Seriously

Today I voted. I was voter number 1291, and my site had been open for about 8 hours. I took my time, double and triple checking to make sure I got everything right. I didn't expect to be nervous.

I pride myself on being a pretty informed voter. The judges always confound me, of course, but I have trustworthy advisers for that sort of thing. I was caught a bit off guard by a food tax initiative. Do I want a 1% prepared food tax, or do I not? I hadn't even heard of the issue. It was pretty clear to me even without knowing what it was about that no, I didn't want an additional tax on food. Food tax just seems wrong. I did check, though, with some of my neighbors, who were outside the polls with sample ballots. God, I love this town. My intuition was right--no food tax.

Normally when I vote, there aren't that many other people there. Today, maybe because it's the first day of early voting, I could barely fit into the polling place. There wasn't a long line, but voters were crammed into every little space. It was a bit chaotic, actually.

After the machine sucked in my completed ballot and the counter changed from 1290 to 1291, I took my sticker and walked back outside. I was surprised to notice the lump in my throat. I looked around at my neighbors. Not just the ones who live in the square mile or so that marks my immediate neighborhood, but at all the others who live in the city proper.

My eyes welled up. My city has mobilized, and it makes me proud to live here.

I'll wear my sticker tomorrow to the conference where I'm presenting. Every little bit helps, you know?



(Oh, and this:)




(And this)

Jodines!

OMG.

Y'all, I got a comment a couple of days ago from one of my most favoritest people in the universe, and definitely my favorite Catalana, Marta.

I met Marta when I was living in Barcelona, over 10 years ago now. (Vaya, como pasa volando el tiempo*...) We didn't hang out in Barcelona. Not much, anyway. We met towards the end of my year living there, when she found out that she'd be coming to my university on an exchange. I didn't have anyone to live with, and she had no idea about getting an apartment in a foreign country. A match made in heaven.

Seriously, Marta and I had exactly zero conflict when we were sharing a townhouse. Things just fell into place. I was messy; she straightened up after me. I liked to cook, so Marta ate what I made. Marta and I drove up to Michigan and stayed with my family, who loved her.

Loved.

Somewhere there are some photos from that time. My twin nephews, now 10, were infants, and we spent a gorgeous afternoon on a blanket in the front yard of my mom and Pete's house. The cherry tree was in bloom, and we were blanketed in pink petals. Truly a perfect moment.

I'm glad she found me here.


Marta, espero que sepas lo importante que me has sido y que sigues siendo. Aunque estamos en paises distintos, y a pesar de que solo hablamos cada dos años, yo sé que puedo contar contigo para cualquier cosa que necesite. Y también, que tú puedes contar conmigo. Es una amistad que tiene raices fuertes, y te lo agradezco. Mil besos, cariño.


*My how time flies.

That's the way....

SO.

I think I mentioned earlier today that I'm a weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bit stressed out. Well, it's getting worse. I know I'll get the things done that I need to do, but I've been left feeling absolutely wrung out. I've been on the edge of tears all morning, and a couple of times have even tipped over that edge.

No weeping or anything. Just a quivery voice, a need to look down, lump in my throat, and then a few tears have escaped onto my salmon-colored shirt. I put out a few feelers to friends just to vent a bit, and set my chat status to "woe-is-me."

---><--- This close to tears That's what my chat status says. A friend of mine that I don't talk to often, a friend who lives just far away enough to make visiting enough of a pain that it doesn't happen, a friend of mine whom I've not seen in person in over a year----this friend saw the passive "be nice to me" cry for help. Sweetheart, he is. Gave me a bit of "Tut Tut, turn that frown upside down!" attention, and then we commiserated a bit. All of a sudden all my stress and all my "Waaaaaaaaaaaah!" emotions turned around and focused on this friend. Y'all, you could hear my internal soundtrack change from The Smiths to KC and the Sunshine Band.

