William Had a Headache...and So Do I

I slept very ill--I am tired, and have a bad headache.

What a great holiday.

Actually the headache isn't bad, and I think more tiredness-induced than anything. Celebrations were fun -- they happened in at least two states this year (Indiana and Maryland), which is significant growth from last year. If anyone else celebrated in any other states, I want to know! My goal really is to see this printed on calendars someday.

I was glad to be able to attend, having had to leave work early (thankfully I had gotten all my work done for the day) and go home and sleep off whatever Steak 'N' Shake had done to me. Grim determination also helps, and WHHD is only once a year.

We honored the holiday at the Fiddler's Hearth, kicking off with Sonia's limerick and an original sonnet of mine (printed below), and going on to read the poetry of various other (and better) poets than Wm (one gal, the fabulous Laura, is herself published, and brought her own. I was as green as the beautiful cover on her printed book with awe and envy). MP read "Nutting" with the most delightful innuendos in her tone, much Guinness was had by nearly all, and ridiculous arguments about Wal-Mart notwithstanding (this girl was quite enjoyable till she insulted everyone in the USA who can't afford to shop anywhere but Wal-Mart -- as a proselytizer she's decidedly inept -- and after awhile, tired of the badly formulated arguments and possibly impersonal but still inexcusable rudeness, I forcefully suggested we talk about something else, so we discussed them Cubs and the nature of Frank's Place, a charming dive in my general neighborhood), the holiday was a brilliant success. The Meg Formerly Known as Boss was there, and her friends Jennifer and Matt, and altogether it was roaring good fun. We stayed too late, and I slept too little, but today I'm so full of good poetry and good camaraderie it doesn't particularly matter.

Tonight, though, I'm kicking back. I've been extremely social after eight or nine months of being extremely antisocial (Meg and I agreed that my nine months in PEDS were like a gestation period, and now I'm suffering separation anxiety and she's suffering post-partem depression), and my body is just plumb worn out.

So Happy Wm Had a Headache Day, everyone!


The Lost Poem

Tonight I'm so exhausted I can't write--
With all the watching underneath the trees,
While Dorothy bought our food and shoes, of bees
Whose velvet stroking on the clover white
Inspired such ecstatic contemplation
I nearly lost my great and noble mind--
With wrestling all the thoughts of all mankind
I lost my gift for penmanshipped oration
And asked dear Dorothy if she'd write, for now,
The words that I myself could hardly say
That I would claim as mine the foll'wing day,
And while she did, if she would rub my brow.
But now perhaps my greatest poem is dead,
Because she told me no, and went to bed.

It's William Had a Headache Day (Observed)! So observe it!

I want to say three disparate things in this post.

1. Wm. Had a Headache Day

Two hundred four years ago tomorrow, Dorothy Wordsworth recorded of her brother in her Grasmere Journals that "Wm had slept very ill -- he was tired and had a bad headache." To celebrate this only moment in history when a rational human being might sympathize with long-winded and self-absorbed Wm, the fabulous MP and I started our own holiday. In commemoration of his headache, we go out the night of Jan 30 and toast Wm's ridiculous poetry with several or more drinks, so that on Jan 31, we can say with Wm that we too had slept very ill, are tired and have a bad headache.

So celebrate this holiday! Take your friends out tonight, drink, and read poetry (even other people's poetry. This is a holiday in mockery of Wm, after all). This is our only opportunity to spend time in the mind of one of history's most famous blowhards. Sure, it's a Monday, but any excuse for a cold beer, right?

2. Steak 'N' Shake

...is evil. Although I routinely get horribly sick every single time I eat there, I go back for more thin and crispy fries and Mushroom 'n' Swiss steakburgers. Which I did last night to obscure the bad effects of Underworld: Evolution (which, though inarguably terrible, I privately enjoyed). And I'm paying for it in digestive bowel agony today. I think MP is right; they coat all their food with Ex-Lax. But I know that, in a month or two, I'll go back.

3. Plumbing Prowess

While I'm on a related subject, I proudly state that last week I fixed my toilet. I didn't do anything that required ancient poopstained jeans -- nothing so complicated -- but still, it was a sizeable problem. When I pushed the handle to flush last Tuesday evening on the phone with my sister, I felt it give in an unnatural way, and five minutes later when I came back to check I found my toilet still running.

Damn, I thought, the chain has come loose from the hatch. Well, no biggie. So I lifted the lid off the tank to rehook it and found, to my consternation, that the chain fastens to the hatch with a little loop...and chain, hatch, and loop are made entirely of rubber. No convenient hooks; no sturdy metal; no. And the loop that holds the chain to the hatch had entirely snapped like a broken rubber band.

What to do? I put my sister on speakerphone and stared at the conundrum and swore and fumed about how long it was going to take to get repaired. Laura's helpful input was not to shit at home for a few weeks.

Now, I come from a long tradition of determined, independent women who don't take "no" or "wait" for an answer. If something needs fixing and there's no one else to do it, we fix it, right then and there. So not fixing the toilet was not an option. And neither was pouring a bucket of water down the toilet each time I used it.

So I racked my brains. What can I use? Tape? No, the whole thing is underwater. String? My fingers aren't small enough to tie it. If only I had some wire. But I don't have any wire. Wire...wire...wire!

That afternoon I had pulled a Christmas ornament hook out of the carpet (the months following Christmas are full of digging up needles and ornament hooks and strands of tinsel, aren't they? Christmas never dies) and laid it on the coffee table to store or pitch later. I said to Laura, "I'll be right back" and went to fetch the hook. I straightened it out, plunged my hands into the hellishly icy toilet tank water, and with the wire bound together the end of the rubber chain and the broken rubber loop. And then I flushed. And it worked.

I'm still, as you can see, congratulating myself -- though not doubting my career calling. I love finding resourceful solutions to practical and immediate problems.

Look, she can hang her own pictures too!

and the truth will set you free...and tick you off

So, while my professional week was amazing and totally awesome (unbelievably, I didn't leave work yesterday too exhausted to think), my social week was full of a froth of insecurities I thought I'd buried right after high school.

See, in high school, like so many people of academic and artistic bent, I was an uncool, badly dressed, painfully awkward geek. The only setting in which I felt comfortbable was the classroom, where I won a certain amount of respect for being smart. When I had to set foot in the hallways, though, it was like running a gauntlet from one class to another.

