Sunday, October 31, 2004

house, asleep

tonight
before i woke you off the couch,
sent you up to bed
you snored
softly
cat on your chest
her nose tucked under white paw.

now the room hums
neighbors creak and shut doors
computer fans blur silence
tap of keys as i type
sonorous click of clocks
i cannot hear you, upstairs,
but shiva's gray tail breathes in
and out,
rumbling
nasal little
soprano
snores.

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Samhain

I slept for a long time last night. Just kept sleeping and sleeping. Before I actually pulled the covers up and called it a day, I made out my to-do list for the weekend. Which is longer than lists I used to make as a kid for Santa.

Woke up at 1130 and now don't want to do anything on the list. For some reason I'm craving a visit to my parent's house, when I was just there last weekend for a bit on Friday night and Sat am. Dunno. Just one of those cravings you get.

I also tried pulling off the fake nails last night. Not so fun. I got two of them off but the rest are cemented onto my nails. Well, glued actually...with no intention of vacating. I give. They don't look bad but they're making doing normal things very difficult. Also I feel kind of as girly as I ever want to feel. "Dan, could you open this can of pop for me?" Mother of god. Please.

But it's Samhain. I want my house cleaned up and smudged within an inch of its life right now, for the start of the new year. And conversely, after the last few weeks of work, little to no sleep and a most excellent and full moon enhanced bout of pms, I just want to cry.

I feel used up again. Tired and hollow. I look around the house and I have one roommate who is home ALL THE TIME but the house is still a mess. The dishwasher is clean--empty it! It's not that difficult, is it? I think I'm in a holding pattern right now, akin to Sisyphus. I need a break, a week off, something. Time to go bury myself under some leaves and recharge.

Winter and autumn have always been my favorite times of year. I love the smell of them, the cool feel on skin, the winds burning my face. My sister's message scribbled down by Dan the other day was about Mom's 60th birthday. Just those words are enough to make me cringe. Sixty? She can't be sixty. She's only 40. Right? Samhain is a time for remembering and starting fresh. Sloughing off the old skin and inviting in the new.

Tonight I'm going to a party that I've been looking forward to for a long while now. I have to admit that I wanted Dan to come with me, but he doesn't want to go. So he'll be home and I'll be there. Maybe I can talk him into driving me in case of drunken behavior on my part. But that's just a cheap ploy because I want him to meet my new friends. I want them to like him. I have this need right now to belong to something. When I was up north I did--I could go into the woods and just be. It's taken me two years to find new friends down here. I haven't lost any of my old friends--but they're all involved in lives they created down here, up there. I've been feeling very dis-attached. And now when I am feeling attached to something, and I want to share it with Dan, and I knew that this would be the case from the get go, I still am letting myself feel bad about it.

The doing list beckons. I better get my butt in gear and get going. My house and my life need some organizing. Cheers, all--I hope that Samhain brings you both remembrance and renewal.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

guadalupe, the san francisco treat

lupe has been my very first own car. she's all mine, in her periwinkle glory. and i think she's on her last legs.

*sigh*

when i think about my car i think about so many things. seeing it for the first time, driving it back and forth to bemidji and st cloud, sitting in traffic, blaring rod zombie on the way to breckenridge sd that one fourth of july, seeing the car all painted up as a going-away gift from my friends at lueken's. so many things. i love my car.

dan asked me today why on earth i got so attached to cars. i can throw away clothing and other household stuff at will, but cars make me cry.

i think it's based greatly on my childhood, and my dad. dad loves cars. dad knows a lot about cars. he treats his with great care and concern, and even a sense of respect--that he's honored to have the car. can you give that to an inanimate object?

for some reason i don't consider my car inanimate. i named her before i bought her.

i guess it's been a tough year--things that aren't considered a big loss by the majority of the world, i feel i'm losing--touch with my friends up north, my girls whom i consider sisters. serena moving to colorado. my dear quinn. and now my lupe. i feel like things are being amputated.

at the same time, the only way for growth to happen is via change, or loss, whatever you want to call it. i always think about driving through yellowstone national park after the fires out there--miles and miles of blackened ground, the green of grass and new little trees standing out so brightly. i think about walking through bemidji state park in the spring--when all the leaves that are falling now are a damp carpet, flattened by all the snow, rotting softly, little spots pushed up where sprouts are unfurling. if i think hard i can smell it, rich and deep.

i think about those things and it's not all awful.

but if i do lose my lupe, i know there'll be tears. i love my car. i tried to explain to dan that to really get a sense of my attachment you have to imagine that my car is a horse. maybe a better explanation would be to reference captain jack sparrow--it's not just a ship, it's freedom.

