riding

Yesterday I bought a bike.

I've been wanting one for upwards of two years now. One of my favorite activities in North East was riding my mom's bike all over the backroads, winding up the valley to The Hill (the line of the original Erie lakeshore, in the days before Daniel dozed among the lions) and plunging down to the water. Early summer mornings, smelling of dew on grape leaves and ferns tucked into hollows, were just about as good as coffee.

So coming to South Bend, leaving the hills and the immediacy of the lake, was even more difficult for lack of a bike. The city was flat and monochromatic and I was stuck in one place. But I'm strapped for money, and I haven't felt inclined to by a cheap bike at Wal-Mart that would make me feel like I was wrestling a cantankerous horse every time I took it out.

And lately with the lethargy that's been plaguing me (spoils of depression, impending unemployment, and the frustration of thwarted purpose) I've been wanting to do something active. Something healthier than sleeping all day and eating Pringles.

So yesterday I bought a folding patio table and two cheap patio chairs, so that I can sit comfortably on the porch eating Pringles and watch the day pass like all good laid-back Midwestern summer folk. And that's how I bumped into Jim.

Jim lives downstairs. His living room is directly below mine. We used to have volume wars over the radio, television, and stereo where the dishes would rattle in my cupboards to the bass lines of belted Bette Middler and the Grease soundtrack and I would call his phone which he would never answer and leave polite cheery messages asking him to turn it down. It was a Saturday ritual.

Jim works the night shift. He's offered to get me an application for his data processing company. Starting pay is twelve bucks an hour, and I wouldn't have to work nights. He seems wary of people and keeps almost entirely to himself, and last summer for awhile he grew red chilis in the only sunny spot in the yard, next to the garbage cans. I don't think he ever picked them. Later in the summer he pulled up the stakes and left the chilis in a pile on the lawn. If you look closely, you can still see where they were. They were the only proof I had for awhile, besides the coming and going of his beige Astro van out front, of his presence. But the few times I talked to him, he's been nice.

So I ran into him yesterday as he tinkered with a bicycle in the front yard. I stopped to chat. He said he'd just bought the bike, and did I know of anyone who wanted one, because he was going to sell his old one. It's in fabulous condition and he bought it for a grand, but it's a racing road bike and the angle hurts his wrists, since he's getting older.

I said, "I'm looking for one."

Eagerly he brought it out and showed it to me and let me take it for a spin. It's red, and lightweight, and perfect.

So I got it for a hundred bucks, which includes a helmet, extra pedals, a valve, and (I think) gloves. It was pleasant to see the soft shy joy in his eyes when he wheeled it to my back step and watched me do a happy dance holding onto the seat.

I went for a short ride this morning, up Riverside Drive where the road spoons the river and the air smells in places of mud and putrification, but mostly of undergrowth and trees. It was lovely.

The only potential problem is traffic negotiation -- I live in a place where you have to travel to hit the backroads, and I've never really ridden on busy streets. But, as always, live and learn.

change in plan

No, I still haven't sent out the email explaining my job situation.

I thought that since I haven't heard your lovely voices in so long, I would tell you by telephone instead. I have nearly all of your numbers, so expect to hear from me within the week.

If I don't have your number, and you have my email, zip me a line and I'll give you a call!

the [flat plains of Indiana] are alive

Spent this evening doing laundry, reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and listening to a Gillian Welch album that I bought for exactly one stick of butter from my downstairs neighbor.

I've felt the need for new music. It's time for a revival of self, and when I lack all concentration to read, music engages me on an entirely different plane of soul. (Sometimes I think a better one; don't shoot me, fellow literature-lovers.) Literature raises consciousness, often by breaking; music, even while breaking, heals.

I don't know if I entirely believe what I just wrote, but for right now, there it is. I'll have to think about it further. I only know that when I need something to stitch the lips of a spiritual gash together, I turn to music.

So in addition to Utah Phillips, I've ordered some albums by Sufjan Stevens and Bright Eyes. (One of those semi-self-destructive moments of pure rebellion against the possibility of future financial squeakiness. But I kept it to a minimum.)

I wish the mail were faster. I want them now.

i think of you

Toying with the idea of doing laundry today. (I hate doing laundry.) Nothing is particularly clean, but then, I don't really have anywhere pressing to be when tomorrow kicks off the new work week. Except finding a job.

This morning I wasted money on a boxed Utah Phillips set, because it was the only one on which I could find the most painfully sweet love song I've ever heard, on Prairie Home Companion on the way to the beach last Sunday.

clean

I purged my office today. I opted to do it on a Saturday, when no one else was around. A nice quiet exit, no fanfare. Everything I left behind neatly labeled, all of my personal effects (books, French press, calendar) boxed into my car.

I'm sitting at home watching The Mummy on a glorious Saturday afternoon. It's tempting to drive up to Lake Michigan, but I'm not yet to the point of driving an hour to sit on a beach full of strangers by myself. Might get there though; MP is on the plane to Italy for a month and Colette is busy, and I really ought to learn how to do for myself even more completely than I've learned to date.

I've learned it well. This week has been harrowing, somewhat, but I've had a lot of support. My sister even came up to visit me for a couple of days this week. And now that it's behind me I'm feeling kind of clean-slatish. I'm free to put away the anxiety and start over.

Of course I'm not always positive and yay-this-is-great. It's been hard. The dreams are still bad and still exhausting and I still wake up feeling like I didn't sleep. Occasionally I feel vastly lost. And whatever I do, I ultimately have to face it alone.

But that's not entirely true. Friends have been pitching in not just for moral support but to help me find jobs. I don't feel quite safe to believe it sometimes. It's always been simpler to go it alone -- or, at least, I've always done it alone. But I guess that's what learning interdependence is about. Maybe this is part of gaining a hometown? Because this is different from when I first moved here. I know some people now. I'm half-established. People are looking out for me, when I haven't asked them to. (That's the real kicker.)

And I'm hopeful. No matter what the day's been like, every time I pray, I lift my head feeling hopeful.

Now there's just to see what's next.

nyasa

Nyasa stopped me this morning on the way to my office. I paused in the unlit hallway, purse in hand, and leaned against the wall while he said, "I heard you're leaving."

Nyasa is a short, round, forcefully built man with dark skin and eyes that have a lion-like intensity. He's lived at the Center for a number of months; I'm not exactly sure how many, since I don't work directly with the guests in my current position, and before this I worked with toddlers, and he doesn't have children here. I told him what had happened, and he rubbed his chin and looked affronted and thoughtful.

"There's something going on," he said.

I nodded.

"Do you have something else?"

"No. I'm scrambling," I said. This is a familiar predicament for most of the guests, and I feel badly and irresponsible and far too lucky and guiltily blessed that I can say, "I don't have a plan yet, but it will be okay" to people for whom a similar situation would mean a turn back on the streets.

"I'll pray for you," Nyasa said. "Because this isn't right. And because, even though I haven't talked to you that often, you've never acted like you're above us."

I felt the same intensity come into my eyes.

"Thank you," I said.

Nyasa is a Muslim. Oftentimes he doesn't seem to like people very much, and you can see the temper glittering just under his clothes. His temper flares up at injustice. His promise to pray for me moved me more than that promise usually does, because it didn't roll off his tongue as an overworn cliche from a person who didn't know what else to say. He doesn't usually say anything to me. And I know he prays five times a day.

Novice

The June heat smells of sun and skin.
A black ant darting over the concrete step
runs across my toes. When I wiggle them
it pours itself down the slope of my pinky
and continues on its erratic path.

I watch the ant and want its connection with detail.
I envy its intimate knowledge of surface--
its confrontation with the pockmarks in concrete, in skin

its bodily understanding of the change in landscape
from sidewalk to grass blade to weed leaf
to the breathing movement of blood-heated flesh

its commonplace awareness of the difference
in a centimeter between sunlight and shade
the indifference of obstacle in tree or rock:

The world in its infinite variety merely something
to be encountered and climbed over, a path
in the certain, daily labor for a colony's survival

while I lay my feet over vast areas of the microscopic
unaware of the minute mountains and valleys
pressing against the cells of my soles, feeling air,
overwhelmed by sky.

Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade: me and my sister

And Will? Why, he's the last peach, high on a summer tree. Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they're not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dimestore pencil sharpener; it's not that. It's just, you know, seeing them pass, that's how they'll be all their life; they get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? how can it happen to them?

But Jim, now, he knows it happens, he watches for it happening, he sees it start, he sees it finish, he licks the wound he expected, and never asks why: he knows. He always knew. Someone knew before him, a long time ago, someone who had wolves for pets and lions for night conversants. Hell, Jim doesn't know with his mind. But his body knows. And while Will's putting a bandage on his latest scratch, Jim's ducking, weaving, bouncing away from the knockout blow which must inevitably come.

So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim, Jim breaking two windows in a haunted house because Will's along, Will breaking one window instead of none, because Jim's watching. God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other.


Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

progressions

Monday I cried all day. Yesterday I was optimistic and peaceful. Today I'm nervous and tired and a little sad and terrified of the future. It's not like anything's screaming, "I'm your perfect job!!!" right away.

Most of all I don't want to leave South Bend. I came here under similar circumstances to the one I find myself in now; except that then I knew no one but my roommate and didn't particularly give a damn about the area, and now I have ties that I don't want to see broken. In Meg and Phillip I have the closest thing to family I could ever want so far from home, and I have a good many friends. I have a lovely apartment (which I finally cleaned last night, and walking over washed floors free of dirt and cat hair is an unbelievable sensation) in a perfect neighborhood.

So I don't want to leave. Which narrows down my possibilities somewhat. And, with my exhaustion and post-traumatic stress from my current job, and my old fears of uselessness in anything not relating to academics, my confidence has plateaued into a dull, whatever sort of feeling.

I need to refill my medication.