So when I came to college I blossomed. Particularly because at Grove City the cool people WERE the academics and artists. I have never in my life been surrounded so consistently by so many brilliant and truly cool individuals. I don't think I ever will be again, unless we all scream "Chuck it!" to the world and start a Grove City Alum commune somewhere in Montana. In college I learned that I'm likeable, fun, outgoing (but still an introvert!), engaging, and a decent addition to a group of people. I had so much fun I didn't sleep for four years. I came out with a completely madeover and much more accurate self-perception, which stood me in good stead talking to strangers in retail and meeting people who were continuing their education at higher levels. I had confidence in more than my intellect; I had confidence in me. (Insert Julie Andrews singing and swinging a suitcase around here.)

But at some point this past week it all fell apart. Granted, after last Friday's insane party we were probably all tired; but Club 23 felt a bit strange and my interpretations of people's behavior faltered. Now, it's true that when I'm tired my grip on reality fragments like a dropped light bulb, but even being tired didn't explain the strength of the resurfacings of the old, old convictions that no one likes me and everyone wishes I weren't around because I'm not good enough.

Because that's all hogwash. I knew it; but still, I wanted to know where the misery came from. I like to understand my own irregular tickings. And in a conversation with MP yesterday (now that we're not roommates we've gone back to being best friends, it's fabulous), I figured it out. It was an occurrence in church that set the whole thing off.

Last week, in compliance with my 2006 goal of 3/4 Sundays in a month church attendence, I went to church. Rather eagerly, in fact, as the (young single) people in my Sunday School class have been welcoming and fun, while letting me have my newcomer distance. I went to the early service, where I noticed a few new (to me) faces sitting with more familiar Sunday School faces, and I thought, Oh goody, I'll get to meet more people. Several of them were rather good-looking mid-twenties guys. (Hence the oh goody. Not that I'm cruising for a boyfriend, but I like to test the waters, you know?)

But when I set foot in the Sunday School classroom, it was like plunging into cold bathwater. A couple of people I'd already met said hi, but the group was so much larger that they were the minority, and the people I didn't know made no overtures of friendliness. None. They wouldn't even make eye contact with me. The seats were set up along three eight-foot folding tables arranged into a "U," with the chairs running along both the inside and outside perimeters of the "U." One particularly good-looking guy (good-looking in the way that you notice him and think, "He's probably an asshole" -- he had a sort of cultivated indifferent arrogance to his mien, rather like some guys I knew at Grove City) sat directly across from me. Two feet away. He would not look at me or acknowledge my presence, before, during, or after class. From two feet away.

The other guys were more or less the same. And something in me quailed. Part of me thought defiantly, "Why should I introduce myself? I'm the newcomer. It's THEIR reponsibility to make the first gestures of niceness." And part of me, very simply, was afraid. What if I stick my hand out and introduce myself and they ignore me?

I left CHURCH on the verge of miserable tears. I endured my share of Christian assholes in my high school youth group, who made me feel marginal, awkward, and worthless, but I met a greater share of Christian and agnostic guys in college (mostly in the English department and theater) who treated me with dignity and love. This throwback to adolescent anguish caught me completely off guard.

Why? Why wouldn't they say hello? Why wouldn't they look at me? Oh yes. BECAUSE I'M PRETTY. And because I'm single. Somehow that appears to spell "danger" to the usual Christian guy. And I don't understand. The way they ignored me (and I was looking at them with friendly, open interest -- not interest in their hands in marriage, interest in meeting them -- most of the way through class) made me feel ugly and small. I wondered what was wrong with me. I forgot all the lessons I learned in college and through the grad school community and began to slip into old patterns of self-doubt and fear.

I'm not going to rant about this at length. I would just like to point out the strange irony that I felt safer, more cherished, and more appreciated at last Friday's party at 3 a.m. among people who had had too much to drink than I felt thirty hours later in the house of God. And while I won't apologize for the fun I had at the party or criticize anyone there, myself included, I want to say that there is something WRONG with the contemporary church when the best and warmest times I have in my life fall outside it. And this has been the case for a long time.

This is one of the reasons why I basically eschewed church attendance all the way through college. And I don't know what to do about it. Because now I NEED a church body, a baseline of people who share the same faith. Especially with my family so far away. So I'll continue to attend, but not with the same eagerness; more with a sense of perseverance through something mildly scary and unpleasant. I love the services. I love the preaching. I don't like having to try to convince people that I'm a good person to have around. I shouldn't have to. Everyone that I've met anywhere else but church hasn't needed convincing. Why should the church body? I like most people I meet on sight. I like people. What is this furtive silence that cripples the outgoingness and warmth of the church? I haven't even busted out with my scary opinions yet.

But at least I know again that everyone else, church aside, enjoys my company. Self-doubt is a horrible thing, but now that I know where it came from this week, I can categorize and contain it, and not let it bleed out into all my other relationships.

Maybe I should be bluntly specific and say that this whole post (which you might have already gathered) has centered around guys. The girls in Sunday School are much more approachable and friendly. So I guess what I'll do is go to make friends with them, and forget about the guys completely. But for how long is that a healthy thing? Part of being a body is interacting with members of both sexes. And part of being a woman -- particularly a single woman, with more social freedom -- is interacting with men. Not because culture dictates it, but because I want to interact with men. I want to cultivate friendships with men, because I like men, and some far-off, hoped-for day I want to have a man who is exclusively mine.

Gah. Oh and one more thing, while I'm irritated -- why can't Sunday School classes and small groups exist apart from study books and study guides? My youth pastor might have screwed up a lot of kids through leading them to believe that God only loved a perfect individual, but one thing he did right: He had us do this novel thing and READ THE BIBLE. My high school Bible studies went something like this: "This month we're studying First Peter. Open your Bibles. Okay, ready? Chapter one, verse one. Go."

Sola Scriptura. One of the glories of being a Protestant -- in fact, one of the fundamental tenets of Protestantism for which, as MP pointed out, people in history have died -- is knowing that, with the Holy Spirit inside us, we can read and accurately understand the Scriptures ourselves. We don't need a "Life Issues" book, a topical studies book, a study guide, or a set of videos to interpret the Scriptures. We have the Holy Spirit, the vast context of the Bible itself, and the body of believers to make, clarify, and guide our interpretations.

I'm sick of study books. I love the Bible. I love the beauty, the power, and the awful magnificence of the words of the Word. We're not refined by the words of John MacArthur, or Jerry Bridges, or even Oswald Chambers. Sure, their opinions can be helpful and serve to expand our understanding. But they shouldn't be our tools for interpretation. We have the most valuable tool -- the Spirit of God -- right at our fingertips, right under our ribs, enfolding our minds, less than a breath or a firing neuron away. Why are we cheapening that, and our own ability to understand what the Spirit gives us to understand, by thrusting it aside and clinging to things from the NavPress? And why are we cheapening the Bible itself by not allowing it to stand on its own?

