it's getting alarming

I spent all of yesterday hoeing out and organizing the bedroom closet and the pantry. I don't think I came fully awake until I was up to my knees and elbows in clothes I don't wear anymore. I blinked, looked around the room, saw it looking like Taz had thrown a birthday party for all his friends and progeny in it, and looked down at my hands busily emptying drawers and folding socks.

"How did I even start doing this?" I inquired of the cat. "All I meant to do was unpack!"

So today I threw a fit of rebellion against whatever force is rising up in me to make me incurably and frighteningly domestic and did nothing. The only productive (i.e. involving money) event of my day was buying a few groceries. Then I goofed around on the internet and knitted.

No! I wasn't knitting on my last day off! I wasn't! I was throwing candy wrappers all over the apartment and ordering pizza!

Okay, fine, I was knitting.

My trip home for Thanksgiving was marvelous. My extended maternal family was as crazy as expected, but, as my mother said, I was "serene and out of the way," so I didn't come to any harm or frustration. And the rest of the visit, with my parents, was great. I haven't been home in almost a year, and I haven't seen my folks since April, so it was a long time coming. And it was really, really nice.

It's an added bonus that when I go home, I get my own queen-sized bed. That's a considerable upgrade from what I'm used to.

home again, home again

The past few days have been marvelous.

MP threw another of her marvelous feastie occasions last night as a pre-Thanksgiving celebration, complete with stuffing, an enormous picnic table dragged in from the backyard, and a twenty-pound fresh Farmer's Market turkey. She and her cousin Tom and I spent the weekend shopping, rearranging, and cooking to prepare for it. It was, of course, a smashing success. I had a moment of pure longing (in geek form) made real as all ten of us sat down to gabble and pass huge bowls of food around: At the end of a rather poignant Firefly episode all the characters, most of whom don't usually get along (but part of the poignancy was the episode's arrival at solidarity), sit down around their big, homey dining table (on a spaceship, of course) and begin to talk and laugh and pass things around, and when I saw it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I teared up, missing so badly having that sort of experience in good company. And last night the wish was fulfilled. I almost teared up again, but my mind was distracted by the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoe pie, squash casserole, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Mmmmm.

Everyone should have Thanksgiving twice in a week.

And today more wonderfulness occurred. Because again, I have a wonderful boss. He called the day after his wife had knee replacement surgery to ask if I wanted Wednesday off to go home. So now I get a five day weekend to travel to the traditional Thanksgiving site at my maternal grandparents'!

I find myself looking forward to it. I haven't seen my parents since April, and with Christmas being a little different this year (I'm spending a couple of days prior to Christmas at home, and then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my sister's), it's going to be really nice to see them for a little more time than I had expected. I'll get even more time because I'm driving home, then riding down to southwestern PA with my parents, driving back up with them, and coming home from there.

AND MP's teaching me to knit in the round tonight, so that I can work on my leg warmers in the car and all during Thanksgiving. (As I'll be the only "kid" there, and a lot of the conversation centers around people I don't know/don't care about, it'll be good to have something to do with my hands, and yet be able to participate peripherally in what's going on...or at least look like I am).

Maybe they'll even let me help with the cooking this year!! My grandmother makes the best stuffing EVER.

That whole side of the family is riotously dysfunctional, and I've been kind of sad the last couple of days, thinking I'd have to miss it. There's nothing like my cranky and slightly inebriated alcoholic grandfather yelling at my alcoholic uncle to PUTAWAYTHATBEER. And my grandmother is wonderful -- a no-stuff-and-nonsense woman full of humor and heart. This is the side of the family that argues and yells a lot, forgets about it five minutes later, and then yells about something new. Somehow it's warm and comforting, and makes me feel like I'm not actually a frigid northern European whose still icy waters run silent and deep, occasionally exploding like a geiser. Or makes me feel like my usual spirit of righteous indignation is in excellent company.

So my boss said, "It's a family holiday, and you haven't seen your parents for a long time, and I hate to keep families apart if I can do something about it."

That's what you get for having a former priest and a family man for a boss. It's the bestest thing ever.

