Evolving Revolver

Imperfections

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:44:00 +0000

Having a house that we own has made me keenly aware of all of it's little imperfections. We're not DIYers, Husband and I, so when we were looking at houses we were very careful to pick one that did not need a lot of work. We didn't by new, however, because I am of the strong opinion that houses just aren't made like they used to be. I like solid walls and exteriors with a little character. I like original hardwood floors.

Our house is fifty years old - not too old and not too new. It has most definitely been updated at least once (obviously in the kitchen area) and has been painted countless times. It has weird wall cubbies and odd, handmade built-ins. It has a fairly ugly bar in the basement that was mostly likely superneat in the 80's. It has fifty years of imperfections.

When I was painting the guest room I noticed that the trim isn't flush with the floor. You can see, if you look closely, that the walls were once grass green, and then we're-having-a-girl-pink, and then khaki brown. Where the trim doesn't meet the floor you can see the faded stain of the original oak, now a pale green color. In some rooms the boards were cut wrong and you can see the dingy grey wood of the subfloor.

If we were more OCD (and richer), we would have small pieces of hardwood cut to fill in the gaps and then even out the stain so that everything is uniform. We would take off the trim and reattach it so that it's flush with the floor. Maybe we'd even buy brand new wood to replace the chipping, over-painted stuff that is there.

We started out like that - looking to fill in all the little blemishes and make the house "new" - but after a couple of weeks of painting ceilings and sanding wall compound off of cracks (that was Husband's work, unfortunately for his neck), we have started to let the little imperfections go. Ceilings that are not perfectly even, despite Husbands hard work, will stay slightly uneven. A line that goes a little wonky on the chair rail of the guest bedroom will now simply "add character".

We could get out the paint again and go over that line but we're beginning to accept the minor details that will make our house our home.

It makes me introspective. All my imperfections are highlighted, inspected and accepted. My bowl-full-jelly belly is seemingly unchanging and so, while I keep my diet fairly clean and regular, I am starting to believe that I'm not actually fat, after all.

This one errant gray hair that has sprouted at the crown of my head stays there, a mark of aging gracefully instead of with angst.

A scar I got when I was in grade school during an unfortunate game of tug-o-war played on asphalt is basically ignored. No one ever notices it anyway.

Mainly because - despite life's millions of imperfections - there are amazingly beautiful things that make up for them.

Having guests on our deck for a barbeque, even before we have furniture for it. Days and days of rain and clouds that are keeping it cool inside while we wait to have our broken air conditioner to be fixed.

The first bloom in my garden, open. Finishing the guest bedroom just in time to have my mother visit our home, which she has not seen yet.

And this - being late for work but just in time to see the horses let out to pasture (my favorite moment of the whole day) and happening to have my camera with me. I couldn't resist swinging around to take a photo of her, racing around so happily, finally free to enjoy the cool morning air.

She was born this year, in early spring, and you can tell that she hasn't even seen a saddle yet. There are no imperfections in her life.

Even if there were, she wouldn't care one little bit.

That Weird Thing I Did

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:11:00 +0000

I often do weird things. I'm a weird girl - anyone can attest to that. Sometimes, though, I do things that are weird even by my standards.

I tried Biofeedback. Actually, it's increasingly common, but for me it was pretty strange. I've been resigned to taking drugs for my depression / mood disorder for a long time now. I've accepted the consequences; I've accepted that some people might not agree that I should need to take them. I've accepted that I know my body and what it needs. Drugs are a part of my daily life.

I'm a druggie.

The last time I was at the psychiatrist for those episodes to tinker with my meds, she said I might need some different kind of therapist. I've seen cognitive therapists all my life, but maybe with this mood disorder, she thought, I should try something more like dialectical therapy. I'd never heard of that but I'm open to trying things so I pulled up the old health insurance provider listing and picked a few that I could call. Naturally the first one I reached didn't offer dialectical therapy at all - he offered biofeedback.

But I'd heard a little about biofeedback before and it was something I'd wanted to try. What if I could simply alter my brain waves? Wouldn't that be easier than pills every day for the rest of my life? Biofeedback is, simply put, the training of ones brain to respond better to life by measuring it's reactions to it. The training can be done using meditation, breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation. Most of the Biofeedback articles I'd read centered about light and sound therapy (which is more in the family of Neurofeedback, actually), wherein the patient is subjected to varying wave lengths of the two in order to subtly alter the brain's firing mechanisms.

Why not, I thought? I’m one of those people who believe that the moon cycles affect our mood so this isn’t so far-fetched.

I made the appointment and on a very rainy Monday I followed my GPS to the office. I didn’t know what to expect but I was dubious, to say the least.

I entered what appeared to be the doctor’s house and was greeted by no one. Even though the windows were opened the place was warm and smelled pungently of animal.

“Hello?” I called out.

“Hello,” a barefooted man came out of an office to greet me. “Go ahead and sit there at that desk and fill out some paperwork for me.”

He pointed to an antique desk to the left of his fireplace where two pages had been laid out neatly. I obeyed, picking up a pen to start writing and then rejecting it because it was sticky. I was judging this situation harshly, I knew, but I have high expectations for a therapist of any kind.

I filled out the general information and check marked the necessary boxes to describe why I was there and was led into the office by the doctor. Only later would I find out that he is not a doctor of any kind.

The office was cluttered and smelled similarly to the entrance. I sat down in a large black chair that was flanked by computer screens and electrical boxes with knobs and little piles of foam dots that hearkened up images of electroshock therapy from the 1950’s. Small putty knives – the kind typically used for painting – put me slightly on edge.

