Where have I gone?

I'm reading my old blog posts because I'm supposed to be doing other things, and I'm feeling too mopey. Specifically I should be applying for healthcare, which I apparently don't have. I am told (via text) that there's a message in my inbox (which I can't access without calling the Healthcare Marketplace) explaining why I don't.

Can't face it right now, so...unless I find time and space to face it tomorrow, it looks like I might just not have health coverage until I get a real fucking job. Note to self: don't get sick. (PS, I'm feeling like I might be getting sick.)

In other news, Ian and I finally retrieved my ring today from the jewelers, it having been resized. (Did I mention that we're engaged? This is a relatively new thing.)


In reading old blogs I am noticing that I used to write much nicer things. I used to spend much more time alone, watching the sky; I used to spend much more time alone, thinking and writing about the sky, and about the trees, and about my heart. Where is all that now? Though I have no desire to own my own pet, I am beginning to think that I ought to have a dog--because evidently that is the only damn way I get myself outside for walks every day. And it seems that not walking means not breathing, in an expansive metaphorical sense.

It doesn't help much that I've been living in the city, and people discourage me from walking alone at night. This doesn't mean that I don't ever do it, but when I do, I feel like I need to look purposeful. Looking purposeful cuts down significantly on meandering, and walking with my face up to the stars, and occasionally sinking to my knees in prayer, or joy, or grief. There has been none of that here, and I am missing it.



Perhaps the issue is in part that I'm never alone. I haven't particularly been feeling that "get the fuck away from me" feeling (which is probably a good sign, in some ways), but nevertheless I haven't really spent any time alone since I moved in with Ian and Sara. And yet, even when I took my mostly-solo August road trip this past fall, I still moved too fast to stop and reflect in any meaningful way. I filled almost every moment with driving, rushing, researching, audio books, and exhaustion. I spent weeks alone, and weeks distracted. I can't say I didn't spend any time in quiet reflection, but I did spend far too little.

It seems that the lesson here is that I do not only need to learn to take time alone for myself--I need to learn to utilize it for myself. Not for rushing from one destination to another, but for simply being, and watching, and appreciating the world and the blessings around me. I need to feed and soothe and caress the quiet, expansive thing in me that is my spirit--the quiet presence that will so easily shrink and defer to the frantic, purposeless demands of whatever stupid whim happens to be yelling at any given moment. I've been spending all my time rushing around in vain attempts to quiet those endless whims, and forgetting that attention only makes them louder. That the only peace I'll ever find is inward.

Duh.

After a summer of wearing Rainbow flip flops (very comfortable; not at all squishy) almost exclusively, taking an evening walk in athletic shoes feels like heaven.

(What are these things on my feet? Springs? Maybe I can complete today's burpee challenge after all!)

Life, by the way, is rolling steadily along. Had quite a bit of drama in the family/close friends group over the past six months: a long hospital stay, a twice-broken ankle, a cancer scare (that is to say, it was indeed cancer, but it's been removed), a bipolar relapse...but things have been leveling out, and there are also several weddings coming up, and there's been a good amount of playing in waves and sand, and a couple of friendships restored and others renewed, and a new camping hammock, and more reading than I've done in quite a while. Things are good.

The River

Sara and I (and Brian, but he doesn't come into this story) have lived by the river for nearly two months now, but until this evening we hadn't gone. So today after everyone was awake and fed and had sat around watching the cat and wasting time on the internet for a while, Sara and I changed into swimsuits and headed off down the hill. It's a very short walk--maybe half a mile--and well worth it, because the parking down there is horrendous. We walked past lines and rows of waiting and parked cars, right down to the water's edge, and then upstream along the bank until the people thinned, and we found a spot to leave our towels. The water was deliciously warm, and the rapids relatively soft, and we waded and stumbled and half-swam, laughing, halfway across through the current until suddenly deciding to make camp on a half-submerged boulder. We sat in the sun, half-in the water, and talked and people-watched and drank in this gloriously beautiful setting-sun landscape in our backyard, and after an hour or so we collected ourselves and walked back up the hill toward home.

