I am sick sick sickly in bed with mono. I have the energy of someone three times my age, and a day out and about wears me down to a shuffle. It's been this way since the end of October, although the fever, chills, and jaundice have subsided.

Please note, although this is the longest sickness of my year, it is by far not the most serious health thing that happened in 2011.

And now, note that despite the extended illnesses, fatigue, and shuffling, I am so much happier now than last year at the same time. There has been old houses shed like hermit crab shells and there is now lanky responsible wonderfulness that caretakes like nobody's business.

I had a few missteps along the way. I am learning responsibility like a kindergartener tying shoelaces, all fumbly and slow but determined. I am discovering that yes, Virginia, your body does start falling apart. But it's not so bad when your life is coming together.

Tags: boys, good things, good times, homes, life, life events, ponderings, sickness
Current Location: north
how i feel: checking in

This is not about whiskey.

It's about television dinners. Wait, no. Television dinners have golden curtains and a multi-generational circle of happy family members, along with steam rising from turkeys.  T.V. dinners, that's what I meant to say.

I have entered a time of my life that I never expected to enter. The time when, due to time constraints meeting up with budget constraints for a few drinks (this is not a post about whiskey!), T.V. dinners are suddenly the things that keep me going. 

I leave the house before daylight, get home after dark. I am carrying a big ol' artist's portfolio bag and a backpack loaded down with books and tools. And when I step off the bus and know I have 5 odd blocks to traipse home still, I am almost not ashamed to admit that the thought of a minute's work and the microwaved sustenance it'll provide, well, that thought warms. my. heart.

I guess we all find ourselves in places we didn't anticipate. Just some of those places aren't as lame as T.V. dinner land.

Tags: eating, food, long days, school
Current Location: 55 seconds if thawed.

Oh, angry little fumes.
You taste like whiskey,
and you keep me going.

Oh cocky me, oh cocky my.

Like several drinks into the evening, and already things get concrete. Clarity shoots down and rests on my shoulder, its beak polishing itself against my ear.

I've got letters to compose and dreams to remember; pages to ink and thoughts to think. Five weeks in and I've gotten complacent with school; totally overscheduled but inherently overestimating my own pink brains as they roll around while they're working. 

Long story short? Confused but overqualified. Weirdly distant and strangely invested. Please consult Weakerthans' lyrics for additional information and a limited time offer on pamphleteering.

Tags: horses, late nights, ponderings, whiskey again

Oooh, there are supplies.
Oooh, there are notebooks.

Waking up at six-thirty in the morning? No big deal, compared to the uphill struggle of finding the properly suiting messenger bag.

Five classes, working full time? No, see, should I wear flats or pumps?

Oh, oh, it's gonna be a cloistering fall, with piles of papers and lots of deadlines, and not one, no, but two assignments featuring hand-lettering have already popped up on the syllabi (Oh, syllabus. You perch on my chest and cough up course credits while your little nub teeth drip with red ink. ).

Remember, remember, the 17th/20th/and 24th of September, these being the deadlines for the payment plan/first day of school/last day to add or drop classes.

Tags: deadlines, fall, good things, notebooks, paper, school
how i feel: completely studious
what i hear: Jeffrey Lewis-To Be Objectified

When I was in, let's see, probably about fifth grade, I decided that I was going to keep a kitten. Secretly.


I had a plan.


The plan was to accept one of the kittens that a classmate was giving away,and to put it in my lunchbox and take it home with my carpool. Then, once I got it home, I was going to keep it in my (rather large) toybox while I was away at school, and then let it out to frolic when I came home. Needless to say, this plan did not work.


Guess where it stopped working?

Yep. Right about when I tried to convince my classmate that, yes, my mom said I could have a kitten, and could I just put it in my lunchbox? He didn't fall for it. I have my doubts as to his regard to my character ever since.

Just a little anecdote for you. It's not a metaphor or anything like that.

Tags: childhood, kittens, lies, memories, things, thoughts

    It's been the longest night for a long time, and I am riding unsafely home. Headlamp missing, taillight flickering in a feeble attempt to catch up.

     The houses I pass are a slideshow of porchlights with most channels mild, but every now and then one will flash a scene. It is late, and I am looking up at the stars in between pedalling madly up hills. It is late, and the van that passes me is stacked with Sunday newspapers. It is late, and I am alliterating again.

         Most porches I pass have a sofa, but this one has a sofa with a man passionately kissing a woman, and then my bike has moved on and they are gone, and the romantic part of me asks why I haven't been kissing madly on porches lately. There are mosquitos,  I say. Beds are soft, and porches are so public. But to be overcome! They were surely overcome, those two liplocked lovers, and under the mad fluorescent they made their marks on each other. Bah! To be a feast for bugs, to bare skin in balmy night air, to bask in the jaundice yellow of the porch light. Who needs it?

So maybe I do. What of it?

Oh, powdered donut...I'm sorry.
Oh, second powdered donut, I'm really sorry.

You see, I'd been drinking. I'd been drinking and talking and at one point I got all maudlin thinking of

1.) Truck stops.
2.) Old roommates.
3.) Times gone by.

and then things got philosophical and my maudlin-oriented brain was forced to shift gears, right there in the bar. I had 8 mini straws lined up in front of me, and suddenly we were talking about free will (except in a really coherent way, maybe not like in previous times). And that went on for absolute ages...puzzling out the details of existence, figuring out what various plot points in Lev Grossman's Magicians were meant to represent. It was good and dense conversation, and although I had stopped drinking by then, the bar rang last call and I walked home. And you were there, powdered donuts. I microwaved a tortilla with some cheese, but you were still there. So fluffy, so sweet.

Ha! Take that!

Six something in the morning and by golly I am here, an early riser at last (or is it a first?). Blue light turned to daylight right outside my window, and the bus rumbles started ages ago.

Whew. Wouldn't want to tire myself out. That's quite enough for now.

Transmissions over and out.

Tags: morning
how i feel: morning breath

Oh, it's been absolute ages.


            I was at the bar just now, and when I returned to my table with a free drink, it made me think of other kindnesses. And there was one big kindness in particular that rang to mind, and I thought that it would behoove me to mention it in writing.

            But by one drink later it had fluttered off into the night, so I sat there in my skirt that doesn't quit and I called up a laundry list of all the other kindnesses that had come my way. None of them rang true as the one big kindness that had inspired me, but there's never any harm nor foul in listing off good things.

            It's been a long hard winter, folks. I've been cowering at inkpens and rustling in the closets, but I feel like maybe spring has come. Maybe the daylight saved me, maybe it was as simple as a free drink. Goodness knows, I'd hate to be one of those infrequent journallers who only pops in with dramatic announcements and then vanishes for months upon months more. We'll see.

Tags: kindness, love, spring