“So, tell me why you are here. What are we going to work on.”

No, that's not what he said first – first he made some joke about the kind of company I work in. Something not at all related to me in any way. “I used to be a career counselor, I know someone in that field,” he justified.

Then he asked about me.

I explained to him about the episodes and he asked me to label them on a scale of one to ten. As if I had a frame of reference. Were they better or worse than most people’s episodes? Maybe he didn’t mean that, but it’s what I heard.

“So, how does this work, exactly?” I asked him.

“Well – “ he paused.

“I mean, scientifically, how is this supposed to make me better?”

“I mean, we don’t really know,” he said, clearly unable to give me the science behind what he does. I looked down to see that he had taken off his shoes. “But most of my patients report that after their sessions they feel more relaxed and balanced.”

I am sure that my face read displeasure with that answer. He tried to save himself with some more talk about what we would do and how it would work but I’d already paid my co-pay and didn’t really care. I would read about it later on the internet.

A few more minutes of blah blah passed before he connected me to the electrodes. He put in the movie I had chosen – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – and started doing something. I wasn’t sure what, at first. The movie dimmed and flickered and a low level hum came from somewhere to my right. The screen opposing the movie was registering tiny scratches at the top of a mass of numbers that meant nothing to me.

“This is twenty, let’s see how it goes.” he said. Then, as an afterthought, he asked, “Oh, you don’t have a history of seizures or anything like that, right? You weren’t dropped a lot or beaten around the head as a kid?”

“No, I wasn’t.” But maybe you should have asked me before you turned on these machines, huh?

“Sheltered childhood, then?” he chuckled at his own joke.

“No, not really,” I replied. I found his comment in seriously poor taste.

He shut his mouth, then – except for laughing at the jokes in the movie which I also found irritating – and tinkered with the numbers, asking how I felt after each change in frequency. At 20 I felt generally irritated and tired but nothing special. At 25 I zoned out and felt an all over sensation of tingling, just the way you do when someone runs their fingers through their hair. I wanted to smile a little more (but resisted because I didn’t want the guy to think he was doing anything). He played around with 26 and then 24 where I found that I was slowly grinding my incisors together for no reason. Then we were done.

Hesitantly I made another appointment. I was curious about the effects of the machines but I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back to the office that smelled like cat. There would be side effects, he cautioned, and I should note them and email him about it after twenty-four hours.

I left his house, still dubious.

As for what it actually did, I’m not totally sure. The first day I felt a certain sense of apathy about various things that happened – not in a totally unpleasant way – but also acute fatigue. I slept like a log two nights in a row and it was so delicious but it never seemed to be enough. I found myself dozing off at my desk and behind the wheel of my car, propping myself up on caffeine to stay awake for a full day. The second day had me irritable from all the sleepiness.

“Should I be concerned about this?” I emailed the doctor.

“If it’s really bothersome, you can come in for a tune up,” he replied. He assured me that the fatigue wouldn’t last.

I googled him, then, and I decided I wouldn’t go back. Although very curious about what Biofeedback could actually do for me, I was put off when one of the articles I read stated in very clear terms that any good practitioner would have run a battery of tests on me to find out if it was safe for me to be doing it. Obviously that had not happened, and his profile wasn’t exactly edifying, either. He had an M.A. in psychology and a certification in NeuroCARE Pro (whatever that way) and maybe that is normal for one of these people but I think I had in mind someone a little more clinical. A real doctor in a white lab coat. Or at least someone cleaner, in shoes.

I had tried it, though. I wasn’t totally unconvinced that it could work, but I decided to table it until I could find someone a little more legitimate feeling and re-opened the health insurance listings to find myself a new couch to sit on.

How Does Your Garden Grow

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 03:05:00 +0000

Last week, on a particularly nice day, I went and bought some things to start my garden. I've never had a garden of my own before and so I wasn't even exactly sure how to go about it. I didn't want vegetables. Not only is it too late in the season for it, but we have too much shade and we don't eat a wide enough variety of vegetables for me to fill a garden with. I thought about herbs but, again, the sun played in. There is one corner of the yard that gets sun most of the day and it's where we keep the trash cans at the moment. I nixed that idea for later on down the road.

No, what I wanted was a flower garden. Not just any old flower garden, but one to emulate Host Mom's garden back in Meudon. Honestly, she had the tiniest, most beautiful flower garden I've ever seen. I remember thinking once how crazy she was to be out in that garden in all kinds of weather any time of the year but when it bloomed there were no words to describe it. I thieved so many lovely bouquets from that little corner of her home, I cannot even begin to count. I want that.

So, one trip to the nursery and a hundred some odd dollars later I made a small start. I'm no fool, I know that cultivating that kind of garden takes real time (in years). And I'm not rich, either, so my hopes of planting a beautiful pink peony bush and a couple of roses were quickly dashed when I saw how much each little shrub was going to cost me. No amount of haggling could make them fit into my budget this year.

Instead I began like this.

Aside from the obligatory hostas and ornamental grass I shoved in some day lilies, lily of the valley, hyacinth, aster and pink lamium. I picked a couple of things for edging like mouses ear and wandering jew (which I secretly love because of it's scandalous name) and called it a day. In my head the whole garden would be filled but in reality it is still sparse. I will have to be patient. I suppose that is what gardening is about, really.