When the cat's away, the mice will...make a lounge

Yup. My boss and his wife are out of the office today and all next week, so the part-time employee and I spent the entire morning rearranging the upstairs offices. The front one in particular needed work. It was being used as a spare room for all sorts of junk. So we condensed all the junk into boxes, threw a lot of boxes away, and turned it into a lounge, complete with recliner, TV/VCR/DVD player, microwave, coffee maker, rug, and fake tree.

Now I can't wait to bring my lunches and sit around watching movies and knitting during that precious hour of not having to work.

I just need to wait for Target to get another shipment of that bag I want...then I'll be all set.

sweet convenience, sweet crock pot

So MP and I made an innocent trip to Target on Sunday. All she wanted was a hat. I was just along for the ride.

But Target seduced us with its sparkling kitchen accoutrements. As we wandered through the gadget aisles, I saw, illuminated by under-the-counter spotlights as by a ray from heaven, a crock pot. A red crock pot. A red crock pot on sale for seventeen dollars.

I ooed. MP saw and aahed. Of their own accord, our hands reached out and seized the boxes. We left Target balancing a crock pot under our arms.

"Now we just need a slow cooker cookbook," MP declared.

"...Wanna go to Borders?" I asked.

So we pilgrimaged to Borders and came away with NOT Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. I also bought 150 Best Slow Cooker Recipes.

I tried out my wonderful new kitchen companion yesterday with a recipe from my Mediterranean cookbook: Provencale Beef and Olive Daube. A gloriously fresh enormous cut of meat from the Farmer's Market, marinated in a simmered concoction of olive oil, red wine, onion, shallots, carrot and garlic, went into the pot. So did half a pound of bacon, half a pound of sliced Heirloom carrots (one of them was purple!), a can of stewed tomatoes, and two cups of black olives. I turned it on Low and went to work.

And came home to a delicious bubbling meal. MP came and partook. Afterward we sat about talking and knitting.

As she was putting on her shoes to leave, she glanced into my bedroom to see NOT Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook on the floor by my bed.

"Are you reading this in bed too??" she demanded.

We laughed. "We really need to channel this into something that makes money," she said.

After she left, I tidied the house and got ready for bed, thinking about the marvel of the crock pot -- that I can have something to do my cooking for me. When I come home tired and hungry, there's dinner waiting on the counter, hot and ready to serve. I no longer have to spend my weekday evenings working two and a half hours to cook a meal, so that I eat at eight-thirty and then have to go straight to bed on a full stomach. Nor do I have to sit around making a meal of cheese and fried eggs, or whatever junk food I have lying around. Forget being a busy soccer mom -- this could be the saving grace for singles!

When I crawled under the covers, the kitchen was sparkling clean, all the dishes were put away, and the leftovers settled in the fridge.

I am turning into Betty Homemaker.

Now why won't someone marry me?

embracing the girly arts

I have begun learning to knit. MP taught me last night, and now I have two and a half feet of bright pink scarf, only a little raggedy.

Oh yes...I am turning into that single woman, with a cat, who knits. Next I'll be wearing glasses that come to points at the corners, with big thick black rims, and flannel nightgowns with high collars.

But really, knitting is awesome. MP was reading me the intro of Stitch 'n' Bitch as I struggled with purling and knitting and not dropping stitches, and the woman has incredible points. Particularly how, as I've been ranting for some time, the idea of women's lib has devolved into turning women into men, and losing all the feminine arts that make life lovely and comfortable. And furthermore, men have not been encouraged to take up the tasks traditionally done by women. So what we have is an overmasculinized society, where everything is prefabricated and food comes ready to pop in the microwave so everyone can spend grueling hours focusing on their careers, going to the gym, and going to bed.

What's with that? All it's saying, in the end, is that "men's" skills are still better than "women's" skills. And there have been too many centuries of that same old attitude. This era is no different. Instead of men's and women's traditional roles becoming fluid and ambisexual -- where a man and a woman alike can have a career and play soccer and cook and sew, the tasks of cooking, cleaning, making clothing, and raising children have been given almost entirely over to factories and take-out services.