But still, my whole world is open to me. I have this sudden, unexpected gift of freedom, and I need to know what to do with it. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who knew her whole future, who always had a plan. She was going to get married at twenty-one and be a high school English teacher. Then she shot certainty in the face and dropped the education focus of her major and decided not to go to grad school right away. She did things she never thought she could do. She left home and trusted God to guide her hands to carve a new life for herself in a land she had never seen. At some point she grew into me.

But she's still there, the planner, the detail fixater, and she's delivering large litters of kittens in her anxiety. There's no plan, she says. There's got to be a plan. Find a plan.

And I have no idea how.

But this is what it's all about, isn't it? Christ says not to worry about tomorrow (and adds one of the wisest things I've ever heard: Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own). James writes that we must never say, Tomorrow I will do this and go there, because we can't know what tomorrow will bring. Instead we must say, If God wills it, tomorrow I will do this and go there. We have to bring it back to the source.

Just a month ago I was planning my Christmas vacation, and how I would spend the extra paycheck that Center employees get in December. I'll never get that paycheck. I don't even know if I can go home for Christmas this year, since any job I begin won't give me a week's vacation right away, or possibly even a few days' vacation.

And in a very gritty way, I don't even know if I'll have income in three weeks. Things have been pointing in this direction for awhile, and I wouldn't see it, because it terrified me beyond my ability to think about it. And today I have to think about it.

But good things have come out of it, even now when all is in flux and I can't fall asleep at night for panicking and I can't rest when I fall asleep for dreaming. I know who my friends are. I know the loyal ones, the ones who have come around me, some from unexpected corners, and surrounded me with practical support. And that is something I've always had extreme difficulty believing -- my faith has failed in regard to firm belief in the love of other people. Now, however, I know.

And I'm wiser in regard to the world of business and profession. And I know very clearly what I have to do. I have to go to grad school. That will take at least a year to accomplish. In the meantime, I suppose, any job will do. I just need to pay the bills.

I don't know why I've been running so hard for so long from the fulfillment of what I know is my academic destiny. The responsibility has frightened me. Sometimes, like Prufrock,

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

But I can't run anymore, I think. It's time to go to Ninevah. I've buried my talent behind the garage and run away to sea and hidden myself in the cargo bay; but I've been spit out on the stretch of sand where I started, and now I have to dig up the talent and take it to Ninevah. There are fires in my bones of what I need to say to the world, and lurking behind a desk hasn't helped me say it. Yet.

So it's time. I am frightened and tired and I have not quite heard the voice of God saying, "Go to a land I will show you," like last time. But I have heard him say, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you." I'm not quite sure of the implications, but there it is.

Walking beyond my vision. (It's hard.) But it's getting me back in touch with the real.

This is how I feel today

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.

I wake in a god. I wake in arms holding my quilt, holding me as best they can inside my quilt.

Someone is kissing me--already. I wake, I cry "Oh," I rise from the pillow. Why should I open my eyes?

I open my eyes. The god lifts from the water. His head fills the bay. He is Puget Sound, the Pacific; his breast rises from pastures; his fingers are firs; islands slide wet down his shoulders. Island slip blue from his shoulders and glide over the water, the empty, lighted water like a stage.

Today's god rises, his long eyes flecked in clouds. He flings his arms, spreading colors; he arches, cupping sky in his belly; he vaults, vaulting and spread, holding all and spread on me like skin.


Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

caught!

So I talked with Chef Eddie (the Latin Chef) from the Palais Royale today, and yes, folks, he found my blog! (And here I thought it was difficult to find.)

I've been laughing about it for the past ten minutes. Who can ever predict life's bizarrity? I spend so much time blogging for my own sake and for the people who live far away, that I forget (except regarding employers) that people nearby can read it too.

I confess I feel that it puts me at something of a disadvantage -- here's my whole life and inner thoughts laid out for an acquaintance to read, huzzah, a book on Sarah! But I don't mind so much -- anyone who knows me for any length of time will find out exactly what I'm like sooner rather than later.

And I'm swinging by the Palais on Friday, where I'll get to chat with him for a bit and see pics of his wife and year-old son.

It's like life is this grand dance of hilarity. I love it.

(Hi, Eddie.)

the deal

Hey, guys! Thanks for all of your responses.

I will be sending out a mass e-mail, blog-post style, in a couple of days, when I have a good list put together. In the meantime, I pray your patience.

There's a lot of figuring out to do.

lend me your ears

I am resigning my position at the Center.

Send me your e-mail addresses and I'll tell you all about it.

the doctor dilemma, part 2

So, I had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Give-Out-My-Address on Friday. I cunningly waited until the end of the appointment when the nurse assistant had already filled out my continued prescription to bring up the matter of his ethical breach of my privacy.

"So...doctor," I said. "Last week when I came home, a couple of missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints were waiting for me. They said you had given them my name and address."

"Yeah," he said. "You had mentioned that you wanted to find a church, and I thought it was something you might be interested in."

"Well," I said, "you mentioned nothing about it at the appointment. And you really shouldn't have given out my address without my permission."

I got a blank look. "Were they awful?" he said.

"No, they were fine, and I appreciate the thought. But my address is unpublished, doctor. I'm not in the phone book and you can't call Information to find me. It was a breach of my privacy to give out my address without my permission. You really should have called me before you handed it out."

"Oh...oh," he stammered. "Well, I've never done anything like that before. I just thought it might help you out."

"Again, I appreciate the thought," I said. "But you really should have called me. I certainly hope this won't happen again."

"Never," he said fervently.

"Great! See you in a month," I said.

He mumbled something and hurried out of the office, either frightened or pissed.

Now, honestly. How can you not know that passing out private information is wrong? And I feel badly for the guy, if he really didn't know, but I still think I'm going to have to find a new doctor and turn him in. What he did was unethical TO HIS PROFESSION, and I'm sure if he did it once he'll do it again.

The thing is, I've always been a loud-mouthed advocate of standing up for yourself and addressing situations that are wrong; otherwise they'll keep happening and you've robbed yourself of what little power you have as an ordinary citizen (and often as a woman). So in this case, although I'm not exactly irate about the situation and not all that worried about the missionaries, I feel that I need to execute a unity of action here and follow my own mandates.

But it's probably going to have to wait until after the Golf Tournament on Monday. This week is going to be crazy.

And I wonder how it is that I'm so terrifying to people. I wasn't angry when I spoke with him, I didn't raise my voice, and I didn't use abusive language. I was simply firm, clear, and reasonable. And it seemed to scare the crap out of him.

This happens a lot. And it can't be just because I'm tall. Maybe because I'm articulate.

I dunno.

on flirting

Last night as I smiled big and pretty and waved a collection jar around, and struck up some conversations with men, I had an epiphany.

See, I've always been bad at flirting. Particularly with strangers. Until now I've chalked it up to my shyness, introvertedness, residual teenage awkwardness, lack of physical graces, or that social ineptitude I'm always trying to hide because I don't want everyone else to see how much I don't fit in.

But lately, when men seem to be flocking to my door in undesirable droves (Andrew, laughing, said the other day, "Every guy in the world has been asking her out lately. It's like Sarah's new thing is being the hottest commodity in town!") and I can't deny my attractiveness, I've been able to pull off the flirting a little bit. And last night while I had them laughing with my semi-witty rejoinders, I was thinking about a hundred other things -- the story I'm starting to write, my cat, how a friend of mine going through a tough time is doing, how I was tired and just wanted to watch a movie on my couch. And I brought myself forcibly back to the present to laugh at something inane the forty-something man said, and realized, flirting bores me.

There are so many things I'd actually like to talk about. Don't get me wrong, I love a witty, fun, fast-paced, ping-pong conversation where the hilarity swells to epidemic proportions (this is a trademark with MP and me at parties) but those are not the same as striking just the right body pose and just the right winning smile and saying just the right almost-naughty, ego-petting things to some guy I've never seen before, especially when any idiot can see that the two of us have nothing in common.

Now later in the evening, I met this other guy and we had a great, intense conversation about the failure of the public education system to address the needs of gifted kids. He invited me to do something afterward (but I was seriously beat, folks, so I just went home), but I got his card and gave him mine, and plan to follow up. I don't think he's the smartest guy I've ever met (though that could have been because of the flowing Bud Light), but he was passionate about the subject and I was grateful for a real conversation as opposed to the usual mundanity.

And flirting is different when you're bantering with an attractive man with whom you can see right away that you have similarities (although this seems to be a rare event). Then it's fun. But vying with other girls for the attentions of some mediocre guy who just loves the game is a waste of my time. And in most of the rest of the cases flirting is an act of politeness toward the older dudes who shuffle up to you and clearly just want a piece of twenty-four-year-old ass. They're not that intelligent, not that interesting, and certainly not classy. But you put up with it if it's not inappropriate or harassing, because you always have to spare their egos (why are we so socialized to spare their egos? I have no problem telling an overt asshole where to go and what to do when he gets there, but these guys who are just so clumsy and hopeful I can't bring myself to be mean to). And then I find myself standing around wishing I were talking about something else.

But oh well; that's the world. I hear people at work who are no longer single talking nostalgically about their single days, when they could flirt and it was so much fun. And I just nod and talk about how great the single life is. But I've never found flirting to be that much fun. It's not how I like to get to know a person. I am looking forward with untempered enthusiasm to the day when I can with society's blessing put away the games and relax in one deep, intimate, knowing love for the rest of my life, without facades.

But I've been realizing over and over again lately that I'm something of a misfit. So I try to disguise it as much as possible until I trust people enough to say, I'm an introvert. However much I love people, they exhaust me from time to time. I'm actually shy. And I don't really like flirting.

At least I know now why I'm not that good at flirting -- it doesn't interest me. And I've never been all that skilled at things that don't interest me.

But in the interest of blending, I'm learning how to do it enough to get by. I wouldn't really bother, I don't think, except that having a winning mien is part of my job, which necessarily involves building up strange men's egos and gracefully responding to their flirtations.

