lazy Sunday

I love Sundays. I'd love them more if Monday didn't follow them. 

We got out of bed at about nine this morning, not nearly late enough, and now I'm wishing I had taken a nap at some point. Too late for a nap now; I guess I'll just go to bed early. We did spend most of the morning on our respective couches though-- the cat on the back of husband's couch over him, Bub snuggled up next to me on mine. He's very protective of me lately, not sure why. Even when we were outside later this afternoon, he stayed very close to me, standing touching my legs at some points. 

At about 2, we finally extracted ourselves from our sofas and blankets to shower and go watch the new Star Trek movie. The thought just occurred to me that I don't know the name of the movie, only that it was about Star Trek. It was pretty good, well acted and well written, full of action. I never watched the original series, just the one with Patrick Stewart. I used to love Data and Jordy, probably because Jordy also did Reading Rainbow on PBS. Anyway, it was a good waste of a couple hours on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon.

When we got home, we weeded the front flower beds. They were in desperate need of a purge. We've had so much rain the camellia bushes have tripled in size. And they were resident here when we moved in-- two of the only three living landscaped plants in our yard. (We bought the worst house on the road and have already significantly increased its curb appeal and value.) I'm surprised at their growth as I thought they were full grown. I don't know when I'm supposed to prune those so they'll still bloom in the fall. I'll have to look it up.

As I was yanking clover, I was thinking about how much I wanted Indian food for dinner. On the way back into the house, as though he had been reading my mind, husband shyly and sweetly turned to me and mumbled "sure would like some Indian food tonight, if that's good with you...." I swear it's like we share a brain sometimes. So I'm full of khorma and aloo gobi and naan, now, trying to entertain myself on the computer while he watches his Sunday night cartoons on FOX. I enjoy the Simpson's but none of the others.

I am not looking forward to this week. My coworker, the one with whom I work the most closely and with whom I have become friends, is about three hours away with her grandfather in an ICU. The boss is out of town until Tuesday, so I'll be holding down the fort pretty much by myself tomorrow. Last week was Hell Week, and I don't see this one being much easier. I need a vacation, desperately. I'd prefer the Florida coast but I'd settle for a river fishing trip at this point. Or maybe New Orleans, or Savannah. Just a few days out of this bubble. I'd even leave my blackberry behind. Maybe.

Grateful... Friday?

This week has gone by so quickly, I didn't even realize it was Friday until I went to write my Grateful Thursday post. What happened to Tuesday? I don't remember Tuesday... Monday I had a migraine, Wednesday I was here mostly by myself, and yesterday I remember because we got a lot of work done. Tuesday it gone, erased form my memory like it never happened, or perhaps it melted into everything else in there, undistinguishable from any other day in my past.

1) That it is Friday. I need the sleep tomorrow morning.

2) My kitty cat. Even though she mutilated my face and likes to chew on my expensive make-up brushes, she brings a lot of joy into our lives.

3) The new donut place down the street

4) The weekend. Did I say that already?

5) We survived last night's horrific wind and rain and thunder and lightning. Not the fun kind of rumbling thunder either, but the smacking, cracking kind that will bring you up out of your sheets sweating and reaching for the light. But it only lasted about 45 minutes, as these strong southern summer storms do, and then I drifted back to sleep, finally releasing my husband's hand from my tight grip. 

cat scratch fever

I didn't realize until just as I clicked "new post" that this will be my 100th post. I don't know why I'm recognizing it, really, as I'm sure there will be many more. I suppose it is a milestone of sorts.

Last night, after two hours of Lost and a good thirty minute discussion with my husband about our vague knowledge of the story of Jacob and Esau (if you watch, you'll understand), I pulled out my laptop to research it a bit and check my work email. The cat was running around like her tail was on fire, zooming from one window to the other, stopping only to attack some invisible spot on the floor. She does this at least three nights a week, always at about 10 pm. Usually she plays with my husband much more quietly-- well, not as hyper anyway. Quiet doesn't describe the scratches on his arm. But she's only about 2 so the kitten side comes out of her now and again.

The culprit, relaxing lazily on the very couch I was sitting on last night, leaning against that arm. 

I was sitting, reading, laughing at my husband's interpretation of the sumo wrestlers on tv, when out of nowhere an orange ball of fur and claws slammed into my face, using me as a landing pad, a backboard, and then shot off into the office. My husband says I made a loud "AHHH" noise and immediately sat up straight and covered my face with my hands. I didn't know what had happened, I just knew that it hurt and scared me. I remember saying "Oh my god!" and pulling my hands away from my face, seeing blood running down my left fingers, dark red and thick.