Boo hiss. I like the new trend that defies this, and I know a goodly number of men who are experts in the kitchen. MP says that men in Ashville knit all the time, and in public. One of my favorite men taught his wife to crochet (I think I have that right). Now that's progress.

And within the next few weeks I'm going to learn to shoot. I'll be the Gunslinger-Who-Knits.

Maybe I'll knit my own holster.

the latest news

If you're my friend:

All generic acetaminophen in your possession, NOT labeled with the brand name Tylenol, you might consider throwing away, as it has been found to contain fragments, shards, and strands of metal wire which could, at the least, give you stomach pain, and at the worst, rip up your throat. This includes acetaminophen sold by Wal-Mart, CVS, Safeway, and, according to Fox News, "more than 120 other retailers." So please pitch it all into the nearest child-proof wastebasket, even if you bought it up to three years ago. It's bad for you. I don't want to get a phone call from you to hear your voice gurgling on the other end due to ruptured blood vessels in your throat from contaminated generic pills. For all of our sakes, stick with Tylenol, the brand name we all know, trust, and can't afford.

If you're not my friend:

I have a lot of acetaminophen I'm giving away.

the note on my door

This year I've finally been found by door-to-door religious groups.

It's not that I dislike them; but I do dislike being proselytized. Give me an honest, open discussion between two people of differing viewpoints any day; but please, spare me the rhetoric with the intent to convert me to exactly your point of view. I don't share a like point of view with most people of my own faith, let alone anyone else's, and I lost interest a long time ago in getting into one-dimensional arguments where there is no intention to arrive at a deeper mutual understanding, or to broaden both people's perspectives, or to make both people think. I also don't believe I can change people's minds, any more than I believe I ought to go banging on my neighbors' doors trying to change their minds for them because I or my beliefs say that their beliefs are wrong or false or misguided. Attempts from strangers to persuade other strangers based purely on word and symbol are generally fruitless.

Also, in order to answer the door, I have to go downstairs, making sure my keys are in my pocket in case I get locked out. Oftentimes the keys are lying in some place I've never put them before, and I can't remember where they are. Then when I find them I have to kick off my slippers and put on shoes, and now that it's getting colder, I have to don a coat in case I wind up standing in the stairwell for awhile. Answering the door is rather an elaborate process. So when I hear the bell ring, and think perhaps it's Kevin or MP or some other friend, and I get downstairs to see someone holding a pamphlet, it's a disappointment.

After my last hit-up on Sunday, I politely disengaged myself almost immediately and marched back up the stairs and sat down at my computer. Taking a cue from The Meg Formerly Known as Boss, I printed and posted on my door the following text:

"Please Note: If you are calling to solicit, without our direct, specific and personal request, anything material or immaterial, including but not limited to goods, services, politics and religion, kindly refrain from ringing the doorbell, or knocking on the door, and continue on your way. We appreciate your concern, but are not interested.

"Respectfully thanking you in advance for your cooperation, and with our best wishes,
"The Residents"

I may feel a bit mean and take it down in the future, but for now there it sits.

My boss was proud.

even if

Since the first of June
lost my job and lost my room
I pretend to try
even if I try alone
~Sufjan Stevens

For the past month or so I have felt increasingly emotionally paralyzed. Which is at least a change from the quiet, persistent mental agony that has been going on since June; but it troubles me.

I’m certain it stems from two things. First is the upped dosage of antidepressants – far from being "happy pills," antidepressants stabilize your emotional state, so it reaches a plateau of non-ill-being. Again, this is better than suffering constantly. But it leaves you feeling a bit dead.

Second is that, as my sister pointed out on the phone this weekend, blocking memories and emotions from traumatic experiences is one of my primary coping mechanisms. Sometimes she’ll bring up something painful that happened anywhere from four months to twenty years ago, and I’ll have forgotten about it completely.

