every once in awhile...

I decided that, like it or not, my introvert batteries need some serious recharging. I've been on the go constantly for two months, and my resources are significantly drained. So, starting Friday, I began a period of a recluse, hermitish existence whereby I go nowhere except the grocery store and hang out with virtually no one. And it's been splended so far. I'm not sure how long this period will last -- hopefully I'll be ready to rejoin the social world again by Sunday, since I'm supposed to host Sunday dinner.

Chris Pipkin coined a term last weekend: "socially hungover." And I've had it bad.

So this weekend I did nothing but sew my curtains. I finally figured out the darn sewing machine, and I spent a good period of forty-eight hours kneeling on the floor sticking pins in seamlines. I used no pattern but the ideas in my head, which fluctuated every hour or so. And by eleven o'clock last night I was finished. And they look awesome.

They're made of panels of a dark red, plush-ish fabric and a cream faux linen fabric. As I have three windows in my living room, two of which are in the same wall, I tried a little organic-type design, so that each window has a different kind of curtain. The outer windows have the red at the outside, the cream at the inside; the middle window has the red at either side and the cream in the middle. I sewed tabs on them from which to suspend the curtains, and then tied the panels together into a knot at the very center of the window.

The result: phenomenal. I wish I had a digital camera to share.

I've also been losing weight. I don't know how much, since I don't have scales, but the belt I couldn't buckle a month ago now fits comfortably at the second hole, so that's at least an inch gone. And that's good: After the Summer of Existential Despair, I started porking up like a pig for the slaughter, and I reached again the weight I was in college (v. bad). But now I'm feeling more comfortable with myself (and my clothes are more comfortable too -- it's so freaking expensive to replace a wardrobe), and another five to ten pounds should do the trick admirably, so that I'm at a healthy, attractive poundage.

My second home decorating project has been the appearance of my walls. I've forestalled painting them (again), but I've begun collecting old postcards at the antique stores in Edwardsburg, and this weekend I purchased a lot of cheap-yet-interesting picture frames, and have been arranging them in the corners behind the entertainment center -- heretofore a vast empty space of sterile white, now a pleasing array of strategically placed pictures. I even figured out how to hang some of them IN the corner, so that they face out and bring the two walls more smoothly together.

Some of the postcards are of local places, some of places far away; and some of them are postmarked with notes -- one of them from 1910, and another rather nasty one from some crotchety-sounding Aunt So-and-So, who wrote to her niece, "This warm weather must be rough on fat people like you. Got your postcard. I was forgetting some of the childrens' names." Others are funny, or rather sweet -- one from an apparently ten-year-old kid to his sister on a trip to the Alps, with a picture of skiers on the front and a note on the back reading, "Dear sister, I had some of those snow shoes on at the top of that mountain, but I couldn't slide with them on. John."

I love old correspondence.

So yes, my self-imposed isolation from society has been doing me good, and given me a chance to work on some nest-lining projects that are turning out well (now I just need to clean the filthy apartment).

Most of this year I've felt like the Anti-Midas, but every once in awhile, the things I touch turn to gold. Or at least cool, red-and-cream curtains, and nicely pictured walls.

See, and even that was a little melodramatic for how I'm actually feeling. What I'm actually feeling is more like this: - .

All I want to do is go home and sew my curtains (MP and I are on a quest to further our psychotic domesticity together). My sewing machine was giving me fits last night, as I was trying to figure out how to use it, but a brief discussion with my boss's wife had her a.) laughing at me for trying to seam the fabric in the wrong direction and b.) giving me tips for how to fix the problem. So now that's all I want to do.

And the only story I really feel like telling is this one.

When I was a senior in high school, I started dating this guy from my Calculus and Spanish classes. He was very short, very cute, very shy, and very sweet. We used to do our calc homework together as a way of getting around my parents' -- and my -- anti-dating policy. He made me laugh. Holding hands with him was lovely. We went to Prom.

I broke up with him (or stopped talking to him) the summer before college, telling myself that long-distance relationships don't work and unable to get past his nonparticipation in the Christian faith. I think that mercenary decision is one of my only regrets.

But when I think about him, aside from all the passing notes in Spanish class and watching movies at Hillori's and scrambling around in the woods building rock formations with our other dorky and funny friends, I think about how I would get up for school at 4:45 a.m. to use the shower ahead of the rest of my family, and how when I got home from school I was so tired I would fall dead asleep on my bed, and how he would call while I was sleeping, and how Mom would wake me up to give me the phone, and how I would be groggy and stupid and take twelve seconds to mumble a response to anything he said, and how he would laugh and ask, "Did your Mom wake you up again? ... She really shouldn't do that," and how his voice was so warm and affectionate it was like he was sitting next to me, and how talking to him on the phone, even with a sleep-reduced IQ, made me wonderfully happy, and how I would look out the window next to my bed and feel the almost-summer breeze blow over the sheets, and think about how happy I was, because of him.

an obligatory post, by way of apology for my long silence

When will my spring come? When shall I be as the swallow, that I may sing and not be silent? I have lost the Muse in silence, and Apollo regards me not.
~Pervigilium Veneris

This is me. I had a fabulous Homecoming weekend, but now everything seems flat and barely worth going through. I'm alone. I have nothing much to say. I am tired and oversocialized. I have no perspective.

And I can't even talk about it. What is there to say?

but it's only October

Why so early, snow? Now all I can think about is Christmas.

Trash Day

In early August thunderstorms push
flash floods into the car-plowed furrows
of the historic street and lay
two inches of water along the house foundation.

Thursday morning I sit on the porch
with a side view of the swamped lawn
and front-row exposure to the hammer
of rain over neglected gutters.

Tips of grass blades lean over the water
toward the sidewalk, a dirty tributary to the alley
where the garbage truck idles.
From my patio chair I can see
the yellow slicker of the trash man
lurch toward the green city-supplied cans.

In the gray caste of the day
the white bags snap from his arm
into the back of the truck
like sodden sheets jerked free of the line.

leeky boats

In an effort to contain the Bridget Jonesian fat splurging out from our hips and sides, MP and I decided to begin the French Women Don't Get Fat diet, which kicks off with two days of nothing but leek soup. We had planned on making this a weekend thing, but put it off this past weekend, and didn't want to do it this coming weekend (GCC HOMECOMING!!!), and the weekend following is too far away, so we decided to do it yesterday and today.

When Sunday Dinner lasted too late into the night for us to purchase the leeks then, we decided that MP should go to Meijer at 7 a.m. on Monday and then come to my apartment armed with leeks to make the soup.

And she did it. (We do nothing by halves, we two.) We made a gargantuan pot of boiled leeks (throwing in thyme and oregano for some flavor), split it in half, and went about our day. I drove to work with an enormous pot of soup snuggled at the bottom of the car, which infused the office with a strong smell of onions as it sat looking bizarre atop the filing cabinets. I spent the morning gulping ladlefuls of leek broth to pacify my screaming stomach, and the afternoon hating leeks and avoiding them by drinking Coke. I became giddy, dizzy, and half-delusional. Email conversations with MP found her in the same state.

My determination lasted exactly until I got home from work, when I dumped the soup in the yard and went to Fiddler's for a steak sandwich.

It just goes to show that I'm not French (and that one should never panic about splurging fat when one is undergoing the camel-syle water storage of PMS). So I'm doing what I did two years ago and reinstilling the Peanut Butter Diet.

I'm the princess

Neighbors Kevin and Jim and I spent all summer fuming in preparation for the showdown with the Absent Landlord demanding central heating this winter. We've been meeting on and off for months, talking about it and planning our attack.

Preliminary to our planned group meeting with him, last weekend while the AL was at my apartment surveying two bedroom windows which had been broken for sixteen months and ten months, respectively, I asked, with all my usual diplomatic subtlety, when he was going to turn on the heat and which system he was using this year. When he began to say he wanted to keep the heat low and have us use the space heaters, like last year, I interrupted him and said, "Yeah, I'm not okay with that." I informed him of his legal obligation to keep the heat at sixty-five degrees during the day and sixty degrees at night. He then promised to keep it at sixty-four.

Two days later, Kevin told me that the AL told him sixty during the day.

Oh no, I said. This is not going to fly. We're having a meeting.

So Kevin and Jim and I conferenced, and Kevin put in a casual call to the AL arranging to have him come over to Kevin's apartment yesterday evening to examine a ceiling leak. When the AL arrived (very very late), he found the three of us waiting on the porch.

"So," I said. "While we're all here, I just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page about the heat this winter. You told me sixty-four during the day, sixty at night. Is that what we're doing?"

And the three of us pretty much bullied him into it, which wasn't that hard. We just kept repeating ourselves. One of the AL's favorite tricks (as he tends to avoid confrontation) is to tell one of us one thing, and another of us another, and then play us off against each other ("Why are you upset about this, Kevin? Sarah's fine with it"). We decided to avoid that by making him say the same thing to all of us at once. And now three people have heard him promise to keep the heat at one particular central temperature.

While we were waiting for the AL to show up, Kevin looked at me (this is a thirty-five-year-old man, mind you, who in the past has appeared to demonstrate no problem with speaking his mind) and said, "I'll follow your lead on this one, Sarah."

"Why?" I said. "Because I'm psychotically confrontational?"

He laughed.

So we get baseline heat this winter (yay!) and Kevin and Jim won't be moving out in the near future (again yay! they're great neighbors -- we're all quiet, considerate, articulate, able to compromise with problems of living in one house, and enjoy little nickel-and-dime improvements around the place, like patio furniture, clotheslines, and now we're planning a firepit in the backyard. I also bought Jim's old bicycle, and Kevin and I are porch-sitters. We all get along beautifully, and the AL has a bad habit of renting to drug dealers, so who knows who would move in?).