Poor lad didn't know what had hit him, but he rolled with it. "Stew, it really HAS been a long time since we've seen each other. I miss you! And we're both SO STRESSED!! We should really do something STRESS REDUCING!" (There's history there. It's not an out-of-the-blue offer/suggestion.)

Gotta love subtlety. And hormones/weakness.

The one seriously interesting bit here is that this is the first time in AGES that I've interacted with a man and considered him as a *man* rather than just another person. I wonder if the stress put a chink is some armor I wasn't even aware I had.

Market bag

It's passed already. Just needed to get out of bed, step in the shower, put on some clothes and hightail it over to my coffee shop.

Yesterday I finished this hot pink market bag I'd put on the back burner for a while. It took just an extremely boring medical interpreter training to motivate me!! Filling in vocab sheets when the trainer a) can't train to save her life and b) is wrong three times a minute and c) takes forever and rambles serves to really get that hook flying.

So here it is in all its dubitable* glory.

I'll call the kids shortly, now that the moment of woe has passed.

*I love making words from other words.

Daddy

So, Art's not doing so well, a month after his surgery. Sure, he's lost 60 lbs and is almost unrecognizable because of it, but he's also suffering greatly.

Every day he wends his way through never-ending nausea, diarrhea and dry heaves. His back hurts so much he's unable to move around much. He doesn't sleep at night. He's lost his voice. He's got blood coming out of places it shouldn't be. Dying goes through his mind. He can't keep even water down. The day I talked to him he'd managed to consume three saltine crackers with jelly and three blueberries.

I'm sad and worried.

The good news is his blood sugar and blood pressure look fantastic.

In case you forgot

Imperatrix was right. Photo Booth is addictive. It also feels self-absorption enabling, when I sit there and take pictures over and over, deleting until I get one that doesn't seem entirely heinous.

Not surprisingly (considering my recent state of being), I'm feeling old and battered. Looking at the picture I've posted, I just see the bags and lines. I'm glad that the turtleneck I've got on hides my the extra chin that's conspiring to wrap around my neck until it chokes me dead. It makes me want to get more of them.

(BTW, I'm slightly freaking out, because even though I want to explore these thoughts, I worry that it will make those of you who read and know me want to reassure me that no, no, no you really are cute, stew, and it's OK. I actually know that, though, and let me just make it clear that I'm not fishing. Heh. The logical part of me does accept that I'm not in the least ugly.)

These unfavorable thoughts didn't just stop me, though, from flashing a bright, honest smile at the cute, presumably unmarried* guy across from me who is absorbed in reading a huge stack of what looks to be research papers.

Oy, I still have a headache.

*Of course there's no telling if he a) has a girlfriend or even b) whether he'd ever have a girlfriend.

New addition, 12:45 p.m.
Deposited checks, and miraculously walked into a busy salon and snapped up a no-show's appointment. $50 later....

No good, very bad day

NB: It always passes. And it already has...HA! (9:30 a.m.)

How can I be feeling like this day is crap and all other days will be crap and crappity crappiness and that I'll never ever have what I want or need and that who cares?

It's only 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday!!!

The trigger was just now seeing that someone had looked at a profile I have up online. It was the someone I was so excited about going out with a while back who didn't work out in the least. I clicked back onto his profile after I saw he'd been by, and he's now "in a relationship" with this other woman who apparently I have friends in common with outside of Web 2.0 stuff.

Logically, I shouldn't give a rat's ass. We had a brief, crazy roller coaster ride and just about everything about him is wrong for me. He does occasionally read here (GO AWAY!), so I won't go into *all* the reasons why that is, but one major one is just a lack of values in common. Maybe I really mean priorities? Materialist-over-the-top vs. tending towards asceticism. Going out every night vs. wanting to be settled and putter around the house. (I left any judgment behind in this description. I do, however, have opinions that I'll go ahead and leave unspoken)

I don't even like or respect him all that much, for chrissake.

Emotionally, though, I'm feeling wrung out and hung to dry. It's not just this new information, which, remember, was only a trigger for this angst.