In fact, my memory has been getting worse and worse. Not so much as far as my job is concerned (in fact, the job is going remarkably well – I got a raise last week!! Hooray!!!); but as far as the events of the summer go, I can’t remember much of them. And I have a scarily far-reaching memory. I can remember moments from when I was eighteen months old. When I was working at Ann Taylor and putting new client information into the computer system, for mailing lists or shipping addresses, occasionally I would hit a wrong button and everything would vanish; but within twenty seconds I could enter everything back in, remembering birth dates, social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and all but three or four digits of their credit card numbers. I would only have to say, "And can you verify your credit card number one more time please?" and they’d never even know anything had gone wrong. My coworkers used to look over my shoulder as I did it and mutter in my ear, "That’s freaky, Sarah."

But I can’t remember things from this summer. I forgot that my sister had come to visit shortly after I lost my job. I forgot a lot of things that were said to me during and after the losing of the job. I’m forgetting names of people who worked and lived there, whom I saw and spoke with every day.

And it’s bleeding into other areas too. Sometimes I wake up and forget what day it is, or I forget that I signed up for the GRE, or I forget to pay bills, or I forget to write to my grandparents, or I forget to fulfill minor social obligations. This weekend I forgot to pick up my antidepressant refill, remembered only after the pharmacy had closed, drove around frantically looking for one that was open later, cried when they couldn’t help me, and cried when they could.

I’m forgetting everything.

So, getting back to the original point, which I had also forgotten, I tend to block memories from difficult experiences. I also block emotions. So, in the aftermath of grief and loss from this year, I’m feeling next to nothing.

It’s been surging toward an eruption. I don’t think the numbness is going to last too much longer. I think I’ll be relieved when it breaks.

It’ll be nice, when it does, to care again. The only things I can focus on much are work, and my TV shows. I don’t care anymore about being single, or dating, or finding someone, although there are certain indications of certain guys beating their chests at each other around me. I don’t care about my future. I don’t care about my hobbies, or my passions.

I’m tired. I’m tired from the struggle to find or hold onto faith, hope, love, and joy, which seem to be running between my fingers like Presque Isle sand. I’m tired from the effort to keep my head up, and keep trying. I’m tired from the effort to pretend that I’m fine. I’m fine, and I’m not fine at all, and I don’t care either way, and whatever is wrong with me is almost inarticulable (despite the above articulation), because I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, and I’m indifferent to it. It’s my indifference that bothers me the most. I’m not indifferent to that.

But then there are little moments – like today at McDonald’s, when, tired and sad and lonely and ready to buckle down with a few pieces of paper and process my problems, I was beginning to sit down when an elderly couple called over, "Hey, lady – do you want to come eat dinner with us?" So I sat down with them, and listened to parts of their life stories, and was amazed to discover that such a spry, alert, humorous couple are in their mid-nineties, and celebrating their seventy-second anniversary this month. Those are the moments that simultaneously assuage some of the sadness, and deepen it, and give me hope. And at the very least, it was so lovely to have total strangers ask me to eat with them.

And there are other moments too – like my raise last week, or today when I caught my reflection in a storefront window as I walked past on my way to drop off office mail, and realized that after a gawky, awkward adolescence, in which my mouth bristled with braces, my hair was odd and my pants too short, I have become a serene-looking, lovely young woman, all grown up.

So I know I’m going to make it. Growing up isn’t all peaches and cream – I don’t have enough money to shake a stick at, I’m single and far from family, and life has snapped a few vicious curve balls this year – but adolescence was no vacation either, and I don’t believe in life without struggle. And this, on the whole, is much better for me than I might have otherwise chosen for myself. Even if I don't understand how. Even if it's often difficult, harsh, or sad. Even if I spend most days trying not to lose myself.

Even if I try alone.

Touched by an Angel

I get really attached to my TV shows.

Growing up, my main show (aided and abetted by my family, of course) was Star Trek. Wesley Crusher was my first crush (though now it’s switched to Data). Dad would tape it when it showed in the evenings, which was past my sister’s and my bedtime, and we would watch it as a family the next evening, munching our dinners in the living room in front of the TV.