And Jim told me yesterday that if we got the heat and he decided to stay, he was getting a satellite dish. "You can feel free to tap in," he said, "I won't charge you. In fact, I'm getting hookup for four rooms, but I only have three televisions, so I'll just give you the fourth receiver."

"Oh. My. Gosh. That would be so awesome, Jim. I'll pay for that receiver," I said.

"Why? I won't be paying for it; it comes with the package. You can just have it."

So I'll have central heat AND Direct TV this winter.

I win.

oh life

What a fabulous week.

I'm finally beginning to settle in at work; I'm not making as many stupid mistakes, and I have apparently worked out an excellent organizational system which allows me to manage my menagerie of tasks without losing track of what I'm doing.

The legal secretary thing is a challenge. On any given day I'm responsible for drawing up documents, transcribing letters, and making copies of said documents and sending them to the appropriate people (with nearly every one of them I sign an affidavit or proof of service, swearing under oath that on that particular date I served the opposing counsel or unrepresented parties the documents by placing them in the mail, which means that if I forget or lose them I can get my petutie tossed in jail). I also have to open and copy the mail, send and receive and copy and file faxes, make sure my boss sees the important ones, file papers in their appropriate files, be absolutely certain to send clients their notices of hearing, manage my boss's calendar, get his office going in the morning, pack and unpack his satchel for court appearances, take his messages and make calls for him. Furthermore, I'm also the receptionist, so I am in charge of answering phones, taking messages, making appointments, putting new clients in the system and helping them complete their paperwork, accepting monies through the mail or in person, making receipts, and keeping track of all charges made for appointments, documents, enclosures sent through the mail, faxes sent and received, phone conferences, and court appearances.

With absolutely no prior training, and so much room for massive errors, it's been a tough change. Add to that my recovery from the trauma of my previous job, betrayal from and loss of people I had considered friends, difficulties with my antidepressants, major spiritual upheaval through exploring Catholicism (which, some days, nearly kills me with stress and uncertainty, and other days fills me with certainty and joy), a sudden sober awareness of the state of my finances and a need to screw down a really tight budget, and it's been a grueling summer and early fall.

But I'm coming along. Very well, in fact.

I'm beginning to work on my writing again; the past couple of weeks I've sat down and begun to revise my poetry, and to consider where to begin to submit it for publication. I'm getting more sleep. Simon has once again become my bedfellow through the cold nights (he stopped sleeping on my bed when I began to be hit hard by depression in April, and I've missed his warm little furry body tremendously). I'm starting to get up earlier and be glad to be awake. The weather has morphed over the past week from rainy and miserable to perfect sunny crisp autumn. I've stocked up on staples for my forays into the world of Indian cooking. I feel like I'm getting myself back.

The past few weekends have been filled with several important home improvement projects (nest-lining in preparation for winter), which have made my delightful apartment even more a beautiful home. The other week poking around in an old antique/junk store down the street from where I work, I found a gorgeous 1920s dresser (for $34!!), which Joan helped me transport into my apartment last Sunday -- finally I can get the majority of my clothes out of the plastic bins under the bed! I also found a heavy old drawer reinforced with rusted iron, once painted yellow but now almost entirely weathered and gray, and divided into four segments; last Sunday I figured out my drill and screwed it into the wall and turned it into a spice rack, and hung my "Chat Noir" pictures on either side of it. I also found an authentic old spice rack, with eighteen empty clear glass spice bottles, so now I have an attractive display for all the Asian and Indian spices I bought, which all come in plastic bags. I battled with the drywall and studs and hung all my pots and pans on another wall. A weathered beer crate has become a shoe rack in the entryway, an old window trough serves to hold my writing projects under revision on my writing desk, and an old wooden box with a worn leather strap now contains all of my stationary.

My house is beautiful.

It's been over a year since I first moved in, and I've fallen in love with the neighborhood, with the local Farmer's Market, and with my apartment. And now, with the additional furniture from last weekend, and with the writing desk and huge armchair I bought over the summer, it feels perfectly settled and at home with itself.

And now that I see Meg and Phillip at least once a week (we spent Friday night eating pizza and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation -- joy! rapture! I love Data!), and Marianne nearly every day, and the grad students who have become like family at the newly-instituted Sunday dinner (a perfect way to pretend Monday is never coming, and to sit down and enjoy a home-cooked meal with wine among familiar company and excellent conversation), and talking to Leigh Ann every Wednesday night while watching Bones, my social calendar is pleasantly filled with people I love in relaxed settings.

So life is settling in and I'm beginning to enjoy it again. Autumn always brings out the best in me anyway, and the changes have reached what appears to be an equilibrium, and all has turned out, indeed, for the best.

And I'm inexplicably content and perfectly happy with being single. I can't actually imagine dating right now, and I'm treasuring too much this refreshing time of loving my life and feeling settled and glad in myself, my God, my friends, and my existence to feel like I have room for someone else. Of course, when the time comes, I'll be glad to greet it. But this is, simply, wonderful.

Oh life.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

stresssssss

I'm wondering if the stomach upsets I've been dealing with all weekend are actually the beginnings of an ulcer.

I'm pretty sure I had one in high school -- I was under constant, slow, elongated pressure from a variety of sources. My stomach hurt all the time, I felt constantly nauseous, and as if butterflies were leaping about with abandon every hour of the day.

It's starting to happen again. I'm hardly ever hungry. My stomach just HURTS.

Not surprising, I guess. I haven't undergone this level of stress in all the combined facets of my life in quite some time, and I've always been one to internalize.

I don't know how to lower the stress levels, though. Exercise more, I think -- which, surprisingly, I began to do voluntarily last week. Pray more. Eat sparingly (oh good, maybe I can start shedding those ten extra pounds). Sleep a lot. Try my hardest to relax whenever I'm not at work, since my hours at work are invariably crammed with stress.

Sometimes I feel a little trapped. MP asked me, a year and a half ago, what my ideal job was. "Quick, like a Rorschak -- don't think about it, just answer -- what's your ideal job?" Instant response: "Not to have one."

Right, that's doable. But all the things I love to do involve not having a job: writing, reading, nesting, cooking. That's real life to me. These just-to-pass-the-time jobs are wearing me out.

And since I have to provide for myself, my only hope is grad school, which is at least a year away.

As the author of Proverbs declares, "Hope deferred rots the bones."

Weekend pleasures...and pains...and ponderings

Apparently something at a departmental party for MP's program on Friday night yielded up a case of something-didn't-agree-with-me. I spent the majority of yesterday, especially into the evening and through the night, in a fog of ill-being and gastrointestinal anguish.

But yesterday was a lovely Saturday nonetheless. Rainy -- as it has been for most of September in the Bend -- but perfectly enjoyable. MP and I planned a short, simple trip to the Farmer's Market, and it wound up being something like this:

1. Go to the new branch of our credit union in downtown South Bend to take cash from the ATM for use at the Market.

2. Notice the little used bookstore that is never open with its doors...open. Go inside and poke around and find several interesting new acquisitions to bulk up our already crammed shelves (a delight for any book collector. I purchased an anthology of Kierkegaard; a translation of the Tao, including commentary, by Ursula K. LeGuin; a work by Pierre de Chardin, a Catholic priest exiled to the Far East by the Church for his espousal of human evolution, who is quoted extensively in Annie Dillard's For the Time Being; an anthology of American folklore, printed in wartime United States; and an updated version of Love Medicine -- the proprietor commented on my eclectic selections).

3. Drive to the Farmer's Market, getting outrageously lost in what ought to be, after two years, a familiar area of town. Buy lots of delightfully local, slightly unnecessary items such as Indiana- or Michigan-grown Cortland apples, Concord grapes, Provolone, and garlic.

4. Swing by Bamber's, a family-owned grocery store a stone's throw from the Market, which has on its shelves amazing and hard-to-find staples such as bulgur wheat, red lentils, and sherry vinegar (a requirement for the finer points of Spanish cooking), as well as amazing and hard-to-find luxuries such as spicy pickled beans, mini cloth bags for bouquets garni, and cooking twine. I then and there fell head-over-heels in love with small, privately owned businesses.

5. Drop MP off at her apartment so she can begin concocting her almost sinfully delicious spaghetti sauce, and zip up to Wal-Mart for everything I've been running out of lately, which almost put me in the poorhouse.

6. Lounge around for the remainder of the day, nursing my digestive tract.

I've also been pondering, a little, the predicament of Christian singles everywhere. It seems there are a plethora of young Christian women and a dearth of young Christian men, none of whom in much of any kind of ratio are dating each other.

It appears to be a double-edged sword (forgive the cliche). Plenty of the Christian women I know I wouldn't date if I were a man. MP realized yesterday, and I agree, that it's hard enough for us to find female Christian friends, let alone for Christian men to find dating partners -- in the two years we've lived in South Bend, we've only grown really close to one Christian woman. We're becoming better acquainted with a few more, but ironically we've met none of them through church. So for the first time I begin to sympathize with the male predicament. Most Christian men whom I have met through church are simply not friends with any women, and when I survey the available material, I don't much blame them. The girls seem to have impenetrable social walls around themselves, and even if they didn't, those girls and I have very little in common except our shared faith. What then, are the guys to do? Church, despite what our elders tell us, is not a good place to meet future mates.

For women either. I've only had one pseudo-dating experience with a man that I met in church, and he turned out to be much less than what I was looking for -- to be specific, he seemed to be strongly physically attracted to me, which I enjoyed, but ended up calling me only once every three or four weeks, and seemed to expect those few and far between appearances to light up my life.

The flip-side of the predicament for women in situations like mine is that I know a lot of guys, some non-Christian, mostly Christian (which is perhaps unusual, but we are talking about South Bend, Indiana). I count a lot of them as friends. The ratio of men whose company I enjoy actually outstrips the ratio of women whose company I enjoy, if we're talking about group environments. Why, then, is it so difficult to attract a date?

