May 2009 Archives

My heart changes so rapidly that I sometimes wonder who's driving this thing.

Yes, I am madly juggling. Yes, that's been a charming change of pace - though not as consistent as one might hope. There are availability issues with both of them.

There are also issues of sorting out which underlying feelings, if any, are which. And which are just free-floating trouble looking for a place to roost.

I never trust myself in these matters.

I suppose that sounds unnecessarily harsh, but you see, I have a propensity to get, as one online dating personality test put it with uncanny (and annoying) accuracy, "sudden and ferocious crushes" that strike without warning and tend to leave me hanging upside down wondering what happened and who made the world suddenly flip on its axis, and hey, can anybody help me figure out which way my feet are supposed to be pointing?

It reminds me, somehow, of lying on the big rocks atop my favorite mountain, and looking downwards into the sky and having this tremendous, delirious, and rather scary feeling of vertigo as my whole being tries to figure out what to do with the whole up-is-downness of it all.

I went for a bike ride today with one of the boys, who is a friend, and I wanted so badly to take him home with me, or at least kiss him, and it just wasn't happening, and I am disappointed.

I don't know whether it's just because I want something that goes in that place that's all woken up and clamoring for attention, or that I've been spending a lot of time with him recently and have discovered that, to my surprise, I like him.

I like him and I am finding him rather cute all of a sudden. And he's not that boy about whom you've heard at length; he's the other one. The nicer one.

What the frack I am supposed to do about it - if anything - I have no clue. Hold my breath, I guess. I ran in the water like a big dog at the beach, with my heavy bike bag on my back, and he was not melted by this, so perhaps it is a forlorn hope.

Because even the blonde couldn't resist the happy dog move.

PS. Pocketcam + golden hour, in case you were wondering.

Once in a while, the city remembers to show its love, in that magic way that only it can. Happily, it decided to do that on the day of our picnic. The forecasted thunderstorm did not materialize, the weather dawned sunny but crisp, and the picnic grounds were green and pleasant.

A local DJ decided to provide accompaniment of his own accord (presumably one of the city's overworked angels had sent him), and then passed a striped railroad cap.

We had all the right ingredients of a successful picnic: too much food, little people and big people, a bunch of lemonade and iced tea, a frisbee, a cute puppy dog, a neighborhood basketball game to watch, and lots of room to run around.

I'd ridden my practical bike, loaded with about a gazillion pounds of pasta salad, and brought my good camera. The Nikon had several friends there, all fancier models, but I still think I took the most pictures.

All the ladies got flowers to wear in their hair or wherever else they liked. There was a bit of sneaky wine and beer. There were a considerable number of homemade cookies. There was a beautiful bundt cake. I ate everything about four times over, and we later adjourned to the hosts' apartment for some after-picnic laughter and more wine.

I rode home in a cool breeze, jacket zipped up, taking it carefully since I'd had a bit of that Riesling.

(Click for bigger, if you like.)

Fresh ginger tea with lemon and honey.

Watching Chocolat made me feel, for some reason, beautiful, even with my dirty knees and the scarf tied over my hair. Or maybe because of them.

I was an irascible, enraged creature today, with various pieces of my life falling to bits like a snake's used skin, flakeity flake flake.

Everyone wanted to know why, and I hadn't a significant explanation. Which is to say, there were so many possible reasons it was difficult to know which was the true one. If there was a single one.

It's been a year or more since I slept outside the confines of this city.

It's been a fortnight or more since I had a day where I didn't ride in traffic. I only rode tiny errand trips last Saturday, but still the traffic has its effect, I guess.

Spring appears to have brought out the worst side of humanity. Yes, that's right. The nicer the weather gets, the nastier your average human on the street gets. Don't ask me why. It's been two straight days of unfathomable, unending bullshit, and I have lost any patience I ever had, plus all of my reserves of self-control.

I think it might be insufficient peace and quiet (I have a daily quota to maintain sanity levels, and it's been woefully undernourished this week), plus the traffic, plus the random horribleness, plus perhaps a drop in daily endorphin levels because of my shorter rides. That last is going to be hard to address because longer rides entail more time in traffic, and as noted, that's part of my difficulty.

"Yes, actually, I am an invincible secret agent from Mars. How did you guess?"

I'd pledge here and now to install the pocketcam in the bike bag once again so you can have some visual stimulation to go with all these words, but at the moment I don't feel like making promises of any kind to anybody. And at the same time I am wondering if my anti-boyfriend plan might have a small flaw in it.