In my adolescence our family switched to The Pretender. I have since bought the first season of this show, which completely enthralled me when I was younger, and found it to be far more obvious with its undercurrents than I remembered, but still palatable. The thing is, it was VERY mid-90s, and feels distinctly dated. The opening lines of the theme boom out in an Unsolved Mysteries voice over a black screen with the lines verbatim represented in white letters: "THERE ARE PRETENDERS AMONG US." I mean, ack. We lost interest in the show when it prolonged itself beyond reason, and became pointless without resolving any of the undercurrent conflicts.

College was the era of Dark Angel. This remains one my all-time favorites, and every time I watch it through till the end of its brief life, I grow enraged at Fox all over again for cancelling it after only two seasons. Leigh Ann and I agree that one of its major appeals is its dystopic setting, with a kick-ass heroine just trying to make it in a harsh and beat-down world. Leigh Ann and I began saying, "Dark Angel is life" due to the gorgeous and relevant themes that this show focuses on – nearly all dealing with social justice. And then "Dark Angel is life" became a catch-phrase for the frequency with which we would see cast members in other movies, TV shows, and commercials. Those actors are everywhere, especially the small bit part actors.

The first year of post-college was House. I maintain that it has an excellent first season – the brilliancy of the indirect characterization of House through his associates, and some of the more amazing episodes which play with narrative structure, make it an incredible watch. But the second season failed and boiled itself down to runny melodrama, and I underwent a bitter divorce from the show.

This year, nearly a decade after missing its first airing, and all its subsequent airings, I fell in love with Buffy, and then with Angel. Leigh Ann had purchased every season, and became my own personal Netflix administrator, mailing me the seasons as I went through them. With a few several-month breaks in between viewings, I managed to finish all twelve seasons of both shows combined (with Leigh Ann, of course! She took a few trips out to South Bend for the express purpose of watching the shows) in just under exactly one year.

Angel sustained me through the summer. Heartbroken over my job loss and the betrayal of good friends at work, alone, terrified of the future and hard-pressed to find employment, I spent a lot of my days curled on the couch escaping to L.A. (Haha.) I found a great deal of strength and courage from the events, characters, and themes of the show, particularly as it progressed to Seasons Four and Five. Episodes dealing with disillusionment, doubt, the death of idealism, and the necessity, always, of fighting encouraged me not to give up.

Perhaps that sounds silly. But story has always been paramount in my interpretation of life and the world, and good television can be easily as powerful as good fiction, with just as many layers to unwind. Leigh Ann and I spent hours, days, and weeks on the phone talking about the show. I’m not sure that I would have survived well without it.

Now the show du jour is Bones. Leigh Ann and I started watching it, of course, because David Boreanaz is the co-star, and we were sad and let-down after the abrupt finish of Angel (Damn you, Fox! Cancelling all my favorite shows!). But then we fell head over heels in love with the show itself, with the interplay and deep, mostly unspoken intimacy that develops between Booth and Brennan, without putting them in a relationship; with the supporting characters; with the writing; with the skillful way the show avoids the formulaic trap into which House fell by focusing on the characters without sacrificing the strength of the episodic plots; with the even more skillful avoidance of melodrama by placing the characters’ most deep-seated issues (Brennan trying to locate her father, who has been missing since she was little; Booth dealing with seldom seeing his son, and his gambling addiction) at a low boil – occasionally they rise to the surface for some fantastic drama, but mostly they stay underneath and undealt with, while the characters go through the daily business of their lives.

And the show is pure and wonderful escape. It went on hiatus while the World Series aired, and I really think that the recent deepening of my depression partially stems from the inability to escape every week into the world of Bones. I’m excited beyond belief that it’s coming back tonight – and dealing with the Jon Benet case – AND casting MP’s very own cousin as the slain girl!

Then last night I started watching Firefly. Another of Joss Whedon’s, it takes place in the space-traveled future. And I fell hard in love. It has the best pilot I’ve ever seen, fast action, humor, poignancy, good characters.

There have been other shows, of course. I watched and loved most of Sports Night, and have been slowly and delightedly working my way through Arrested Development and Veronica Mars.