So the situation appears to run something like this: Christian men don't see the trees for the forest, and Christian women don't see the the forest for the trees. Men aren't finding any individuals to inspire their attention because the over-all scene is humdrum and they stop looking, while women get so fed up with the lackadaisical individuals they know that they write off the whole species.

What's the answer? My solution has been a resolution to spend less time losing my mind over the issue, and to spend more time out socially in groups, meeting people, getting to know acquaintances better, and deepening already good friendships, while continuing to cultivate excellence in my lifestyle, skills, and habits. The true frustration lies in the knowledge that in the end there's not much more I can do. I find myself growing virulent towards Christian men in a similar vein to my attitude toward men in general while at Grove City, and I would like to avoid that cutting persona a little -- I don't want to run everyone off.

Plus when it comes down to it (where did that most generic of phrases originate?), I truly have faith that I will find the person I've been seeking, and that no art or cunning or rage on my part will bring him along any faster. At the finale, it's all about the right person at the right time in the right place. There's mystery to it. And it won't be all that complicated when all the coordinates are in place; but I can't orchestrate those coordinates any more than I can pattern the stars. So my part, for now, is to wait, to be patient, to cultivate my talents and to grow in love and virtue, to enjoy all of my friendships, and to be content and really happy with my life as I pray for the future.

Besides, constant frustration gets to be exhausting. If there's nothing more I can be doing than what I listed above, it's futile to "throw effort after foolishness," as Spur says in The Man from Snowy River.

And yet there is a time to express frustration, to shout questions, to shake fists -- there's as much a season for trumpeting warnings from the roofs as there is for waiting for the dawn. So I'm certainly not going to give up thinking or writing about, or discussing, the problems among the Christian single population. For now I'm just tired, and coming off a period of deep despair, and I'd like to rest a bit from all the worrying. And I'm not that unhappy with being single, believe it or not.

Joy

I have begun reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, and I think it's going to change my life.

RCIA is going beautifully. This past Tuesday I met with Father Nate, the young and dynamic, intelligent and energetic priest who leads the group, to tell him my story and my background, which was excellent. (There's something so trustworthy about a priest. Maybe it's that Confessional privacy understanding, similar to doctor-patient privilege.) Last night we discussed Scripture, the origins and the importance of the Bible. The Bible-bred Protestants in the room rocked the conversation, and I learned a few nifty new things -- such as the books that were affirmed or ratified to the canon were books that had been found to be in use by Christian communities in extremely variant geographical locations across the known world. Neat. I was impressed by a young man in the class who was appalled at the misogyny inherent in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas (since were were talking a little bit about books that didn't make it into the canon). We talked about the beauty and truth and divine inspiration of Scripture, and its usefulness in drawing us to God.

Afterward Joan and I went to Fiddler's for tea with a couple she knows from the grad school, and whom I met through RCIA. They're wonderful, intellectual, knowledgeable about Scripture, and passionate about the faith. He is Catholic, she is not, but is drawn to it the way I am. Immediately following RCIA they turned and invited me to a grad student Bible study that meets on Wednesday nights. "Some people don't like it because it's a bunch of grad students, and it's 'brainy,'" Heather said, and then laughed. "But you strike me as the kind of person who would like that."

So once Bones switches to Friday nights (DOOOM! DOOOM! Is Fox TRYING to kill my favorite show?), I'll be able to attend this excellent study. They're currently going through 1 Peter, which is a book I'd like to study, as I have a dicey relationship with it. (And lest you think me either shallow or too incompetent to manage the VCR, I will add the caveat that I watch Bones while on the phone with Leigh Ann -- it's our once-a-week show night. Geeky, absolutely, but familial and fun, because we're 600 miles away from each other and have always loved watching movies and shows together -- even though this season the network here is out of sync with the exact timing over there. Grrrr.)

And on Sundays I've been regularly attending Mass with friends.

Kids, this is what I've always wanted from religious community life. Assurance of God's love, beauty, challenge, truth, and most of all peace from the services; people to attend with; new friends; people to socialize with outside of church; encouragement in the mystery of faith; and intellectual stimulation. I am experiencing a joy that I had given up finding. I actually look forward to Sunday. I spend all week in anticipation of RCIA on Thursday. I feel incredibly free, to say what I'm really thinking, to ask my questions, and to respond to discussion questions. That's the whole point -- to explore, to learn, to ask tough questions, and to freely choose whether or not to be Catholic.

Plus I love this one thing: the option of going to Mass at 5:00 on Saturday, or 5:00 on Sunday evening.

Mmm, and September brings with it the delight of apples, and of grapes. I think I'm going to have to drag Meg and Phillip somewhere up in Michigan to smell the grapes. Sometimes something in my brain fires the remembered scent into my nose and makes my throat glands tingle.

the gilded month

I KNEW September was going to be glorious. I felt it in my weary bones. When I turn twenty-five, I thought, things will start looking up.

And oh, they are.

A slightly constricted social schedule is blossoming outward. Already good friendships are deepening into a refreshing, relaxed, familial closeness. My need to retreat from all of humanity has abated, as has my distaste for sitting in silence. My house is astonishingly clean. I'm happy to wake up in the mornings. I'm slightly more motivated to cook.

I'm getting my life back.

Having MP for a neighbor is completely marvelous -- we spent most of last year yelling, "Why do you live so far away?!" and now it's a hop, skip and a jump down the alley for some riotous fun and listening to her landlord doing shotput in his apartment above her.

The job is up and down -- with the stress, chaos and insanity that revolves around the practice of law, there are many days when I think I'm about to yield up my last shred of mental stamina to the four winds; those days are even worse in combination with the depression and recuperation from the stress of the summer. Yet there are others, like today, where I feel productive and more or less on top of things. My bosses are consistently supportive, corrective, and concerned with my wellbeing, while expecting monumental things of me. It's a challenge I haven't had in awhile.

Grad school plans are progessing apace, insofar as I'm further resolved to go. I miss my long vacations and the ability to skip class. I miss the learning environment and the (slightly) gentler pace. I miss having the time and space to focus on writing.

Then last night MP and I went for Chinese and met the new Victor Lee. He asked us all about our academic/professional lives, was duly impressed by our responses, and heaped a take-out box with free crab rangoon while we waited for our order...and, ladies and gentlemen, crab rangoon is my favorite. I had been on the verge of ordering that instead of the egg rolls and egg drop soup, but some little conviction clamped down on my soul and told me to order the egg rolls and soup instead. So I got to have it all. (And isn't that what everybody wants?)

Now with a few new promising possibilities on the near horizon, and with anticipations of a ROAD TRIP to Grove City in three weeks, I find myself, for the first time in months, simply and purely happy to be alive.

How to Make Hummus

Ingredients:

1 15-oz. can garbanzo beans (chick peas)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 Tb tahini (Greek paste of ground sesame seeds, available in the ethnic section of most grocery stores)
6 Tb lemon juice
4+ Tb extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
salt and ground black pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Drain the liquid from the beans into a bowl and set aside.
2. In a blender or food processor, preferably one from 1978 (those things never die and are always at top performance), process the drained beans into a smooth, stiff paste, using the liquid sparingly as necessary. Discard remaining liquid.
3. In a bowl, combine the garlic, tahini and lemon juice. Pour over the beans in the processor.
4. Mix.
5. Listen to sudden, strange thumps coming from the other side of your apartment. Step into the hall to listen -- it sounds like something sliding, dragging, and thudding, but it's not your neighbor in the entryway outside your door. Listen to your cat growl from your bedroom window. With your heart in your throat, tiptoe to the bedroom expecting to see a head in your window.
6. AAAAAH! There's a head in your window! Swallow your heart. Notice that the head is furry and not human. Walk toward your bristling cat in the windowsill and wonder aloud how a cat got on the roof. Notice that the head is the wrong shape for a cat. Conclude, correctly, that it is a raccoon. A dirty, round raccoon slapping at the screen and upsetting your cat.
7. Pull your cat away from the windowsill with terrors of rabies in your soul. Let curiosity get the better of you and stick your head against the screen to see the raccoon retreated further up the roof. Cluck and chirrup at it until it crawls down to see what you are. Watch it scramble away when it catches your human scent.
8. Shut the window and wonder if this accounts for your cat's odd behavior lately. Feel a little less secure in the supremacy of your human dominion. Realize that the wild is everywhere...just a millimeter past your screen. A house is in itself insufficient protection. Feel a little creeped out by the ambiguous voyeur-robber tendencies of raccoons.
9. Keep an eye on your cat and watch the raccoon come back to the window and put its face right against the screen. Watch your cat leap nervously away from the window. Reach out and bang the glass with the flat of your hand and crack the brittle windowpane. Resolve to call your landlord about replacing the window, which in all fairness has been cracked since you moved in.
10. Return to the kitchen. Vow to take your cat to the vet as soon as possible for renewed shots.
11. Add olive oil to contents of blender, a little at a time, until the paste loses its stiffness and achieves a smooth, semi-solid consistency.
12. Add seasoning. Mix. Season further to taste.
13. Scrape hummus into a bowl, cover, and refrigerate until needed. Serve with pita.

I'm insured!

Massive celebration ensues.

Early autumn

I have a positive love affair with September. I love the cooling off, the slight change in leaves, the dying freshness to the air, the slight tang of vinegar that precedes falling apples. One of my favorite Saturday autumn activities is loitering in my apartment looking out the windows with a candle burning in the background while I attend to the basic chores of housecleaning.

I cleaned out my refrigerator today, which wasn't as terrifying as I thought it would be, and am now gearing up to swab the deck from stem to stern.

MP and I have begun, with our friends Joan, David, and Peter, to have Sunday night dinner. It inadvertently began last week with a casual invitation from MP to enjoy a simple (simple?) meal of spaghetti with mussels around her table.