PS. Yes, I decided to throw you a bone with the crappily fluorescent-lit tea pic.

Movable Type: Hello Lizbon. Your last entry was 5 days ago.
Me: 5 days ago? No way!
MT: Way!

I've been holding off on posting till I had some photos to round it out, but I still don't have any, and I don't have much to say other than a bit of random updating.

(Blog reader: Dude, that's all you ever say!)
(Me: Well that's what a blog mostly is, isn't it?)
(Blog reader: I guess. But once upon a time you wrote us nice essays.)
(Me: I wrote one of those about 5 days ago.)

Right. Anyway.

To the tune of a cat licking herself much too loudly, I will sing you the following song of mundanity.

Some boys are teasing me. Some boys are calling me back after a date I distinctly do not want to repeat. Some boys are, well, giving me to think, or rethink. And the timing of everything is rather dreadful, as usual, and I've made a clumsy ass of myself in about six different ways in the last few days, though not in anything really irretrievable, I don't think. Just sort of ordinary clumsiness. Social clumsiness and the other kind.

Okay then. (The cat has quit washing and fallen asleep in that sudden way they do.)

I am enjoying my proximity to various aspects of my social life. I am closer to several friends. I am closer to farmers' markets. I am better placed for spontaneous fun. All good.

I find that I am a tumbling assortment of things these days, so I will give it to you straight, because that is my wont. (Not a spelling error. Look it up if you don't believe me.)

I am content, I am nervous about money, I am gleeful, I am lonely, I am curious, I am sleepy, I am pining for the beach, I am wearing legwarmers, I am in lust, I am annoyed, I am giving up on that one, he is a pain in the ass, I am suddenly attracted to another one but that may only be because he laid hands on me unexpectedly and in a gentle, appealing way that made my brain spin.

Well hello lovelies.

See my pretty new curtains? See?

Much more fiery than the last batch, and somehow that feels appropriate to me. Yay, fiery.

Some things here are the same, and some are distinctly different, and I am still adjusting to that.

It occurs to me that I've made myself at home in various places by bringing a small group of (unremarkable to anyone else) objects with me. So that my space feels familiar, no matter where it's located. I'm not sure what that means, if anything, though I know that I like to feel that I am entering my own brain when I come home.

I'm watching a movie I've seen before, in which the main character has short-term memory loss and essentially has to reinvent her life every day, to remind herself of where she is and everything that's going on.

It means she approaches each day with a certain freshness, a zest for the most minor things - waffles she ate yesterday but can't remember, kissing a boyfriend she has to re-meet again and again, a pineapple upside-down cake. She paints giant lily plants on a wall each day, and each night her brother and father whitewash over it so she can paint them anew.

There is always something evocative about this movie to me, which is why I've watched it many times.

Tonight what's hitting me is that this is a bit what moving to a new place feels like. It's still me, it's still my things (or some of them - the ones that I didn't get rid of, and the ones that escaped the clutches of the world's worst movers). The cat is much the same. But even she senses that maybe the rules can be rewritten here. She's been climbing on certain pieces of furniture she never climbed on before. She's testing her limits, even as I'm rewriting mine.

I hadn't realized how much my days are shaped by habit. It's disconcerting, in some ways, to not have access to the same rhythms, the same resources.

I can't find some of the things I always took for granted at the local grocery stores: red lentils, frozen lemonade. And the prices are exorbitant compared to my old neighborhood.

I have a shorter bike ride to get to my haunts, and while that frees me up to do a lot more socializing, it also means that I have to think about getting exercise. Which is weird. In the old place, a 40-minute ride was built in.

There are parks and other beautiful places here, but the hood itself is a bit rougher-looking, and I am not sure how safe I am walking home at night.

Essentially, there is a whole new language to learn. The language of days, and I am a rank beginner.

Feeling downright beautiful at the moment. The sun came out, literally and metaphorically (yes, I am aware that there may be a quasi-causal relationship between the two). I unearthed my box of bike tools and lubed my chain - thank god.

I get uneasy when my bikes are ill-cared-for. I feel their pain when their chains are dry, and ashamed when there's visibly crusted dirt in the bends and elbows of their frames.

So I rode my newly sparkly bike into town, and on the way got a text message from crushboy asking if I was coming into town that day (yes, right this minute, sugar), and then we had coffee, and then we went shopping (he's a girly-man and likes these things, and a very pleasant quality that is, if you ask me), and then I had a rather delicious hug and went to get my nose jewelry changed.