I love books. I’ve been reading a lot of my old favorites lately, particularly Madeleine L’Engle’s works. But I also love TV. Clearly science fiction and fantasy are my dearest genres -- partly because they tap directly into myth, the are myth, and myth is the human race's oldest way of telling stories. It's the First Art of Story.

Whatever gets you through, right?

Why I Love Ace Bandages

While hugging the carpeted walls of my high school in my too-short pants (in the days when floods were an anathema) and bulky sweaters, trying to escape the notice of my peers, I often saw the district’s celebrated athletes crutching their way down the center of traffic, sporting their sprained ankles and blown-out knees packed in ice like donor organs. As the weeks went by, the ice disappeared to be replaced by mid-calf sports socks pulled up over the bulge of Ace bandages.

I helped the district’s physical therapist for a few weeks, exploring a possible (and long-discarded) gateway to the future. I learned to unroll and reroll Ace bandages over rainbow-colored puffy joints, tightly enough to provide support without cutting off all circulation. I learned to view Ace bandages as stinky extensions of their wearers, saturated with foot and ankle sweat and the slightly putrid smell of injury.

Then in college I had the opportunity to personalize my Ace bandage experience. A flying high-kick leap in flip-flops through the doors leading into the dorm lounge resulted in a popped ankle which swelled to the size of a grapefruit in about twelve seconds. My friends, all of whom, might I add, I dwarfed by about a foot, made a chair with their Superman-strength arms and carried me back to my room. I was on crutches for six weeks. I used a lot of Ace bandages. It became a form of art to wrap my ankle just so while it turned all shades of green, yellow, purple and black.

But my favorite Ace bandage experience topped off my senior year at Grove City: Children’s Theater. I was cast by the inestimable Hannah Fischer as Otter in The Wind in the Willows – a character distinctly male, robust, middle-aged, and jolly, complete with a "man gut." To transform myself from tall Amazonian woman to tall boisterous man, I pinned a few half-bolts of cloth together, held it to my middle, and had my friends wind me up from neck to Abercrombie waistline in Ace bandages. It was so successful that I even had a little bit of cloth pudge hanging strategically over my belt, and a small dimple that, under a shirt, looked like a belly button.

I obtained six bandages from the Nurse's office in order to be a successful man-mummy. Of course they didn’t want them back; so when Earl the Man Gut had to return to the scrap pile from whence he came, I rolled the Ace bandages into a plastic bag and kept them. You never know, I said.

Since then I’ve used them infrequently. Sometimes the old sprain acts up and I have to wrap it. And when, last night, I melted the skin on a small section of the heel of my hand taking biscuits out of the 450 degree oven by leaning briefly on the rack, I used a bandage to make a mummy of my hand around a Ziploc baggie of ice cubes for about an hour. Eating creamed chicken and biscuits with one working hand and one club with a thumb was interesting.

And today the burn, while rather ugly, is not even blistered.

And I couldn’t have done it without the Ace.

Tremors

This morning I woke from strange dreams involving revival-type meetings in a faux outdoor arena, complete with Astro turf, and Peter Cava, to the sound of footsteps in my hallway.

I jerked an earplug out and listened closely. Underneath the carpet right outside my bedroom door, which I keep mostly closed at night, I heard floorboards shifting, softly but unmistakably.

I lay awake in a flood of terrified sweat, breathing as quietly as possible in spite of the hyperventilating gasps my lungs were attempting. While the back of my mind sent up a stream of frantic prayer, I considered my options. The house phone was in the kitchen. The cell phone was turned on but would make a noise. The Maglite, my only realistic instrument of defense, was next to my bed. Was it wiser to try to confront the intruder, or to lie still and hope they were only after my TV and would go away?

The floorboards shifted again. Thirty seconds later the cat leaped onto my face to wish me good morning. He seemed unalarmed. I risked a glance at the clock. 6:15. An unlikely, though not impossible, hour for breaking and entering.