On the opposing side of the stone path (which was conveniently there already) I decided I would plant grass. Briefly I played with the idea of buying sod but as I have no idea what I am capable of keeping alive I decided it would be a waste of money. One bag of Shady Nook seed and some very heavy rains later, I had this:

I couldn't be happier. In a week, no less! I can't yet tell if it will grow in fully (or stay alive) but I've got my fingers crossed.

The afore mentioned heavy rains - which were actually part of a tropical storm hell bent on flooding most of the area - battered my little plants pretty good. The lamium looks a little haggared and the lily of the valley needs a vacation, but the other stuff seems to have weathered the storm quite well. Which, if I am honest about my horticultural abilities, is really just the kind of thing I need to start with.

But it gives me hope that I might not fail at this gardening thing after all. If I don't kill the majority of my plants I will reward myself with a rose bush for my birthday.

For the moment I'm content to simply sit and watch my grass grow.

An Open Letter To The Things We Could Have Become

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:21:00 +0000

You said that if you could be anything else you would be a designer. The first thing out of my mouth, after that honest admission, was “But that doesn’t make any money”. Immediately I hated myself for saying it but I thought I couldn’t take it back for some reason. I don’t believe that, though. Those are the words of my parents. “Don’t be an artist, that doesn’t make any money.” As if making money were the most important thing in life.

Don’t I sound like a hippy when I say that? I don’t mean it like that. I know damn well that we all need money to survive. We all have a certain level of comfort, too, that we have to achieve. Mine includes expensive shoes and champagne. Maybe yours includes five course tasting menus and trips to the beach every year. It’s comfortable, it’s first world luxury and I would never ask you to give that up.

But there is something to be said for dreaming. What if – and just go with me for a second here – what if you were to become a designer? What if you dropped what you have going on now and just did something that could make you really happy? Not that the level of comfort you’ve achieved doesn’t make you happy, in most ways, but does it fulfill you? Are you doing it for you or because you have to do something and this something seems to work alright for now? What would be the worst that could happen if you took that leap into the unknown and tried for something you might just really want?

Of course I’m not one to talk. I have let go of my dreams so many times. Look at what I do for a living – it’s certainly not my “dream job”. I have dreamed of being everything except what I am: an artist, a fashion designer, an interior designer, a graphic designer, a children’s book writer, a travel writer, a novelist, a journalist, a bed and breakfast owner, a coffee shop owner, an event planner and briefly – before I realized how much math it would require – a marine biologist. I have spanned the spectrum of things I could be and never once hit upon “secretary” in any capacity. Yet, here I am. Over and over I land on this job. It’s what I’ve become skilled at, even though it doesn’t emotionally fulfill me. This particular job has the trifecta of things you’d want in a job, too – good pay, good benefits and nice people. These days you can’t ask for more than that.

And I don’t ask for more because - after letting go of so many dreams and after so many terrible work environments - I know that the trifecta is almost as important as doing something you really love. It’s enough for me to stay and to use it to move towards something I could possibly enjoy doing. It almost makes up for spending a third of my life at a place that doesn’t even come remotely close to using my creativity and talent. Almost.

Husband sometimes says to me “Why don’t you do this in your free time?” To which I generally scoff. While he’s mostly right – I do have some free time I could commit to my creative pursuits – once you figure in cooking and cleaning and going out with friends and meeting up with family and going to doctors appointments and driving to and from work I have no emotional energy left. Any free moment I find, after all the other obligations of life have been met, is spent staring vapidly into the void because my brain can scarcely compute another higher thought. And then to sleep, praying for a full night where my dreams are the most creative thing I touch in life.

So I understand how you might never actually become a designer. Just like I might never become a writer or an artist or an event planner. Sometimes life gets in the way of our dreams. Stupid life. Stupid marriage and a house and two cars and two cats and a dog and babies that need to go to school someday. Stupid shoes and champagne and tasting menus and world travel. Stupid other things.

But what if? And that’s all I really wanted to say because I couldn't live with myself if the last thing I said about your lovely dream was “It doesn't make any money.” I don’t know when I became the type of person who spouts bullshit like that. What I should have said was “Do it! Try or you’ll never know if you could have! Try or you’ll regret it! Do something in your life for you for once.” I should have said all that and more. I should have left you thinking that maybe – just maybe – you actually would.

And I should, someday, listen to my own advice.

Oh, and This

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:17:00 +0000

Last year Husband and I said we'd start looking to buy a house in the spring. We'd been wrestling with the whole "establishing credit" thing which, if you are currently or have recently done any kind of loan shopping you know already, is like having someone take out your spleen with their bare hands. You need credit to get credit but no one will give you credit if you've never had it before. What? Makes no sense. So we'd given up on the idea that we would be able to have a house this year.

Me, being who I am, could still not resist the idea of going to open houses. "We have to know what we're looking for when we finally do start looking," I justified. Naturally, we fell in love with a house the first time out. Which got us thinking - maybe we could get a loan after all. There have to be loans for our situation, right?

And there were. Once we were pre-approved we started looking immediately. Within a week we had found a house that we knew was the one (but not the original house we were in love with because that went off the market three days after we saw it) and within a month we had closed. We may have made a record for the world's fastest purchase of a home, ever. By the time I had returned from my work trip, Husband had bought us a house.

This green will go. Gorgeous bay window will stay.

Floors. Shiny shiny floors.

You can't tell because we've dismantled it here, but this kitchen is HUGE. For me. Quite literally ten times the size of what I have now. There are electrical outlets EVERYWHERE. Our espresso machine will now live in THE KITCHEN! I will put it next to our very first blender.

