming. "Where," I beg in an angelic sniveling voice, "Where oh where is Fall?"

This year I am going to be more proactive. I've decided that since the Metroplex sidesteps the pleasantries of Fall and careens head-first into the dead of "winter", I will have to simulate my own in-between season. Here's a list of what I need on hand to be successful:

* one pumpkin spice candle
* several silk orange, yellow, and brown leaves
* several real orange, yellow, and brown leaves (for stomping)
* a bag of candy corn
* a bag of kettle corn
* a hay bale or two
* apples and a large wash tub
* a bouquet of unsharpened pencils
* a pleasant looking scarecrow (not the scary kind that can sometimes be mistaken for an actual person)
* a taxidermied crow
* a pot of chrysanthemums
* maize

Or I could simply walk down the seasonal aisle at Hobby Lobby.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Make, make a ______________.

Thanks to Heather Armstrong's friends, I can't get this out of my head. I wouldn't be me if I didn't share the pain and cut it in half. So here you go:


And a rip rap rippity doo.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Reality

I've almost survived my first week back at work. Monday I thought I was sure to die a slow agonizing death, complete with hair tearing and teeth gnashing. I welcomed it. Tuesday felt better. I let go of the certain death strangle hold and allowed myself to simply bang my head into the nearest wall.. every three minutes. Yesterday I lost myself for three whole hours and found myself eating a stupid amount of sushi - odd for me - while teetering on the edge of what would soon be a stunning panic attack. And today I'm playing hooky-- sipping flavored coffee at my kitchen table, holding a posture that would make Miss Manners proud, delicately ignoring the crime scene that is my living room.

So things are going better than expected.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Unity

by Pablo Neruda

There is something dense, united, settled in the depths,
repeating its number, its identical sign.
How it is noted that stones have touched time,
in their refined matter there is an odor of age,
of water brought by the sea, from salt and sleep.

I'm encircled by a single thing, a single movement:
a mineral weight, a honeyed light
cling to the sound of the word "noche":
the tint of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
things of leather, of wood, of wool,
archaic, faded, uniform,
collect around me like walls.

I work quietly, wheeling over myself,
a crow over death, a crow in mourning.
I mediate, isolated in the spread of seasons,
centric, encircled by a silent geometry:
a partial temperature drifts down from the sky,
a distant empire of confused unities
reunites encircling me.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

It's good to be a stick in the mud..

When I was a kid, I spent lots of summertime at my Mimi's house in a Texas country farm town called Crosbyton, population 1,874. It was during these summers that I found myself getting into the most marvelous mischiefs.

In my defense, Crosbyton's only form of entertainment was (and is still) "making the drag" which meant that you drove your car pick-up from city limit to city limit (2 or 3 miles) on the main road all the way to the Dairy Queen, then turned around to make the drag again. On a good night, you ran into someone you knew and gossiped with them while leaning on the tail gate of a pick-up. On a bad night you ran into someone you didn't know which meant you probably hated them and your night was sure to end in some sort of tractor chicken race or ass kickin' or spontaneous warehouse dance routine or something..

But even though Crosbyton is not an ideal place to go for entertainment, there were times that were SO much fun. For some reason- probably because I am lamenting the end of another summer- I was remembering some of those fun times that only happen when you are a kid in a small town during the summer.

For example, I remember a particularly rainy summer day - one that left so much water in the bar ditch that if you had an inner tube, you could probably float the length of the drag (How did we never have one?)- we decided to play outside. The rain had left the empty (but plowed) field in front of Mimi's house the consistency of warm pudding. My cousin, my brother, and I looked at each other, all of us thinking the exact same thing.

We ran for the mud, intending at first to only gush it between our toes and make mud pies. But the further we got into the field, the deeper the mud got, and all of a sudden we found ourselves fully clothed and floating in it. Our heads and toes were the only parts of us sticking out of the warm mud. And if there ever are perfect moments to be had in life, this was one of them. The mud was the perfect temperature -warm and spa worthy - in contrast to the chilly rain that was still falling in large drops on our faces and which conveniently provided a little drink when we felt parched - we closed our eyes, looked skyward, and opened wide. And all we could do was grin at each other - for our collective genius of having the idea of getting into the mud in the first place, for going all out and breaking the unspoken, adult "do not wade into the mud" rule, and for feeling that the world had stopped on its axis in order that we enjoy ourselves in this mud.

We spent the better part of the afternoon lolling around in our miry bliss, and even though there were consequences for ruining our clothes; and even though we had to strip down to our skivvies to be hosed off in the driveway in front of hell and creation before we were allowed into the house - losing our pride in the process; and even though mud was compacted in places on our bodies that we didn't even know existed and we were finding it for days.. Even with all of that, it was SO worth it!

We gave ourselves to the complete JOY of the moment.

It was awesome.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Adjusting Luna - tic

OK. I promised myself I would no longer use my blog as a diary where I would gripe and moan about my personal life. "Save it for the actual written diary," I told myself, "where I can safely vent without beating the hell out of myself (emotionally) for having sold my soul to the post. I should be strong enough not to need back pats in comment form."

That was the first lie.

If you've ever seen me actually write anything, you know that I use colored pens that represent specific patterns and moods. Even for work, when I am in a particularly peaceful mood I use green pen, and if I am pissed, I use my teeth to angrily pull the cap off of the red one. I have quirks and compulsions that dictate how I do everything. And even something reletively small, like chosing which cd to listen to, can become a dramatic, life altering experience for all of the fretting I do. And if I can't figure it out, I shut down..completely.

Writing it out can help. OK, not so much with cd selection, but with other things. Why I thought I could keep my personal life out of the blog is beyond me. Plus, I spent an entire afternoon covering up/tearing out the sad days from my diary so that if Jack ever found it, he wouldn't know how crazy I am. Like he wouldn't know after one crisis evening when I break down because I can't decide if I should make spaghetti for dinner or macaroni and cheese. But the diary is not working for me these days. The empowering wo-manifesto that begins it is covered in dust bunnies.

I have been successfully off of mood-altering medication for five years now. I have compensated for this by using various mind tricks.. er methods. I fend off the anxiety attacks by using mantras like, "This is anxiety. It isn't real. Breathe in. Breathe out. In and out."

The depression has been more of a trickster. I feel close to that emotion. It is the most comfortable of all of them. I have to work exceptionally hard at not welcoming "the sad", or allowing myself to dismiss it as nothing worth mentioning.

That being said, I guess I need to mention it.

I know my hormones are out of whack. They have been for more than a year. Since I miscarried Dot, I think. This isn't an excuse. A friend asked me the other day how my life has been affected (positively and/or negatively) postpartum. My answer was not OK. So I didn't mention it. And I won't here. Suffice to say that something needs to change for me, whether I go back on the meds or seek another solution.

For now, I recognize that I need to do what's best for my baby and for Rich. I'm not sure what it is, yet. But hopefully, it will come to me. Either that or work will distract me.

Work starts next week.

Escalator Temporarily Stairs.

My whole life, pretty much:

Monday, August 4, 2008

Passing Lamentations

"Hey. Did you hear the sad news? Solzhenitsyn died today," he said.
"He did?"
"Yeah. I just heard it on NPR."
"Wow. That's really, really sad. What a significant loss," she said.
"Yeah. He wrote One day in the life of.. of.."
"Ivan Denisovich. Yes. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is the title."
"Hm. Have you read it?"
"No. You?"
"Nope."

[Moment of silence]

"I have to be honest: I didn't know he wasn't already dead," she said.

"Yeah. Me neither."