I stumbled into the bathroom, husband behind me saying "Are you bleeding?? Put pressure on it!" When I looked in the mirror, my top lip and front teeth were covered in blood. He got me some paper towels, and with very shaky hands I cleaned away all the blood that I could, swallowing a lot of that metallic tasting stuff, to reveal a split in my top lip on the left side, where a claw had no doubt caught and then ripped as she jumped away from my face. It runs from my skin all the way into my mouth in a slightly jagged but vertical line. There are also two less severe scratches on my forehead. I'm lucky she didn't take an eyeball with her on her way.

There's something about cat claws that make scratches swell up immediately, and that side of my lip looked like a grape within five minutes. I thought maybe I needed stitches, but we decided to wait until this morning to decide, after the swelling had gone. I kept ice on it for an hour until finally the bleeding stopped and I fell asleep. This morning I decided I didn't need stitches, but it certainly still hurts.

You don't realize how much you use an appendage or area of your body until you can't use it anymore. I could hardly brush my teeth, I need a straw to drink, and eating cereal this morning? That was a joke. I can't laugh, I can't smile, I can't talk loudly. It's very frustrating.

And then I hit a bird on the way to work this morning, a pretty red one.

When something like these things, things that bother or affect only me, happen, I always think of kharma. What have I done lately, or not done, that would cause this to occur? Gossip, we've been gossiping a lot at the office about the coworker we don't like. I've been trying to like her but yesterday she made me feel like a secretary so I turned around and made her feel stupid. Mean, I know, and it mostly comes from being frustrated because we're so busy lately, and honestly she is a little slow, compared to the rest of us (i.e. I don't have time to explain how to use a copy machine to her). So I'm going to chill out on the gossip and rude comments. Since I can hardly talk, that should be fairly easy.

Satisfaction

Ahhh....

My hair looks terrible when it's still partially wet. Ugh.

The day I had

There were no cold diet Dr. Peppers at the house this morning, the convenient "fridge pack" box sitting open on the lowest pantry shelf. I pulled out a can and stuck it in my gray hobo-style purse, next to my camera, for the car ride to work. As soon as I had unlocked that metal and glass door and dropped off my laptop on a pile of papers on my desk, I put the soda in the freezer for half an hour thinking I'd drink it as a mid-morning wake up call. At about 11:45, when I finally looked up from my keyboard, I gasped and ran for the freezer, hoping against hope that the can hadn't exploded and that I wasn't going to have to spend an hour scrubbing frozen cola off the inside of the cold white box. Luckily it was intact, but it was also surprisingly heavy and hard. Frozen through and through. I moved it to the fridge door, thinking I'd have it as a 3 pm pick-me-up instead. After a sad little cheese sandwich scarfed down for lunch between emails and conference calls, at about 2:30 I was craving that diet Dr. Pepper, fiending for it, feeling the bubbles popping on my tongue with that caramel cola swishing around, the caffeine invigorating my brain for the last couple hours of work. But upon my arrival at the fridge door, I found it still as solid as a rock. I moved it my window sill, in the sun, believing by 4 it would be drinkable, but the sun only made it sweat, creating a large puddle I then had to mop up. Still fretting over my stone-like aluminum can holding in all the goodness I had been needing for the last eight hours, I tried to open it but found it wouldn't budge. I put it back in the fridge at half past five when I finally left for the day. I'm hoping by nine tomorrow morning I will be allowed finally to drink. But I'm taking another can with me, one of the few I slid into my home fridge this morning from that narrow box, just in case.

Monday morning quiet

I'm lost. I'm old. I feel old. A friend told me it was because I was officially in my upper 20s. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, upper 20s is young, childlike even, but when I think about the 27 years that I've lived on this earth and how it only feels like 8 or so have actually passed, it scares me because I wonder how quickly the next 27 will go, the next 42, the next 60, and then I'll be dead. Death doesn't scare me, my own death anyway, but the death of my loved ones does, and the loss of time with them and the loss of being here, breathing in and out, impacting this earth and creating something good. I'm feeling like I'm running out of time for that. I've always felt like I was running to something, hurrying up, and that maybe I won't have the luxury of 70 or 80 good years here, not feeling and remembering and being in all of them anyway.

My parents' 35th anniversary is this year. My dad told me he feels like it's still 1985 and that we should all still be little children running around his backyard. 

I watch people. I watch them and I think about their separate lives, the people that they know, the experiences they've had, the struggles and joys they share with everyone else, making them human, but as a human still separate, still alone, everyone in their bubble. That's a real person, I think, he has a mother somewhere, he has his own life and his own problems, and everyday he gets up and goes to work like the rest of us, never knowing that I exist or that my world exists or even caring about it. I want to know everyone. I think it's sad that there are people on my own street that I've never seen, not in full up-close focus, just drive-by glances through waving fingers. Why I choose, why we choose, the people with whom we share our lives, I'll never understand, not fully. I'm picky with myself, only showing myself to a few when I want to be exposed, utterly open and honest, with everyone, telling everyone my story so they will tell me theirs.