It's a glorious book. I just want a group of people that can sit down around one chapter a week and dissect it. Other people's insights -- the insights of normal, everyday, nontheologians -- are so enriching. And when people sit down to discuss the Bible, just the Bible, together, there is a revelation and a powerful accountability that takes place. If someone has an opinion that's way off base, other people can point it out -- using Scripture. If someone has a fabulous insight that no one else has heard before, it can be heard. And when the Bible is sat down to and read in its own context (a whole chapter, not just a verse here and there...I'm not a big fan of topical studies, unless it's relevant to the chapter you're actually talking about), something holy happens. Because this is a book that is meant to be shared, bread broken among the body of believers. This is the book that lays out the whole basis of our faith. Why are we letting it collect dust in our minds by only opening it where the Navigators tell us to? Not that the Navigators are bad interpreters; but they're limited. The Bible is not.

The Bible speaks for itself. So does the living Spirit of the living God.

So we should read it. Corporately. Because this is where real transformation happens.

Mommy, wow! I'm a big kid now.

A year ago, sick to death of retail, I was desperately considering two options: grad school or a desk job. I fantasized about sitting down most of the day. I thought about having my own phone extension and a business card. I thought about wearing all my pretty Ann Taylor clothes to work, but not to advertise them; just because that's what was in my wardrobe, and they're professional.

So I talked to a few of my Ann Taylor associates who, unlike me, also had full-time office jobs, and they promised to keep their eyes open for similar occupations for me. I allowed myself to go wild in my imagination of a future as a professional woman...but still thought of myself as being perhaps a receptionist, having no real experience in the business world apart from selling people clothes. I never bothered to daydream about my own office; I realistically decided not to shoot too high, but imagined a better life than fourteen-hour days in retail in constant terror of employment termination due to low sales.

And now I have an office job.

It's better than what I had allowed myself to dream. I have my own office. I am not a receptionist, but a director. I have my own phone extension, my own computer, and soon my own business cards (that will say Director of Events and Marketing on them!!). I've held the position for just over a week, and I've already started meeting important people in the community, and making contacts with area businesses in preparation for our most involved and productive fundraising event of the year, the Miracle Auction in March.

I love it. I report to the Sr. Director of the Development Team (Angie), and as I'm a complete rookie I'm relying heavily on everyone else's knowledge and experience (particularly as I'm still green to the South Bend area and don't know anyone -- right now there's a flurry of names being tossed around that I'm just scribbling down and hoping to learn as time goes by), but largely I'm responsible for myself. I'm in charge of getting done the daily tasks that need accomplishing. I'm in charge of keeping updated, complete, and accurate records of every call I make and every donation promise I receive.

It's awesome. My Virgo self is in love with all the recordkeeping and listmaking. My independent self is in love with the control I largely have over my own time management. My get-out-of-here self is in love with lunchbreaks and off-site meetings. My professional self is in love with making so many new contacts and meeting so many new people. My ambitious self is in love with the goal of improving upon the people who have held my position in the past and being the best Director of Events and Marketing ever. My social self is in love with being able to do things with people relatively late at night again, and with being able to get around and visit coworkers periodically during the day.

Last week I attended an off-site committe meeting which flowed freely with ideas, laughter, appetizers, and wine. Tuesday I went out to lunch with the fabulous MP and one of our friends in the area. Tomorrow for lunch I'm attending a meeting to taste-test the entrees for the Auction at the ritzy Palais Royale.

I feel like I've graduated to real life. Not that anything I've done since graduation wasn't real life -- it was very real life, being poor and overworked and uninsured, and then poor and overworked (but insured) with at-risk children -- but this, now, is real, settled, relatively secure professional life. Of course there is the small, familiar voice in me whispering, "But what if you screw it up and get fired?" but the larger, newer voice briskly answers, "You won't." And that's the voice I believe.

When I first accepted the promotion a couple of months ago, MP said, "Sarah, you're your own chicklit heroine!" And, funny, it's true. I have a decently-paying (though I won't by any stretch of the imagination be rich), high-powered, fulfilling job for a really worthy cause, I get three weeks paid vacation every year (THREE WEEKS!!!)...and at the end of the day I come home to a reheated dinner and my cat, change into casual clothes (usually pajamas), and sit alone on the couch to watch DVD collections of TV shows.

It's a really good thing the job is going so well, and that I wake up eager to go to work in the morning, and that I have such fun with my fabulous female and gregarious grad school friends, because the singleness aspect of my life has been wearing lately. Leigh Ann pointed out last night that, really, it isn't necessarily a boyfriend I want, but certain things (physical contact -- almost no one hugs me or touches me at all -- companionship, walks, dinner options) that usually come neatly and conveniently packaged in a boyfriend. So if I can't have that tidy package, I need to look for the broken-down elements in separate places. (Isn't she smart?)

And I'm feeling, after my long absence from and sudden ready presence among the graduate school community, sort of passed over (left out? forgotten? pick the least offensive word, since I'm sure no one does it consciously). Maybe it's that I'm too tired this week and lacking perspective, or that I can't expect to dive back in after keeping such limited hours for so long and expect to be effusively welcomed or expect things to go right back to where they were. Actually it's probably both. But the truth is that while I'm extraordinarily comfortable with my own company and certainly need a majority of quiet evenings and time alone, I'm also tired of being by myself. I don't work closely with any one person every day, so my social needs are no longer met through Meg (insert forlorn sad face). And after years of holding people off out of a fear of not being able to give them the right, agape sort of love, and out of the fear of being hurt and let down, I want to jump back in and cultivate a close group of good friends who love each other well and have a relaxed, good time together. But those things take time, and at the best of times I'm not very patient. So I need to dedicate myself to a gradual process, and wait. (Getting more involved with my church will help in this area, too...and so far I've attended church within my goal for the year: 3 Sundays a month.)

So yes -- wonderfully, thankfully, the job is going beautifully. I love it. And now I must go and continue checking off the items on today's priority list.

toto, stop chasing the white rabbit

Last night I discovered something about myself: After a Grolsch or two and the hour of midnight in very old houses, I regress to the age of five and begin hopping about looking for adventures.

It all started calmly enough, a birthday party for one of Marianne's colleagues at a lovely old house in downtown South Bend which is undergoing a massive renovation at the skilled hands of its owner. We arrived, mingled, had fun meeting new people (or at least I did; I've been out of the loop for a semester and now that I have a job that does not necessitate daily and total superhuman patience I can lose a small bit of sleep and still function), and generally behaved ourselves until Hans, the owner of the house, mentioned that the first floor boasts a trapdoor but wouldn't say where.

It was all ridiculousness from there.