C'est la vie, non?

hilarious things about living and working in south bend

I love South Bend on Daylight Savings Time. It's still twilight at 10:15. This is what it means to be summer.

Tonight Lynyrd Skynyrd performed in South Bend, and our new partner radio station and hero, WAOR (America's first classic rock station) hosted a Party on the Plaza in front of the Morris Performing Arts Center, and donated the proceeds of the beer tent (and whatever donations we collected in souped-up oatmeal canisters) to the Center for the Homeless.

I collected some new business cards, and now have:

1.) A lunch date (to be determined next week) with the head chef at the Palais Royale, an extremely good-looking Latino named Eddie.

2.) An offer from a trucker from La Porte, Indiana named Phil to ride on his Harley. He said he'd call me at work. I declined to give him my cell phone number outright.

Life is so fricking weird. But always funny.

why i will never apologize for communicating through writing

If you've read the previous post, then you may remember something The Grad Student said to me in his voicemail asking me to discuss my decision not to see him anymore over coffee: "I'm a little hurt that you didn't call me or tell me this in person, and just sent me an email. I hope we can get together for coffee and talk about this in a mature way."

Was I pissed? Yes, I was pissed, especially about that little dig at my maturity. I went to talk to him anyway, because I'm a fan of face-to-face confrontation in theory, and disciplined to face-to-face confrontation in practice (I hate hurting people's feelings as a general rule, so I don't really enjoy confrontation, but I will do it when necessary).

And in the course of the conversation, he brought up again the fact that I chose to tell him of my decision in an email. This is what I said:

"I'm not going to apologize for that. I live in the written word. I'm a writer. It's what I do and who I am. I express myself most clearly and thoughtfully through writing, and when I get the chance, I do it.

"Also, I don't talk on the phone much with bare acquaintances. I talk on the phone at extended lengths with my parents, my sister, my best friend from home, and when I'm playing catch-up with my college friends. That's it. For everyone else, I use the phone as a means of gathering information -- 'Hey, I have a question.' 'What are you doing tonight?' 'Meet you there in five.' etc. And I've had enough unpleasant and sticky phone conversations with people that if I have to have a serious talk with someone, I don't do it over the phone. I hate the phone for that type of thing.

"And I'm not going to call you or send you an email saying, 'We need to talk. Can we meet later to discuss it?' Come on. Then you're edgy and wondering all day what you're possibly going to talk about, and dreading it.

"So by sending you an email, you had advance notice of what was coming. It's the most thoughtful, 'mature' means I have of communicating, and I will never apologize for that."

Now, I understand, as Laura pointed out, that I owed him no explanation for myself, my habits, or my decisions. But as I like the clearest communication that I can achieve with the human beings in my life, I didn't mind explaining. And I wasn't going to sit there and get criticized for who I am and how I do things. And I sure as hell wasn't going to apologize.

Just a little shout-out to the writers out there who also live by the word. And to those of us who think in-depth "friend break-up" phone conversations are stupid. And to those of us who refuse to be browbeaten by manipulative, high-horsey people who don't know their own minds.

(The farther I get away from the conversation, the angrier it makes me. I don't like when I KNOW a person has an agenda in regards to my personhood and friendship. And he condescended to me a lot, under a veneer of concern -- and he probably only thought he was being concerned. Things like, "I hope you learn how to rely on other people. My mother carried a lot through her life, and in the past few years crashed, because she couldn't carry it anymore. You really need to be able to be interdependent." And, "You seem like you have the outcome of this conversation all decided." And, "I hugged you lovingly, and you maintained the hug." "Yeah, that would be a mutual maintenance," I said. [Don't blame ME for your behavior, buster.]

Gah. There was something terribly cloying about his touch, and his attempts to explain himself, and his veiled threat at never being able to date me if he couldn't know me first as a friend. I don't like when people try to weave a web of subtle coercion around me.

And golly, I haven't been mad about anything in forever. Just blah, or nil, or sad, or in despair. Anger is a little refreshing for a change.)

in-de-pen-dent

So. The last two weeks have been a flurry of interactions with men. Older ones. And I've come out of it still single, and glad.

The most recent episode was with a guy I know through the grad school at Notre Dame. I met him at a party in January, and enjoyed his (slightly inebriated) stories. He didn't particularly notice me until a few weeks ago, at a concluding-the-semester party at another student's apartment. Then he asked me out for coffee.

So we went for coffee and had a great time. A few days later we met to walk around on Notre Dame's campus, got caught without shelter in a downpour, hid under the overhang of a monastic building until it let up, went to the grocery store, and hung out at my apartment making smoothies.

But there's always a fly in the ointment. He told me that night, "There's a few things you should know." (That statement is always a red flag.) "I'm a lot older than you, I'm still in love with a woman with whom it will probably never work out, and I've recently started seeing someone. But I find your company delightful."

Okay, I thought; I can always use another friend. And everything seemed more or less okay, except that he was flirtatiously touchy all night, blotting my rain-smeared mascara with his fingertips and such. And then when he went to say goodbye, he gave me a hug...and it was WAY too much of a hug. And I'm very sure (although he denies this) that he kissed my neck.

And after that I was extremely uncomfortable. It felt completely wrong. And he continued to invite me to do lots of one-on-one, datelike stuff with him -- watching movies, going for walks, heading to the Farmer's Market, etc.

I don't like messy relationships with blurry lines of friendship and more-than-friendship. So I e-mailed him and told him that I didn't think we should be spending so much time together, particularly if he's seeing someone. And that I prefer relationships characterized by clarity, and this one wasn't clear.

I got a voicemail from him the next day informing me that he was hurt that I didn't call him or tell him face to face, and asking me to meet him over coffee to talk about it. So I did, last Sunday after church. I explained to him my problems with the too-much-hugging and the neck kiss (although, like I said, he denied it. The only other thing it could have been was boogers from a running nose, and I really don't think it was that). He told me that he cares about me, finds me attractive, knows that I've been suffering and has wanted to help, and that the relationship he's just gotten into with someone else is more like a blurring of the lines of friendship and not an actual relationship.

But I stuck to my guns. "I've never had anyone take care of me," I said. "I've always been the one to take care of everyone else, and take care of myself. When I break down, I do it alone. I fix it alone. I don't know what to do with someone's help."

"I don't date people that I haven't known for awhile," he said. "And I really want to get to know you. I regret that it's working out like this."

"Me too," I said. "And I enjoy your company. But this is what's best for me. And I'll be okay. I always am."

So I said a cordial goodbye and walked away.

It was rough -- for about an hour I wondered if I'd done the right thing. But I know I did. I don't know on what kind of terms he wanted me, but sorry, I don't actually believe that men and women can be intimate friends and stay friends only. I told him this. And for myself I know that I do not want to be some guy's possible back-up plan in case whatever he's doing now doesn't work out. Been there. Hated it. And dude, my friendship is not there for the taking. You have to earn trust, and his body contact with me made all his words of only wanting to be friends into lies. And I don't trust that.

And I don't need some guy to come into my life and fix me. I've had a hard time the past three or four months, but I'm not broken. Just struggling. I don't need fixing. All I want is kindness and support and company. In short, a friend. I can take care of the rest. I've done that all my life. Someone who has an express purpose of helping me or making me better inspires resentment in me, because I become less a friend and autonomous being than some sort of project, some sort of dependent. And I have never been that, or sought to make other people that for me.

So I made a good choice. And right after that coffee meeting I went to spend the day with Meg and Phillip, who have become my family.

It makes me feel so much better about being single. I have chosen this. I have decided what is best for me, and I have acted on it. That's more like me than anything else, and I've been missing that about me lately.

So I'm no longer desperate. And the medication is helping tremendously.

Cue the Mormons

When I got home from work yesterday, two men in suits were standing in front of my porch.

Suits? I thought. Is something federal going down in the hood?

So I approached them and said, "Can I help you?"

And they said, "Yes...we're looking for Sarah."

"That's me," I said. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, we're missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints," they said. "Your doctor told us you were interested in speaking with us."

"He didn't tell me," I said.

So yeah. Apparently the nice old Jewish doctor that I went to see for my antidepressant prescription last Friday is a nice old Mormon doctor...who took it upon himself to give my UNPUBLISHED ADDRESS to these guys to come solicit me for their religion.

Now, it's not like I don't appreciate the thought. But he didn't say anything at all to me about the church, or tell me, "You should talk to these people," or ask me if he could give out my private information to anyone.

And yes, as I was describing my depression to my doctor, I in fact did say that I live far from family and have had trouble finding a church. But I certainly wasn't wanting him to do anything about it beyond signing my precription.

The situation itself was funny. I was very polite and disengaged, and sent them on their way. ("So you're doing the mission thing," I said at one point. "...how's that going for you?") But the circumstances of the situation are frankly a little creepy.

I think that his action was highly unethical for a number of reasons. I mean, you can't even call Information to find me. I'm not only unlisted, I'm unpublished. For the sole reason that I want my privacy, rooted in a desire for the safety of anonymity. And now these missions-oriented men know where I live.

Yargh. Life is weird.

the eternal child

Caught in a downpour yesterday. Puddle-stomping never gets old.

my own private spa

So yes, I feel fairly certain it's sun poisoning. My skin is all clear-blistered and disgusting, and hurts like hot pokers. The color now resembles the center of a very rare steak. A living steak, in fact. And I've been feeling sick to my stomach and intestines all day. I almost threw up from the pain this morning when I eased into my shirt.

So I did a few things at work, looked totally pathetic and garnered lots of sympathy (I really do look like a slab of fried salt pork) and came home early to soothe my terrible pains in a rare luxury that I remember from a bout with the chicken pox when I was five years old:

The oatmeal bath.

I've told a few people about this amazing ritual, and they've looked at me as though I were from a far-off planet or had suddenly sprouted an extra, babbling head. But I tell you, it's the most soothing experience you'll ever have in your bathtub, and it's so incredibly cheap.