Sundays are usually bittersweet, the dregs of the weekend and the brewing of unpleasant anticipations of weekday duties. Last Sunday I found, to my utmost delight, that a sit-down meal in the relaxed company of good friends, just before the close of the evening, almost obliterated the doldrums. There was good food, good conversation, and a smattering of football. Lovely.

So this week I'm hosting, and in celebration of the cooler weather I think I'll make this excellent garlic and chickpea soup I found in a couple of my cookbooks. It will also be a lovely opportunity to use my new red dishes (which are just enough of a deep pink shade to complement the dishes I already have, which is excellent for dinner parties, since the new dishes only seat four).

Recovery from my black Monday has been slow, but a fun party last night at Joan's helped top off the week, and a lot of sleep did some good as well.

It's no fun sometimes to realize that a chemical imbalance that I was born with will cause bad episodes, regardless of medication, three or four times a year for the rest of my life. I mean, how marketable is that? "Hi, attractive man. I'm slightly insane and for perhaps four days out of the year I will turn into a sobbing, hysterical lunatic for no discernable reason, which will draw out into a full week of dazed exhaustion before I recover what you and I know as my personality. So how about dinner next Saturday?"

When I have a bad day I can't disguise it. I spent all of Monday going about my normal work duties crying -- just like the mother in About a Boy. I couldn't stop. What am I going to do when I have a family, so that I don't scare the bejeebers out of my kids and wear out my husband? My boss's wife has had similar difficulties, and she takes care of it by going away by herself for a weekend, which may be necessary but I'm afraid it will freak the kids out, Ya-Ya Sisterhood style. Or I could try to make sure I live close enough to one set of grandparents to pack up the kids for the weekend, so they'd have some fun while I get some rest.

I know I'm putting the cart a bit before the horse. I don't even have a boyfriend. But I like to have strategies, plans, so that the bad head days don't catch me unprepared. I guess another problem too is that when times like these roll around, I can't be strong. I can barely keep myself together. I'm always strong; I've always been. But these things completely break me down.

I suppose they're a blessing, in a way. That thorn in the side which I've begged to have taken away, but which shatter me to the point where I don't have to be strong, because I can't; and in those moments I'm able, in ways I'm usually not, to rely more heavily on the love of Christ. The last episode I had, Scripture verses yanked out of my memory at random were all that saved me; this time it was prayer.

I would rather not suffer. But if I must, at least I can know it's going to produce something good. And I confess that I look forward to the day when I can lay my head on someone's shoulder and have a pair of human arms around me. No one can fix me, but human touch does so much to heal. In the meantime there are my friends, there are candles and tea and fuzzy slippers and hot baths and George Winston, and there is Simon in all his sweetness. And there is God, who suffers alongside me and who "daily bears my burdens" (Psalm 68). And for the time being, it's enough.

birthday-presents

Early this morning I put in a call to my very good friend MP, and before going about our usual business of the day we went, in spite of the torrents of rain, for a saunter along the egg-smelling banks of the St. Joe River which borders our neighborhood. It was the perfect weather for a slicker with a hood, and galoshes. (I never get to wear my galoshes, so I was excited. I feel like I'm four when I put them on. And it makes puddle-stomping so much drier.)

As we laughed and I poked around the usual debris looking for odd trinkets to decorate my apartment (I already have a few twisted spoons, small medicine bottles, bits of colored glass and broken Delftware, and a big old eaten-away brick that says "BRAZIL" on it -- which fell on Adam's foot when he helped me put in my air conditioners early in the summer), MP's eyes were caught by a yellow glitter under a rock in the water.

She edged out on a pile of flotsam, bent down, and pulled out a ring. A simple, plain band that looked almost a little too bright in the gray cast of the day. I picked my way over the rocks, cans, and tree branches to crouch over her shoulder and get a better look.

I really wanted it. I asked her if I could have it; she said no.

"But it's my birthday! I want it!" I said in tones of great injury.

"I already got you something from Italy! I found it and I get to keep it!"

But I couldn't let her have it. I needed that ring. So I knocked her down and took it. (Yes, I know. I'm a terrible friend. But I'll be making dinner on Sunday, so that should make up for it.)

Suddenly my career plans are changing drastically. I find that, instead of the legal field, or even grad school for writing or English lit, I want to spend the next five hundred years in a black cave so deep no one's discovered it yet, eating raw fish.

Strange thing, though. I've been wearing the ring since this morning, and no one seems to know I'm here.

Also, I got my period this morning. Hello, cramps. Thank you for your many happy returns.

the crash

I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, with everything that's been going on the past six months. Depression hit me hard in April, I got myself back on meds, and managed to get by.

But that's not working anymore. Granted, I rather stupidly ran out of my antidepressants in the middle of last week without refilling them till yesterday, and that caused some nasty side effects -- mild shakiness, poor sleep, nausea, headaches, nervousness -- but today I'm in bad shape. I can barely concentrate on anything, and I feel a breakdown on the rise.

Thank God my new insurance kicks in on Friday. It's time to check myself back into therapy. I feel inadequate to deal with life at the moment, and it makes me tired and blank and helpless. It's like I'm living in this engulfing void of general ill-being.

Depression is hard to explain sometimes. "But what do you have to be depressed about?" I've been asked. "You're beautiful, engaging, intelligent, and you have a good job. You're making it!" Well, I've responded, your circumstances, however positive, don't matter, because this chemical in your brain makes it impossible for you to feel happy, and the bad circumstances seem worse because of it. You don't want to die, but you don't want to live either, because every waking moment is filled, not exactly with pain, but with a black sense of dull horror. Your mind feels dark ("If, then, the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"). The past and present are restlessly upsetting, and the future unendurable. You feel that even the basic aspects of daily living require an atlasian effort beyond your capacity. You doubt your fortitude. You drag through each day just wanting to go home, but are afraid of those moments when you will finally be alone. You want to curl up into a fetal ball and sleep, but sleep comes fitfully and the dreams are awful -- fatalistic fulfillments of all your nagging terrors, or wild fulfillments of your dearest and most impossible wishes.

I'm also wondering if this antidepressant is the best one to be on. My boss's wife has recommended a physician who is excellent with psychiatric drugs, and a psychologist.

It is said that all artists are to some extent tortured, that it comes with the territory, that is it inevitable. I'd like to say I'd rather not be an artist, or be only a mediocre one, and just be okay. But really I want to be an artist AND be okay. Being okay, however, is top priority.

Something's gotta give. God has always been faithful, and always will be. I need to hold to the good with everything I have and have left, and get some qualified help, STAT (as in next week).

I Sing of the Saigon Market

One true gem has arisen from the panned rocks and soot of the summer: the local Asian supermarket.

The Saigon Market sits quietly adjacent to the Oyster Bar, just down from the Fiddler's and well set back from the street, and so I've often regarded it in my time here -- mostly while trying to situate my car outside the crowded Fiddler's and cursing the Saigon's intensely threatening parking signs which promise towing, misery, and death to anyone other than a Saigon Market customer who dares breach the gate.

But toward the end of the summer, dying of boredom and stress and hankering for something recklessly new, I decided to crack open the Japanese cookbook I had purchased sometime in the spring (and if you think I'm being facetious, you don't know my quivering eagerness to master world cuisines, or Japanese cookbooks). After hunting through the glossary and the 100-page introduction deciphering the ingredients, I elected to make miso soup and, armed with a shopping list, exultantly parked in the forbidden lot and walked into the store.

It had a distinctive, and not unpleasant, smell. Odors of fish and fish powders, seaweeds, and other scents unidentifiable to the ignorant Western nose clamored for my attention. I wandered through the three small aisles staring at the produce and trying to figure out which of the twenty-five varieties of dried seaweed appeared on my list, especially since most of the packaging was labeled in characters which, sadly, I have yet to learn.

Finally I shyly approached a manager and asked for help. The Market appears to be run by a family, and all of them are friendly and expert, and grant Western shoppers the kind courtesy of not speaking in front of them in their language (someday I will learn an Asian language. Someday. And I am grateful for the courtesy because once at a gas station, the cashier, a man not a native English speaker, said something to me in his language which sounded extremely unkind. From his tone and the contemptuous way he looked me over I conjectured it was about my gender, and it wasn't even so much lewd as simply nasty. What I would have given to have been able to answer him back). The manager was quick to find me substitutes for the ingredients he didn't have, showed me the locations of the refrigerated tofu and miso, helped me select the correct varieties, and wished me a pleasant day.

The girl at the register seemed to find me mildly, though cutely, insane for making miso soup from scratch when there are plenty of instant varieties in a bin; that's when I began to get the impression that I really am a psycho cook, even by the standards of other cultures.

But truly best about this lovely Market (and I didn't even mention the fresh and frozen produce yet! Enormous varieties of seafood -- fish, squid, eels, shrimp -- and knobs of root ginger the size of your head) is the spice aisle. Half a pound of ground cumin for a dollar-fifty. Half a pound of fennel seeds for a dollar-fifty-nine. Five ounces whole coriander seeds for eighty-nine cents. My friends, two OUNCES of fennel seeds at the local grocery store cost nearly five dollars. Whole coriander is nearly impossible to find. And the quality is wonderful. I used the fennel and coriander in an olive marinade for MP's birthday party last Saturday, and it was scrumdiddlyumptious.

So I usually walk out of the market with the euphoric conviction that I've legally stolen something. And what a lovely hoard of spices I have nesting on top of the fridge!

So if you're worried about spice stocking (which can be dismally expensive), check out your local Asian market...chances are you'll get away with some glorious deals, and you can peruse the awesome candy.

What am I doing?

I think maybe I'm tired and dragging, partly through lack of sleep (because when I'm mentally or emotionally worked up about something, or somethings, I keep myself up to all hours to exhaust myself beyond dreaming or the ability to think about it, which is not exactly helpful to maintaining perspective), partly from the long slow convalescence from the summer, and partly through reeling about a number of decisions I will be making in the next few months.