I hung my wet skirt and sarong on the back deck to dry, and was bombarded by a wave of childhood memories and nostalgia for all the countless days I walked to the pool and walked back, or walked to the creek and walked back, and hung my wet things to dry.

I smell like the river. It is the most perfect smell there is.

From Friday

1. Today was the last day of petsitting--I've been taking care of a litter of black lab puppies on weekdays since January, and the last will be sold this weekend. I'll be glad to have my afternoons back, but I'm a little sad to see her go.

2. Here is what I'd write about inchworms if I felt affection for them, rather than revulsion at their mission and massive numbers: I would say something like, everywhere I walk, the air is filled with shining threads of light, strung gently to and fro from tree to car to fence to jungle gym, to the tiny t-shirt of a small boy in my P.E. class on Tuesday.

Also if I liked them I probably wouldn't throw them out the window of moving cars.

But since I do not feel affection for them, and instead feel revulsion, here is what I'll write instead: the fucking things are everywhere. It's like a damn plague of inchworms, and their sticky little threads crisscross everywhere, all over the place, across the driveway, across the doorway, across the playground at work. When I get in my car, if I've left the windows cracked to prevent a little solar oven from forming, there will be an inchworm dangling inside my window. GO AWAY. And if one more child at work comes up to me talking about how great the damn things are or how he can't find any and Jackie won't give him the one she found, it is possible that I will freak out.


3. Today, while I was driving the bus toward an area elementary school, I suddenly realized that I was happy.  Happy. That I had a job and a boyfriend and this new phone, so many friends, this great kindle thing...I'm making it sound like a shallow happiness, and maybe it is in some way, but I don't really think so. It isn't like everything is perfect, or like I have everything I want, or whatever. It's more like, for the moment, I was satisfied. What I had, what I have, was enough. And increasingly often, it is enough. And that is the kind of person I want to be. And the kind of person I've wanted to be for so, so long.

I like the way we do things in our family.

12:20 am today found me in my grey boots that feel like slippers and rose-printed hoodie from Scotland and this beautiful hand-me-down skirt that Eva bought in India, squatting in twenty-eight degree weather on the bright red adirondak chair I picked up last week, watching my breath mist and dissipate and grinning as I waited for my mother to return with another strand of Christmas lights. Because we run on Africa time, and when the mood strikes us we run on the principle that there is no time like right this very second to do whatever it is we've been putting off--like stringing a couple of strands of Christmas lights across the front porch, even if we had to step around our Christmas tree (which all week has been casually leaning up against a pillar, studying its fingernails and patiently waiting for a space to be made inside) to do it. There is a sweetness to such moments that I can't imagine infusing any other space or time than midnight, with my mother, in the last few moments of the fall. I like the way we do things.

An evening walk

The very air feels green, and is swimming with that sweet smell of falling leaves and distant wood smoke. The horizon is stacked with piles of purple clouds, all rimmed with gold.

Regardless of what the trees seem to think, it's here.

Though it will take me some time to adjust to these new lower temperatures and artificially heated spaces and driving with the windows rolled up, the nip in the air makes me feel alive. The smell of woodsmoke wafting across the yard and the feel of warm gloves and chilly fingers, the cold wind on my face and the act of arranging logs and embers in the fireplace to coax a flame into being are all excellent. All alive.


Also: fall festivals. Obviously.

A fair and a fire and a late-night stroll

And it's finally cool enough to walk with a hoodie and hat and gloves. This is all so wonderful.