Steps to Oatmealed Bliss:

1. Find an old sock, preferably on the large/long side. You know, one of the ones that keep getting divorced from their mates in the dryer. They deserve a sticky fate anyway, the jerks.

2. Fill the sock halfway to three-quarters of the way with dry plain oatmeal. (Soooo cheap.) Knot the sock at the top (a very simple knot will do).

3. Place the sock in the tub and start the water. For best results, keep the sock under the running water.

4. Adjust the water temperature as necessary. (For a cold winter's day, a hot bath; or for a hot summer's day, or a terrible sunburn, something nice and lukewarm.)

5. Soak in the lovely smooth glutinous oatmeal water. Squeeze the oatmeal sock over the worst burns for an almost instantaneous soothing.

I'm still experimenting with whether it's best to rinse off, or just towel dry. But do make sure to at least pat the burns dry; letting them air-dry without being rinsed just causes the oatmeal glue to dry and crack, which is (hello!) painful -- as I've just discovered.

And when you're done, just squeeze the oatmeal down to the bottom of the sock, unknot it and turn it inside out, discard the oatmeal, and rinse the sock. Voile!

And anyway, an oatmeal bath is such fun ("'amusing' or 'diverting' darling, never 'such fun'") and it's the only 20 minutes I spent pain and nausea free today.

Vive l'oatmeal!

a burnt offering to Ra

Yesterday I headed up a car wash that a former Center resident hosted at her place of employment. And spent four and a half hours on asphalt during the most sun-intensive hours of a day that was within one degree of being the hottest for its date in sixty years of South Bend history.

Without sunscreen.

You idiot! you say. Yup. I don't currently even own sunscreen; ordinarily I spend so little time in the sun preserving my ivory pallor that I don't need it. And yesterday I paid for it. And last night. And this morning. And right now.

My shoulders are on FIRE. Yesterday when I left the parking lot I smelled faintly of bacon, from my own skin cooking in the UV rays. I had trouble sleeping last night; the pain kept waking me up. I've felt faintly nauseous.

Now, if I don't die of sun poisoning (which I strongly doubt I will), in a few days I'll have a gorgeous base tan. Currently, however, my ponytailed hair where it touches the back of my neck feels as warm as though it spent time in the microwave.

I'm like a space heater of strawberry-ice-cream-colored skin.

at last

God bless the clinics who serve the low-income and badly insured of our nation. And God bless no-nonsense doctors who don't treat you like an idiot.

So the doctor who saw me this morning was first of all really old, second of all very complimentary as to my personhood -- intellect, appearance, and clean-cut lifestyle (can you believe it?) -- and thirdly supportive of my request for antidepressants. I even got samples!

So now begins my medicated quest for a mentally stable existence.

And the nurse who saw me to the exam room was extremely friendly and gave me her phone number and wants to be my friend.

This week has been totally bizarre.

And, despite 10.5 hours of sleep yesterday, today still finds me groggy and exhausted. But hopefully that will all be over soon.

Hallelu Yah.

soon (hopefully)

So I've been falling apart. The teller is that nothing should really be that wrong, aside from the usual loneliness. My life is great.

It's just this chemical imbalance in my brain and body that's causing me to absorb too much seratonin, making it impossible for me to pull myself up by my bootstraps. I need medication.

Laura has this great analogy that she told me on Sunday: Taking antidepressants is like wearing glasses. It's correcting an imbalance that you were born with, that you cannot do anything about.

Anyway, I'm all about antidepressants (I was on them three years ago), and after trying multiple avenues today -- calling different doctors and organizations -- and running up against a wall each time, I finally fell back on my family practice (that I've only been to once...another thing that sucks about relocating to a totally new area is having no idea where to go for medical needs) and told the receptionist that while it's more common for a family physician to refer a patient to psychiatric care, no one can take me until the end of the summer and I really need help now.

So I have an appointment on Friday morning.

Here's hoping.

too much

I finally got ahold of the psychiatrist's office recommended to me. And they are taking new patients...but they can't get me in until August. And they had no referrals for anyone taking patients any earlier.

So, on the one hand, yay, I'll get help. On the other hand, crap, August is a long way away. (Explain to me how this makes sense. Crazy person calls doctor and says, I need help. Doctor says, Great! We'll see you in three months. I mean, Crazy Person needs help NOW. What is Crazy Person supposed to do in the meantime?)

Getting through the day is hard. I have a depleted will, drive, and capability to do anything taxing. It's hard enough dragging myself through the routines of my day. And I'm terrified that I'm going to start sucking at my job. And I hate, I hate that my joy in what I do and believe in just isn't there.

So. There's that. There's the fact that I'm exhausted and my eyes hurt from the one-day trip to PA and back this week. There's the fact that I'm driving back to PA this weekend (which I'm happy to do; it's my sister's graduation, hooray for her!!).

And there's the fact that I can only do so much for myself. I'm trying to cope. It's difficult.

My favorite ways of dealing with depression:

1. Spend as much time with people as possible, or as little, depending on my need and mood.

2. Watch a lot of soothing movies that just make me happy when I have to be alone. For example: Monsters, Inc.; Spirited Away; Lilo & Stitch; 10 Things I Hate about You; My Neighbor Totoro. Yes, heavy on the Disney and Miyazaki. Miyazaki in particular is pure joy.

3. Take it easy on myself when possible. I haven't cleaned my apartment thoroughly in a couple of weeks. I just can't. I'll have to make myself eventually; but for now, I'm just letting it be. (I cleaned the bathroom last night, and swept the floors. That's a good start.)

4. Do something radically out of character that is also good for me. This time around I'm training for a triathlon in July. The exercise is amazingly good for my mood, and it's toning muscles and making me feel better about my health and appearance. Plus it's something I've never done before, which makes me feel like I'm being proactive in doing something new and beneficial, and it has no negative triggers for me.

5. Take ruthless advantage of the "self check-out" lines in the grocery stores, when I have to go foraging for food and don't want to interact with strangers.

6. Oh yes, this is my favorite: Buy and read a lot of trashy romance novels. I did this all through college (and in a fit of guilt kept throwing them away), but they're all so ridiculous and predictable and end happily, and it's good escapism.

7. Write. I've been picking through old stories on my GCC laptop, and thinking about taking up an old writing project. It channels me somewhere else for awhile, where all my experiences have artistic meaning, which makes up for the fact that without the completed picture which I can't know, my experiences lack existential meaning.

Sigh. I need a vacation.

pupdate

Huzzah, Duke is spending MUCH less time outside...so much less that I feared for half the morning yesterday that he'd been confiscated. But then I heard his energetic barking as he spent a pleasant, sunny hour out of doors around noon.

Better yet, I talked about it with Slightly Psycho Kevin yesterday, and he said that last week he spoke with the neighbors and in his nice-on-the-outside-but-watch-out way told them that if they didn't look after their dog better, someone was going to have to make the call to Animal Control. So unless he rats me out (you never know with SPK), they probably think he did it.

Now of course if they were to ask me if I made the phone call, I'd own up to it. I did it for a reason. But in the meantime it's nice to think I can still probably take him for walks without them hating me.

The saga of the dog a door down

Sometime in December or January my next-door neighbors got a dog.

Allow me to say that this is possibly the cutest dog I have ever seen. Thanks to a self-absorbed horror of a Doberman who followed hard and badly on the heels of my childhood's Perfect Dog, I thought I hated the species. This adorable youngster made me realize otherwise. We fell completely in love, through the fence -- like Pyramus and Thisbe.

His name, I learned from the neighbors, is Duke -- a dumb name, but you can't have everything. (I'd have named him Brutus.) Duke is a Chow-German shepherd mix, with a shepherd's build and short coarse coat, a chow's head and black tongue, a shepherd's patterning on the head, and a chow's reddish coloring. His large triangular ears stand perkily alert and his head, usually cocked to the side, and intelligent fun-filled eyes give him a rascally look.

At first I was cautious about him -- he barks ferociously at every passerby through the chain-link fence that holds him in his dirt yard -- but one day as I shut the door of my car in the driveway (which I share with Duke's owners) I noticed his tail waving. So I approached him, and he jumped eagerly to brace his front paws on the fence, and we introduced ourselves.

After that we established a routine -- I go over to pet him and say hi every time I come home. Then I started taking him for an occasional walk, which brought him massive amounts of joy, and brought me massive amounts of muscle aches the next day because he's so young and eager and pulls so hard on the leash. (He's only ten months old. Just a puppy.) And eventually he was happier to see me than he was to see his owners. We arrived home from work at the same time one day, and both approached the fence...and Duke came dashing over to me. I was a little embarrassed, a little happy.

But all these months I've been troubled by the way he's kept. Obviously he's not ill-treated in any emotional way -- he's the happiest, most outgoing, loving dog on the planet. But through the harsh days of South Bend's winter, snow, ice, and wind; and through the hot days of early spring; and through the past two weeks of frigid rain, he's always outside. And he has no shelter. The neighbors put him outside and leave all day for work, while Duke sits huddled miserably as close to the house as he can get. He has no doghouse, no access to the garage. And when the weather got legitimately hot a few weeks ago, he had no water. His food is usually dumped on the ground. His only toys are sections of a chewed-up garden hose.

I've been struggling internally with the right course of action for a long time. When I began taking an active interest in the dog, such as walking him, I noticed that he stopped being left outside all night, like he used to. But even so, he's outside from 8-12 hours every day, with no way of getting out of the weather. I asked around and learned that it's the law to provide your dog with a shelter raised off the ground if it spends the majority of its time outside. I bought a bucket and filled it with water to put inside the yard for him (and all the while he drank -- thirstily -- he watched me and waved his tail), hoping the neighbors would take the hint, but instead they took away the bucket.