I charged over to Marianne and shouted over the music about the trapdoor, and the two of us were off like little bunnies (or one big and one little bunny) jumping up and down on various places on the floor listening for hollow noises. We searched built-in cupboards. We opened a door and were nearly staked in the heart by a vast bundle of falling wood. We stomped and capered until we found the door in a most obvious place, then begged Hans to open it. We ran down the spidery stairs into the basement and came back up through the proper basement door. We were giddy with the spirit of exploration. We wished there were a secret passageway.

The rest of the night is a bizarre montage of poetic renumerations of springtime and autumn in Pennsylvania to a tall interesting gentleman who responded with stories of the Ukrainian Catholic church, a British marker fight, a self-proclaimed scary and ugly German student who is neither scary nor ugly, and clattering explorations of the many rooms of the house.

We stayed till four a.m. I woke wondering how much had really happened and how much was the product of the busy imagination of a bored and lonely single woman who stayed up far too late with people she hadn't seen in far too long. But there on my bedside table was the folded hand-drawn map to the Ukranian Catholic church in Mishawaka, with the tall interesting gentleman's phone number. (Yes, ladies and gents, I got a phone number at a party from a man who invited me to church.)

A perfect evening. Even if I had to talk to Marianne to verify that it actually occurred and wasn't a result of too many Buffy fumes clogging the brain.

oh my catness

Simon is batting a piece of frozen broccoli all over the apartment.

at long last love has arrived

We met two Easters ago, while I visited home from Grove City on Spring Break. He was new to the neighborhood, and we hit it off the moment we saw each other. We spent some time hanging out, and I introduced him to my parents, who had seen him around but never formally met him. As he had no family or friends in Erie, my parents took him under their wing while I went back to college and eventually moved to South Bend. I made it a point to see him whenever I came back to town. Visiting him always made me ecstatic, and for his part he always seemed pleased that I was home (he's not a man of many words, but he communicates effectively nonetheless. It's a surprisingly good combination).

This past Thanksgiving everyone sat down for some discussions. I'm lonely in South Bend and while he is generally a little reserved, he loves me and always has, and Erie really has nothing for him. Plus it was crowded and noisy where he was living, and he needs some space and some quiet. (Finally, someone who appreciates my space and quiet!) Mom and Dad thought he was right for me, and so they helped us get set up for him to move to South Bend. He came back with me right after Christmas (the drive back was distracting, I can tell you!) and moved into my apartment. It's a lot smaller than what he's used to, but for the time being we're making it work, and he's not a complainer, which I certainly appreciate.

I didn't think it would make much of a difference, really -- I was only a little annoyed, to be honest, at the thought of having to share my bed. But everything is indescribably wonderful. In the morning he cuddles me awake; after work we romp around the apartment (so far no complaints from the neighbors) and I laugh at his antics; in the evenings we curl up together on the couch to watch TV (he's remarkably tolerant of Buffy and Angel). And going to sleep at night is so much warmer.

It makes all the difference in the world, having someone to come home to. I can't take two steps anywhere without him coming to cuddle and tell me how glad he is that I'm around. It's so nice to have someone to touch. And we don't have to talk all that much; it's enough to be in the same room with him. He knows when to leave me alone, and when to snuggle. He's perfect (except for his insistent demands to be fed. He can't cook to save his life). He's the sole reason I haven't been blogging lately; I love spending time with him too much even to talk about it to the blogosphere.

Marianne likes him tremendously, and even Meg says he's not that bad. It helps that he's extraordinarily good-looking, and charming to boot.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have a cat. And everything is changed.

ends and beginnings

Today is my last day in the PEDS program. Tuesday (we get Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off) I begin my new position at the Center as Director of Marketing and Events.

How do I feel? Mixed, of course. There's the incredible relief at not having to change diarrhetic diapers or wipe slug-snotty noses, relief at not having to calm temper tantrums or constantly count to ten to hold my own. There are the pangs of loss and sadness at not being close working partners with Meg anymore. There's excitement for the energy Vanessa the new PEDS Assistant will bring to the classroom (my energy's been about gone since October). There's guilt at being offered this position while Meg, who's been here longer and worked much harder, has to hang on in PEDS for awhile longer and train yet another new PEDS staff member (when she was the PEDS Assistant, her boss Angie was offered and took a position as Director of Development, so that Meg became the Program Director in Angie's place and I took Meg's old position. Now Angie is going to be my new boss, since my new position is included in the Development Team. It's ironic and awful at the same time). There's hope and joy at having my own office and a new and challenging job.

The next few weeks are going to be topsy-turvy as I adjust.

There's so much I've wanted to say, the past couple of weeks, but no time to say them the way I want, so this little update is, I hope, an appetizer for more consistent posting.

the rusty ivories

The week before Christmas I was struck with a deadly attack of needing to play a piano. I took lessons from the age of nine to nineteen, and after quitting lessons (due to the demands of schoolwork) my daily practice ground to an eventual halt with my move last year to piano-less South Bend. (Not that there are no pianos in South Bend, but there were none to which I had access, having had to leave my own upright at home for lack of storage space and the inallowability of playing it in an apartment complex.)

So just before Christmas, when job stress became unbearable and sleep came with a fight, I felt the muscles in my arms and torso and hands and fingers aching to pour their energy into cool smooth keys. My body longed to engage in music. So I took the piano books I'd brought from home, just in case, and after work one day slipped up to the Community Room on the third floor, a vast open room which when not in use lies empty and boasts a piano. I dragged up a chair, opened a Grieg sonata, and attempted for the first time in more than a year to play something besides the simple melody I'd written in high school.

It was, of course, a disaster. Like trying to dredge your memory for fragments of a forgotten language when suddenly faced with a native Spanish-speaker in a half-emergency situation. Music I had once nearly memorized (or, in the case of Debussy, had completely memorized so that even when I couldn't find my place on the page my body remembered to play) I had to sight read. I picked over the songs for half an hour in frustration, then finally hit some sort of stride and ended in a decent tone. Roger the maintenance man came upon me playing, encouraged me, then sensitively left me alone to my struggles. I left slightly disheartened but resolved to continue relearning to ride the bicycle, as it were.

Then tonight I sat down to play my own piano, the piano that knew my fingers and my feet on the pedals from the time I was a child. It went almost like a dream. There were still rough spots that I had to stop and squint at, but the difference playing my own piano was astonishing. And when I played "Claire de Lune," my favorite piece, it was how I imagine old lovers who parted under necessary circumstances coming back together...cautiously, a little warily, with a longing and a touch of sweetness and remembered love. There were spaces where I'd never really gotten it right and had to work over with careful attention, and other places where the music and I had meshed so completely that I couldn't ever forget it. Overall it was a little clumsy, a little halting here and there, but still beautiful.