Harvest Moon

The first slivers of fall are starting to seep through into the air. I am told that tonight is the first night of the harvest moon, and when I walked out with Miley I swear I felt a nip in the air. I felt the same on the ride home as I halfheartedly tried to sleep in the passenger's seat--I curled up against the wide open window under my folded comforter with the early fall wind blaring against my face and eardrums, and I thought about fall festivals and apple orchards and wood smoke and cider and cool soft winds. The leaves are beginning to change. I can't wait.




EDIT:

I walked Miley and then felt that I just absolutely had to come back and write about it. That's a sure sign of approaching winter, right there. It starts.

To begin: we live on a hill, not far down from the main road--so when I walk, more than ninety percent of the time I walk down the hill, and deeper into the trees.

This means that on nights like tonight, when I walk up the hill, I am astonished by the broad, magnificent stretches of sky that hang over the higher parts of the road. I stepped out and watched, mouth wide open, as the cottony clouds drifted inexorably over the moon like obscuring leaves in a slow stream. The air is crystal clear tonight, the stars like diamonds, and the full moon threw a soft rainbow onto the surrounding clouds and lit them up with a shine that was the color of frozen lightning.

A sleepy reflection

A new (to me) love song came on the radio as I drove home today from Camp, and suddenly it seemed like such a great time to fall in love*. The world just felt like things were clicking into place, and (despite the fact that I rarely meet new people) this could happen any time. Bam. Soulmatehood.

I mean, this shouldn't be too difficult, right? I'm pretty awesome. You, theoretical mystery man, are pretty awesome too. We'd be great together. So it's cool, you can go ahead and show yourself now. No need to be shy. Just step right on up. Let's buy some finger jewelry and make a whole bunch of babies.



I say that like I'm good at relationships. Love songs (and the effects thereof) are so ridiculous. Annnd just a little bit frustrating.



In other news, this:

It was 7:40 am. Eye circles are my prerogative. Taken post-staff-morning-yoga, and at the swim hole, obviously. I've gone to morning yoga twice now (that makes two and then three times in the past ten years that I've intentionally woken up before staff meeting), and each time at the end I leave and walk toward the creek. I stop fifteen feet shy of the water and take off my shoes as though I'm stepping onto a holy ground of old concrete and grass and gravel, and walk carefully to the ladder, descend three steps, and sit down with my feet in the water. The slanting sunlight is savoury on the water--rich and delicate. And when I run my hands along the skin of the stream, it feels like cool silk. I've been late to staff meeting both times.

And this:

This is Daniel, and he is magical, and this picture took us about fifteen tries to take. We ran out of time during snorkeling interest group time, and then finally succeeded (with a camper behind the camera this time) at Pool Night. 

And look where I get to work:

I like this picture. Please don't steal it.

*Yeah, I know. Weird.

Nights

Sometimes it is when I am the lowest that I appreciate beauty the most. Two nights ago I was in a foul mood for sure (thanks to a situation which has been addressed and clarified, if not entirely rectified), and after campfire I found myself sitting cross-legged on an inner tube by the swim hole (which is, hands down, my favorite place to spend a warm summer evening), watching the water, feeling weepy, and singing prayers into the night. I wasn't dressed for swimming, but I remembered things I had written about this water, and I watched the bats swoop above and the fireflies meander over the stream. I love the grayness of the night, and I was a little shocked to notice that the fireflies constituted the only spots of color I could see--or rather, they and their tiny neon green reflections.
Later that night, after a very necessary conversation and after offers from my friend Dean to do things like drink five gallons of scalding water "to cheer me up," I took Miley for a walk down the driveway--a choice which keeps me away from sleeping children and coworkers, but which also gives the very best available view of the stars and the moon and the horses on the hill. The sky was not as filled with stars as it sometimes is, but there was a fantastic partial moon, which had swollen and turned honey colored as it began to set, and there was a horse standing up on the hillside, perfectly silhouetted against the deep blue sky, which raised his head to look toward us as we passed by.