This week was the last straw. The weather has been in the upper thirties and lower forties, and pouring down rain for the past four days. And through it all this poor dog has been sitting outside. It made me mad. So I called Animal Control to report it.

I didn't term the case anything at all; I just said to the woman who answered the phone that I needed to talk to someone about my neighbors' dog, who spent most of his time outdoors in all weather without shelter or water. She said, "You need to give us the address, ma'am: That's a neglect case, and a priority call." So I complied and requested to be kept informed: "If he winds up being taken away, I'd like to help find a good home for him. I'm really attached to this dog." She took my number and said she'd do what she could; it wasn't standard procedure. She also said they'd send someone out right away.

And they did. About an hour later I saw the Animal Control van parked outside the house. No one was home, but Duke was in the yard as described, and as I left to go grocery shopping (yes, I finally did that, too), I saw an official-looking paper stuck in their door.

So they've got their warning informing them of what legally they're required to do. I assume they'll have an eye kept on them.

I don't want them to take the dog away. I want him to be treated well, and I want to keep taking him for walks. If I could take this dog myself, I certainly would. But if it takes him getting a new and better home, that's fine.

I don't particularly like the sensation of ratting on my neighbors -- that's why I've been silent so long -- but I can't stand seeing him cold and miserable and huddled in a little ball when it's cold and wet, or collapsed in the shade panting without a drink when it's hot. So I did something about it. And maybe now things will change a bit for him. I notice that he's not outside at all this cold wet afternoon.

you gotta open up your heart

Yeah, I'm not all that okay.

Hence the lack of blogging -- everything seems lackluster. I have no motivation to do anything that I usually enjoy doing -- reading, writing, blogging, cleaning, watering my plants. I lagged behind in my bills this month (something I've gotten meticulously out of the habit of doing). I haven't done laundry in forever. I hate being alone in my apartment. I'm grumpy with my cat. I'm not sleeping well. I'm gaining weight. I feel a general sense of tired, hollow sadness. I long to spend a lot of time with people I know, but I'm ashamed to talk about what's going on in me, this relentless feeling of ill-being and an inability to function at the higher levels. And I'm terrified of being with people I don't know. Last night I was supposed to go to a dinner for work, but at the last minute I had to go by myself, and I freaked out and started crying. (My boss kindly excused me from going. I felt like a heel.) I haven't gone grocery shopping in two weeks because I can't face the thought of being in company with so many strangers at the store.

This is not like me in the least. Some of my coworkers are a little surprised -- "But you're so outgoing," said Jess. I know. This isn't me. This is horrible. And I don't know what triggered this tailspin, so I need to talk to someone who can a.) figure me out and b.) give me medicine to mitigate the effects of depression.

So it's going to get fixed. I will not live like this any longer. I need help. My boss gave me the number of a reputable psychiatrist, and I'm waiting for a call from them today to set up a new patient interview.

This sucks. But something's gotta give -- and I've been here before, and I know it gets better. With help, it gets better.

The good thing about my morning was that I got to share a little excitement about the Psalms with a resident (we call them guests) at the Center who is just starting to read the Bible. And it was fantastic to remember that the Word of God does not return to him empty, and that other people are touched by it, too.

what I'm looking for

I know the posting has been spotty...this great, heavy, soggy apathy has been smothering my desire to communicate, even as it enhances my sense of isolation. Lovely, yes? Oh -- no.

So, in a comment on the Fab Females blog, I one day, off the cuff, spelled out what I'm looking for in a man. It struck me today as a pretty incredible description, all the more so because I know someone who fits that bill. Despite the fact that he is somewhat unavailable (for the time being, anyway), the fact that this man actually exists bodily in the world I live in gives me tremendous amounts of encouragement and hope.

Here he is in a nutshell:

The man I'm looking for is a man of God, dedicated to truth and justice, who treats others the way Christ treated others, who hates hypocrisy, and who knows the clear, hard, just, and merciful nature of love. Who knows his purpose and strives to live toward it. Who loves equally the successful businessperson and the homeless derelict. Who treats all human beings, including his family, with dignity and respect. Who pursues his goals with unshaken focus and seeks to live an effective life in our broken world.

Yup. I have met a person like this. He's not too good to be true. (And this is in no way intended to slam any of the guys I know. I love almost all of you.) He also has a hot temper and the (at least as far as I've observed) unheard-of ability to live in a bad day without somehow involving you in its badness. Add innate confidence, a well-rounded sense of humor, a love of literature, aesthetic taste, and a feel for good irony, and you've got him.

In short, I think he's great. Available or unavailable, for now or ever, notwithstanding. He fuels my hope for a good future.

Wild.

making waves

Radio waves!

Yesterday saw the annual Homeward Bound 5K walk to end homelessness in South Bend, IN. Several of my coworkers and I were present to walk, and partway through a gentleman just ahead of us turned and asked us if we'd like to go on the air for the radio station he was representing when he did his twenty-minute check-in.

Of course we said, YES! So he handed the phone off to me, and I got to explain the point of the walk, saying something like, "We're walking through some neighborhoods right now, and looking at the lovely houses really drives home the point of what we're doing. Hundreds and hundreds of people in our own community don't have a roof over their heads or a place to call home on any given day in the year. The average age of a homeless person in America right now is nine years old, and we're walking to raise money to make sure people have a safe place to raise their families."

The dude's general manager called a few minutes later to say how clear I sounded. Anyway, the guy works for a Christian radio station that reaches around 30 counties, and I was terribly excited to make the contact. The Center for the Homeless, not itself a faith-based organization, is working more this year to establish connections with faith-based organizations, which basically exist to help such places as ours.

So hopefully we have a new business relationship -- and I got to hand out, for the first time, my very own card!

So the summer finds me getting more excited about my job, and loving what I do here and why I do it. Which is good, because I just signed a two-year lease for my apartment this weekend.

bryter now

At least for the time being.

As I said in my comment to the last post (in response to the great input I received), I realized that one of the things that was crushing me the most was the sense of helplessness. And I'm NOT helpless.

So the new strategy is to spend as much time with people as possible. Wednesday night I hung out with the inestimable ThisWomanAlphabetical, yesterday I invited my two favorite coworkers over for lunch, and last night I watched Bon Voyage with MP's French class and then drove over (the reopened!!!) Douglas Road to eat colorful, cold roast vegetable loaf and exchange stories about how tired we were.

It's essentially a matter of being proactive and collaring the people I want to befriend, without hanging back from fear of rejection or looking pathetic. I NEED people. Therefore I will hunt them down. If they hate me, fine; I'll find people who don't. But most people don't hate me.

Plus I have been suddenly blessed with peace over a complicated situation with a guy I know (sorry for the vaguery; perhaps I'll spill more beans layter), and am reminded that I am very capable of bouncing back and recovering from the things that make me sad.

And I'm going to a cookout this weekend! Wheeeee!

Not again...

I've been slipping back into depression.

I've been trying hard to deny it -- I went through two summers of pretty intense therapy toward the end of college to work my way out of it, and I have never wanted to be back here again. But there are certain signs I can't ignore anymore. Pervasive listlessness. Constant exhaustion. Emotional numbness. Indifference toward things that usually make me very happy (hanging out with people, going for walks, reading, even cooking). Lack of energy. A feeling of purposelessness or pointlessness. Poor sleeping. Failed appetite.

I don't know exactly what triggered this slide. Spring is usually a bad time for me -- it's when my sister was at her worst state of health, and when relationships with my family members were tense at best. And depression runs in my family. But I thought I had more or less conquered it. I guess the most consistent thing that has been eating at me since November is my aloneness. I'm far from family. After living here for almost two years, I've only made a scattered handful of friends. My daily existence doesn't matter much to anyone -- I'm not essential, not in the sense that I'm constantly needed, but in the sense that my presence can be assumed by someone. So I'm young, I'm single, I don't have a strong support system in the place where I'm living, and it's really, really hard to meet people here.

And it's getting me down. I spend almost every day on the verge of random, senseless tears. I've been getting hot flashes again. Nothing I do seems to have a whole lot of meaning. And I really, really don't want to live in this state of blankness again. I want to be the old, happy, strong me.

My health insurance isn't that great, so I can't afford therapy. Though -- if it doesn't start to improve soon, I'm going to take steps to get a therapist anyway. I'd rather be emotionally healthy with an even slimmer budget than try to plod alone through a life that for no good reason looks completely gray.

Prayers are much appreciated. In college I had so many friends to come around and support me and be a web of loving presence while I put myself back together. Here I have only a few, and I hate being a downer and a burden.

What to do? It's especially annoying because my life is great. I have a great job, a great apartment, a decent church, and some really great friends. And I still feel so horrifyingly, chokingly alone. I can't stand it.

Poop.

Passage of Time

The new kitchen clock with its
circle of red shocks the walls
into purpose and order.

The hazy apartment sharpens
around the iambic tick
that whispers in each room

measuring the sleepy silence of
a faded house in a neighborhood
where the grass spikes
through the cracked concrete in the street.

Last night brushing my teeth
I stiffened and shut off the water
thinking the cat was rustling plastic
or someone was creeping inside

but the regularity of sound
was only the clock
telling me it was nearly eleven

and I had wanted to be in bed
at ten. I turned on the kitchen light
to see it:

red rim with an analog face
that showed the white walls
to be a little yellow.

The cat came to rub against my ankles.
His purr rattled under the clock voice
singsong, surgent like waves.

the fifth season

Every morning when I open my eyes to a sunny spring day in South Bend, I ask myself two questions:

1. Will it be warm out today?
2. Which roads will be closed?

See, there's this fifth season squeezed into the year, sometime between spring and summer (and often stretching through all calendar seasons, refusing to die). Construction season.

I've never lived in a place as haywire for tearing roads apart as South Bend. There's never any announcement. You get in your car and drive along a main thoroughfare, in the happy yet stupid assumption that all will be today as it was yesterday, and suddenly there are orange signs, detours, road blocks, heavy vehicles, and men in green and yellow vests milling around appearing important but really doing nothing.