I'm not a writer. I say this because I am unable to write about anyone other than myself, about anything other than my own thoughts and way of being. I can't write fiction. It just doesn't come to me. It seems fake because it is fake. I can fully express my thoughts with my words, most of the time, and most of the time I can make them seem more intriguing than they probably are in reality. So I hope that's enough. I would like to tell stories but I have few stories to tell from my own life, and that is all of which I am capable. 

The story of my life this morning: My green loveseat with the reclining arms makes a pretty good desk. No one has a piece like this, the upholsterer told me when I took it to him last summer-- this antique from my great-aunt's large collection, the beige and orange ruffled rose pattern hiding unknowingly clean and modern lines, appearing suddenly in its new olive green low-pile velvet dress. I use it as a chaise, one arm completely down on which I stretch my sweat-panted legs, the other up to support my back, the laptop in it's named place. Bub sleeps in the dark across the room, curled up on my husband's couch on one of my granny's quilts, snug as a bug, and the cat sits on the arm of the loveseat behind my head, trying every now and then to groom me, as a mother with her kit. I swat at her lovingly. The tv is off and the clouds have silenced the birds; the only sounds are my fingers tapping on these shallow keys and the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen to my left. I just finished a mushy bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, a late, unsatisfying breakfast. I should have been at my office desk two and a half hours ago, but I awoke with those shiny lights in front of my eyes and immediately popped a pill and went back to sleep. Always Mondays, always this time of the month. Bub just woke up and looked across at me, surprised to see me still here. I guess I need to get in the shower, a long and warm one, and wash this all away.

Current Reads

So with all the work going on at work lately (including the added stimulus of the construction work going on in the building behind my desk... buzz buzz Crash) I've needed to chill out at home at night, which for me means picking up a good book and zoning out. Luckily my father, the book nerd that he is, has lovingly provided me with a large stack, as usual.

First there was With by Daniel Harington. I finished this one about a month ago and have since moved it from my nightstand to my home office shelf, but the images it implanted in me have not moved from my mind. It's about a little girl, kidnapped and taken away to live with her kidnapper high up on a mountain, so high she can't escape. He never brings himself to hurt her though, other than the initial stealing. Half the book is told from his dog's point of view, another part from a ghost's. It's a long read, but well worth it. I was slightly disturbed after I finished it, because it brings up a lot of touchy issues, but after it digested a bit, I think it will reign near the top of Most Interesting Reads for me.

After that I moved on to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, but I wasn't able to finish this one. I think it will be good, and I will get to it, as I will get to the other ten books in the stack eventually, but it was too similar to With at the start, and I needed a break from seriousness.

For Christmas, my father-in-law, a fellow art lover, got me a subscription to Style 1900, a magazine dedicated to the Arts and Crafts and Mission art movements. Love it. It's inspirational and beautiful, makes me ohh and aww over pottery vases and oak chairs. About the time I had given up on Edgar, I got my new copy of this which entertained me for a week. I even read the ads in detail.

This past weekend my dad brought me The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. Shame on me, as a Southern woman, that I had never read anything of hers. Surprising too since I took both a high school class and a college course dedicated to Southern writers, both with large sections about women. Nonetheless, I opened it on Monday night, and have stayed up too late every night this week reading. She's dreamlike at one moment, lilting and swaying with her words, painting an Impressionist picture for you, and the next she's matter-of-fact and outright truthful. I have greatly enjoyed it, and not just because I know the places and the people about which she writes so well, like New Orleans and the humidity that makes you so wet you feel like you've been swimming in the Mississippi, and Bubba, the pallbearer who goes to a funeral in his windbreaker suit, swishing as he carries the coffin. 

I've given myself an hour at work to write this. My coworkers are all gone today-- business trips and sick family members have taken them away. I was, as they say, holding down the fort, but I gave myself an hour, and if no one called or wrote an email to me in that hour, I was going home. I take my computer with me and can forward my calls anyway. It's been 45 minutes. I think that's close enough. I want to finish my book today.

Grateful Thursday

Just a quick one today so I can get back to work (yuck)

1) The sun, finally out after 4 straight days of rain

2) Antibiotics. Got a nasty sinus infection going on but these antibiotics are helping to kill it quick. I can sort of breathe today.

3) I have three irises blooming in my front yard!! see below

4) I had a fun birthday, got to eat at a new seafood place, got everything I wanted and was pampered by my husband. 

5) My mother found a pieced-together but not quilted (meaning not stuffed and backed) quilt in my grandmother's attic, and my maternal grandmother said (in a moment of clarity) it was put together by her great-grandmother and great-aunt, so my paternal grandmother, who quilts, quilted it and gave it to me as a present. So it's an heirloom quilt worked on my both sides of my family. It's beautiful too, very patchworked. I'm very proud to have it and am going to figure out how to hang it in my guest room.

taking a break

Wouldn't that be nice? If by "taking a break" I meant I was traveling somewhere exotic and warm with water so clear you catch watch the fish swim next to you, tall palms casting gentile shadows over me while I lay on the sand and get lost in a book. 