And complementarily enough, my sister's half-grown cat fell asleep next to the piano, listening.

It's been long enough that I've gone without music. I can't afford more lessons, but I can practice what I once learned. It'll have to be in the Community Room until I get my first house and can transport my childhood piano out to South Bend.

I have missed music.

the necessity of poetry

You can see what I've indulged in from my Borders gift card: the complete (well, it says "complete" but we all know it isn't) poems of James Wright, and A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far by Adrienne Rich.

I like James Wright because he could be categorized as "confessional" (a term which I despise anyway, misapplied as it is to woman poets honest about their lives and their worlds and the world, making it sound as if they had something to be ashamed of, telling their lives in strands of burning words, holding language accountable for its glossed persecution of the experience of women rendered to silence) -- Wright writes with a tenderness and self-awareness and sensitivity that I appreciate. He has a good strong use of metaphor and a consciousness of the natural world that, very simply, work. An emptiness comes through in his poetry that is at times almost Japanese. So I like him.

Adrienne Rich I love. More than any other poet, she inspires me to write.

So I'm sitting in a quiet house for once -- my parents gone (to work? on errands? they left no note), my sister sleeping, the menagerie of animals for once at peace. It's nice, to be alone and quiet in the house. I'm used to living alone, I'm accustomed to cherishing my space, to waking up and breathing and knowing that mine is the only breath in the rooms that are my own. Living alone is a sort of wild dream, something I can't always believe, that makes me glow with happiness.

It has its funny aspects. I've largely stopped reacting at all when I drop something or hurt myself through moments of uncoordinated stupidity. The other week I spent a few minutes putting a huge stack of CDs back into their enormous CD carrier, then when I went to stand up to put it away the carrier ricocheted off my knees and bounced into my face and cut my lip. I put the carrier down, reached for a tissue, and pressed it to the cut until the bleeding had mostly stopped. Then I put the carrier away. Throughout the whole incident I didn't make a sound. Why would I? There was no one to hear.

Then last week I was cleaning up the kitchen and set a clean glass on the edge of the counter and turned toward the living room to fetch a tissue because I felt a sneeze coming on. In the process of turning I bumped the glass and heard it drop to the floor behind me and shatter. I turned around, looked at the mess, then went to get the tissue. After mopping up my nose, I returned to the kitchen and got out the broom and swept up the shards of glass lying all over the floor. No swearing. No anger. No reaction even. Something that once was highly unusual and is becoming more of a norm.

Maybe it will change when I get a cat. Part of the lack of reaction, as I mentioned, is the lack of audience. It seems far more functional just to clean up the mess than to get mad about it. But then all the reactions I don't indulge get packed in somewhere inside me and periodically I have a sort of insane meltdown to let it all out (and those are times when I'm glad there is no audience). But all of it takes place in the emptiness of my own rooms and although it would sometimes be nice to have someone there to say, "Sarah. It's no big deal. Calm down," or to laugh at the humor of the situation, or to put a pair of reassuring arms around me and let me fall apart if I want, there's a joy in taking responsibility for my actions, all of them, and a joy in knowing that I can live on no one's initiative but my own.

This does not excuse me from a need for community. One of my New Year's resolutions is to attend church three Sundays of every month, to build community. And I'm starting to build community at work. Man is a social being, and I can't deny my place in society among other human beings. But it is wonderful, so deliciously wonderful, to have my own tower to retreat to. Mike at work says that being an extrovert or introvert has nothing to do with being outgoing or shy and everything to do with what energizes you: people or solitude. So while I'm outgoing and engaging and love being around people, I am energized by solitude. I need to back out of society quite often, actually, to recharge my batteries and reorient myself to life.

So living alone is perfect for what I need, and emerging from my tower is necessary as well.

And so is reading poetry.

Integrity

the quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; entirety --Webster

A wild patience has taken me this far

as if I had to bring to shore
a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor
old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books
tossed in the prow
some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades.
Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through.
Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain
in a sun blotted like unspoken anger
behind a casual mist.

This length of daylight
this far north, in this
forty-ninth year of my life
is critical.

The light is critical: of me, of this
long-dreamed, involuntary landing
on the arm of an inland sea.
The glitter of the shoal
depleting into shadow
I recognize: the stand of pines
violet-black really, green in the old postcard
but really I have nothing but myself
to go by; nothing
stands in the realm of pure necessity
except what my hands can hold.

Nothing but myself?...My selves.
After so long, this answer.
As if I had always known
I steer the boat in, simply.
The motor dying on the pebbles
cicadas taking up the hum
dropped in the silence.

Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere--
even from a broken web.

The cabin in the stand of pines
is still for sale. I know this. Know the print
of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked that door,
then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis
back on the trellis
for no one's sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards
the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails
emptied that kettle one last time
are these two hands
and they have caught the baby leaping
from between trembling legs
and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
and stroked the sweated temples
and steered the boat here through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve.

~Adrienne Rich, 1978

Trying to Pray

This time, I have left my body behind me, crying
In its dark thorns.
Still,
There are good things in this world.
It is dusk.
It is the good darkness
Of women's hands that touch loaves.
The spirit of a tree begins to move.
I touch leaves.
I close my eyes, and think of water.

~James Wright

post-Christmas craziness

I love Christmas. While it didn't feel quite fair to have Christmas on a Sunday, we more than made do (Mom and Dad went to church while I shamelessly stayed home with Laura and Keith to catch a late-morning nap -- very necessary to make up for the two and a half hours of sleep caught the night before due to present-wrapping and early rising to look at the tree). I asked for a number of intensely practical things that I never feel justified in putting into my budget -- new towels, cloth showercurtains, a Swiffer duster -- and I got them all, plus some (a new phone with a working answering machine! and a nice 3-qt saucepan, and jersey knit sheets, mmmmm). Laura gave me a GORGEOUS coat from her place of employ, Banana Republic, Keith gave me a scrumptious gift card to Borders (which I am going to spend today, the hole has burned through my pocket and into my skin), and Boss Meg gave me a FABULOUS monthly/weekly planner which will be absolutely indispensible as I move on to my new job.

I visited with church people and friends yesterday, and today am spending time with my beloved Eigh Ann after my post-Christmas shopping spree. Among the things I need (aside from the eight or so books that I do not yet own, imagine!) are gloves and a scarf to match the new coat, and new jeans.

It's so nice to be at home, taking a break from work. Since Christmas and New Year's fall on a Sunday, we get to take two weekdays off of our choice, and I took in addition three personal days (personal days! how adult! how career-oriented!) so that I get the whole week to myself to spend on my native soil with friends and family. So so good.

Even though I'm having dreams about cute guys who select other girls over me. Meh.