You curse. You follow the detour. Sometimes even the detours have detours. And the repairs -- or whatever it is they're doing (looking for gold?) -- take weeks.

Suddenly your five-minute commute to work takes fifteen. Or your fifteen-minute drive to a friend's house takes twenty-five. Traffic is always terrible. The word "detour" seems to inspire mass confusion among the majority of fellow drivers. They inch along the detour roads, as if afraid of missing the next prominent orange detour-with-an-arrow sign, or as if afraid to trust that the sign really will get them where it promises. You ride people's bumpers. You catch a lot of red lights. You scream.

It does familiarize you quickly with alternate routes to anywhere. You look up and see that familiar orange-and-white barrel and make an instant turn to Plan B. Anything to avoid the detour.

I feel that every citizen of this community deserves a flyer in his or her mailbox. With a calendar detailing each road and intersection that will be closed, and for how long. That way we don't walk out of our homes and blunder into an urban jungle of broken concrete and cranes.

cookbook queen

Lately I've been bored and restless. Things at work have mostly calmed down from the auction (although I'm still recovering from the stress -- shown mostly by an increased irritability, joy for my coworkers), building community is still taking its time, and with summer coming up, my grad student friends will jettison themselves from South Bend as quickly as they can. So a thinned out social scene awaits me in the next few months, and singleness is, at the least, a further source of boredom. (There's no one to call and say, "Let's go for a walk!" who has to come and walk with me.)

So I did the only thing a girl with a penchant for most things culinary can do.

I bought five new cookbooks.

This is a very logical act. While working on "fitting in" and building a life here, over which I only have so much control, I don't have many new interesting things to do, and often very few people with whom to spend my daily life; and lacking the money to dine out on the exquisite food I enjoy eating, I have to fall back on making it myself. So cooking good food is an easy (or challenging!), enjoyable to way give my life a little flavor, relatively cheaply.

One of the most important aspects of cooking, for me, is not falling into a rut or getting bored. For the past three weeks just before grocery shopping day, I've been thinking, What do I want to eat?...and coming up blank. I flip through all my recipes and they're all so...blah. I'm not in the mood for any of them.

Time for something new. And something new showed up at Borders in the form of: Juices and Smoothies, Mediterranean, Mexian, Spanish, and Jewish cookbooks. I've done nothing for the past two days but read all the recipes and bookmark the ones I want to try.

I'm insanely excited to restock my cupboards and buy (a little at a time; I'm still on a poverty income) new accesories to expand my abilities to make such things as tortillas and flan. It's a little taste of something fresh, and a way to broaden my horizons while I lack the capacity to travel the world, or even the area restaurants.

Plus the pictures are pretty. My mouth watered all day paging through them.

forehead pressed against the glass

I'm taking a week's vacation from work, composed almost entirely of flex time from the long weeks I worked before the auction. The first two days I spent lying in bed wrapped in afghans, overcome with some mildly disgusting bout of the flu (mildly disgusting mostly because of the degeneration of my clean apartment -- you just can't wash things when you're sick), but on the whole it's been wonderful to relax and know that they're even listening to my voicemails and checking my email at work, so I don't have an endless string of backlogged communication to pick through when I get back.

I've been thinking about community. At church, and in one of the few decent albums by a Christian artist that I own, I've been hearing things like "my journey is my own" and "It doesn't matter if nobody loves me but Jesus." And in some respects, of course, that's true: We are fully responsible for our own lives, and if we find ourselves utterly friendless, we can count on the love of Christ. But statements like these disregard what I think is an essential principle in the Christian faith, and in human life across the board: community.

We weren't meant to live alone. The human being is a social creature, in constant need of contact with his/her own kind. And for each metaphor of individual race-running and watching oneself that appears in the New Testament, there are two metaphors for community, of coming alongside one another and of being a body (one unit, many parts). When Christ left his legacy to the apostles at his ascension, he founded, not a scattered group of individual mystics who went off by themselves into the wilderness to ponder great things, but a church.

When you look at the "secular" world (if you believe in a secular world; I don't, actually), it's the same: People need other people. Most have some kind of family to fall back on, which they often take for granted. (I've met a lot of people who go back home after college, or never left their hometown, so that they are continually surrounded by family; I think they fail to realize what a hole not having nearby family leaves in the lives of complete transplants like me.) Even some of my coworkers, who don't live close to their families, graduated from Notre Dame and so keep to their old, preformulated communities from college while they live in South Bend.

A dash of the closedness to strangers for which I have criticized the church at large (because the church should be the first place where barriers break down -- it was when it first began, or was challenged to be by recognizing the radical truth that "in Christ there is neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor Gentile"), is present everywhere. People who already have fulfilled their need for a place among others generally aren't looking to include newcomers -- not, perhaps, out of an overt desire to ostracize or exclude, but out of a kind of tunnel vision that results from personal satisfaction: All of my needs are met, so why look further?

I hope that didn't sound at all nasty; it was only an observation. One of my saving graces while I try to settle in and work my way into the already-established communities of the worthwhile and interesting people I've met is the grad school. These are worthwhile and interesting people who are used to a flux in their community as new students enroll and old students leave, so they tend to have a mindset open to incorporating outsiders, newcomers, and loose affiliates.

My other, more permanent saving grace is Meg and Phillip. While rooted among family and longtime friends in their own community, they accepted me with a casual, firm familiarity that reminds me oftentimes of home. I invite myself over; they put me to work, feed me, and take me fun places around the area that I'm still getting to know. They helped me pick out, cut down, transport, and set up my Christmas tree. For several months, although I never actually used it, I had my own toothbrush at their house. We all call me "the second wife." We laugh and horse around and work and bicker like good friends and family do. And the beauty of it is, they're not going anywhere (at least anytime soon, that they've told me). They don't leave for the summer. They're not moving out of town. So they're a kind of above-ground root that I get to lean against.

Not to be all mushy or anything; but a single girl with no family in the area certainly appreciates the niches of belonging that she lands in. Building, or shouldering your way into, a community takes time, and I've only been here twenty months. But it's nice, while I try to put down some roots (this is scary, this roots thing -- I have no particular plans to settle permanently in South Bend, but I also don't have plans to go anywhere else for awhile -- and this weekend I'm signing a two-year lease, which is weird), to have two open places to go where I'm not standing on the outside looking in like a little lost soul.

And I'm off to try to forge some cleanliness out of the disorganized mess that has become my apartment.

Cat Feet

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
(Carl Sandberg)

Clearly Carl Sandberg never lay
prostrate in bed staving off daylight
until a hungry cat cannonballed
his unprotected stomach like a sudden avalanche.

Obviously Carl Sandberg never dragged
the covers over his head, only to suffer
forty careful, cubic pounds per square paw
flattening every cyst and sore chest muscle
creaking each rib and collapsing each lung
to crush him slowly, grindingly awake.

Observation

Through a haze of Sunday cigarettes
and a web of Celtic music
I sip cooled tea and track,
over the rim of the cup that does
not match its saucer,
the Irish server’s gorgeous ass.

His appeal contains some mystery:
His fair hair recedes in wisps
along his skull, though his large
blue eyes and generous mouth
open up his somewhat somber face.
Seen from the side, his tummy
bulges slightly over his belt.

But oh, sweet God, that ass.
It fits into his jeans like breasts
fit into a bra, or an orange
fits into its peel, or air fits into
a balloon. I want to cup my hand
along its curve, to feel the sweep
of buttock into hamstring, to tug
the damp white towel from his left
back pocket and snap it at that
perfect, molded ass—

but his left hand glints with
a simple band of silver,
so I pour another cup of tea,
relax against the wooden bench,
and watch his denimed buttocks,
tea towel swinging, saunter past.

Apartment Living

1. Sights

In early April mourning doves
spiral and surge under the crumbled shingles
above my windows. They throw out
curling flashes of taupe and cream
against the paint-splashed panes
and the cat races from the kitchen
to the living room, trying to follow,
his movements manic, liquid.

On the street squat, balding Jim
in gray sweatpants
unloads laundry and bottled water
from his beige Astro van.
Dark hair swirls around his bald spot
like an iris around a pale pupil.

Coming down the stairs, I see Kevin
trekking toward the rutted alley
with his kayak over his head,
short legs and an oversized hat,
on his way, through the St. Joe River
blanched with sewage gas, to work.

Sometimes I surprise Ted
smoking on the cement patio
with his only friend.
They always stand up and say hello,
two portly, gray-faced men
with pouchy wrinkled eyes and
mustached, gap-toothed smiles.

A month ago a police raid
shrieked through the streets.
From my darkened apartment I peered
through miniblinds at houses
blinking in the savage,
festive beams of blue and red.

2. Sounds

In the kitchen Simon’s clawless paws
thump and patter an intermittent jig
on the cracking linoleum tiles
as he captures his insurgent tail.

On Saturdays Jim’s Hoover
growls and snarls over his carpets
below my living room.
While he listens to Bette Middler
or watches soaps, I put on Ray LaMontagne
or Chris Thile to mute the buzz
crawling up the walls.

Sometimes, late at night, Kevin,
who lectures in Spanish at a local college,
listens loudly to Latin music
in his living room below my bedroom.
I used to stumble down the stairs
and knock on his door in the dark
wearing my green robe and red slippers
to ask, in my saddest sleep-scratchy voice,
for him to turn it down.
Now I cram orange plugs in my ears
and burrow under the covers.

If I stand for long enough in
my quaint and tiny bathroom,
over the small free-standing sink blue
with worn enamel,
I can hear, over the ear-grating hum
of the dying fluorescent light above the mirror,
Ted coughing across the hall.

3. Smells

Opening the shabby brown door,
I step into leftover onion and garlic,
laced with growing plants in dirt
and the faint underlay of cat litter.
Sometimes the kitchen smells
of raw chicken.