Here are two:

1. I'm enrolling in an RCIA program on Thursday to consider becoming Catholic. It's a decision I've been kicking around for about three years now, and I've taken the research and the questions as far as I can on my own; it's time to take the official class and learn about it more in detail. Obviously it's a big decision, but I will have time to consider all aspects carefully, and choose. I can back out even up to just before Confirmation, which is the week before Easter. Sometimes I feel certain and peaceful about becoming Catholic, and sometimes I'm terrified and doubtful. But I'll never know if I balk further, so it's time to push forward. I've never really found satisfaction from the evangelical churches I've attended, I prefer the Catholic approach to ministry, and I love the Eucharist. I enjoy Mass. So I need to see. I need to know.

2. I'm going to be applying to grad school again. No matter how nice a job is, it's not ultimately what I want. As MP says, I've been "getting by." And getting by is fine for a time, but not forever; I have, to be cliche, big dreams, and eking out an existence working various office jobs is not fulfilling either the dreams or my sense of purpose.

So the current plan is to take the GRE generals again in November, thus giving me two months to study so that (this time) the results won't be embarrassing, and begin to compile writing samples and recommendations. I'll be going primarily for an MFA in Creative Writing this time, since when I boil down my aspirations, writing is at the heart, and I don't have the space or time to dedicate to my writing while I'm also holding down a full-time job. Naturally I'm applying to Notre Dame (although they only accept 10 writers per year), but I'll be canvassing other universities and I'll also keep my eyes peeled for a good English literature program here and there.

This gives my intention to visit GCC for Homecoming an added purpose: To drop off writing samples to favorite profs and so get better recommendation letters and to run around collecting transcripts. Oo, I'll also be buying, at long last, a Grove City hoodie. I can't believe I've never bought one. I need one.

So, if other things aren't working out the way I want them to -- and there have been a lot of disappointments this year -- I can at least keep my mind fixed on the greater purpose: changing the world through writing. And right now the next step up the marble staircase is academia. I've had my chance to roll up my sleeves and work it out in "the real world"; and now I need to push the cuffs back up over my elbows and start in on my destiny. I'm tired of just getting by.

Hmmm

Also! Yesterday I received a voicemail from The Absent Landlord informing me of a walk-through in my apartment for an appraisal.

I inquired of my boss's wife as to what that might mean. She said either he's selling or applying for a home equity loan to make improvements on the house.

Either one would be welcome. The yard is in a general state of gone-to-seed, the shingles are rippling all over the roof, the gutters are sprouting trees, and the windows are cracked.

Plus, there's the question of heating for the winter (since colder weather is imminent): Last year, freaking out about gas costs, The Absent Landlord declared that he was converting us to electric heat. Okay, we said, thinking he meant to change the central heating from gas to electric.

But no. He essentially shut off the gas and brought us space heaters. As many as we wanted, he said.

Well, Mr. Landlord, how many house fires would you like this winter? I'll have heaters in direct proportion. Thank you.

Besides the fire hazard (because an older heater that I had from college, and which I was using to heat the bathroom, caught on fire one winter morning this year as I stepped out of the shower, making fire more than a statistical probability), it's simply illegal to cut off a tenant's heat.

Now, I and my fellow tenants are more than prepared to fight for central heating this winter. We don't care if it's electric, as long as it's central. But it would, perhaps, be really nice if we had a landlord or landlady for whom such a circumstance is not an issue.

Either way, we win.

the winds of change?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages...

Today just outside the office I found, not one, not two, not three, no, not even four, but FIVE four-leaf clovers.

I never find four-leaf clovers.

Perhaps my luck is about to change. And God, will it be welcome. I turn twenty-five in just under two weeks, and I just want this year, this twenty-four, to roll under and be done. I need a fresh start.

bits of good news

1. The sun is out! It's warm!

2. Contrary to the word which may or may not have been leaking out, I WILL be making tracks for Grove City Homecoming Weekend, thanks to some timely wishing on the part of David DiQuattro.

3. My apartment is still clean.

4. After a period of muddled opinions regarding any number of topics, my thoughts are again clear.

5. I've realized that I'm sick of being anxious and depressed, and am glad to find myself in a better frame of general mind.

I feel cold

The office is freezing today and the rain feels oppressive.

I discovered yesterday that when I nearly maxed out my credit card taking care of Simon, they tripled my limit.

How exceedingly generous of them.

rainy days and Mondays

...aren't bringing me down, but they're making me sleepy.

It's an uneventful day at the office; the boss has an all-day appointment, and we're left pretty much to ourselves. I'm enjoying the brief and temporary respite from the general chaos.

George called me last night, and I got rid of him. I felt admittedly badly for doing so, but I can't see it going anywhere serious (and neither could most other people), so I thought it would be easiest to cut it loose before we knew each other all that well.

Thank God for female friends. Meg called me in the middle of an awkward conversation I wasn't sure how to begin with George, so I told him I'd call him back; then she affirmed my decision and I went running over to Marianne's to sit on her porch to go through with it. In lieu of established family, it's good to have people who surround you with moral support, even if it's, "Hey, I have to break it off with this guy and for some bizarre reason didn't want to do it at home or on my porch; can I do it here?"; and then it's nice to have someone hovering by the screen periodically to check how you're getting on, and when you're finished, to demand a full report and come running out with an offer of wine.

Her porch has thus been christened The Break-Up Porch. Beware, unsuspecting young lovers who might think to linger on its comfortable cushioned lobster crate or deck chairs; tarry for long, and your love is doooomed!

And working in a family office is funny. There are little clouds of spats and temper that gust over from time to time, as well as lots of joviality and comfort. I find myself irresistably drawn in. Their son Rob, who is shadowing his dad for the rest of the month, is something like an ornery older brother -- lots of mutual joshing, crankiness, impertinence, ordering around, and flicking off. (Haha, he started it!) So I'm enjoying myself, and they all take an active interest in my well-being. Most times I don't quite dare to believe it.

Anyway, it's cold and rainy out, and I'm put in mind of soup and of naps, and also of fall. Brief as autumn is in Indiana, I'm looking forward to crisp gusty nights smelling of dead leaves and smoke, and thin blue afternoons of wandering around in jackets with pockets full of apples.

I love fall.

the necessity of singleness

My date went extremely well. George is incredibly nice, and easy to talk to. Thoughtful, decently interesting, and much taller than I am.

But the thing is (and I can't believe it) I just want to be alone. I'm convalescing from a difficult summer. I'm slowly starting to get myself back, as it were. Yesterday for the first time in months I cleaned my apartment top to toe -- and how WONDERFUL to have a clean, neat, orderly living space again. To have a Sunday where I wake up, stretch luxuriously, and have all day to relax, without thinking, Ugh, my apartment is filthy, I really should clean it, but I just can't.

I changed the calendar hanging on my bedroom wall for the first time since April. April is when my life as a healthy-minded human being basically stopped. Now it's on September, as I'm greatly looking forward to that month. I'll be twenty-five in two and a half weeks, and it's good that another year is starting its cycle.

And with all that, I don't have the energy to expend on a new relationship. I just don't want to. At the moment, most guys, however nice and interesting, seem sort of flat when I consider dating them. I have been tremendously enjoying my time spent with groups of friends (hallelujah, the grad students are back), which makes my time spent in solitude all the more relaxing.

But there's been too much loss, too much regrouping, to get to know someone right now in the context of dating. I'm having a hard time dealing with the inevitable awkwardness, with the explicit intent from someone I've just met. I don't want to cuddle with, or kiss, someone I don't really know (touch is an indication of knowledge and trust. I don't like giving it to someone right away, and I hate how dating, as a means of getting to know someone, desacramentalizes human contact). I want to recover, and to heal, I've always needed to be more or less alone. And it all comes back to the reality that however much I love people, getting to know new ones exhausts me.

It figures, of course. I spent the entirety of last year freaking out about my single status and hating every minute of it, with no relief of offers to date from decent men. Now a decent one enters my life and I'm cringing away from dating him. Partly it's just not the right time; partly it's that I don't want to get seriously involved with someone who doesn't share even a modicum of my beliefs (I don't know why it's so difficult to discourse on faith with a dating prospect who isn't a Christian, when talking about it with general acquaintances and close friends is so easy. But there's an uncomfortable friction nonetheless); partly it's that he just doesn't have it. And I hate this because I don't even know what it is. It's like Dr. Potter's standards on the "A" paper -- he would always say, "I don't have a criteria, really. I just know one when I read it." Which is very frustrating to both grader and graded, not to know why one paper is an "A" and another is a "B." I can't say why one guy draws me and another doesn't. Maybe there's a fire of spirit that I need, and placid people just don't do it for me, which tends to be the quality that formulates the basic character of the "nice guy."

I tend to wonder if my standards are too high; if I'm too picky; if I'm too willing to shunt someone away without giving him a chance; if these attitudes and behaviors will consign me to years of unecessary unhappiness. But then I tend to consider that I don't have much baggage from prior relationships, and count that in my favor. I worry about everything more than enough as it is, without adding complicated choices made in uncertainty to the pile.

And I'm anticipating dealing with a couple more losses in the next week or two. There are a few things that I have to do. I don't really need, I don't think, anxiety and guilt from a new quarter to heighten the difficulty of the necessary changes I must make in more familiar realms.

All that being said, the baseline is that I'm just tired. I need to continue to heal. And always, for me, that's best done when I'm single.

continual turns for the better

Well, in addition to further realizing some of the best friendships of my life right here in South Bend, getting my laundry done for me, arranging a new and improved living room complete with small charming writing desk and huge comfy armchair (transporting which up the narrow staircase required the intervention of MP's cousin Tom, removing a door from its hinges, scraping a track in the paint on either side of the wall, and much banging, hammering, and swearing), organizing all the crap in my apartment to make it a recognizable place of human habitation, and sporting a softly sexy new haircut that allows me to wear my hair down for the first time in eight months, my life is taking some fun new twists.