Old carpet will go at some point, but we are keeping the funny little bar in the corner.

OMFG A WASHER AND A DRYER. IN OUR HOUSE. Enough said!

Adorable washroom located off of the family room.

Attic / Guest Room / This is where the visiting parents will sleep. See that little corner built-in? It was once for an architect. It will hold all of my art supplies quite nicely, don't you think??

Mini yard!! I plan to keep the little path and add flowers. Lots and lots of flowers. The shall serve as the "Before" photo.

The front. We have azaleas! Lots of them, apparently. And that tree is a weeping cherry which was in bloom the first time we saw the house. It was stunning.

We aren't sure why there is AstroTurf on that little porch area but it's certainly not our priority. Look, we have a DRIVEWAY. And a house to go with it!

Boo is ready to move, already. "C'mon, let's go!! I hear we're getting a deck!"

We're moving this Saturday. Because, you guys? That's how Husband and I roll.

Event Horizon

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:10:00 +0000

What seems like a million years ago, I took on a project at work. Funny how nine months can feel like a million years and two weeks all at once, isn't it? One day you've started this thing, hoping against hope that you can really pull it off because you can't fathom doing exactly the job you're in for 25 years, and then a split second later you are done with it. Remarkable, really.

It's like I've gone through some kind of worm hole.

It went so smoothly. Not perfect, because nothing ever goes perfectly, but smoothly. Remember how I was a bit miffed that I had been told I would report to someone? Well MY GOD was I glad she was here. I wouldn't have been able to do it without her. I learned so much and had a great time (she's a wonderful person, too, which was pretty lucky!). I hope to work with her again.

I would love to tell you exactly what I did and who was there but I can't. So I'll just share with you a few of my favorite photos of the little details that pulled it all together. It was sort of like seeing my first child brought into the world. After a long wait wondering what it was going to look like, I finally got to see my funny amoeba turn into a living, breathing thing. You know, without the labor pains and swollen ankles.

Old Topic New Fears

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Sun, 12 May 2013 03:33:00 +0000

In the past week I've had two "episodes". It's been a long time since things have felt unstable and now, inexplicably, these rages have begun to crop back up.

No, not inexplicable. Totally explicable. See, medications have a kind of time limit on their efficacy. I know that, but I didn't want to believe it was true for me. Trileptal was working well for me. I felt almost healthy. I felt normal. I was able to function and take on challenges and make changes and friends. Husband and I have been growing together as a couple. I thought, naively, that if I ignored the little symptoms telling me that it might be time to tinker with the dosage that I wouldn't have to.

Then - BAM. In the snap of a second I had to smash my hair dryer and needed to rip my skin off. I couldn't breath. I couldn't stop crying. All total it lasted about an hour, but the emotional hangover blurred our house for days.

The second one happened last night at a dance club. I had no idea it was coming. I was excited to go dancing. I lasted about thirty minutes before the music turned up to an unhealthy decibel. Why do they even do that? My ears hurt. But it wasn't just that, it was the frequency of a high pitched voice reverberating through speakers a foot and a half over our heads. It tittered shrilly right through to my nerves. I tried to stave it off by moving away from the loudest speakers but it didn't work. I had cracked. I left the club in tears, shaking.

By this morning the medication in my system had regulated. Excepting being emotionally drained I felt fine.

Which is the worst part - the confusion. I feel mostly well, mostly normal, mostly sane and then suddenly I'm not. It's not like before where my nerves were constantly frayed and I was ten inches from mental collapse at any moment. I'm fine most of the time. I am so fine that I'm not even worried about how I will get to the other side of it. I am seeing my doctors. I am changing my pills. I am being patient and kind with myself.

But how do you explain that to the people you care about the most? How can you tell someone that those moments of terrible, skin burning anxiety and desperation are really temporary and nothing has to go back to the way it was before. We're not reliving those days because, I swear to you, I'll fix it. How to you tell someone that "I need you to just do exactly this and be patient for one more week", and have them believe it, when they have seen your demons. They have restrained your angry body and walked you out of an emergency room and held your hand at the psychiatrists office while you calmly explained that you don't really want to die but living physically hurts.

You can't explain it because every time it happens that person relives those moments. They aren't taking the mind altering medication. They haven't even been in the darkness and brought back into the light. They are simply unfortunate bystanders to your mental disorder. For them, one episode is the same as any other - horrifying and damaging and question raising. Can I keep doing this? What have I done now? When is it going to happen again? Will it ever end?

I know this time - especially this time - is going to be very temporary. I have a new medication to try. And if that one doesn't work I'll try another. But I'm scared. I'm scared it won't work or, worse, it will work but it will make me fat. I'm scared of the side effects I haven't had yet. I'm scared that, in two years, I'll have to do this all over again.

"Isn't this very bad for your liver?" Husband asked.

And it probably is. But what are my choices? Live in that dark, scary place that feels like knives and terrifies all the people close to me because I choose to worry about my liver? No, that's not even a choice. That is a fate worse than death. So I resign to the fact that, barring some miracle advancement in modern medicine, I will probably have problems with my liver at some point.

Worse, though, is this one: Do I have a right to bring a child into this world, like this? The subject came up this time. Husband and I had been tossing around the idea of babies for a couple of months and I had really warmed up to the idea. But how? I cannot even fathom how it could work. How could I be pregnant while I'm on all these drugs but then, also, how could I raise them? I never want a child of mine to experience one of my episodes. Ever. Yet I can't guarantee that they will stop happening. Is it fair of me to bring a child into that kind of world? This place is scary enough without knowing you can count on your parents not to lose their shit.