When Santos comes to shut off our heat
for the summer, I will tape
garbage bags over the old black
metal register grates and cover them
with bathroom rugs that match the carpet,
to keep out the stale, persistent perfume
of burning cigarettes.

After I pull up the covers and turn off the light,
I can smell Kevin, who keeps weird hours,
cooking. Gourmet vegetarian, organic
garlic, tomato, masala, curry odors pour
through the vent in the wall next to my bed.
I close my eyes and try not to dream of food.

Coming or going, up or down
the dirty, stained stairwell that I share
with Ted, I sometimes smell nicotine, tar,
unwashed old man, ancient cat and
ancient cat piss, and sour unscrubbed breath.
I sometimes smell the full, wet steam
of my shampoo and Dial soap.
I sometimes smell Ted’s sister’s cheap cologne
or the grease from onion-frying beef.

When I push open my sticky, warped windows,
I catch the sharp clean smell of snow,
the smoke of wood-burning furnaces,
the rich awakening of the earth in the yards,
the asphalt taint in rain.
Neighborhood kids of mingled races clamor
in the streets. They climb cars
and dart after balls and spat with sticks.
Through the pavement on the streets,
the red lines of bricks are wearing free.

snacking out

Last night Joan, Laura, Marianne and I had a long-awaited Girls' Night at my place. We intended to watch chick flicks and eat lots of popcorn; we ended up talking and eating lots of chips and salsa con queso, and monkey bread.

All day prior to the get-together, I was reminiscing on the slumber parties of my adolescence, when our parents supplied 5-10 teenage girls with enough junk food to feed the army of Attila the Hun, and we would stay up till 3 or 4 a.m. yakking and drinking caffeinated soda and stuffing our mouths with Doritoes, Cheetoes, popcorn, chips and dip.

So I wanted to provide a feast (perhaps partially in denial of my current poverty -- I can be far more lavish with guests than I can with myself, and it's more satisfying to feed other people anyway), and I did. There were chips & salsa, an enormous veggie spread with ranch dip, baguette (provided by Marianne) with butter or sun-dried tomato spread (which didn't turn out like I'd hoped, but was edible), chocolate chip monkey bread (provided by Laura, and delicious), soda, and wine.

And we couldn't eat it all. I didn't even break out the hummus and babaganouj (I have FINALLY conquered the recipe!) with pita, the popcorn, or the cheeses that Joan brought. And I realized, to my astonished disappointment, that I'm no longer an adolescent. Eating till I burst now means so much less than it used to.

The conclusion: I'M GETTING OLD. Not really. The actual conclusion is, don't buy tons of food for a girl party. Because now I'll be stuck with it for weeks.

BUT the conversation was delightful and fulfilling -- nothing warms my heart like a fellowship of women (unless it's communion with one amazing man -- and I'm something lacking that at the moment, not completely but in part) -- and we're planning to make tracks for a girly shopping trip to Chicago in a week.

At least we didn't run out of food!

2006 Auction: going--going--gone!

The Auction took place a week ago today, and went, I am glad to say, extremely well. We didn't quite make our fundraising goal, but on the whole the event was a brilliant success.

And some quick backstory about the Auction, so you get a little bit of an idea what it was like: It's a big event -- 432 people attend, alongside 100 volunteers, to bid on fully or partially donated packages, the net from the sale of which benefits the Center for the Homeless. Our annual operating budget at the Center hits the 2.4 million dollar mark, and the Auction is our biggest annual event. This year, with the sale of auction items and sponsorships from community businesses, we grossed $260,000.

And I was in charge of running the whole event. Namely, I was in charge of organizing our Auction Committee, comprised entirely of long-time volunteers from around the community. They all know what they're doing, so I didn't have to run anyone's life, but I had to make decisions, network behind the scenes, and do a lot of navigating in what is for me completely uncharted waters. It was thoroughly rewarding work, and of course left me exhausted afterward.

The particular challenge was making this year's auction experience better for everyone than last year's. Last year my boss, Angie, came into her position and had to handle the Auction, with no preliminary experience, three weeks before the event; it was the first year being held at a new venue; and it was the first year using a new brand of auction software to make keeping track of sales easier (but, since it was the first year, it wasn't easier at all).

I was lucky in that the second year of doing something new is bound to be easier than the first, and in that I had Angie to coach me along the entire way; but something also made everyone on the Auction Committee, and the other Center staff who worked their arses off to pull this off, very relaxed. The day before the Auction we all set up at the Palais Royale, and it was entirely low-key. So was the day of the Auction. And that -- everyone's chill, roll-with-the-punches attitude -- is what makes me think I did a good job.

So I've been putting in 60-90 hour work weeks the past month, and I took a three-day-weekend this time around, and midway through April I'm taking off a week just in flex time. I'm looking forward to it greatly.

The Woman Warrior

Tonight the University of Notre Dame opened a three-day conference celebrating 25 years of the democratic Chinese magazine Today. I attended with Marianne, Joan, and Laura Farina for a wine and sushi reception (fabulous), and to hear readings from one of my literary idols, Maxine Hong Kingston.

She was wonderful. She was pointed out to me while I sat in the atrium of McKenna Hall trying to identify the most polite way to eat a sushi roll: a petite woman in a black-and-white striped dress with shoulder-length gray-white hair pinned back at the side in cute little clips, standing with her back to me about seven feet away. I watched her greet the people she knew with hugs and thought, Ohhh she's nice. (It's lovely to see in person a favorite writer who is nice.)

And her readings were superb. She stood just a head above the lecturn in the cozy auditorium and told funny stories about her writing career (which began with a funny poem she made up when she was two, hanging out a second-story window from her mother's hands, greeting her great-uncles coming toward them in a coach drawn by a pair of black horses). And she read exerpts from her work. This is the thirtieth birthday of The Woman Warrior, and in the thirty years since its publication, Maxine discovered some errors (or omissions) in her representations of the myths of Fa Mu Lan and Ts'ai Yen, which she corrected (or added) in her readings. She has a low, easy voice and a relaxed presence. Her reading voice is excellent. And her passion for peace is both inspirational and contagious.

I left wanting to read everything she's written, and kicking myself for not bringing my copy of The Woman Warrior for her to sign. And as we filed out of the auditorium, I found myself walking right behind her.

I touched her shoulder and thanked her for presenting, and said, "It was an honor to hear you."

She squeezed my arm and said with a big, warm smile, "Thank you -- I love your coat! Pink -- so appropriate." (My pink spring coat coincided neatly with her concluding remarks on pink as the color of peace.)

Then she went to the table to sign books, and I wandered out into the frigid South Bend early spring night, happy happy happy.

If you haven't read Maxine Hong Kingston, please do. Not only is she brilliant and amazing and powerful in her works, she's also gracious and endearing.

So glad I went. So glad.

a day with Meg

Yesterday morning I had to go with my coworker Mary to set up a display for the Auction at the mall. Yes, folks, the mall where I drudged my life away for nine months on two minimum-wage, benefitless jobs.

I was unprepared for the strength of my reaction to that consumeristic, soulless place. I had, consciously, to wipe the disgust and revulsion and resentment off my face when we came out of the dingy back hallway into the main area of the mall. It actually took courage.

I didn't realize till yesterday that I really was miserable for a good deal of the time last year. And now, when things are going so incredibly, unbelievably, unexpectedly well, and I don't have to brave my way through everything, I can say, Man that sucked.

I mean, don't get me wrong. God was there, all the way through it. The ladies at Ann Taylor (none of whom work there anymore; the wonderful women who took me in as a surrogate daughter and sister have been replaced by toothy, snotty sharks who only want your dollars -- if they can tell right off the bat that you have dollars) gave me a place and a kind of family. But I was under several burdens, constantly and simultaneously: feeling inadequate in a sales job; feeling pressure to bring in more money or lose my job (this was from the upper management, not the management in my store); feeling despair at having to work so hard doing something that my personality and field of education didn't suit me to do.

So when I walked out of the mall after my three-hour table-sitting shift, I felt slightly sick -- poisoned, even. (The only upper was buying an ADORABLE mug at Gloria Jean's.) And on the way home, out of the blue, I called The Meg Formerly Known as Boss and audaciously invited myself to her charming house in Michigan for the afternoon. (It's harder to invite a married couple over to my small apartment when they have a real house with things like yardwork to do on Saturdays, when on Saturdays the height of my activity is maybe walking the dog next door.) So I drove up to Michigan -- and every time I drive to their house, even after eight months, I still need a refresher on directions; the generally decent map in my head abandons me when I cross the Michigan border -- and we went antiquing.

Antiquing was the perfect antidote to the mall. We poked around stalls in this big warehousey low-ceilinged building exclaiming over chairs, glassware, pots, lamps, chests, benches, stained glass windows. I fell in love with an old unstained kitchen chair, carved for comfort. And the woman who waited on me at checkout gave me a stranger's unexpected high praise. She asked if I were a student, and when I said no, she said, "Oh, let me guess what you do. I like doing this. Hang on -- I'm trying not to stare -- you're really lovely, you have wonderful teeth -- okay, let me guess what you do..." And she guessed wrong (lawyer's assistant), but when I told her my real job, she said, "Oh, you'd be really good at that, you have this warmth about you, it draws people. Some people give off this vicious vibe, but you're not vicious." And in the process of ringing me up, she found out I was funny to boot, and when Meg and I left she called after me, "Good luck, you're wonderful!"

It was a little crazy, but really nice. It purged the mall-poison from my system.

So then Meg and I went home and had an excellent dinner with Meg's husband Phillip (grr, I can never remember if I'm spelling his name right, I hope that's it -- Philips/Phillips are as picky as Sarahs/Saras when it comes to spelling), and then we went to see the local high school's production of The Wizard of Oz for which Meg and Phillip had done a lot of set work, and which Phillip was stage-managing. It was insanely cute, and the show was completely stolen by the cutest little four-year-old girl Toto anyone has ever seen. At several points there were at least twenty people onstage doing well-rehearsed dance numbers, and all eyes in the audience were fixed on this sweet little Toto doing her enthusiastic, unselfconscious level best to follow along. I kept whispering to Meg, "I can't take it. I want one."