Yesterday I was not in a dark mood. It was a pretty average day starting out, and then the swim hole just felt amazing. And I spent some time with Melissa. I was helping with swimming stuff for three hours, and then spent all of dinnertime beaming around at my friends, siblings, coworkers and former campers. I get like this especially when the CiTs are here, and especially when I have the chance to step back and take a good look around. It's easier to be appreciative when I don't have a cabin, but a good group of CiTs or junior counselors will get me every time, and we have a really excellent group this year--several of which I've worked with since they were nine years old. It's a great thing to see people grow up, and grow into the people you hoped they could be.
In any case, the CiTs planned the evening program last night, which was water games. It was obviously not perfect, largely because they've never planned a program before, but it was pretty great. When it was over I took advantage of my lack of cabin and helped them rinse the tarps from the slip-and-slide in the swim hole in the deepening dusk, and talked to them about their past as campers and their possible futures as staff, and breathed in the evening before heading to campfire.
After staff meeting and after much debate, several of the staff opted in for a silent slip-and-slide in the field and swim in the stream, and, honestly, I think it was one of the best nights of my life. There's no way to describe sliding around on soapy plastic and whispered scoldings and giggling in dark water and racing down the slide, lying back in soap suds in a line of women and looking up at the stars that will ever in a hundred years do it justice. Kita (Cheetah) and I cleaned off the tarp in near silence in shallow black water under a deep blue cloudy sky, spread it on the grass, and met everyone again in the shower room for ridiculous jokes and toothbrush-mouthwash-facewash-shared-sink antics and uncontrollable hushed laughter, and the (possibly inaccurate, but still happy) realization that this wouldn't have happened anywhere else, with anyone else.

Catching up

Last night, it was too cold for fireflies. Before that, though, on the fifth, I wrote that
"as always, the sight of a clear night sky full of stars is positively bewitching. But here, in the summer, the beauty is heightened still further--the trees blink with fireflies, and looking up into the night, numerous extra stars seem to wink in and out of existence.
I love this. On my way to bed I stand outside Cabin 6, or sit in my bunk, and watch the trees glitter in the night, hear the frogs sing, listen to the creek run on.
In the day I cannot keep from checking the blackberry bushes each time I pass by, just in case--as though they might have grown from green and hard to a full, ripe black overnight."

I have also been noticing with some frequency how much I love the way guitar music played outdoors seems to saturate the air.

[begin religious moment]
Two things:
I had a bit of a moment during and after our Camp version of church the other day. Religion is largely an emotional thing, and emotions aren't something I'm good at--so I tend to do a lot of drifting. This bothers me. Anyway, I had this realization, based on the "Christ-as-the-potter, people-as-the-clay" metaphor:
Our responsibility is not to mold our own hearts--can clay mold itself, or rid itself of impurities? We are only clay; Christ is the potter. We only need to submit, as clay only needs to submit. We only need to lay our burdens down in the pile at the foot of the cross.

Anna is pretty great, and gave a bit of a devotional the other day. She ended with this: "The end of your rope is not the end of the world--not with a God whose grace is sufficient for you. Not with a God whose strength is made perfect in your weakness."

And that made me think of the way our strengths complement our weaknesses--that is, the way my strengths are there to fill in the gaps where you are weak, and your strengths may perfectly fit with my weaknesses. It reminded me of the Bright Eyes song, "Bowl of Oranges": 

And we'll keep working on the problem 

we know we'll never solve: 

of love's uneven remainders--our lives are fractions of a whole. 

And if the world could remain within a frame, like a painting on a wall, 

I think we'd see the beauty then. 

We'd stand staring in awe 

at our still lives posed 

like a bowl of oranges. 

Like a story told 

of the fault lines in the soul.

[end religious moment.]