But I'm holding my fears on my tongue like a dry communion wafer. I'm making that brave face that people always tell depressed people to have, so that they, themselves, don't have to feel fear. "Just buck up," they say. I am bucking up. I've been bucking myself the fuck up for years. All I want now is for someone to hold my hand through it, hug me, squeeze me until the endorphines shoot into my brain and tell me it's going to be okay. I know it will, but oh god it sure feels good to hear it said sometimes.

Sometimes two scared people together holding on for dear life make everything feel like it really will be alright. Sometimes you just don't want to do it alone anymore.

A Day in the Life

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:54:00 +0000

Dear Auntie and Uncle,

You and maybe two other people are the only ones who check back on this blog these days, so this little update is for you. I thought you might be wondering what I am doing these days and the truth is – very little. The sun rises and the sun sets and each passing day looks fairly similar. Let’s take a Tuesday, just for example:

My alarm goes off but I ignore it because Husband is still in the shower. It’s no use getting up until he’s done brushing his teeth because the bathroom is so small. At least that is what I tell myself.

Once he’s vacated the space I take my turn and get myself out of the house. If I have time I’ll pass the Starbucks – not because I like their coffee (in fact it’s much to strong but I refuse to get a five dollar mocha) but because I like seeing the neighborhood pass through the line. I know the faces by heart but not their names. If I’m awake enough I smile and make small talk because it makes me feel connected. I wish I could be that guy who does his work there every other morning, or that woman who is still in her pajamas getting her morning latte but I’m not. I can only stay a moment.

Back on the road I head down past the train station and towards work. I pass the arboretum on my left and the soccer field on my right where a young dog is patiently walking his old man. At the field the old man lets the dog off his leash to go bounding through the grass, darting back and forth with vim while his friend smiles on from the safety of the fence.

Further down the way, if I’m lucky, I get to see the horses set out to pasture for the day. They gallop and buck and whinny, shaking the stiffness out of their necks. Behind a mother the foal is tripping over its knobby knees to keep up with her. Just after the horses come a field of cows who I will gladly open my window to moo at if they are close enough. These little exchanges with the scenery will prepare me for the day.

At work it is expense report day. Nobody who does expense reports loves them and I’m not different than anyone in that regard. It’s tedious and boring but somebody has to do it. So I do. The cheerful Fedex man brings me a package (“Hello sunshine!”). The grumpy UPS guy brings me a package (“Hey.”). I enter data into formulas and double check and print and collate. I smash other projects into the moments when I take a break from the monotony. I answer the phone. I eat lunch and then do it all again until closing time.

On my way home I do the reverse drive of the morning, except that the cows have moved up pasture and the horses are back in the stable. Instead of the old man with his puppy the field is full of young girls playing lacrosse. At the stoplight around the bend is the man in thick glasses who sells six roses for six dollars, rain or shine. I never buy his roses but I sometimes fantasize about driving by and forking over a wad of cash for the whole bucket of them, just to see him smile. I have only seen him smile once even though I’ve passed his post every day for the past two years or so. Sometimes I feel bad for him but I know that he chooses to be there because I’ve seen him in my neighborhood, just hanging out. What made him choose selling flowers on the roadside as his profession. Who is his family? What is his story? The light turns green and my thoughts move on.

I stop to pick up the laundry from the Korean man at the Wash & Fold. We know each other by first name which is good because he and his wife have both smelled my dirty laundry. I know that has two kids and loves classical music and opera. He knows that I’ve lived in France and work as an assistant. Between the exchange of money and clothes we share micro-details about our lives, just skimming the surface of important personal information but making the most of a moment between neighbors. I find myself a little sad when I think about the day in the future when I will wash my own clothes and no longer say hello and how are you to the drycleaner on the corner.

At home I am greeted by the cats. They meow at me from the window as I come up the walk and then yowl at me when I stumble in the door with my various bags (laundry, groceries, shoes, and a purse). I follow Fitch to the bathroom to turn on the faucet in the bathtub. Boo Radley follows me in just to chat. In a short hour Husband will be home and we will take turns washing dishes or making dinner and watching the Tuesday shows. It’s not a special night and we are both tired so I don’t even think about trying out my new (used) guitar or writing a blog or doing a sketch or even reading. I just put on my pajamas and turn off my brain. The cats take their respective posts on our laps until bedtime. It is comfortable and routine. It is just another day.

There is nothing new to report.

Chill Pill

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:39:00 +0000

Sometimes I think about crushing up some xanax and putting it into a cocktail for various people I know. I think that a lot of people would really benefit from chillingthefuckout. Life’s not that serious, you know? Nothing that is happening to us is so grave that we have to freak out about it every minute of every day. Most things are temporary. Except death. Death is pretty finite.

This week I’ve heard about four separate deaths of the loved ones of people I know. That is an instance where it would be okay to be a bit upset and maybe even get dramatic. I am glad to not be included in that lumping.

I don’t know what I would mix it with – the xanax. I think hot chocolate would be nice but not everyone likes hot chocolate. Some people don’t drink coffee, so that’s out. In water it would be bitter. Maybe I could trap them under my arm and stick it in their mouths by squeezing their jaws open like I do my cats when I give them pills.

I think I would probably go to jail for this.

Regardless, some people need to just breathe a little or something.

All this is hilarious, coming from me.