Now, I know from daily routine that the cat has a heavy tread. He climbs all over my chest and torso and shoulders in the mornings, rolling around on my abdomen in an ecstacy of affection and anticipation of breakfast, and some days I can barely breathe. But I did not know that his tread was heavy enough that he, when not galloping around like a mad giraffe, could sound like a human tiptoeing down the hall.

I got up, shivering as the chilly air attacked my soaked pajamas. My covers as I left them felt as though someone had gotten in bed straight out of the shower without drying off. I flashed the Maglite around the apartment for certainty’s sake, concluded that I was in no danger and that all the windows were sound, and fed the cat in a zombie-ish state of post-adrenaline rush.

I don’t often consider the possibility of danger; and while I don’t live in a savory neighborhood, I’ve never felt threatened beyond the first terrors of living alone when I first moved in. But it’s Halloween, possibilities are always there, however remote, and I hate being defenseless.

I’m not going to be that afraid again. My boss is now going to spend a few weekends teaching me to shoot, and I’m buying a gun.

politically shaded ramblings

I've discovered a love for NPR. Maybe it's the upcoming elections, but something in me wants to tune into the news, and if you listen to NPR you can also get fabulous music, Guy Noir, Writer's Almanac reports, and Science Friday. I was grinning this morning because I knew every author in the Writer's Almanac who was born today (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAXINE HONG KINGSTON!).

One of the news reports from this morning concerned the gas prices, which are expected to remain lower than all summer but will still (surprised?) bring the profits rolling into the oil industries. An audio file of a company respresentative speaking in ecstatic tones about the "record profits for the third quarter" almost had me wrecking the car yelling THAT'S BECAUSE YOU HELD THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HOSTAGE ALL YEAR, YOU UNPRINCIPLED FREAKS.

I could have understood the high gas prices if the oil companies were barely scraping by with what they've been paying and what they've been charging. But for God's sake. And I know, I know, Europe has been paying through the nose for years. But Europe has a.) smaller countries and b.) outstanding public transportation. The bus lines in South Bend don't run after eleven at night. The only trains running through most small cities and towns and villages carry freight. Most Americans commute long distances to work, rendering cycling absurd. I once saw a news report saying, "And now a look at how Britain has been dealing with the rising gas prices," with a shot of hundreds of people on bikes in the city. I choked on my water. England is pretty much the size of New Jersey, and the population tends to be more dense due to the limited available space. Of course biking is a great option. But not here, if you're one of the average middle-class suburban-dwelling commuters. There's not that much leeway for creative options.

Obviously suburbia sucks (and I don't understand the range in gas prices any more than the next averagely aware individual; but I'm tired of it jumping up and down twenty or thirty cents every three days like some demented sugar-high kindergartener). When MP and I visited Pittsburgh the other weekend, it enforced to me how much I'm coming to love city life. There's always something to do within a short walk or shorter drive; car pooling is excellent, recycling regular; there are fabulous family-owned businesses to frequent, markets to support, and political buzzes to listen to. In short, you can be pretty "crunchy."

I have MP to thank for introducing me to crunchiness. South Bend has a way to go before it's a truly crunchy city, but it's not that big and not that old, so there aren't as many creative opportunities to postmodernize, say, an abandoned stone church by turning it into a coffee shop and arts center (as in Pittsburgh, where we bought coffee and locally made mugs on our Homecoming trip). But it's a start. The Farmer's Market carries every kind of imaginable produce (including skinned rabbit), most of it organic, all of it local; I've even begun buying my milk there, which is the kind of milk that makes all other milk seem like skimmed blue shadows of what milk really is. Nearly every Saturday morning I roll out of bed, don a pair of jeans and a hoodie, and head to market with MP.

I still shop at Wal-Mart for the things in bulk that I need, or for housewares (n. v. crunchy). But I also have to live within my means, which I became very bad at this summer, and sometimes you just need chicken stock at forty-seven cents a can, instead of a dollar-fifty.

And at least once a week we wander around the worn brick streets of our incredibly, beautifully conscious neighborhood and revel in the fact that the houses are so old and that we live so close to everything in South Bend.

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.