The World is Collapsing Around Our Ears...

Things have just been feeling a little upside-down lately. All around us. It's been frustrating and scary and sad, and I know a lot of people who are holding their breath lately...including us.

I saw this quote a while ago in O Magazine and I thought I would pass it along, because I like it so much and it seems appropriate at this time in our history and at this time of year:

I know
It's hard to be reconciled
not everything is exactly
the way it ought to be

but please turn around
and step into the future
leave memories behind
enter the land of hope

—Zbigniew Herbert, A Life

i'm sitting here thinking these thoughts

today as a result of my job, i met a celebrity hairstylist. who often does makeovers. who said i should cut my hair. not happening anytime soon. but i did love him anyway.

today i had a funny conversation with my parents about everyday things. and i had a good giggle with them and they finished each others sentences and my mom tried to give me soup and my dad was pretending to be grumpy... and it's just such a good feeling. to have awesome parents. who are fun and we all love each other. and i realize how fragile those things are in this world, how tenuous of a grip love and true friendship can be. and i really do find myself, if not daily, at least on a weekly basis, feeling so happy that i have a family i can count on.

right now william is washing his bike gear and molly is snuffling on her favorite chair, and the heat is running, and i can hear myself typing, and it feels snug. and like home.

i have developed a weird dry cough in the last couple days (shortly after the accidental shrimp-eating incident) that is only occasionally somewhat helpful. but mostly the tickle resides in my throat like a mosquito in your ear in the dark. and it's so annoying, to me, but also probably to everyone around me. sorry everyone.

i had lunch with my friend fatty today. it was a late, last-minute thing. we gushed, for the eleventy millionth, but certainly not last, time about having FIFTEENTH row tickets to see tom petty this summer. rock and roll heaven. luckily we have good enough senses of humor about ourselves to ignore or poke fun at our differences in order to remain good friends (he's turning into a conservative old white man, i'm a crazy creative liberal). one of my few from college. hey fatty, how about you get me and cindy some squirt guns for hawaii??? come on, dude.

lately i have felt a little down. i don't know why, considering the impending fun that is about to explode in like 76 days. it's the weather maybe, or just those tectonic life shifts that are so much more like icebergs. . . way below the surface, your life changing, raw, new nerves exposed.

that said, don't worry! i'm ok. just stress and lack of sleep, most likely. and a lack of reading lately too. just started a new book, one mississippi (not as fun to type as to physically write, by the way) and i'm really liking it. also an interview with the cloons in esquire never hurt a girl's happiness!

i wish i could find a way to bottle up "getting in the zone". you know, where you hit this productivity high and can do a bunch of stuff in a hour and feel good about it and not think about sitting on the couch once? yeah bottle that up and take it when you need it. that would be awesome.

also, am i doomed to be a messy person forever?

today i got to wear my new raincoat. it was pretty fun! i have a thing about coats and jackets. it's getting worse. my little addictive personality...

ok. time for grilled cheese and tomato soup. the gourmet kind in the gold box. :) it's rainy and i'm lazy. and that just sounds right for a cough, right?

today i. . .

had a headache all day (four in four days, yes! am i going to explode? stay tuned.)

stood in the rain waiting for the bus

walked home in said rain

was cold

had a ton of work to do

so much that i forgot about a meeting.

felt bad about a lot of stuff i'm too tired to blog about

my new shoes? ate my foot. they suck. i am hoping i can take them back and call them defective. i have horrible bruises, yes, bruises on the back of each heel. (the cute purple ones with the elastic-back heel that seemed so great? they suck. and today i talked to no less than three women, one of which gave away practically brand new tory burch flats with the elastic-back heel becuase of the pain they inflicted. save yourself the pain and the money. they are BAD).

but

i had a spare pair at work by TOTAL luck. hooray for that! otherwise idon't know what i would have done.

had comfort food dinner made by my mom

listened to the flaming lips and foo fighters on the bus

came home to my sweet dog and my fiance

a good ending, no?