On Creativity and Timelessness

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:10:00 +0000

The other day I put an old Ani Difranco CD on in my car so I could have something to sing along with. It's actually difficult to sing along with Ani D, she's got this crazy vocal rang and more variance than most Tori Amos songs (is it possible?) so I listened to the lyrics instead.

I know the song by heart but it struck me, suddenly, at how timeless her song was - despite being thirteen years old.

To The Teeth:
the sun is settin on the century and we are armed to the teeth. We are all working together now to make our lives mercifully brief. Schoolkids keep trying to teach us what guns are all about - confuse liberty with weaponry and watch your kids act it out. Every year now like Christmas some boy gets the milk-fed sub-urban blues: reaches for the available arsenal and saunters off to make the news. And women in the middle are learning what poor women have always known - that the edge is closer than you think when your men bring the guns home.

Look at where the profits are, that's how you'll find the source of the big lie that you and I both know so well. The time it takes this cultural death wish to run its course they're gonna make a pretty penny and then they're all going to hell. He said the chickens all come home to roost - yeah, malcom forecasted this flood. Are we really gonna sleep through another century while the rich profit off our blood? True, it may take some doing to see this undoing done but in my humble opinion here's what i suggest we do:

open fire on hollywood, open fire on MTV, open fire on NBC, and CBS and ABC, open fire on the NRA and all the lies they told us along the way, open fire on each weapons manufacturer while he's giving head to some republician senator. And if i hear one more time about fool's rights to his tools of rage I'm gonna take all my friends and I'm gonna move to Canada and we're gonna die of old age.

Why yes, I do share her opinion on gun control. And my comments section is open to your hate mail.

~

On a different day, coincidentally also in my car, I was having a conversation with my dear friend Sylvia about writing. Sylvia's a writer too, but a more dedicated one than I. (Hint: Most writers are more dedicated than I.) I was telling her about this opportunity I had to write for a start up publisher that has fallen through. It turns out that it was almost definitely a fake publisher - and that's what I get for responding to ads on craigslist - but at the end I said something along the lines of "But I really had a lot of fun writing it".

Sylvia misunderstood what I said, in a way. "Yeah, you should be writing for fun."

But it was totally and wholly accurate. I should be writing for fun.

Every time I write I put a pressure on myself to create "something" - to have a finished product, to publish a story, to start a whole book, write a blog. I can't think of a time in the past years that - outside of writing in my journal which I no longer do - I have written simply for the joy of writing.

That was why I did it in the first place. I found myself in my writing. Whether it was bad poetry or good poetry, essays or personal narratives, short stories or unfinished stories, I wrote because I wanted to. Not because I needed to. Not because I thought I was going to get somewhere with it, or become famous from it. Not because it defined who I was (or who I wasn't). I just loved to write.

In a way it's just like any other thing I gave up from my youth: Trying to learn how to play guitar, drawing even though I wasn't so great at it, walking everywhere barefoot, skinny dipping in the river. At a certain point we are told we must "give up foolish things that are a waste of time" yet it's usually us who dictates what is foolish and is there really such thing as a waste of time?

As children we have no fear. We learn fear from our parents and our peers. Then we forget what it is like to be fearless. We "can't" do so many things as adults that seems so attainable when we were younger. We stop doing things we loved because we think we ought to or because maybe someone somewhere told us we couldn't.

As soon as I learned to write I wrote where ever I could. I wrote in journals, in day planners and in discarded notebooks. I had floppy disks and hard disks stacks and stacks of papers. You couldn't stop me from jotting something down somewhere. One day, somewhere along the lines, I stopped. I don't recall when and I am not sure why but I did. I gave up this natural thing that brought me joy simply 'because'.

I must have thought that I outgrew it, or maybe I thought that I had devised a better, more efficient way to do it. I know I became focused for awhile on making it "a project" that I had to see through. The Project of 'making myself a credible writer'. Yet it always felt a little empty. I had sucked all the fun out of it, all on my own.

So now my Project is to not have a project at all. I am trying to find new, fun ways to write, digging out stories I left for dead, seeing if I want to tinker on them some more and bring them back to life. I am reading old poems and finding out that some of them were pretty good as poetry goes - especially the ones written in the margins of old notebooks. I am trying, but not too hard. Project No Project is about having fun, or finding the fun again, anyway. Is it like riding a bike? Can we go back to that place of innocent fearlessness that allows us to become astronauts and movie stars and world leaders? Can we ever unteach ourselves something that we learned as a 'survival mechanism'?

I'm dubious, it's true, but I'll let you know when I find out.

Not a Weiner

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:38:00 +0000

Last week I had a horrible nightmare about a baby pig being pushed down a garbage disposal by a serial killer. I woke from that dream utterly disturbed and unrested. I couldn't shake the dream.

Offhandedly, I mentioned it to my dry cleaner.

“Oh, was there a lot of blood?” He asked. “Where I come from, I think that’s considered good luck! You should buy a lottery ticket or something.”

I thought about doing it, but went straight home instead. The next day, I googled “meaning of pig dreams in Korea” and sure enough! That’s a sign of a big windfall. So I bought two lottery tickets and a some scratch offs. None of them were winners.

The moral of the story is that when your Korean dry cleaner tells you to do something you should probably do it immediately because he knows what he’s talking about. Also, eat less pork and don’t tempt serial killers with baby pigs.

You know, as a general rule.

Varied and Various

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:12:00 +0000

It’s been miserable lately – dark and drizzly and cold. God I can’t wait for winter to be over.