Been having bad thoughts...like that I suck (not true) and that I suck (not true) and that I'll never (fill in the blank with concern of the day/minute)and that I'll always (fill in the blank with things I'd like to change but haven't yet). That a, b or c aspect of life is just horrible and why bother trying to interact or change things?

I'm dealing with an extreme lack of optimism for the future, an inability to manage the present, and just overall feelings of hopelessness.

I spent all weekend with myself and only me; this lack of intimacy will eventually kill me, I fear--not physically.

I want to do something now to get rid of this horrible state, but can't think of anything I would be able to do.

I'm lonely.

On stress and poultry

Year: 1999
Setting: Townhouse, College Town, NC
Event: Out-of-Season Turkey Dinner, complete with Fixins (Capital F)
Invitees: Several close friends, and a few of their friends.

Situation: I had rescued a frozen turkey one March, from a man who was carrying it to the dumpster at my doctor's office. It had been in their freezer since DECEMBER! The HORROR!

Problem #1: The turkey was done 2 hours before it was supposed to be.
Problem #2: The guests were an hour later than they were supposed to be.
Problem #3: I hadn't yet learned that not every crisis merits a full fight-or-flight response.

Resolution: Upon the guests' arrival, I shoved a fork and carving knife into the nearest hand (which happened to be a guy I'd never met) and told the lot to "Shut up and cut the fucking turkey!"

Hoo boy!

I felt a little of that same feeling yesterday as I finalized this weekend's camping trip details. All of a sudden the friends accompanying me started to have input into the decisions I'd made in their stead, having lacked much helpful feedback until that time.

Why are we doing it this way?
Why not go here instead?
Is it worth going, if the drought is so bad?
Oh man, we'll have to portage some of it!
Don't canoes hold like, 1200 lbs? Why pack light?

I'd spent way, way too much time carefully planning the best course of action to react logically and calmly to these questions. I hid my irritation as best I could, but did tell a friend that I was having a "Shut up and cut the fucking turkey" moment. He'd been there to see that fabulous moment, so he knew exactly what I meant. He stepped up and planned out a menu for the trip.

It's going to be worth it, right?

OF COURSE IT IS! Whee!

Productivity and the Beast

This morning I got up nice and early, having spent the night in. I hauled ass outside and did some long-overdue yard maintenance. Mowed, ripped out the zinnias, weeded the zinnia bed, moved the tarp off of the as-yet-unplanted bed, put cardboard down over all of that, and moved some compost to where it should be. It had been deposited in the wrong pile, see.

Oh, btw? I have a "secret" blog now. It's password protected, and it is going to be the place where I pour out my sturm und drang more privately. I'm the only one with the password. That's how it's going to stay.

Meanwhile, I'm taking suggestions on how to get a delicious, sweet hard shell, such as one finds on an M&M or Smartie. I want to custom order a full-body suit made out of that material. I considered Kevlar, but I don't want to be *that* closed off. Not yet.

MORE HAPPY!

Are you at all sick of this if-it-weren't-so-real-it'd-be-saccharine mood?

Blame it on the rain.

Or maybe the bushel of Virginia Stayman apples I got at the SW Virginia Farmer's Market today that are currently cooking into applesauce for the canning. (Once again, thanks go out to our Marianne for my crockpot.)

Local apples which I bought on the way back from a wedding.

Where I saw my friend Cosmo marry the most perfect for him woman ever, each pledging vows that were exquisitely real.

While I was sitting with my good friend Nemoid.

Next to a spring-fed brook teeming with watercress.

Which I sampled.

But forgot to harvest.

OR maybe it's because I found out I'm getting a new computer for Christmas (together with my birthday).

A computer that, theoretically, won't have such issues as deciding not to charge. Or to only allow one application open before the spinny, rainbow wheel kicks in.

And I can get it whenever I want it. As long as I don't bitch when the holidays come.

Or maybe it's because I'm sunburned to a crisp.

Because of five straight hours in sunlight today, sans sunscreen.

Because you don't NEED sunscreen when it's only in the mid-60s, right?