So it was charming, and the set work, despite Meg's disappointment with the final result, was great. Oo and the Oz costume was amazing -- modeled after Western Native American dance costume, it featured a huge, frightening mask head on a frame several feet above the actor's head, from which flowed long loose robes, making Oz look enormous. There were also creepy metal claw-hands. Fantabulous.

It actually makes me want to see the Judy Garland version again. I haven't wanted to see that, even remotely, in ages.

So it was a good day. And tonight I'm planning on attending a Chinese lit conference at Notre Dame, and tonight's program features Maxine Hong Kingston reading some of her work -- I'm outrageously excited.

spammers

Okay, I mean come on. Who invents these names that show up in my bulk folder?

Today a guy named Castillo Harvey sent me a spam. Then there was Napoleon Huddleston and apparently his brother Jarold Huddleston who both wanted to tell me about tickets they say I'm being billed for.

Who has names like this? Who even invents names like this?

Ridiculous.

In other news, as the Auction nears, I'm surprisingly calm. I had a meltdown week last week, and my favorite guy friends were insanely nice and supportive, and this week when I'm doing fine they don't seem quite to know what to do with me. We've hung out and had good times, but sometimes they just seem...puzzled. "So, you're doing okay?" "Oh yeah, I'm doing fine now. Everyone says things are coming together well, so I decided to believe them." "Oh...good -- that's good." (Maybe they think I'm an insane woman, freaking out one week and blithely fine the next.)

But the thing is that the meltdowns tend to be few and far between. Ordinarily, I'm really fine. Sometimes I half-wish I were consistently broken, just because it seems to motivate men so much to try to make it better, to be there, and they make the greatest companions. And I grant you that I'm pretty lonely. But I can't fake that I'm doing poorly, when I'm usually doing fairly well.

I'm not sorry I'm doing well; I was broken for awhile, and I don't miss it. I do wish that I could find a way to be close to men without having big problems for them to try to fix. My only big problem is that I'm lonely and want someone to share life with, day by day. But how do you tell someone that? (Although I'm starting to.) So, usually when they ask how I'm doing, I say, "Fine -- yeah, everything's fine."

When it's kind of not...I mean, my life is great. I have a great job, great cat, great apartment, great friends, and I really feel like I'm settling in. But I keep coming back to the bare, bald fact that when I consider what I most want in life, it's a family. And I have no control over acquiring one. I have to wait.

But even with the frustration, the loneliness, the yearning, the hunger for intimacy in all its forms, I'm still not broken. And often that seems to drive the good men away. Like I don't need them. When I do need them. Not to fix me, not to save me, not to complete me; but to live alongside me and love me and see me.

Bah, it feels corny to be complaining about it. It'll happen, when I'm not clutching for it. I know this.

So it's a matter of cultivating contentment, a matter of time, and a matter of enjoying the people I know right now, while I have them. Everything will fall into place eventually. Everyone says so, so I think I'll believe them. (Because "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.")

Right?

Right.

overwork and odd bumps

I put in about 65 hours last week.

The next couple of weeks leading up to the auction are going to consume my life. This isn't of course bad -- it's like a strange combination of production week and finals week -- but I'm going to be exhausted by the end. The night itself will, I think, be quite fun.

Poor Simon spends so much time alone that he goes primordially insane when I walk through the door. He tears around the house making brrrrrrrt! noises and leaping out from behind furniture to bat madly at my ankles when I walk past. Lately our favorite game when I'm getting ready for bed involves him ferociously attacking my hands through the shower curtain while he sits in the bathtub. (When he sees the bare skin of my hands, however, he immediately desists and rubs against my fingers and starts purring.)

And I have this odd lump on the back of one of my vertebrae -- it doesn't seem to be attached to the bone, is slightly squishy, and hurts like hell, probably because I've been performing contortionist exercises to prod at it. My acupuncturist says it looks like a fatty nodule and needs an eye kept on it.

I'm freaked out and scared. What is it and why is it there? Is it dangerous? Should I get it looked at? What if I need some major surgery? What if it's cancer? Why does it hurt so much?

Prayer, please. I know I may be a little of an alarmist, but when it comes to my health, I really really like things to be normal. And this isn't normal.

new things

This week kicks off our "Biggest Loser" competition among the staff at work. Twelve people are participating, and there's a nice reward pot for whoever wins.

I'm excited to do this. Now, I know I don't techincally have a weight problem, but I've been steadily putting on the pounds over the past year, and I don't like it. I know with absolute confidence that I will not win the "Biggest Loser" prize, but I look forward to the camaraderie of working with other people to establish healthy patterns of eating and excercise, which will hopefully outlast the 4-month competition and continue into my future.

So yesterday I went for a brisk long walk through sopping spring snow (the snow actually completely covered my glasses and soaked my coat), and today I plan to implement a new two-hour lunchbreak plan, where I still come in at seven and leave at five instead of four. This way I can take a nice walk during my lunch, shower if necessary, eat, relax, and head back to work. (This is the closest to a "siesta" that I can get this side of the Altantic.)

And now I have to roll up my sleeves about the Auction. I'm starting to stress about it. It's a huge task, I've never done anything like it before, and there are so many different tasks that I need to do that it's difficult to stay organized. BUT I have to have faith in the God who put me here, and who equipped me for it -- I don't have to do this alone.

And that's the other thing -- I feel like this weekend contained the perfect balance of companionship and solitude. I hung out with MP, chilled with some of the most fun of the grad students at her apartment for sweeping rounds of Balderdash and Bullshit (both of which I sweepingly lost, but it was oh-so-much fun), and Sunday was church and much-needed shoe shopping, and then an afternoon of trying to take a nap while Simon jumped on my head, and an evening of movie-watching by myself while I figured out my menu and grocery list for the week, and finished paying off my bills. (Ugh.)

So it was good. No matter how well I sleep on Sunday nights, it's never enough for Monday morning, but I'm going to keep this nice past weekend close to mind as a landmark of sanity when everything starts to go crazy...starting in about ten minutes when I have a meeting to figure out what we're putting in the program, get the program text written, figure out volunteer contact information to go into the program, and various and sundry other panic-related things as we all completely wig out.

But it's going to be okay -- by and by. I really need to keep the stress under control. When I don't, it keeps me from falling asleep, seeps into my dreams when I finally do drift off, wakes me up from the dreams to continue worrying, and brings my menstruation on early. (Oh yes. Some girls skip their period when they're stressed; mine comes sooner. So lucky.)

SO, I have a strict don't-think-about-it-when-you're-not-at-work policy. Which has been working so far. But we'll see, when the poo finally hits the fan. In five minutes.

Here's to relying on grace!

a great week

So, after all the angst and misery and anguish of last week, this week was splendid.

It all started, surprisingly and ironically, of course, with church. After tearful conversations on the phone with various people of various degrees of understanding, MP said, "Sarah, come with me to Calvary Temple. Just this Sunday." And I, who left this church at the beginning of last autumn, and who normally decline MP's invitations to go back, said, "Yes, okay."

It didn't cross my mind not to go. And the entire service was unbelievable. I sat there stunned, thinking, this is God gently telling me that it's okay. That everything is okay. And that there's a place for me.

Because the pastor, just after a great worship service, stood up and said, "The word of the Lord today is one word. It's two syllables. The first syllable is re." And I thought, oh-the-second-syllable-is-PENT-okay-I-should-probably-repent-of-my-bad-attitudes, and then the pastor said, "And the second syllable is lax."

And I sat back and thought...oh. Oh.

And the sermon, preached by my favorite pastor at this church, addressed almost everything that's been important lately. I was challenged, encouraged, and filled with joy. And afterward there was a luncheon for the young adults at the head pastor's home, and MP and I both went, and we met some truly fabulous people. One girl busted out with the occasional "shit" and another was telling me how much she enjoys wine. And I just relaxed and bathed in the company of other, normal, cool, amazing young people who are connected with church.

This doesn't mean that any of my previous complaints no longer have value. They very clearly do. But God took me by the shoulders and showed me that the whole thing is not hopeless. And I basked in the "God-afterglow," as MP calls it, for the rest of the week.

The Miracle Auction that I'm running at work is three weeks away. There's so much to do. And this week I wasn't going crazy with stress. I just did what I needed to do. A few coworkers for whom I care greatly are undergoing various extremely stressful personal scenarios, and instead of worrying myself sick over them, I prayed. And prayed. And prayed. And was suffused with peace. And overall a vast thankfulness, that God has brought me here, and is still leading me.

The week has had its challenges. Last night I plunged into momentary discouragement, where I was convinced I'd die alone, and started to feel like I felt all through February. But then I said, "No. I'm sick of being depressed. I don't want to feel this way anymore. God is GOOD, and His gifts are GOOD, and they're pouring out more than I had imagined possible." So I relaxed, and chose hope, peace, love, and faith.

And now it's the weekend -- the last free weekend I'll have till after the auction, since work will, starting Monday, overcome my life for the next three weeks. Last night I went to the Fiddler's with two of my favorite coworkers (the only person missing was Meg), and we hung out and told stories and talked, and then I went home feeling that momentary lonely discouragement and instead of wallowing, I baked a pan of cornbread, took a long soak in a tub full of relaxing bath salts, read half of a cheesy romance novel, started a historical exploration of Helen of Troy, and went to bed. This morning I slept in, read, and began cleaning the house. Soon I'll head over to MP's to do laundry and chill, come home to walk the dog next door, and head back to MP's for a game night. Tomorrow is church and an afternoon of relaxation.

A great week. Thank you, Jesus, a great week.