Sigh. Nope. I simply mean I'm going to be MIA here on the blog for a week or so. My company's software is set to launch on the 15th, so these coming weeks are going to be insane, very little time for chit chat. I even forgot to eat breakfast this morning, tsk tsk. 

Personally I think my boss is already insane if he thinks we'll be done by then. Not to mention he'll be out of town on that day, like my two coworkers and I can handle all this on our own. I have to set up some way of tracking payments... it's an monthly fee, so I've got to figure out a way to set it up so there's an automatic notification when payment is due, or automatic withdrawal. Fun stuff. Already been on the phone twice this morning with a credit card processing company. And the lawyer needs another check. Ugh.

I'll check in later this week hopefully and might lurk on some blogs after hours, you never know.

Hi ho, hi ho...

drifting apart

I had a dream last night, a vivid full-color dream about an old friend of mine from high school.

I've mentioned this friend before in my blog, maybe even more than once. I don't know why he's so important to me. Well, he's not-- I mean I haven't seen him since April of 2004 (I remember the exact date and time and reason), and we only send a random email maybe 4 times a year. Despite that he pops into my mind often and into my dreams even more often.

A bit of him must reside somewhere inside a bit of me, and that leftover trace checks in on me on a regular basis. I can't remember anymore if we were really as good of friends as I think we were. Maybe I made it all up, maybe we were just acquaintances and I've romanticized our relationship, turned it into, in my memories, more than it ever was. But I don't think so. He's probably a different person now, completely different like I am. We probably wouldn't even get along. No, we would. We would.

We met at the end of sixth grade. He had a goofy bowl cut and wore whatever his mom put him in, and I was the shy, lanky girl transferring schools. We both joined the middle school student council and by eighth grade we were pretty well inseparable, at least in the sense that we secretly liked each other, stolen glances and brushes of the hand, the first person we went to when we got to school in the morning, leaning around the lockers waiting on the bell. We didn't talk about that though, never, we were only ever friends. He moved after eighth to go to boarding school up north. 

I remember his going away party, kids running around acting like the fools we all were. He walked over to a couple isolated patio chairs and motioned me to follow. I still remember my heart leaping into my throat, just knowing that he was going to tell me something serious, admit his feelings, or at least express how much he'd miss me in particular. But this annoying girl that used to follow me around everywhere did what she did best, and followed. I feel like I missed out on something momentous there, a life-changing moment that didn't happen, and I wonder what that life would have looked like if it had, if I had gotten the chance to follow that path instead of this one. He was able to slide his address to me later, and we were pen pals while he was away.

He came back to my school in 11th grade, boarding school not exactly a good fit for him. He was changed, I was changed. We tried to rekindle those feelings, but they weren't there anymore. We even went on a date, although neither of us called it a date. But what else is dinner and a rented movie at an empty house for a couple of teenagers? I told him about my eighth grade crush and we laughed, but by the end of the night he was reading the newspaper and I was throwing popcorn at him, teasing him for his old bowl cut. There was no romance, only great friendship, although there always a lingering trace of those old feelings, for me anyway. Not enough to act on, or even think about, but feelings like that don't just disappear, ever I think. But from then on, there was no mention of us as anything other than best friends, and we were happy that way.

We drifted apart in college. I started dating someone he didn't like at the end of high school, and he went off to Texas to school while I stayed around here. I didn't understand the importance of him then, as much as I wish I had. Once that's gone it's so hard to get it back, especially when we're so far away from each other. 

In eighth grade I didn't know what this word meant, but by 11th of course I did: I think he might be gay. There's just little things, motions, and the fact that he's never had a girlfriend, that lead me to that conclusion. He used to know the dance, every bit of it, to NSync's Bye Bye Bye, not that that proves anything. He lives in DC now.  His pictures on facebook always seem to contain more males than females, but that's not proof either. 

It wouldn't matter to me, of course. I just want him back as a friend. I want him to know how a part of him still lives in me, but I don't know that he'd understand. He probably would, he's probably feeling the same about me, at least in the perfect world that exists in my head he does. I don't know that my husband would understand. It's a different kind of love I have for him, a historical, brotherly love. Maybe that's it, I want him to be gay, so that I can have them both with no consequences. 

We're facebook friends and I just messaged him. Nothing serious, just "how are you." I suppose that's the first step. I don't remember what my dream was about anymore, just that when I woke up I had this lingering feeling of him having been there, the feeling of being understood in a way that only someone who's known you that long through that many stages of your life can, acceptance and comfort. It's lasted me most of the day, which is nice.