and it's probably not good bye quite yet. i hope. props to lupe--you've been a good little mazda 626.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

creation

that's a big word. right now, i mean. i'm sitting here, having just spent the last few hours poring over palladium books w/ eero and corpse. eeeeeeeeeeee. i'm not into math but i suppose i like looking at catalogs enough sit here and poke around for this length of time.

i've got this story cooking around in the back of my head. just simmering. i've been working on it forever but it's got no end in s ight and so many frayed edges that i'm at a loss as to how to get them all put back together. if i stand back and look at it it reminds me of a patchwork quilt--with no discernable pattern. *sigh* someday i'll learn to be a little more linear.

and the moon will turn out to be made of gouda.

i'm not an organized person. chaos is my aura and lifeline. i feel much more comfy in a place that's consistently fluctuating than a world that has limits and lines and borders. just not my bag.

which is i think why my current occupation bothers me to the degree it does.

i dislike being told what to do. i dislike letting people down. i dislike having people pissed off at me. i dislike paperwork and filing and all that other crap from which Office Space sprung. naked, as athena from the head of zeus... blah blah blah.

anyway i've had this issue building up for ages at work and of course today it all came to a head. too much work, too much work, too many new hires asking questions and too many clients taking up my time--this equals disaster of paperwork building up on the desk, and consequently, management interest.

can i get this all done by friday? god only knows. there are not enough hours in the day, days in the week, etc. i have essentially been given the tools to create this mess...and no tools to dig myself out.

i'm feeling slightly wrathful at the moment. also tired and somewhat boggled, by nothing important. just life handing me the door and no key. same old drill. tomorrow night we have another meeting, after work, after hours, to discuss how to deal with everyone's individual profiles of how we deal with the world around us.

gah.

on the flip side, we might be getting another kitty. cathy's got someone with a new baby who's allergic to kitties, and the family has an 8 yr old abyssinian mix who's got allergies herself. so that's a big maybe. i'm not sure how shiva would handle having another cat in the house, and i'm not sure how i would do either; this kitty needs a shot once a month for her allergies. who knows. thursday we're supposed to stop by the savagedorm and dan apparently has some fun stuff to play for them--some new richard cheese he just got.

anyway i'm off to bed. cheers (:

Sunday, October 10, 2004

the sunday paper

I used to love reading the paper. When we were just in the first years of college, we'd get the ol' hometown paper to see if we knew anyone getting hitched or popping out a kid, etc. Read the whole paper, get my fingers all black and smudgy.

Dan's reading the paper now. If I think about it there are probably three sections I'll read: Variety, Arts & Entertainment and Travel. And the Target ad. Poke through the comics, and call it a day after about 10 minutes.

Fingers clean as a whistle. Strange how over time something that used to be a relaxing hour eating donuts and laughing at finding out that one of the cheerleaders is on child Numero Five has morphed into: I have SO much more to get done. So much better to do. Really? I do? Humph.

I didn't get my books signed the other night. We got up to Uncle Hugo's after fighting traffic for 45 minutes, grabbed something at the KFC after getting our number and settled in to wait. The store was packed, and because it's Uncle Hugo's and small and filled with piles of books already, stuffy and hot--and not in the good sauna way. By 745 LKH had only gone through about 40 to 50 sigs--this was based on her start time of 6 pm. She wasn't done w/ February and I was holding the date May 9th. I was over heating and bored, and having some blood sugar issues--dinner of biscuits and popcorn chicken and a diet Pepsi will do that. So I threw in the towel and Dan and I drove home.

Yesterday we did have fun--after going in for training at work in the morning, I wanted to do something cheapish, but out of our ordinary loop, and luckily Dan did too. So we grabbed lunch at Roly Poly sandwiches--VERY yummy! I had a stuffed spinach wrap, grilled, with cheese and tomatoes and artichokes and spinach, and for a twist, cornbread dressing. It was divine. Then we went over to Fort Snelling, where neither of us has been since forever. At least over 10 years for me, longer for Dan. We traipsed about and I got to visit with the living history folks, which is always amusing and fun. Everyone was very informative and we had a good laugh over the thought of Dan trying to fit in one of the bunks. I guess during the big days when the fort was stock full, and during MN winters, the men would sleep two to a bunk--which was about 5'8" long. The thought of 6'4" Dan squidging into the bunk just gave me the giggles. I did get to see some pretty nifty medical supplies--the "doc" was able to take out and show off some reproductions of trepanning equipment and an amputation kit. Very cool. Then we watched them blast off the cannon. I wish it'd been more than once because it was such a nice big boom! Everyone was so informative and they've done an excellent job of keeping things alive and in perspective for the folks participating. Spiffy.