Oo but yesterday I saw a preview for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and those views of Johnny Depp more than sustained me.

who's surprised?

Your Reputation Is: Maneater

You're the kind of girl all the chicks hate...And guys are both scared of you yet strangely drawn in.

What's" Your Reputation?

nevertheless, hello

Holy smokies, it's been awhile since I've updated.

The reason for this is simple: My life has been turned into some ghastly sort of one-dimensional hell where I drift in the-ghost-of-Marley fashion with my jaw bandaged shut in order to stifle the moans of despair. I have kept myself at a level of near-complete exhaustion in order to deaden myself, with the result that I have no brain cells left for blogging.

And it's all because of work. Work has become as difficult as it could imaginably be at every facet.

Now, lest you think I am about to launch into a barrage of complaints, allow me to say that I am not in true despair. I just have to hang in there. I know that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"; but boy howdy, I'm tired. And I wish to explain to my beloved readers why.

The Center for the Homeless in South Bend is a sort of national phenomenon. It's not a soup kitchen, or a shelter; it seeks to end homelessness for its guests by giving them all classes and programs to address and fix why they're homeless. People can get their GEDs, acquire sponsored internships and externships around the community, pay off debt, learn about themselves, and find homes, all while having their basic needs met and their basic bills paid by living for free at the Center.

In its fifteen-ish years of existence, the Center has expanded a great deal, rather beyond its original vision, and so it is in the process of hashing out what its current vision and purpose are supposed to be. So there's been a lot of turnover as various people have left, and as a new leadership is establishing itself; and overall, as with all revolutions, things are in a state of temporary chaos as the new order begins to gain its balance.

This puts a lot of burdens of adjustment on all the staff, and the PEDS program where Meg and I work is no exception. We're undergoing a lot of changes anyway -- changes to the curriculum, changes in our supervisor, changes in the enrollees to the program, changes in the number of volunteers (on whom we rely -- a day with five toddlers and three infants and without help is almost impossible) and now changes in the program assistant, as Meg looks for a replacement for me in preparation for my move to the administrative branch.

As other children have left, Meg and I have taken on five new children, all very young and very needy. Two of the infants do not sleep when the older children do, so now there is no point in the day wherein Meg and I get a break. We have no lunchbreak, and with the vanishing of the volunteers (mostly college students) for their long Christmas breaks, we have had to beg for help from the already overworked staff in order to be able to put all the children down for a nap in under an hour and a half. Meg and I agreed yesterday that we are so busy taking care of kids all day long that we don't have time to run to the bathroom or even put on chapstick. We're desperately overworked and overwrought just trying to get through each day.

So I've pretty much shut down into survival mode. No emotional response to anything, no deep thinking. I come home deadpan from work every day and shuffle around the apartment putting off going to bed, then get up so tired I see flashes of light as I stagger to the bathroom to shower, and drag myself to work.

At least I can say there's a light at the end of the tunnel -- I get to start my new job once my replacement in PEDS has been found. It's much worse for Meg as she tries to keep the program running by herself. Hopefully the new hire will have more energy and boundless enthusiasm.

I do love the Center. I love working there and I love the people who work there and live there. Last week I sang a duet with one of the case managers at the Center's holiday talent show and it went over extremely well, and it was nice to come out of the woodwork and be part of the community there. Last week also some of the staff got together after work at the Fiddler's for fun and socialization, making me fall in love even more with the staff. I am optimistic about everything working out in the end for everyone else's benefit. It's just a roughish road getting to where we need to be.

So simple exhaustion is the reason for my long silence. Today I took an entire Saturday to go nowhere and do nothing but relax and clean. Tomorrow Meg and I are getting together to bake cookies, and when I come home I will finish wrapping presents for the people for whom I can afford to buy presents. It's going to be a lovely Christmas, I think -- not because of lavish gifts (tons of bills for various things -- hopitalization, car tax, car rental -- have just arrived, tightening the screws down on my already squeaking budget) but because this year I can spend Christmas at home with my family. That in itself is comfort and joy.

o tannenbaum

Yesterday I pulled sturdy jeans over a pair of old nylons, layered up in sweaters, donned the only hat that becomes me, and headed up to Michigan to fetch myself a fine-lookin' tree with Boss Meg and her husband Phillip.

Christmas tree selection, transportation, and installation is possibly a greater difficulty to the modern single woman than the pointlessness of hanging mistletoe. A dear friend (an attached young man) once asked, "Why do all these TV shows and movies make a big deal out of single women having to drag Christmas trees into their apartments through their windows?" Because it's the starkest thing about the single life. A woman can be content, even satisfied, with her life as a Singleton; but managing a Christmas tree by herself throws into sharp relief the inherent wrongness of having to navigate life alone. There should be someone to help her with the damn tree. When there isn't, it goes beyond a feeling of cosmic mockery and violates the sensibility that lies at the marrow of Christmas: connection. Divine connection to humanity, human connection to humanity. A woman falling back on her own resources to set up her isolated celebration of connection is a terribly ironic tragedy.

I've been blessed so far by not having to set up makeshift pulleys out my living room window. Last year when I couldn't go home for any of the holidays because of the demands of retail, my parents visited for Thanksgiving and brought with them a Scotch pine to set up in my living room. (One of these days I'll post on the necessity of having parents, even and especially as an adult, and how glad I am that my parents maintain an active involvement in my life, or I might be lost.) They helped me purchase the lights, the ornaments, the tinsel. I decorated it alone, but even though I cried as I did it, I did not feel abandoned.

This year I could not have done it without Meg and Phillip. And I had a wonderful time. We drove to a Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere, which supplies its customers with saws and hayrides (horse- or tractor-drawn) to the tree fields, where you can wander at will and select your very own tree. Phillip cut mine down for me (a tall, full Douglas fir -- I'm drawn to triangular trees the way some people are drawn to certain body types), and we hauled our trees back to meet the next hayride and headed to the home base where our trees were mechanically shaken free of dead needles, measured, priced, and bundled. Then we went into a log-cabin style general store for complimentary hot cocoa and to pay for the trees. Phillip strapped the trees to the top of their SUV and we returned to their place for chili and tree decoration, after which they drove my tree to my apartment, carried it upstairs, and went about the messy business of setting it up in my living room.

I had already rearranged all the furniture to accomodate the beautiful annual intruder, but we hadn't factored on the difficulty of forcing the tree into my ancient tree stand. In the end my living room carpet was littered with branches, bark, sawdust, pinesap, needles, and twigs as Meg and Phillip hacked away at interfering tree limbs. (At one point Phillip was doing the sawing while Meg and I straddled the still-bundled tree to keep it still, and I laughed and said, "Meg, we're having a treesome!")