MP's landlord is the coolest, chillest child of the Baby Boomer generation, holds dinner parties/folk music jam sessions on Thursday nights, and has extended a standing invitation to attend to MP and myself -- all we need to do is bring a dish. (This will have the added benefit of encouraging me to cook again.) Furthermore, he plays open mic at the Fiddler's regularly, and has told me if I pick out three songs that will go over fifteen minutes, I can perform with them (my joy knows no bounds).

And then on Sunday, my boss, his wife, their son (all of whom work at the office) and their son's fiancee (who forwarded them my resume) had a cookout at the big house, to which I was invited, and for which I was asked to provide transportation to a guy named George whose car has broken down over the summer. George and I bonded immediately over Josh Ritter, gabbled all the way up to Edwardsburg, talked our way through the cookout, and conversed all the way home. As I dropped him off, he said, "Sarah, I'd really like to take you out." I said, "George, I'd really like to go."

Yesterday he called and scheduled our date (and yes, my friends, he used the word "date" -- not "let's hang out" or "d'you wanna grab coffee") for Friday night.

He's (I think I remember him being) a bit taller than I am, with an animated, engaging face and direct eye contact. He's from Pennsylvania (Yuengling forever!) and turns thirty a week after I turn twenty-five. We hold slightly differing political views (but only slightly, as, while I am personally conservative, I am socially more liberal), and vastly different religious views (he is an agnostic); but his conversation is interesting, his manner easygoing, and his company pleasant; and he and I are both relaxed and respectful of differing viewpoints, so it should make for a fun Friday evening.

Stacy, my bosses' future daughter-in-law, confessed to having set up the whole thing (which I had suspected from the get-go...Sunday as I was getting ready to go, I felt instinctively that I ought to do something nice with my hair; having never met George, I felt nonetheless that perhaps a date was on the way).

Anyway, I now have something to anticipate over the weekend. And, okay, I can't help it, here goes...

Am no longer date pariah!

neo-modern solutions to ancient and annoying domestic predicaments

Well, I've done it. I've gone and got my mother wondering if I'm a changeling and who actually raised me and in what century.

Is she sacrificing goats at Beltaine? you ask. Is she raising chickens? Going the route of polygamy? Joining a holy order? Donning full body armor and running off to fight the Huns?

Sadly, none of those. It's much worse, actually.

I've sent out my laundry.

Yes: reel, gasp, clutch at the edges of your desks, ladies and gentleman, beg me not to do it, plead all you like, it's too late. I've gone and done it and I'm glad, I tell you, glad!

The situation is this: I live a busy and exhausting life. I work a demanding, high-stress job (which I am beginning truly to love) and when the day is over, I am pretty much too tired even to cook myself a meal. In fact, I have been buying frozen chicken pot pies and making myself sandwiches for dinner for the past fourteen or so days: Lo and behold, single and three weeks from twenty-five, I have morphed into a modern woman.

The laundry dilemma is grim. I have no washer & dryer readily available in the building where I live, which means that when the clothing is screaming for cleaning, I must pack it all into baskets and bags and load it in the car and haul it to a laundromat, which is either terrifying and dangerous and reeking of cigarette smoke, or sterile and boring and very far away. I must then sit around wasting two hours of my time and trying to stay awake in a dingy atmosphere, which is particularly unappealing on a weeknight, but then weekends are insanely busy at the laundromat and you wind up feeling like one cow among many milling around and mooing dismally while waiting for a machine to open up. Or maybe like a runty shark in a feeding frenzy, racing to a washer to slam dunk your sheet set inside before the bearded bespectacled man or the mother of ten beats you to it.

The more I have to do it, the more I truly hate it. I begrudge every lost second which I could be spending buying some precious relaxation time in the evenings instead of getting cramps in my shoulder blades from folding and pains in my back from hauling it around, then staggering back into my apartment so bone-weary I can't even put it away before collapsing like a card table among the rumpled unmade ruins of my bed.

Had I a washing machine at my immediate disposal, it would be different. I could spend Saturdays puttering with the laundry and using it to break up other chores. I could spend five minutes here and ten minutes there folding and ironing in pleasant little chunks. I could put it away a little bit at a time. I could sing while doing it and not seem like a crazy person while all the world watches.

But I don't, and my cheap and indolent landlord refuses to put one in the basement for me (he says there's no hook-up, but I believe one could be made; he just doesn't want to). And as I was commiserating with MP last night, she reminded me that back in the day, people always sent out their laundry, if they had any means to do it; it wasn't until the wide accessibility of washing machines & dryers in the home that people began to do their own.

So I decided to bring shame on the head of the woman who reared me to do all my own chores and make my frantic, stressful life a little more burden-free. There's a laundromat 1.5 minutes away from my place of employment which does drop-off and pick-up. They wash, dry, fold and hang for just 80 cents a pound. My laundry will only cost me twenty dollars this week -- just slightly more than what I would pay to do it myself, and it will save me monumental amounts of time and mental stress (since I have to spend the entirety of each designated Laundry Day gearing myself up to do it). I can drop it off in the morning and pick it up when I get off work.

Lovely. (Now if I can just remember to pick up a chicken pot pie on my way home from work.)

through the fog of post-trauma

Well, folks, my new job is going splendidly. It's a strange and wonderful thing having bosses who care about me not only as an employee (they are encouraging and -- again the gasp -- they train me in nearly every task) but as a person. I can't quite get used to it yet.

That's not to say that things here are totally relaxed. Most days spin into a whirlwind flurry of legal forms and paperwork that have to be in the mail by a certain time or someone is totally effed. I'm usually running around with a hand clamped to the top of my head, trying to remember what it was I was doing.

Overall it's enjoyable, even the stress, because I feel that I've earned the right to lounge about my apartment in languid indolence in the evenings.

The downside of everything is that the whole summer is starting to catch up with me. I sat at lunch yesterday adding up the various stressors that I've undergone since January, and most especially since June, and it's left me wondering vaguely how I'm still sane. Here's a brief timeline:

***

JANUARY:
Leave much-beloved though exhausting job with adorable though frustrating toddlers. Worry that friendship with Meg might disintegrate as a result of switching to Development side of services. Plunge headfirst into entirely new job with which have had no experience whatsoever.

MARCH:
Fumble through huge, Great-Wall-of-China-sized charity event of which pretend to be in charge but internally panic over since must figure most of it out on own. Pull off in 2 months event that realistically takes 8 to 12. Make it best one participants have ever attended...but fundraising goal is not met. (Which is not responsibility of self.) Begin hanging out more with new coworkers. Think self belongs, but suffer heart attacks of anxiety because spend much less time with real friend Meg.

APRIL/MAY:
Begin to feel overwhelming sense of disapproval from higher realms of administration. Feel strongly that self does not belong. No one talks to me. No one tells me what I'm doing wrong. Begin to make more rookie mistakes as result of nervousness and paranoia.

JUNE:
Put together and pull off amazing Golf Tournament charity event by self. Lose job in humiliating, Gestapo-style way, on same day as incompetent fool who has never done anything right in his entire year of employment but was given far many more chances than self. Lose people had thought of as friends. Force self to return to old job for one week where have nervous hyperventilating panic attacks in hallways, office, and bathrooms. Take three-week leave of absence. Realize personally for first time that being good person not always a shield against bad happenings. Fear being forced to leave self-made home, lovely apartment, and few real friends self has left. No family closeby. No connections to help self to new job. No idea what to do next. Hate all job prospects but cannot enter grad school without applying.

JULY:
Spend three weeks lying around in fog of depression. All friends except Meg and Phillip busy, out of town, no longer friends, or inconsiderate. No energy to call college friends and tell story over and over again. Rack up huge cell phone bill talking to Mom, other friends and prospective employers who don't have Verizon plan. Prostitute self in harrowing, demeaning interview process with jobs know will hate.

Run into people from old job. Pathetically wish still were friends while wanting to shred their tires resulting in stilted matter-of-fact fakey conversations where self assures people from old job that am fine and staying in South Bend and sure things are for best and hope to see them around.

Let apartment go to shit. Plants die. Hate self, hate life, hate old job, hate bad friends, hate future, hate apartment. Spend nights dreaming horrific old-job old-friend unemployment monster dreams. Disappear from old job like exorcised ghost.

Find new apartment for MP. Finish Buffy and Angel in two-night mega-marathon with Leigh Ann. Keep terrible nightwatchman-undead-style hours.

Get new job. Get wonderful new employers. Begin to learn complicated, exacting duties of legal secretary. Is challenging and refreshing but still monumental and new. Have had no time to absorb and recover from past month of terror of joblessness and moving home a failure. Sudden divine-Providence-style success inexplicably almost depressing. Press on.

AUGUST:
Close friend totally absent. Have not had hug in three weeks. Beloved, only-ever-present-friend-cat consumes vast quantity of elastic webbing which nearly kills him. Spend entire weekend crying and begging God not to let only life companion die.

Life companion lives. Self now very poor. Realize have not been to church all summer and have built self's house on sand of previous employment and feeling of solidarity with former colleagues and homeless people. Realize self has been stupid.

Grad student friends begin to swarm back. Excited but overwhelmed: Have spent entire summer curled up on self trying to nurse self alone through trauma, betrayal, terror, stress, rage, sorrow, hurt, loss, shame, disillusionment and despair; and now people will be around constantly. Is sort of psychological culture shock. Feel as if have been hit repeatedly in head with Whiffle ball bat by maniacal five-year-old and now must talk to grown-ups who have no idea what has been going on. Must gird self's loins to sketch out facts of summer story to curious questioners while still internally bleeding from after-effects but not seem overwhemingly desperate for sympathy and support. Fear becoming social pariah as have forgotten how to make jokes or laugh. Wit dead. No funny stories from work. Feel uninteresting, two-dimensional, cardboard-style person.