On the way home I stopped in to visit a friend who lives near me, and she miraculously produced out of her stash of goodies the perfect curtains to replace the ones I managed to lose in the world's worst move. My curtains got thrown in the trash, I think, which sucks beyond all suckitude, since I adored them, and had made them myself, at considerable expense, from long panels of linen in indigo and turquoise-blue (living room) and aqua-tealish silk Dupioni (bedroom).

Okay, I am getting sad again just writing this. But the friend's replacement curtains are really marvelous and just what I had in mind for this apt, but could not have afforded to buy. So it all works out fabulously - well, I assume it will, once I buy some new rods (the ones I have won't work in my quirkily dimensioned windows) and rings and put them up. I hope they'll be long enough. I think they will.

And then, making the giant vat of soup turned out to be another sort of missing link in making me feel at home.

It also didn't hurt that I had a rather wonderful, social weekend - bike rides with friends, and a party five minutes away from my house, and just general delight in being here.

Ahhhh. It's about time.

PS. Kitwich likes it, too - much better nook-and-cranniage for her to enjoy.

The city is often an object-lesson in hardcore checks-and-balances living. Today was one such day. I offer you exhibit 1:

Plus column: I got a pedicure. Lavender.
Minus column: I got into a bike vs. car accident with an SUV on the way there.
Plus column: Neither I nor the bike appear to be damaged.
Minus column: The damn SUV cut me off so shortly that there was nowhere to go and no time to stop. Smashed into his bumper with a nice "crunch!" Eck.
Plus column: Ran into a friend on the street five minutes later and had a nice little chat. A cute friend. Not that cute friend; a different one. We had gone for a bike ride once, long ago, that might have turned into a date but I kinda thought no. Still cute.
Minus column: A little shook-up for several hours following accident.
Plus column: Another friend made me dinner on my way home. Yum, and relaxing.
Minus column: Somewhere along the way I managed to step in crap and get it all stuck in my bike shoe.
Plus column: It was the kind that comes off relatively easily and doesn't smell super-bad.
Minus column: I think I will be throwing those bike shoes away, anyway. Just in case.
Plus column: Cute young blond boy asked me out on a date. Interesting cute young blond boy.
Minus column: Since it's an Internet date, there might be zilch chemistry.
Plus column: Delightful hot man offered to help me shift some heavy objects around my apt.
Minus column: Delightful hot man might not actually follow through with it.
Plus column: Kindhearted husband of friend also offered and would follow through.
Minus column: Hard to decide whom to take up on offer.
Plus column: Even if doesn't move heavy things for me, delightful hot man might come visit and help me move some, er, other things. Like earth and sky.
Minus column: Delightful hot man also somewhat problematic.
Plus column: So the fuck what? He's adorable. Let him come visit you and admire your pretty toes and help you find new uses for your delightful staircase.

And so forth.

In other news, Kitwich likes her new windows.

I am hungry and in need of chocolate.

Oh for frack's sake, that was just ridiculous. Let's not do that again anytime soon, shall we?

If I am feeling whoopdeelio ambitious, I might stick an old photo in here for entertainment value, or I might just relegate you lot to my increasingly cranky and undelicious words.

To list the things that went wrong would only take too much space and make me cry (again).

To tell you that I spent a recent birthday a: getting rained on and b: crying would only be a pity party - not that I don't deserve such a thing, given the dearth of actual party.

To tell you that I've been a week sans Internet, sans TV, and sans DVD player (until I remembered I could just call Boywich and have him tell me how to hook the latter up) would be...well, complainish.

Would it help if I told you the damned movers broke nearly everything I owned?

Would it help if I told you they threw everything in a huge pile, and that I've spent the last 8 days digging myself out from under it, in little increments punctuated by my back going massively and horrendously out?

Would it help if Baby Kitwich mewed piteously at you from behind the fridge?

Well. It's all true, and then some.

Today it is pelting, but absolutely pelting down rain outside our window. I can see rivers in the streets and the drops are coming down so hard they are positively loud.

I saw you-know-who earlier; he's been sick and is still not well enough to play with me, though he was kinda nice. Kinda very nice, on his spectrum of weird-to-nice. I wanted to take his clothes off, there on the street corner, and eat him like a handsome little birthday cake. I mean, I didn't have cake, after all, so the universe owes me.