Normally I am a huge proponent of this season. I love watching the white stuff fall and bundling up in big sweaters and wearing soft leather gloves but this year (like last) has been seriously lacking in the snow department which is part of what makes winter so lovely. Why bother with all this cold and darkness if we can’t have at least ONE snow day? Oh, I know I’m romanticizing it but after such amazing warm weather in Vegas I’m having a hard time waiting for spring.

At the airport I told Husband that someday we would have to live in a city with at least 300 days of sun per year. He said he would get to pick it and that he’d make me move to California. Even though I’m generally against living in that state I would probably consider it if it meant I could sunbathe six months of the year. My body needs a sunny day.

Things at work have been busy and things at home have been busy. This week I went grocery shopping with a PLAN for all our meals for the week and so I feel a great deal of pressure to make all of them. The shortlist looked like this:

- Butternut Squash and Pasta

- Tacos

- Soup and sandwiches

- Fish and Rice

- Sausage and foie gras (it was Husband’s birthday present from his mom)

Monday night’s dinner was a total failure because I started it late and the butternut squash didn’t cook all the way through and I used angel hair pasta which turned sticky. Is there some trick to angel hair that I don’t know? Tuesday however, was a flying success due mainly to this recipe that Sarah tweeted. I swear I will never make pulled pork any other way again. You know, because I make pulled pork so often.

Our Wednesday night dinner was sort of foiled by a bad bottle of wine. It was brown. I tried to convince Husband that maybe it was just cheap wine, but no, it was brown. A whole meal of foie gras and sausage just isn’t the same without a good red wine.

Tonight I make chicken soup. I am going to make an enormous vat of it so that we don’t have to worry about cooking anything for the rest of the weekend. Yes, I am ultimately lazy.

This morning, on the radio, the news told a happy story about how the housing market is improving. YAY! Except not at all. Husband and I were really hoping that the market would stay in the hole for another year or so – you know, until we buy our house. No dice, kids, no dice. I don’t want to be a negative nancy but it seems less and less likely that we will be able to buy the house of our dreams and more and more like we’ll be able to buy the house of our reality. It won’t suck at all but it ~~definitely~~ probably won’t be in the neighborhood we want it to be.

Such is life.

Do you ever add new blogs to your google reader and then get anxiety because you know you can’t read them all? No? Just me? Hrm.

This morning I woke up with the travel bug. I knew it was only a matter of time before I got restless. “But you’ve been travelling!” You say. To which I respond, “IT’S NEVER ENOUGH, SILLIES.”

Sitting at a desk two hundred and thirtyish days a year is hard. I’ve never been great at it. I love my freedom, which is so juxtapositional because I also love security. I need a home base. I’ve said that I will never again sell everything I own start from scratch. However that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to rent out my house for a year or two and live in Japan! As long as I have a place to ‘come home to’ I think I would be more than happy being a globe trotter.

Or at least working flex hours. At the starbuckers today I found myself wildly envious of the man sitting in the corner with his laptop, doing whatever it is you can do at 8 am on a Thursday that doesn’t involve being late to work because you stopped to get coffee. What I wouldn’t give to be a well paid, full time writer. Or a part-time writer, actually! But I suppose one has to write in order to be paid for it. Ha.

Anyway, I wanted so much to get on a plane today that I proposed to Husband we move to London. I would even take a year in his beloved Sweden! Wouldn’t that be amazing?!

I quickly followed this with a statement about how my mother would literally have a heart attack if we moved to another country right now. We can’t do it. But oh how my toes are tappin’…

Is there a better way to end a blog than this?

Mr. Fitch, enjoying a nap in the 'ugly chair'.

Back Then

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 16:13:00 +0000

I'm posting three times this week, can you handle it? I hardly can.

But I'm actually having a really hard time finding things to write about these days. I went back to look at what I used to write when I started blogging - back when I sometimes blogged twice a day - and I know why I don't have anything to blog about anymore. It's self censorship.

I do it for a lot of reasons I didn't used to care about, and some that weren't even relevant at the time. Back then I was rarely read and even less "Googleable". It wasn't a thing to look a person up on the internet and find out their life story via their social media and blog. I had ten readers a day* and I could trace back their url's to people I knew. I wasn't spilling my life story out to strangers from Prahran, Australia or Shepperton, UK. How did these people find me? (By searching for unicorns.) What do they want? (To know who was the first person to milk a cow.) Why do they keep coming back? (It's the mystery of the ages.)

Back then I didn't know what a bad idea it was to write about work on a public site. I didn't think about anyone I worked with reading what I wrote, thus I was completely unabashed about giving the details of my job as well as my feelings about my coworkers. What a horrible idea that is! What was I thinking? Some days I still write about things that happen at work because they feel like personal failures or victories, but you will never find the gory details of my job on here now because people I work with read my blog. Hi people I work with! See you on Monday!

Back then, I was single. Oh the multitudes of things you can write about when you are single! The wins! The losses! The miserable, terrible, awful, no good, very bad dates. Of which there will be many. I learned, though, over the years, that men don't really like finding out about themselves on your blog. They don't like reading the details of your not-great date (which they thought when quite well), and if you keep dating them they hate reading about the spits and spats you have. If you marry them they hate having their personal life divulged at all. Or, at least Husband does. Which I have to respect. It's my blog about me, not my blog about us. And even though I might consider him a part of me, that is a part I must keep to myself. He gets embarrassed when I recount the tales of our warp speed Ikea adventures or his very deep love for our cats. (See how I did that Husband? I talked about it anyway. I'm such a jerk!)