Winter and spring, then summer

Here is the difference: I love winter like I love sleep. I love the quiet. I love the dreamy, ethereal qualities of the season, of the air. I focus on the fixtures: the unmoving trees, the pendulous moon, the here-and-gone frost that mirrors the glittering stars in the night. And when summer comes, I am suddenly lost. Where is my moon? Where are my bare, silent trees? Where is my quiet beauty? The leaves grow suddenly so thick that I can barely see the sky. But then the sun sinks toward the horizon, and its yellow rays mix into those green leaves, and my breath is stolen away. I am slowly, slowly coming to remember that I can't look in the summer for what I loved in the winter. In the summer the beauty and magic are in the movement, in the shockingly quick growth of the plants, in the changing landscape, rather than the spinning sky. It's in bioluminescent bugs, and in all of the animals that seem to somehow have appeared out of the ether. Where have they been? This evening I stood barefoot in the stream again, again drinking in the feeling of its coolness around my calves while Miley refreshed herself by swimming in small circles and huffing, and I was struck by the fragility of the water skaters. I was glad to see them, firstly, but (never having done a whit of research on them) I always wonder where they've come from. How could such spindly, tiny little bugs--water bugs, even--have survived such an icy winter? But it doesn't matter. They're here now.


Just as Miley and I crested the hill, the church bells up the street chimed eight, and the late afternoon sun reached over the Western trees, and gilded those standing to the East. A handful of bluejays circled the sky over the neighborhood, calling back and forth. Winter is about sleep, but I am relearning how to be awake.


I am still sneakily trying to teach Layla that all life is precious. This week we've (finally) been doing swim lessons rather than math lessons, and the design of their backyard pool is such that hapless spiders crawl up to the edge, lose their grip, and fall in. They are light enough to be able to stand on the surface tension in the water, and can often cling to floating leaves or make their way back onto the walls of the pool, but they can't make it up over the lip and back onto dry ground. We've been rescuing them when we see them, and noting those that are jumping spiders. They still make her nervous, but at least she no longer demands their deaths on sight. I'm working to warm her up to bees, but I am making less progress.

Once again.

Why do I never, ever feel like writing anymore? I suppose, if I think back, I have to admit that this happens every summer. Somehow it surprises me every time.

Well I'm tired. What else is new? I know this is shocking, but the reason for my fatigue is twofold:

1. I stayed up late reading.

2. I couldn't sleep. WHO AM I?




I took Miley for a walk the other afternoon (I know! In the daytime and everything!) and I began to warm up to the summer a bit. No pun intended. I've been missing the winter landscape. But I reveled in the hot dirt smell that I so love, that doesn't show up until the temperature hits a relatively dry ninety degrees or so. And the moment Miley and I burst out the side door of the house and hit the asphalt, a chorus of cicadas swelled into song on the other side of the road, and my heart nearly burst. I have never understood why so many people dislike cicadas. They're such an essential part of summer to me. They sound right. And have you ever seen one just emerging from its shell? They're gorgeous. They look like living, winged emeralds and sapphires.

We walked down to the creek, where Miley always swims whenever it's even remotely warm, and I stepped into the water with her and savored the feeling of it swirling around my calves. I may have splashed it up onto my arms and face; I can't remember. I sometimes do this. Further up the road we passed the flowering blackberry brambles and the honeysuckle vines, and as we reached our driveway, I saw that the tiger lilies had bloomed. It was a good walk.

Things I've been forgetting.

Last week when I was tutoring Layla out on the dock, I saw something white bobbing in the water under the walkway. It looked like one of those soft, white, round mushrooms (which don't grow in the water, of course), but turned out to be a goose egg. Despite my best efforts, I failed to effectively convey to her that the watery sound from inside the egg meant that it was dead, that it was rotten, and so on. Anticipating the smell and fearing the view I didn't want to crack it, but I allowed myself to be convinced. I carried it away and downwind from the house, stood back, and cracked the shell with a stick. I would have let Layla, but she lost her nerve at the last moment. It seemed that somehow water had seeped into the shell, so what came out was a terrible smell, a piece of embryonic sac, and half a shell's worth of grey liquid. Layla spent the next ten or fifteen minutes telling me that I should have cracked it more gently, though I tried to explain that "baby goose eggs" need to be kept warm in their mother's nest; that all of the goslings had already hatched and didn't she remember them?; that floating in the water for weeks will never let an egg live. She said that she had hoped that if I cracked the shell gently enough, it would turn back into a baby goose.