So now I have armfuls of fir boughs to adorn the apartment, a clean carpet, and a fully decorated tree. Every family decorates differently; mine favors large colored lights, some of which randomly blink (and the first half-hour or forty-five minutes of tree decoration involves unscrewing and moving bulbs around to eliminate clusters of one color throughout the branches) and no particular theme to the ornaments. The tree is a hodgepodge of homemade, inherited, bought, and acquired ornaments placed to fill its spaces, some hung as far back as possible, layered over with silver tinsel icicles (no garland for me!) and topped with an angel. The overall effect is friendly, warm, and delightful; my favorite evening advent activity is to turn off all lights in the house except the tree just before bed, and sit listening to Christmas music or in silence, watching the tree and the needly patterns of colored light it throws against the white walls and ceiling.

It's still odd, decorating by myself and for myself, but this year I feel I have friends with which to share it. Next weekend sometime Meg and I are getting together for a Christmas cookie-baking bonanza (such fun, to swap recipes), and she'll be stopping by during the week to see what I've done with the tree. I'll have Colette over soon, and I'm pretty sure I can drag MP over for some insane Christmas cheer.

This is a new and glowing facet to celebrating Christmas: sharing and experiencing the traditions of fully grown friends. Everyone has a different story, and story, as Leigh Ann and I enthusiastically discuss, is life.

So I'm single. So I'm living alone. But I didn't have to wrestle my tree in place by myself, and I am beginning to feel more and more connected where I am.

And my tree is fragrant and gorgeous.

Enter Henrietta

My cute, sassy 2001 Toyota Corolla Sport. Yes, in the span of sixty hours I got a new car. Here's a frame-by-frame:

Friday. The call comes from Gurley Leep about Earl's totalled status. I freak out. My grandparents promise to help. I ride back to Erie with Mom and Dad feeling sick. Dad calls a friend from church for car-buying tips. The guy tells him he usually gets them off Ebay.

Saturday. Doug e-mails Dad a link to a 2001 Toyota Corolla Sport on the Ebay market, fantastically priced and in great condition. I see the pictures. I read a list of the car's assets. I fall in love. Dad calls the seller (who lives in Rochester, NY) to ask a few questions. Dad calls Pap-pap to tell him about the car. Dad wants to drive the car before he buys it. I spend the entire day chewing my nails.

Sunday. Dad calls the seller again. Pap-pap calls with his approval (necessary because Pap-pap is footing all of the money for the car, part a gift and part a loan). Mom, Dad, and I drive to Rochester. We test drive the car. I am wildly in love with the car. I name her Henrietta Brighton-Jones. We buy the car. We drive her to North East. We arrive there at 8:00 p.m. I finish packing the rental car and start out in it for South Bend at 9:00 p.m.

Monday. At midnight I am still driving. I pull over at the western edge of Ohio at 1:00 a.m. for a nap because I am so tired I am shaking and feeling close to vomiting. I arrive at my apartment at 3:45 a.m. I fall asleep an hour later. My alarm goes off at 7:00 a.m. I sleep for another hour. I arrive at work forty minutes late. I make it through the day. I go to bed at 9:00 p.m. for ten hours of sleep.

Tuesday. Mom and Dad drive Henrietta to me. Dad and I return the rental car while Mom helps Meg at work. I drive Henrietta back to work. We have dinner at the Fiddler's, then part ways so Mom and Dad can get home before midnight. I drive Henrietta home and hash out the details of repayment with my grandparents (I'm paying back eighty-eight percent of the cost of the car, which will have me making payments to them for the next five years. This basically means I'll be living in my current lifestyle -- no extra frills or fun stuff, definitely not a new chair and probably not even a new mattress for a long time -- even after my raise. This stings a little, particularly about the mattress because my back HURTS all the time now, but at least they're not charging me interest, which with their loans they usually do. My grandfather was a banker). I sit back excited to watch Bones and House. Or maybe just Bones, depending on how tired I am.

So Henrietta is white, snazzy, with a CD player and a stick shift and cruise control. I have wanted a stick ever since I learned to drive one. I can't believe that I have the car of my dreams. For this I am exceedingly grateful. And she definitely has "get-up-and-go." Earl was faithful, but certainly not speedy (zero to thirty in ten seconds). Henrietta grips the road and jumps.

I have an amazing family and a great car.

Happy happy happy.

Tired.

good night, sweet prince

They're totalling my car.

Apparently on the close inspection that he should have done the minute I drove to the dealership with my damaged Earl four weeks ago, the inspection/estimate guy decided yesterday that the cost to repair outweighs the value of the eleven-year-old minivan. So I'm sitting back waiting for a call from the insurance company.

This frustrates me for a number of reasons. First, my old Earl has been a faithful vehicle. So I'm sad. But more than this, the insurance company should have declared total loss at least a month ago. Instead they farted around denying me the money I needed for a rental (they said they'd pay for the three days it would take to repair the as-then-assessed damages, but no more, sticking me with the bill for another five days since the soonest they would let me take my car in was Thanksgiving week, when I was due to travel to visit family), and then the estimate guy waited till FRIDAY (I dropped my car off on Monday) to call me to tell me he's putting a hold on my car until he can hear back from the insurance company about totalling it.

So now I have to scramble to find a new car before the cost of the rental puts me in the poorhouse. My grandparents were great, though -- I got the phone call yesterday at their house, and was so upset that I buckled onto the floor and started crying (I seriously don't have the money for this and I sure as hell have never bought a car before); poor Mom thought someone had died -- and my tough, practical, Scots-Irish grandmother came and knelt in front of me on the floor and took my hands firmly and said, "You're a good kid, and you've been making it on your own. I am so proud of you. Your grandfather and I will help you with a new car. And don't be too proud to accept it." I sniffled and said, "Thanks, I'll pay you back," and she said sharply, "No you will not. If we help you, you won't pay anything back." And my gruff German-Scots-Irish pap-pap growled, "Sure, honey. We'll help you." And Grandma started flipping through the 2006 Consumer Report looking for reliable automobiles while Pap-pap gave me advice on taxes and told me to run my hands up under the dashboard of any used vehicle I consider to look for flood silt.

So I've decided I want a Toyota Corolla -- affordable, reliable, cheap to repair, long-lasting, safe -- and Mom and Dad and their friends and our family are helping me locate some. So within a week I should have a new car.

The good thing is I get an extra paycheck in December, which should cover the cost of the rental. And I'm actually pretty excited about a new(er) car. I'm just glad I don't have to do everything myself (another sucky singleness factor, especially with home base so far away).