The thing that struck me later, as we were leaving, was that the buildings that you pass on the way into the fort, Buildings 17 and 18, were used in WWII for soldiers and for the Japanese Americans who were doing translations, etc. Those buildings, built long after the parts of the fort that are original, are in worse condition than the for itself, which was construced in 1827. I hope that someday they'll have the funding to fix them up--seems strange that we're more concerned w/ 1827 than 1945.

Had dinner at Grizzly's and played a game of trivia--Dan won, I took second--and then came home.

Well, I'm off to page through the paper after strolling around the Ikea site quickly to see if there is a shelving unit there that will support my obscene amount of clothing that no longer fits in the closet. *sigh* When I was there the other day I got distracted by some really nice dishes...but dishes are gravy. (; What I need is a good sized dresser-wardrobe system. Something that will no doubt take up the whole closet and most of the upstairs den too. (;

cheers (:

Friday, October 08, 2004

tgif...i think...

so i was all excited when i woke up this morning because it's friday! yay! last day of the workweek. aside from the fact that i didn't get much sleep because we hit barnes and noble last night and of course i had to read at least part of one book before nodding off 6 hours ago, life should be dandy.

then after a minute or two you recall why life is not so dandy. yesterday as i was leaving work my muffler, which serena will recall that same episode from last june in which the muffler started out sounding like an irish tenor underwater and slowly but surely developed a nice, rich, deep bass sound, has sprung a hole somewhere and is apparently in the tryout process again. this is in addition to needing a serpentine belt for the car, which screeches when i start it ONLY when i'm either at work or at my sister's house in south minneapolis. why? who the hell knows.

i can put this to the side because since dan's not working hopefully it'll be easier to work out something to get the car fixed. hopefully. i can also put this aside because tonight after work there's a book signing by maryjanice davidson up at uncle hugo's. the downside is that i'm feeling guilty because laurell k hamilton will be there too but there is no way in blankety blank that i'm purchasing her newest anita blake, vampire humper, book--from the reviews it's about 682 pages, 80 pages of plot, the rest is soft core porn, and not very well done, either.

so ye olde catholic guilt is kind of catching up to me. i really want to meet maryjanice--her books are fun and fresh and set in mpls, and she's from around here--but i'll no doubt have to walk past lkh and that's kind of an affront. which i suppose is what i'm looking to do at this point. *sigh* i think.

on an up note, i did finish first rider's call by kristen britain, so s, it should be on the way shortly when i have cleaned up the house. also that book by diana pharoah francis, path of honor, is out i think dec 4th...and the new kelly armstrong book, industrial magic, is out oct 26th.

so that's all uplifting and kind of counters the whole my-car-sounds-horrible feeling.

and then i remember that tomorrow morning i'll be at work right now for two hours of training. *really BIG sigh* just when i need a weekend off when i'm not sicker than a dog and sleeping or helping with something all weekend...and i know it's just for 2 hours but 2 hours is more than no no hours and i would really, really, really, really, really like to sleep in at some point...and not just three days of the next three weeks! (training is three weekends straight...) to top things off on wednesday we have to stay late after work and discuss a personality profile we took that will apparently help everyone deal with everyone else better. garg!

well i've got 45 minutes...which isn't much at the moment...my pigtails from yesterday are kind of messy and not where they were before, in fact one has migrated nearly to the top of my head. i really need to strip some paint off my toes and do the whole girly pedicure thing, and there's the whole shower issue too...and after mentioning that i feel the need to point out to myself that i did open up the blinds, to my left, on the sliding glass patio doors...so everyone else in the neighborhood is presently basking in the radiant glow of my grumpy mood and frumpwear.

i'moff to create humanity with soap and makeup...houdini, eat your heart out.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

still

it's still outside right now. i can hear the hum of a plane, and someone who needs their muffler plugged, but just still. no birds at the feeder, tho feed is scattered about. no chippies wandering, or rabbits. the cat is staring at her litterbox, which i just refilled this morning. i should be showering.

*sigh* it seems like everyone is in the same state right now--verging on dormancy. i don't recall feeling like this last year, or the year before, or any before that, mainly because i adore winter. maybe it's my lack of contact w/ nature as of late. i know i ought to get out there but with this whole wedding thing and then this cold that just won't evacuate, i'm exhausted. i slept for a total of four hours last night. and then i was up every hour, on the hour. well, 338, 438, 538, etc. then i woke up at 706 and thought, the hell with it.

so what do i do, when i could be getting ready for a bang-up day at the office and get there *gasp* early? i load the dishwasher. check the weather (high of 70, low of 58) and clean the litterbox. i never did laundry last night, as intended, just glued my butt to the chair and paid bills. then got on my fave forum, and then surfed about lazily until1030.

i feel like i'm missing something. like i'm watching some part of my life go by--the plane humming, and i'm the bird feeder, half full and hanging, still even in the breeze.