I and my father went to pick my sister up from the Greyhound station the other night, and from the parking lot I looked up into the night sky and saw dozens of bats swooping and gliding through the air above the baseball diamond. In my experience, bats don't usually soar and glide, actually--they flutter around and frequently change direction to go after insects. It's also rare to have such a clear view of their motions, though, so perhaps I just haven't been as observant as I might. The lights from the stadium shone straight up into the air, and I can only assume that the air was filled with enough light-loving nocturnal insects that the bats could just soar straight through the beams and get a mouthful on each pass. Good on ye, bats! I love 'em.


Friday, just before the goose egg incident, Sara and Brian and I went to see the VMFA Picasso exhibit in its dying days. I don't love Picasso particularly, but as ours was the only museum on the East Coast to get the exhibit, and as Mr P is super duper famous and influential and all, I felt that I should go. It was good. I mean, he's talented, you know. Also, he really likes boobs. A lot. Just a heads-up, there.

Saturday S and B and I went to an herb farm and took in a talk about beekeeping and met up with Anna and her friend Amy, who seemed pretty cool. Anna and Amy and I accompanied the beekeeper back to his hives and watched him replace the queen and the observation frame and essentially got another lecture lesson about beekeeping, which was really cool. We ate some lavender iced cream and some honey iced cream and some chocolate iced cream, and I (and possibly Brian, but not while I was looking, not that I was looking often) helped Sara pick out a bunch of herbs and tomato plants and suchness for a hopeful new garden for her family. We got variegated basil, among other things. Not elfin thyme, though, despite my rabid support. Sara and I also bought fricking adorable beeswax candles in the shape of a little bear with his arms around a beehive (the stereotypical old beehive shape, rather than the more practical but significantly less cute boxy hives of today) and with a relatively large bee perched on the outside of the hive. They smell like honey of course, thus making me want to consume honey, and they are unreasonably cute, and I can't understand how Sara plans to actually use hers as a candle. I'm pretty sure I could never set that thing on fire.

Also on Saturday with S and B: impromptu (for us) fish fry; Strawberry Fields Festival where were sold unsprayed strawberries, spinach, kale, and no free kittens. Lovely. And buying cookie dough and cooking cookies not-as-long as the wrapping says, thus producing perfect soft, gooey cookies. And Kelly and Junior happening to be near my house, and being convinced to come over, and Sara and Brian leaving to dinner.

Saturday sans Sara and Brian: Hanging out with Kelly and Junior, and retrieving Chloe from the bus stop whilst they take in Picasso in all his slightly obscene glory.

Sunday: church with Chloe and Junior (who opted to stay, possibly partially because he seems to really, really love the couch in our basement. It really is excellent for sleeping), and an afternoon spent with my excellent cousin Sara (not to be confused with the Sara of Saturday), talking and reading magazines and rifling through items destined for the Goodwill.

All in all, quite a nice weekend.

I think there may have been other stuff, but I am not sure. I may have forgotten still.


Song I've been playing on repeat for a couple of days now (I haven't watched all the way through this video, so I apologize if there is any unforeseen weirdness):

Tone.

You know what's utterly delicious? Leftover Chinese food: beef with broccoli from that takeout place down the street. You know what's really not that delicious? Salad with no chicken in. Just saying.


ALSO COMPLETELY DELICIOUS AND WITH WHICH I AM UNREASONABLY OBSESSED:




Also omg fried rice is the best thing ever, ever, ever invented. Ever.