Begin to crack in moments of stress at new job. Face lots of walls in effort to contain tears. Panic at each error with instant throwback to terrible Job-Losing Conversation. Replay friend Melissa's advice over and over in head: "You've been through a traumatic experience. You're going to have moments at your new job where you get paranoid and think that it's just like your old job. You're going to think people are plotting against you, that you suck, and that you're going to lose your job again. That's post-traumatic stress. It's going to happen. Just take it a day at a time and breathe."

Have constant headache.

***

And believe me, friends, this isn't the whole thing. And while I've made light of my summer, it really, really sucked, and I think it's finally washing over me since I don't need to hold everything back and be as brave anymore; I have a job, I have an assured paycheck, and therefore I have time to process everything that I went through.

Not pleasant. My current plan is to sleep a lot and try to balance social interaction with alone time, so that I'm not unloading everything on everyone I know, but at the same time not spending massive amounts of time alone and obsessing. And to charge back into churchgoing. I've gotta have something that stays constant and unchanging no matter what might happen with jobs or friendships.

But the new job really is going fantastically well. Last week my boss told me that it's been decades since he's been able to trust this level of work and document preparation to a secretary.

An evening with Meg and Phillip

As Meg and I washed dishes after a gargantuan meal, she and Phillip were trading insults. He was downloading a Star Trek episode in the living room (we are all nuts for The Next Generation). Suddenly he yelled, "You're demoted!"

And this is what I heard:

Meg runs into the living room. I continue washing dishes.

*WHAP*

*Aaaaaaaaaaa!*

*Rrrrrrrr!*



Now, let me be clear. The WHAP and the Rrrrrrrr came from Meg.

I laughed the whole way home.

Slightly Psycho Neighbors

So, neighbor Kevin and I have, over the course of the summer, struck up an unlikely friendly association.

I blame it on the patio furniture. I bought it a little over a month ago, while I was taking time off from the old job and looking for a new, seeing how I was spending vast amounts of time in idleness and tired of languishing about the apartment. No matter how much you love your abode, it starts to feel a little cramped in gorgeous weather.

So I bought a cheap plastic table and two cheap plastic chairs, that I could languish in idleness out of doors, tucked away on the porch looking over the yard. Kevin returned from a trip to visit property he owns in Costa Rica, and he spends a lot of time on the porch as well. We began chatting.

It's basically the first time we've attempted much to interact since he tried browbeating me last summer into giving him information about Colette. Of course he failed miserably (there's a post in the archives somewhere), since I respond to browbeating in a predictably me fashion. Because, I'm guessing, that's his usual mode of interaction with people, particularly women, he didn't bother talking to me for about a year, which suited me splendidly.

But over the summer our mutual presence on the porch, our loosely disguised loneliness in the largely indifferent city of South Bend, landlord gripes, and some apparent internal adjustment on his part have rendered friendly conversation possible. He hasn't attempted to browbeat. We don't discuss Colette. If he makes suggestions as to life impovements I could make, I shrug them off or laugh at them, and he leaves me alone.

We have quite different "worldviews" and a few drastic differences in lifestyles (he's what my landlord likes to call "earthy," and I get along well with earthy, though I eat meat and shop at Wal-Mart and am horrendously bad at recycling), but rather similar approaches to things like different perspectives. (Although I suspect his approach to my different perspectives on, say, the Second Amendment would be more overbearing if it would work, which it won't; I've had my mind made up on that topic since I was nine years old, and I have lengthy lists of logical support.) So we've had interesting discussions on politics, religion, society, ethics, grammar, reading, etc. and, having spent much of the summer conversing with myself, I've been enjoying them.

Kevin is also a virtuoso on the guitar. For some reason he knows I like to sing (maybe I'm louder in the shower than I realize), and before leaving for Costa Rica he gave me a mix of Gillian Welch songs which he encouraged me to learn so that we could perform at an open mic at the Fiddler's sometime.

Me, I've felt the music swelling in me almost as intense as words, the need to sing like the need to write. It's been unbearable lately, in all honesty. I used to sing in church at home, fairly frequently in the summers when I was on break from college. Though I'll have to say the need to sing now is stronger than I ever remember it. My voice is getting better, and I've finally found the genre that suits it: folk.

My summer has been filled with folk artists and folk-influenced artists -- Gillian Welch, Josh Ritter, Sufjan Stevens, even Bright Eyes. And I'm starving for more.

So last night after I came home from dinner with the intrepid MP, Kevin dug out the guitar and played while I sang "Miss Ohio." He introduced me to Edie Brickell's "I Do," which I'm learning.

So it's been fun. Lightly, surprisingly fun.

He suggested I learn to play the guitar so that I could be my own act. It's a thought. He also said that I should start doing stuff with singing. He was highly complimentary of my voice.

And of course I love compliments, even though they sometimes embarrass the hell out of me.

That's it

Okay, out with it: I'm pissed at you. It's something I've been dealing with for a long time now, and I'm finally going to break it open and say that I'm pissed at you. I hate that things turned out this way. It's disgusting how quickly you changed from what I knew.

It was really, really great at first. You were interesting, vivid, fresh, new. A combination of spices I had never tried before. I marveled at your being. You were lively, and you nourished me. You shared yourself. You did me good.

But then there was a flatness, then a staleness, then a foulness. You got, let's admit it, boring. Day after day of the same old thing, and every day you became a little less than what you were. You broke down. Decayed. God help me, I tried to stop it. Tried so many things. At first I tried to be creative -- I came up with alternatives for you. I relentlessly put them into action. But they weren't good enough. Initially you went passively along with it, but after awhile you wouldn't have anything to do with my attempts to recreate you. You caved in on yourself, turned sour and scummy.

Nothing I did made it better. So I started ignoring you, started leaving you alone, hoping the problem would go away. I shuffled all my new successes and disasters (far many more successes than disasters) around you so they wouldn't touch you, wouldn't disturb your sullen repose.

And it bothered me. A lot. How dare you take up so much space when you weren't good for anything anymore? When you kept getting worse? I shoved my successes a little more sharply near you, to force a contrast. You didn't pay attention.

And I missed you. I wanted to go back to you. I'd think about what things were like, at first, and I would MISS the taste of your presence. And it's not like I've been up to doing better than you lately. I wanted you back. But then I'd think about actually facing you again, and I felt -- I felt exactly this -- revulsion and contempt. Granted, it was all in anticipation, but I KNEW things wouldn't be any better than the last time I looked at you. So I didn't bother.

Yes, you can credit me with a high degree of avoidance. I hate that kind of confrontation. And it makes me unspeakably angry -- disgusted, even -- that even now, I have to be the one to haul you up and dump out all the garbage and scrape you out and make you clean. It's unbelievably unfair. I worked tirelessly to hold you together. And even now, I have to be the one to get rid of you. I have to be the one to initiate the separation.

You don't communicate at all. You don't put up any red flags. Based on my past experience, I have to guess at how you're doing, check occasionally, knowing that it's all going to pot, despite my best efforts, my greatest skills (and I have considerable skills, as your very being attests).

So here it is. I'm bringing it up. I'm saying it. I'm making it happen. Are you ready? Get out.

Get out of my life. Don't darken the door anymore. I've crowded everything into spare corners to accomodate you, and you've gone to waste. Now you're not just wasting my time and energy (remember how much I put into you? remember?); you're wasting my space. And that's the last straw.

I mean it, leftovers. Get out of the fridge. You've become utterly contemptible. And you smell horrible.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Housecleaning

I
Among the twenty sleepy houses,
The only thing moving
Was the dust from the housecleaning.

II
I was of no mind,
Like a house
In need of housecleaning.

III
The Swiffer whispered on the bookshelves.
It was a comforting part of the housecleaning.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and the housecleaning
Are not.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of process
Or the beauty of perfection,
The housecleaning
Or just after.

VI
Cat hair swirled the linoleum
With clustered cobwebs.
The eddies of the housecleaning
Pushed it, here and there.

VII
Fuck the housecleaning.

VIII
Anger speaks best
Through the stiff bristles of a brush
In the porcelain tub
And the slow pull of shoulder muscles tired
After housecleaning.

IX
When the mop draws dirt from the floor
During housecleaning,
It lifts the edge of one
Of many layers.

X
Watching the early sunlight
Blow in under the plastic blind
Is something that must be done
Like the housecleaning.

XI
I worked over my apartment
With an ancient Hoover.
Once, a joy pierced me,
In that I mistook
The old hair smell of housecleaning
For happiness.

XII
Mold mouths the rims of the dishes in the sink.
I should do the housecleaning.

XIII
It was morning all afternoon.
I was sleeping
And going to sleep.
The housecleaning drowsed
In the living room closet.

he heard my cry for mercy...

Simon is okay. Thank you, sweet Jesus, my sweet Simon is okay.

He shat out a mass of elastic webbing this morning -- the second one around the second roast. That idiot. He's never gone after meat products in the trash before.

I've never been so excited about feces in my life.

And he's back to his old self again -- sleeping on my best clothes, hurling himself on the floor at my feet to writhe around "in an ecstacy of love" (Green Grass of Wyoming), yowling for another snack of kitty food whenever I get up from the couch, purring whenever I come within three feet of him. His fever is gone, and he seems vastly better. He even patiently suffers my forcing an antibiotic down his throat every morning.

Thank God. I live alone, I'm single, all of my friends are away, I'm tired and lonely and adjusting to a lot. I've really come to rely on the presence of my darling when I come home, waiting at the door and miaowing as he hears me come up the steps.

He's part of home, and I love him, and I need him. I'm so deeply grateful that I get to keep him for awhile longer (hopefully for many more years).