And it's cold enough in those mountains to need a wrap.

Which you didn't bring.

Because you don't have one.

So you can just make one, right? No problem. 2 yards of brocade satin, some new scissors, 45 minutes to kill, a needle and thread? Wrap.







Or maybe I'm just happy. Things are going really, really, really well, my friends.

Something else to be happy about

At least an inch so far of glorious, lovely, drenching rain. I put a jar out there just now to check tomorrow to see how much more we get overnight.

Wow am I lucky.

Conversations

My new roommate seems to be a really upstanding guy. That's cool.

We each had first dates yesterday, and it was kind of fun to have a little pow wow about them this morning. He gave me some technical assistance regarding male behavior. We commiserated about dating ups and downs, and per new roomie's request, I pledged to kick him in the ass if I found him in the fetal position on the couch, lovesick.

Help me figure this out, will ya?

So I mentioned that this weekend marked a year since I quit smoking, right?

Well, I promised myself a new computer. But now that seems a little LARGE of a purchase. And I don't like the amount of time I'm on the computer as it is. If other people park themselves in front of the TV when they get home from work, I park myself in front of the computer.

I don't know what to do; I'm so cheap, because of what seems like necessity, that often I make these bargains with myself and don't follow through with them. That's probably not a very effective strategy in the long run, but I really feel like I can't afford ANYTHING beyond the norm. Doesn't stop me from buying beer though.

I've also really been wanting a freezer to use for those seasonal vegetables that you can't can very easily. To tell you the truth, I'd much rather have frozen huge batches of sauce from the tomatoes I bought. But I make up barriers. I mean, I've seen plenty of cheap, second hand freezers on Craigslist. They're affordable. I have a friend who has said she'd be willing to help me move it. She and her partner have a truck. There's no real reason not to get it, but I've spent all summer convincing myself it's not doable. Now my reasoning is that I've waited too long as it is, and being single I don't really need all that food anyway.

Another thing I'd like is a new digital camera. The one I have is, poor thing, older even than my computer. I bought it second-hand for a reasonable price, from someone I know takes care of their belongings. But it still works. It works. So I don't get myself a new one.

I'm having a hard time convincing myself to follow through with rewarding myself for a year of not smoking.

:-(

Any ideas?

I was right, I think.

Sooooooooooo.

Since yesterday was "feel like crap and sit around biding my time for who knows what," today is already much better. Not perfect, mind you, but better.

I went into work late, because I have a late meeting. I still got up at the normal time, though and actually accomplished things. I paid ALL MY BILLS, for one. I hate paying bills. It always seems like such an ordeal. And it never is.

And I did some dishes. Very nice. Not all of them, but a couple of really big things that made it look like a lot happened. Funny how that works!

Oy

I'm reading that book that everyone else is. I'm near the end of it. I promise not to say anything about the content. But you know how with a suspenseful book there's a point where no matter how late it is, no matter how tired you are, no matter how many other things you should be doing you just can't stop?

I'm there now. I only stopped to write this because it's making me a little overwhelmed and I need a distraction. So maybe you *can* stop. I make no sense. Típico.

I've had a crap weekend. I only left the house today to pay rent and buy gas. I was up at 6 (!) and didn't get moving until 9 or so. I harvested worms for a woman from Freecycle who seems to have bailed on me. She's not responded, and I've a paper bag of slithery things near my front door. They're probably not very happy, but I did leave them with a cantaloupe rind.

I worked yesterday, a couple of hours, and then I did manage to do something social. A movie. Which, though excellent, wasn't a movie it's really necessary to see in the theater. I didn't go for the movie though. I went for the company. And that was way better than the movie.

But still, it felt like I'm just biding my time today. Until what, I don't know.

I dunno. I'm in a negative mood. It will pass. It always does, remember? It's good to document it here, even if I'm slightly freaked about the spike in blog views I've seen happening recently. I still think it's important to be open and such, but it's weird knowing this new site is posting all my entries for an extremely local audience. That I don't know.