Oo, and my parents are giving me my favorite of their three cats, adorable black-as-velvet Simon who doesn't prefer the company of so many cats and would probably benefit from living with only one person. He strayed into our yard two Easters ago and I made first contact with him (I was sitting in the yard with Kristin Born, then Bell, late one evening when I saw this gorgeous slender black cat hanging around under one of the cars, so I crouched down and started rubbing my fingers together and crooning. He paced frantically back and forth like he wanted to come running but was afraid, then suddenly gathered all his courage and shot over and scooted under my hand and froze. Then when I kept crooning and started stroking his head, he relaxed all over and kicked up a raspy loud purr that you wouldn't believe and started rolling around in ecstasy in the dirt. Within a week he was formally adopted into our zoo/family). So after Christmas I'm taking him back to South Bend.

This will put me two closer to achieving my five By The Time I'm Thirty-One I Will Have goals. Those goals are: a house, a new car, a cat, a dog, and a king-size bed.

Three to go.

this is me doing okay.

I found my first facial line.

There are three, actually. Very fine, but clear. One parallelling the curve of my upper right lip, the other two side-by-side at the left-hand corner of my mouth. I have been noticing for the past month or so that when I smile (yes, I check myself out in mirrors and my car windows when I'm unlocking the door) the smile quirks back into set, predestined curves. But then after a four-hour laugh session at Don Pablo's with the incorrigible and hilarious MP, I got home and noticed while getting ready to wash my face that the laugh lines...were still there. And I wasn't smiling.

A smile-free night of semi-restful sleep (I have just decided that my mattress sucks, which is the reason I wake up tired and sore every morning) found the lines...still there.

I have two feelings about this. The first is, of course, a combination of hollow regret and desperate panic (will I meet the man who wants to marry me BEFORE my skin collapses into dewlaps?) because I think, I'm not eighteen anymore. The fresh unworn skin is becoming a little less supple, a little more set, like overworked clay.

The other feeling is...pride. I hated being eighteen. I have always wanted to be a grown-up. I have always felt a little too old for my age (and have been told at least a thousand times that I am, even this year), and now I've reached the point where I've lived enough to have it carved, just the tiniest bit, into my skin. My body is beginning to catch up and take me where I've always wanted to go. And I'm proud because the lines, the first to appear and tell me that however young I am, I'm getting older, were born of laughter. In high school I had small white frown-spots at the corners of my mouth from not smiling, from feeling heavy-laden and sad; in college I started to shove away sadness and embrace joy. And the lines that tell me where the smile is going to go show me that I've won what is for me an old war. I have a leg up on time. I'm going into age laughing.

There are years of reasons why this is a miracle. I was reared in my adolescence by a fanatic youth pastor who taught me that I was horrible, who trained me to hate myself and to think that God hated me for not being perfect. I used to lie awake every night weeping, casting around in my mind for every single minute thing I had done wrong that day and desperately begging for God's forgiveness, believing he would cast me into hell and withhold his love from me because I was human. I believed for the entirety of the most formative years of my life that God detested me, was disappointed in me, would never be satisfied with me, thought I was disgusting, and loved me only in spite of myself because he was God but would much rather he didn't have to. I was afraid. I was in despair. I didn't particularly want to live. I didn't think I could make it on my own. I thought that if God could only love me because he was God, no one else could love me. I was alone.

But in college I learned that my fellow human beings could, and did, love me. And so did God. My favorite bathroom stall in North Hall my freshman year (left-hand side, second door from the front) had Zephaniah 3:17 hanging in it. Every time I took a pee, it affirmed to me in curly cheerful letters, "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. / He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." I started to uncurl my fingers and loosen my hold on the idea that I was worthless, good-for-nothing, better off dead. I began to laugh.

When my sister went through her debilitating illness, I learned to stave off the anguish and despair with laughter. Wild sometimes, hollow sometimes, forced sometimes, but still healing. Even when I was angriest at God, I found something I'd forgotten, something that vanished sometime after I turned eight. I found joy. And I held onto it. I met people I could laugh with, and I found faith that everything would work out.

And it has. It's not a happily-ever-after ending, of course -- not yet. But it's still good. When I was eighteen I had my whole life planned out. Now at twenty-four I don't have plans at all. None of them panned out the way I thought. And I couldn't be happier about it. Sure, there are nights when I wish my battered stuffed Eeyore was a solid, breathing, warm human man; sure, there are mornings when the thought of wiping one more horrible slug-dripping nose or changing one more shitty diaper or holding one more kid in the throes of a temper tantrum over something stupid like "It's time to brush your teeth" makes me want to pull the covers back over my head and deny the daylight; but at every moment I'm in a season. Something new is just around the corner.

Not all of it will be enjoyable (in fact I have an appointment after Thanksgiving to see if I have a stomach ulcer, which I doubt but who knows?), but everything will be okay. I'm doing what I didn't think possible, even two years ago: I'm relatively emotionally stable, I have a good job (which is getting better -- in mid-January I'm going to be, not Administrative Coordinator, but Director of Events, some Marketing, and some PR -- I'll be writing press releases and I get a thirty percent raise and an extra week of paid vacation and an office!!!), I find pleasure in living alone, I find pleasure in spending time with the few trusted friends I've made here. I find pleasure in being.

Yesterday I opened my Bible at random to Psalm 37: "If the LORD delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand." Yesterday I laughed so hard with Marianne that my abs hurt more than they do after my daily workout. Yesterday I found my first facial lines. Today the lines were still there, and today I looked out my window at the hard, bright, shallow sunshine on the bare bright trees and I loved my life and this season and the God who brought me to it. I put on my coat, my favorite scarf, and my warm ugly gloves and went out into the day at the death of the year (this coldness before the snow flies, when the leaves are packed in sharp-smelling banks along the curb and the land is stark and bare, is my favorite time of year), and found Colette, and walked around the neighborhood, talking.

Maybe every second doesn't find me jumping up and down in elation -- that's not life. Maybe every morning doesn't find me burning with delight to be awake, maybe every afternoon doesn't find me suppressing a song because I'm filled to bursting with happiness. But every minute finds me alive. Every minute finds me upheld. And when I turn my faithful, as-yet-unrepaired old Earl nosefirst down the driveway wherever I'm going each day, I can look down the uneven bricks of Ashland St. and up at the flat November sky and think, I'm doing okay.

I'm not getting younger, and I'm not where I thought I would be. But where I am is better. Facial lines and all.

la la la la la

Just had a fantastic evening hanging out with former roommate Marianne -- I sometimes forget how lovely and essential it is to spend time with someone who has known you well for a long while, whose company you really enjoy. (Shout out, MP!)

Also some really exciting news on the promotion, which I'll go into further over the weekend. Right now I'm tired and have to get up early on a Saturday for a conference on baby sign language. Wheee.