Thanks to all who were praying! I'm extremely, deeply grateful to you as well.

My kitty boy. He's so fricking cute...as soon as Marianne rolls into the Bend, I'll borrow her digital camera to show everyone. (YAY MP IS COMING BACK!!!)

I spent three hours last night at the animal ER. Simon may have a viral infection, or a bacterial, or there may be a second mass of elastic netting from the second roast I made last week, which is unaccounted for. (That Beefe and Olive Daube has turned out to be the most expensive meal of my life.)

They filled him with fluids, and barium, which turns his kitty poo white if his digestive system is working. If he doesn't pass anything by this afternoon, I have to call the hospital again. He may need surgery.

He hasn't vomited since Friday night, but he gets listless in the late mornings, and huddles under the bed, and his nose gets dry and hot.

This waiting sucks. I wish I could do a Mary Poppins snap or something, and make him all better. I hate seeing my dearest companion, whom I've grown to adore absolutely, suffer without my being able to help.

And I can't afford surgery. But I'll find a way to, if I must.

Oh no

Simon is sick. He vomited a lot this week (including a mass of elastic string that was once wrapped around a top round roast and which, I had thought, was safely stashed in the garbage), and I took him to the doctor today, and they did bloodwork on him, and everything was pretty normal; they also gave him fluids to help him use the litterbox.

But he hasn't. And he's just lying on my bed, breathing shallowly and quickly, and his nose is unbearably hot and he growls when I touch any part of him but his head.

Please pray. Most days he's all I have, in the realm of companionship.

I can deal with all the stuff that's happened to me in the last few months -- I can deal with what happened to me at my old job, I can deal with learning a brand-new job in which I have no experience all over again (after doing the same thing only six months ago), I can deal with all of my friends being busy or out of town, I can deal with -- even embrace -- another year of singleness. But I don't think I can deal if something awful happens to Simon.

i'm homeless now.

That's the real reason I don't have internet. I have to use the library anytime I'm not job searching, and I've been busy moving all my stuff into storage, which I can't afford any more than I could afford my rent.

Hahahahaha...JUST KIDDING!!!

I'm not homeless, I have internet back, I don't have a library card, and next month's rent check is potentially already written. (As in it's not. But it will be.)

Things have turned out amazingly, unexpectedly well.

Last Monday, while Leigh Ann and I recovered from the most intensive Buffy/Angel watching yet (we watched the last seven episodes of the seventh season of Buffy and the entire fifth season of Angel in 48 hours -- and I'm so proud and thrilled to say that I watched all twelve seasons comprising both shows in just under exactly one year), I got a phone call. From a law firm in Edwardsburg, Michigan, half an hour from South Bend.

"Would you like to interview for a legal secretary position?" asked Mrs. LaBre.

"Yes!" I said.

So I interviewed on Tuesday, was hired on Thursday, and started on Friday...the EXACT DAY AFTER my employment at the Center officially ended. So I didn't even have to go one day unemployed. And the pay periods mesh perfectly. So, although my new position brought me something of a pay cut, I'll be getting my checks just as regularly as if I were still working at the same place.

But THANK GOD I'M NOT working at the same place. I think I'm going to enjoy my new job so much more. The law firm is quite small, consisting of five employees, and very fast-paced yet down-to-earth, and Mr. & Mrs. LaBre (Mr. LaBre, the attorney, is my boss; I'm something of his personal assistant) are absolutely wonderful people. They're also in-laws-to-be of my friend Stacy.

I've been battling a vague, fatigued depression -- the past few weeks I've had to keep it all together in order to have my wits about me to go on and have hope, and now with even more change (however good), everything's been sort of crashing on me. But at the end of the day, I feel satisfied. This was my second day of work and I drove home tired (there's so much to learn) but largely happy.

And of course there's my precious fuzzy Simon to come home to...he's so darling and adorable it makes my stomach hurt sometimes. He spent all weekend on a catnip high until I took his new toy away from him; he was getting jumpy and irritable. Yay drugs.

Most evenings we spend playing tag. I run around the house and hide around corners and he alternately chases and stalks me. My kitchen, living room and hallway create a kind of circle, and he always doubles back and meets me head on. His clawless ankle attacks from behind the couch are something fearsome.

Anyway, I've been so lethargic and petrified that I haven't done laundry in about ten years, so off I go. Clean clothes are essential in a new job.

stupid internet

I'm sneaking a blog post out quickly while at Meg and Phillip's house.

My internet has been down for the past week because I was very very late in paying my bill. (Oops.) So it's actually my fault.

Anyway, I'll update as soon as I'm back online.

unexpected powers of extraordinary good luck or coincidence, if one believes in such things

This week I got notice from amazon that the newest Sufjan Stevens album, which I preordered, had been shipped to me, and was due by the 17th.

As I was pouring coffee for breakfast at 12:30 p.m., since Leigh Ann and I stayed up all night to finish the last season of Buffy, I said to her, "I want my Sufjan Stevens album. RIGHT NOW."

We carried our breakfasts down the stairs to eat at the patio table on the porch. Perched on my mailbox was the album.

The mail comes at 12:30.


Okay. Now. *cracks knuckles, rubs hands together, blows into them*

I want a job. RIGHT NOW.

the love of my life

"For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry."

Christopher Smart, confined in a madhouse from 1759-1763 for his overecstatic and public prayers which annoyed the entire city of London, wrote a long poetic adoration (Jubilate Agno) over the course of his isolation. He dedicates a portion of this adoration to the contemplation of his cat, his only companion during these years. In it he writes, "For I am possessed of a cat, surpassing in beauty, from whom I take occasion to bless Almighty God."

And I will consider my cat Simon.

This exceedingly gorgeous animal has kept me company since he came to live with me seven months ago. Even when he's grumpy and aloof (and during such times my nickname for him is "Poophead"), he's never mean or vicious.

While I wash dishes he will come to stand next to me, and wrap his long tail around one of my calves, and leave it there for a few minutes. Every time I come home, he's waiting at the door greeting me with yowls and tumbling about my feet in his happiness to see me. He writhes around and stretches to his full three-foot length and bends backwards so that he looks like, as I call him, a noodle kitty. He loves to be kissed, and will tip his head up toward my face to invite it. He likes to sit on one of my bookshelves looking inscrutable, with his black coat and owlish yellow eyes.

He's learned not to wake me up in the morning, but waits patiently for me to open my eyes and roll on my back, signifying that I'm really awake (I'm a stomach-sleeper). Then he jumps up on the bed and climbs all over me and purrs and rubs against any exposed portion of my person. Sometimes he reaches to pat my face with his paw.

He used to sleep on my bed, until my nightmares got bad. I think I thrashed around too much for his taste. But last night I realized where he's been sleeping: under my bed. As Smart writes, "For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins. / For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary. / For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin & glaring eyes."

And lately, having nothing to demand my time in the morning, I drag myself out of bed, feed Simon, and crawl back under the covers. When he's finished with breakfast he jumps up on my bed and settles down for a nap. Yesterday morning when I woke up he was lying sphinx-style at my feet with one paw stretched full length in front of him. When I started to scratch his head and talk to him, he curled his paw around my wrist and held it there as I petted him.

We've been known to sit on the couch watching movies with one of his paws settled in the palm of my hand (which makes up for his not being a lap kitty). If I sit at the computer too long and he wants attention, he comes up behind me and stretches up and pats my shoulders. He's doing it right now.

And he's ridiculously funny. He whirls around like a mad dervish in pursuit of his tail. He'll chase me around the house (we love playing hide and seek) or ambush my ankles when I walk past the couch. His favorite toy is the plastic ring you peel off a milk jug. He carries it in his mouth for hours. (When I move out of my apartment, whenever that may be, I will find a graveyard of blue plastic behind all the furniture.) I'll be sitting in any given room and hear something clattering, at which he'll appear looking all innocent and I'll ask his second favorite question (the first being "Would you like your supper?"): "What are you DOING?"

And he's gentle. I had to trim his back claws the other night, which he hates, but even as he tried to get away and miaowed unhappily, he never tried to bite.

I often call him "my one true love." And he is. It's funny, I've always liked him tremendously, and we've gotten on well together, but lately, as I've been reeling from my job uncertainties and loneliness and he's been so deeply content and happy to have me around more and following me everywhere and just being so damn sweet, I've been absolutely falling in love with my little guy.

Laura has a cat too, and we have been calling each other several times a day to report on our cats' various cutenesses. I told her we're turning into new mothers who can't stop talking about their babies and comparing and contrasting and rejoicing together.

He's the best companion ever, "For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire."

sarah beth is scared to death

Well, at least yesterday I was.

Job hunting under the pressure of ten more days of employment really sucks. But I'm forging ahead, girding up my loins, all those lovely idioms and cliches, and looking for work.

I've certainly had more fun. But something will turn up. I'm sending my resumes everywhere, for all sorts of jobs, and waiting to hear back. The waiting is killer. I can hear the clock ticking every second, and there's only so much I can do before it's just a matter of waiting.

It's a cool rainy day in South Bend, and the only human being I've spoken to so far is my mom. I'm searching the internet, the paper, and various collegiate websites while trying not to feel tired and useless.

I haven't been sleeping very well, and the nightmares have been plaguing me every time I close my eyes. Horrible ones, the kind where I'm slapping myself in the face in my dream and shouting, "Wake up!" and clawing my way back to consciousness, just to escape for a few seconds of groggy clarity before I sink back under. (I wasn't always able to wake myself up. At least I can do that now.) So I never rest. I'm tired all day and I feel like my eyesockets are black and hollow and I've taken to napping on the couch, which is really a loveseat and is just uncomfortable enough that I don't fall deeply asleep, but can still catch a few zzs.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Something's gotta give. (But it won't be my sanity. That stays put.)