On another note, it totally sucks when people seem really awesome and then you realize that they don't actually, you know, like, understand the concept of boundaries. Or, for example, the idea that the world doesn't revolve around what they want. Or that their problems are not my problems. It's not the most endearing thing in the world.



On yet another note, Sunday was largely really awesome. Jack and our parents and I had 8:30 am "brunch" for mother's day, after which Jack and I each crashed for several hours. Generally I try to get to church on Sunday mornings, but we had been to the funeral for Kelly's grandmother on Saturday, which included a mass. It was (of course) very sad, but the service was beautiful. Being around so many people that I loved was beautiful. So anyway, no church on Sunday. When I woke up there was a distant* cousin stopping in at our house on his way out of town, so we talked and had lunch, and he's an interesting fellow. Possibly an electrical engineer? Or trained as such. I spent most of the rest of the day cleaning my room (relative success!), and at one point took a break to walk Miley. There were several separate points of awesomeness on said walk:

I smelled honeysuckle!
I also smelled cut grass!
I also smelled cigarette smoke, which would normally be not-awesome, except that it was coming from Gina, whom I have not seen in probably eight years. She lives in the Norfolk area, and her mother is a friend of my mom's and her maternal aunt--River's mom--lives behind us. She and her mom and grandmother AND HER DAUGHTER were in town for mother's day. Her daughter is six now! I had never seen her before, but she is so beautiful. It made my day to see them.


































*I actually have no idea how we are related, but "Armistead" is a family name, and I'm pretty sure someone referred to him as a cousin at some point. Actually, there are rather a lot of people to whom I am related, but related in some completely obscure (to me) way. So "distant" here really only means that he isn't a first cousin, or (as far as I know) a second.

Hey, it's April again.

I guess it's been a few days. Seems like forever. But yes, it's April again.

For days I've been meaning to write about the fabulous sunset I saw on the way to Kelly's house the other evening, but I have felt neither the inclination nor the obligation to put anything down, aside from the initial notes on my cell phone notepad:

The most delicate peach-pink on the softest baby blue, and the whisping clouds in front a dark, pastel lavender. The sky is the only thing that can get away with pastels, if you ask me. A spring sky, post-rain, at gloaming time. Is anything more lovely? And the moon, hanging round and full just above the colored clouds.



I've been taking a WSI class, and I've been trying to coexist with my allergies, and it's just exhausting. The class was Saturday and today, and will run tomorrow and through Wednesday, 7-8 hours each time. I still haven't found the time and motivation to read through the materials, but I'd better before Wednesday, when we're sure to have a test. Red Cross rules rightly state that a person has to score an 80% or above to receive certification, and with the money Camp is paying for this class, I really think I'd better get a certification. So.

I'm enjoying the class though. Just not the fatigue, as much.

Regarding the allergies: I woke up sometime last week with a sinus infection, which has transmuted itself into some sort of dry-and-itchy throated, sleepy, sometimes headachy cough. And my eyes itch and burn.


Sunday, Lorraine and Jr and I responded (for once) to Anna's invitation to join her in dancing at Capital Ale House downtown. It was nice. And I had thought that Lorraine and Anna would hit it off, and they did. Lovely.


I seem to have been practicing self-sabotage on POF. That's probably okay. I've managed to end most email conversations that were going on, some more intentionally than others, and none gracefully. I thought I'd made a friend, back there at the beginning, and maybe I have--but we've hardly spoken in a week or so. It annoys me a bit that a week here is an "omg what's going on" issue, when going a week or more without contacting the vast majority of my friends is barely an issue, if it even rates mention at all. But anyway, I made boundaries and let him cross them, and it dampened my enthusiasm for the relationship. And then today a person I'd thought I might meet asked (or I assume that he'd have termed "send me a picture" as "asking") for a cell phone picture of myself, and I got annoyed and refused, and he got frustrated and hasn't texted since. (This is probably for the best, as I had nearly accidentally double-booked myself for Thursday evening.) It seems to be par for the course for that place to exchange cell phone pictures, but I think it's a stupid game. I don't really have a slew of pictures of myself on my phone, for one thing, but then also, who's to say we'll ever speak again? This is barely even an acquaintance-ship. You do not need to have a picture of me on your phone. And if you're asking because you don't "trust" the pictures I've got posted already, then you're kind of an idiot. One is faked as easily as the other.