Out of whack

Am back from my whirlwind tour of the S.E. USA. In addition to great times in Atlanta and Athens, I ended up stopping off in VA to visit another friend. This friend happened to be a boy, and a quality one at that. He also is pretty firmly ensconced in the NE, far from here. He's temporarily in the area, though, and we were able to take advantage of that.

The 24-hour affair kind of messed with my mind a bit. On the one hand, I am more optimistic that there has to be someone out there for me. Unfortunately it does nothing about my fear that there isn't anyone HERE. And I also have the feeling (based on little more than gut) that there's an imbalance of interest.

There was no "what next? (if anything)" discussion. I feel very out of my element.

All together now: AWWWWWWWW

I've been deeply lonesome for some time. There's a distinct lack of intimacy in my life on any level at all. Most of the time I accept it pretty stoically, but from time to time it just kills me.

Today I helped a friend move. I hadn't seen this group of friends in toto for a long while, so there was lots of catch-up to play. For some reason, I openly copped to being pretty sick of my loner status. The more I thought about it, the more I kind of felt pretty shitty, and then I almost cried. Remembering it makes me teary, too!

On the way home from the move (which, aside: OY! they got the truck stuck!) I thought about moving back to Michigan, because at least there I'd have my family around. Even with my very extra super closest friends I have some kind of barrier to intimacy. I don't have anyone I can call no matter what time of day or night it is. I mean, that's not strictly true. I don't have anyone that I'd feel OK with calling, though. I know that's about me. That's not about my friends. I bet that any and every last one would be OK with a middle-of-the-night emergency call. I mean, shoot, I'd be happy to help in the same situation.

When I mentioned it to my mom, the maybe, what-if, huh, should I thoughts towards going back to where I've vowed I'd never go back again, she jumped with excitement. Audibly, anyway.

I dunno. The growing season is SO short. The people are SO conservative. The town is SO boring. The economy is SO shitty. But the wilderness is equally beautiful. And my family is even more important. And face it, how can you not miss THIS?

Sigh.

Well, I did get to hold a very cute baby last weekend who made it her job to give everyone kisses.

That was good.

And also

I guess I'm kind of grumpy. I don't want to try and figure out what damn lesson plan the person here before me used. And I don't want to go try to warm up to another bunch of damn kids who don't really want me there!

(someone has a bad attitude today)

This again

A friend of mine once told me that he suspects I feel emotions more deeply than most.

I think he's probably right.

It's great when it's joy. I can look at a flower or a bird or my garden and be utterly restored and filled in the moment with an intense swelling of pleasure. When the emotion is utter capitulation in the face of seemingly endless loneliness, though, like right now, well...it sucks.

Sheesh, I sound like a drama queen. I'm sick of crying, though. Between that and the way more frequent allergen-induced nose-running, I'm getting raw. At least the zit that was hanging on outside my nostril has healed though.

Oh, but I think I had a tick in my hair. I picked something off of my head, but I seem to have lost it in the bed. I brushed my hair out over the white sink, but I didn't get any tick falling out.

And my washer broke mid-cycle. I had to haul out the wet, soapy clothes and bail out the water when I got home today. The clothesline broke under the weight, and so the clothes are on cycle two in the dryer. Soapy and dryer. Better than mold, I suppose.

Sigh.

Talk amongst yourselves

So, sadness: to display or to stifle*?

555-fouh fouh fouh fouh-- Give a call, we'll talk, no big whoop.

My gut feeling is to let the tears flow and accept them, when possible. I've not ever been real successful at stemming tears, but I am excellent at feeling bad about crying.

Crying feels uncomfortable to me when I'm doing it, and frequently afterwards as well. I don't get the relief that some people claim. I do get annoyed, though. It also makes me want to hide.

When I was at Al's memorial service last weekend, I didn't feel concerned or pathetic or anything about crying. And the tears *really* streamed. Maybe that's because everyone else was crying, too.

Hm.

*assuming one is home and not in the boss's office or on a date or something