here comes the fall

labor day weekend. i can't help it, but it makes me a little sad. a three-day last hurrah to summer. although summer is still runnin', according to the calendar.
don't get me wrong, i love fall clothes, i love the holidays, i love the smell of leaves, all that good stuff. but i'm leaving my summer behind. as imperfect as it was, the world is now tilting toward winter, and that, i just don't want to deal with. i feel like we just emerged from all that. i blinked and it was over.
so i'm dealing with a bit of the blues tonight. this too shall pass, as my mom tells me whenever things seem weird.
that being said, i had a perfectly lovely weekend.
friday night i went to the state fair (a huge deal here, in case you don't know) for my best friend's birthday. we ate a lot of junk food--cheese curds, pronto pups, key lime pie on a stick—saw a lot of strange people, and genuinely enjoyed the night—the weather was perfect, food was good, friends were happy. she got diamond earrings from her boy! woo hoo! a good time for all.
saturday i got to see a good friend who moved a state away a while ago, and it was good to see her and her husband. we went together to another friend's house to see their three-week-old baby. three weeks! already he is alert and looking around and just generally being one of the cutest things on earth. then, as if i couldn't get enough babies, i met y, the new baby that belongs to r. i am in love. he is so sweet. two days old when i met him, with that new-baby wah-wah cry, what an absolute miracle. so it was a babyful day, and babyful sounds like beautiful for a reason.
sunday, sunday, sunday. shopping abounded. i got some new threads for work, which was a nice change because normally i can't find what i want--and then when i finally do, it is definitely not in my price range, of course--and i leave the stores disgusted. finally! stuff that fits, that's cute, that's affordable. i'm still lusting after some j. crew stuff, and of course some even more expensive stuff than that, but i think i did pretty well at the gap (of all places, i haven't been able to find ANYTHING there for about a year at least, but hey, awesome! that gap and i are back to being friends). i love that william will shop with me--with enthusiasm.
sunday morning, we went to the farmer's market and came home with pounds of produce, not to mention two armloads of flowers that are absolutely gorgeous (sunflowers, gladiolus, these weird/cool fuzzy brain things, azaleas). we are so doing farmer's market flowers for the wedding. so cheap and so beautiful! i will miss the farmers' market when it leaves me. then, last night, we headed out to see one of william's friends from grad school, who recently moved to new york city. it was good to see him and others, have some really good food (a blt with basil, who'd have thunk? it was awesome!), good drinks (i love strongbow), and some good giggles, especially when we left the bar and william had had a few. he kept me entertained with a steady stream of chatter the whole way home.
today was a great example of a do-nothing day. we watched—yes, we—a whole's day's worth of america's next top model programming on mtv. the total definition of sloth, but seriously, why didn't someone clue me in to the fact that this is such a FANTASTIC show? i'm so out of the loop!
otherwise, a quick list of impressions of the weekend:
ferris wheels, baby animals, fried cheese curds, hot sun, cool breeze, open windows, napping, back rubs, corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes, tank tops, cold beer, loud music, celebrations of all kinds of birthdays, couch time, pillows, molly snuggles, scent of new babies, brimming tears, television, documentaries, sweet words, clean laundry, bacon, fresh flowers, free time.
ah, my friends. free time. here comes the fall.

writing it all down

i'm starting this thing where i'd like to be writing here every day. even if it's a short entry.

william's grandma and grandpa hung calendars on their wall and recorded details of days' events, even if it was just the temperature and the amount of fish they caught. and now they have like fifty years of days where they can look back. their own farmers' almanac. something, that i'm sure will be much sweeter for their relatives to look at and remember.

back in the day, i blogged anonymously, and after a while, it was sometimes up in the two-to-four entries a day category. not all of them were good, but it was good exercise, good therapy, good practice. and now i look back and there are definitely moments there that i wouldn't remember if not for my writing. which is sad, because some things are so joyful, some are so awful... how could i forget? of course, that was anonymous blogging, and so the nature of the blogs change once you know that a)people are actually reading you, and b) that you might be writing about life experiences that might affect them--those that you know and love. that's ok though. sometimes i get afraid my memory is getting worse, which upsets me further when i think about that two of my favorite people in the whole world died from illnesses that eventually completely erased their memories and reprogrammed them with incorrect ones.

memories aren't accurate anyway. and when we write about them, i've learned, we are, in a way, cannabalizing our own memory, just like how when you play a game of telephone the words change. it's better than letting all those things get buried.

i just read one of my favorite blogs, from the back nine, and she reveals her mom's diary pages, which were often just four or five fragmented sentences that bring floods of memories back for her. or even small insights into her mother in a way she wouldn' t have understood at the time. (here i'm just conjecturing--i just feel i might be able to get that somewhere down the line).

in any case, the challenge is on for myself. i need to do more writing, be more creative, nurture that. i do love blogging, i do love writing, and therefore, i should do more of it. your comments and emails egg me on further. thanks for those. keep them coming.

ok, so on the list today besides that:
i hate money. hate it, hate it, hate it. i have to get better at managing it (although i've come a long way already, i still have a ways to go). i also need to actively seek out some freelance jobs because i need some extra cash lately. weddings! expensive! no matter how you cut it! plus a girl needs some fall work clothes, and stat. well, sort of stat. it's still august, i know.

also. i need to find some ways to focus all my nervous and bad energies. i would like to, besides write more, which often helps... work out. i know. i hate working out. i think i hate it more than the average person. but i'm getting to an age... agh... where i think my metabolism is slowing down. and no, i'm not heavy by any means, but i am out of shape and getting not toned and i'm stressed out all the time and it's good for me anyway, so i should find a way to do it, even when i'm tired and want to veg (which is all the time), and find something that's marginally fun. i think yoga and pilates would be perfect for my energy and frustration problems, but i also need to take brisk walks, do some resistance training, and maybe get some tennis in (i do so love tennis). but it's a lack of time and ... will power, i guess.

william is right now watching a show called fat march. he says "you can't even make that shit up!" is that why i'm thinking about this?