That's the second rant I've written on the subject today.

Friday morning, quite early, I fly to Saratoga Springs to see Adrienne and Ian on their birthday. I'll be back Sunday, and Wednesday I'll be leaving for Lafayette, and will return Monday. Friday, or possibly Saturday morning, I'll be driving (or riding along) to Knoxville, to return Sunday. The following Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I'll be participating in a lifeguard training session taught by my friend Art, husband of Camp's director (friend Beth). The weekend after that I'll be house sitting for Sara's family, and do you want to know what's going on the weekend after that?

NOT A DAMN THING.

In its completely raw, unedited form

Because I am tired and lazy and short on time. Here are notes I wrote down two nights or so ago after working outside and driving over the river and walking Miley under the moon, and then never fleshed out. I've put them in chronological order and left the "and" before the robins, because I feel like it.

and the little red-breasted robins, hopping around on the newly turned earth as I worked.

the surreal beauty of the tall, straight, slender trees by the river.

the bare cold fingers of winter and the soft lacy sprays of spring, with the moon shining through.

Here are links from my facebook news feed and from other sources, some of which I have not actually yet read:

Here is a trailer for an indie film on the consequences of a childhood removed from nature. I'm not sure I feel like the trailer is extremely well put together, but I am interested in the concept.

Orange is not the only rhymeless word! This sounds like a good challenge.

Misplaced Mama is one of my favorite blogs. Probably my favorite, actually. I like this, about roots.

This I haven't read yet, but I love linguistics, so I'm planning to when it's not 1:30 am and I'm not late to meet Sara, etc. Evidently analyses show that all languages may have originated in Africa. GO FIGURE. (Given that anthropologists believe that human life originated in Africa, this doesn't seem too shocking. Still interesting though. Or I hope it will be.)

It seems that wolves have been removed from the endangered species list, not because they are no longer endangered, but because people don't like them. AWESOME.

"My Drunk Kitchen" on youtube. So classy.

Starting production on The Hobbit! Best thing of my life!

Rain.

It rained all night and has rained all of today, and it is wonderful. It is a beautiful, soft, gentle rain. I've been house sitting for Sara's parents this week, and not much of interest has happened that I wanted to talk about here, so if anyone has been frustrated with the lack of communication (doubtful), then that's why. But this rain--I've left the sliding door in the kitchen open all day to let the fresh air in, and gone wandering barefoot in the back yard a few times. There's a pretty excellent puddle down at the other end of the house. And the small fishless fish pond at the corner of the patio is filled right up to the brim, with the water gently lapping against the moss that grows around the edge. It is lovely. I can't even tell you how much I love the sound of my feet stepping into the water, by the way--the excellent puddle or the little pond. It is a gorgeous sound, and it sounds like summer evenings at the swim hole in the mountains. This one:

1.2.3.

1. I SAW A FROG. I really had thought it too early for frogs. I hope I didn't inadvertently run over it. And if I didn't run over it, I hope it doesn't freeze. Low temp tomorrow night is 32 degrees.

2. On the way home tonight, the sky lit up for nearly half a second. Not like lightning, because
                 - lightning doesn't generally last that long
                 - there was no thunder; I checked
                 - lightning isn't usually a sickly green color.

3. Birds. There are lots of them. The other day they were flying back and forth all around our street all afternoon, and I loved it. Little back bird shapes covering the lawn, then flying up into the trees, then in the backyard, then our neighbor's yard, then our front yard again. And they were calling the whole time. And it was awesome. Birds. Awesome.