After all that it leaves me very little to talk about. Work covers forty hours of my life and when I come home I am naturally with Husband which covers another forty some odd hours and the rest I'm sleeping - and we've established that the majority of people hate to hear about other people's dreams - so what is left? I can talk about the cats rather often, and of course I will talk about our fun outings and trips. Then what? Strip everything away that I can't talk about these days and I start to feel a little bit like a journalist, or how I imagine a journalist must feel. Which, consequently, is one of the reasons I never followed through with journalism.

So, I guess I am complaining but it's a pitiful complaint. My life is filled with good things. Sometimes those things are annoying or tedious just like any good things can be. Life isn't all rainbows and unicorn farts, no matter how smooth it's running. All this to say 'No news is good news', I guess. And that I'm still going to try to find things to write about here. I am, after all, a 'writer'.

Besides, in a couple of years I will be a 'mommy blogger' and all other things in my life will cease to exist, so take it what you've got people. The clocks a tickin'!

*I still only have ten readers a day.

Not Ashamed (Okay a little bit ashamed)

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 01:02:00 +0000

Do you ever get sucked into Buzzfeed for, like, an hour? No, just me?

Well okay then.

Failing At Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:39:00 +0000

Social media sounds like a class, doesn't it? As in "Are you ready for the social media final? I totally didn't study."

Anyway, I'm going to fail that bitch, for reals, guys.

For extra credit (because you should always do the extra credit if you think you're going to fail) I offer up some updates. Regardless of the fact that I have not been super present on this blog, or facebook, or twitter, things are still occurring in my life. Shocking, isn't it?

1. Remember when that work moment happened and I was really upset about it? One of the worst parts about that day was learning that my boss did not want me to see to fruition the big project I'd been working really hard on. I had volunteered for it knowing that it's something I would be really good at. My hope was that it would move me in my job towards something a little more interesting and a little less thankless.

Yes, like any job mine is often thankless.

What I hadn't counted on was that apparently my boss has little faith in me. That Big Mistake day he told me to my face I couldn't see through the project because he didn't trust me. I was crushed.

I'm still working on the project, though, and this week the wind shifted and the stars aligned and he had a change of heart. There is a catch - there is always a catch - and I will be reporting to someone else for all the work that I've done (which I try not to think of as humiliating) but I get to finish the project. If I do real good they'll let me be involved in the future. Maybe. Eventually.

I'm happy with it just the same.

2. Husband and I have started talking about buying a house. We're still at very least six months away from actively starting to look because he doesn't have any credit and mine's all wonky, but I've got my eyes on the prize. I want a space of our own so badly I can taste it. I will seriously miss our downstairs neighbors but not so much that I won't leave. We're outgrowing our apartment by way of stuff and cats.

3. I finally have all of my belongings under one roof. After next weekend I will have every book, record and photo in my possession all in the same place for the first time in six years. SIX. That is a terribly long time for one to go without their favorite records and books. We will, however, be needing new bookshelves.

4. We took a long weekend and went to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Not for Valentine's day because pfffff! Valentine's Day? Who celebrates that? (I do, usually.) We went because it was Husband's THIRTIETH birthday. He is officially old, just like me. We had a wonderful time and didn't spend too much more than we'd planned, but also we got to be in the sun. There was a pool and we used it. TWICE. Oh my god, for everything else fun about the trip this was by far my favorite part. That and we got to see dolphins.

5. PICTURES:

6. The cats continue to be fat and happy. Which, really, is the best part of the status quo.

Blinking Cursor

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 03:22:00 +0000

It's the bane of existence to any writer: The Blinking Cursor. It's somehow work than the blank page ever was, I'm not sure why. It's insistency, perhaps? Blink blink, blink blink. Write something, write something.

I want to write something. Anything. I've been dabbling lately. I refreshed my freelance writing search, sending out queries to things that sound fun to me: Commercial scripts, chinese horoscope writer, personal letter writer. Things probably that don't seem "legitimate" in the eyes of other writers but I know I would enjoy. I don't want to write Pharmaceutical copy, or articles for a business magazine. I know even if I got gigs like that I would quit them in a second.

I opened up an old thumb drive the other day, looking for some pictures, and stumbled on a short story I'd started. It was about a woman who lived with her husband and three children in a house by the Hudson river. Because of it's location, dead bodies regularly floated up on to their banks. There was a back story there, something about her brother dying, but I can't remember it now. I've been looking at it for days wondering if I can recover it somehow.

I enjoyed reading it back after all this time. It was almost as though it had been written by somebody else. The names were lovely. Marlene, Gus, Bowen. Where the hell was I going with that story? I want to find out what happens to them.

I feel like I am about to get all existential here. I want to say something about how the blinking cursor is a metaphor for me and how I want to know what happens to my characters, but the rest is still unwritten. I want to wax poetic about it, but I'm not going to.

Instead, I am going to go to sleep. Husband is entertaining a friend visiting us all the way from Australia and the house is quiet, save the downstairs neighbors watching a movie in their bedroom.

Blink blink, blink blink, blink blink.

It's hypnotizing. My eyes slowly drift to sleep.

What I Want to Do vs. What I Should Be Doing (vs. What I Am Actually Doing)

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:59:00 +0000

What I want to be doing:

Writing a backlog of blogposts full of pictures and charming stories to describe them. Updating you on a month of happenings that linger in the back of my head like songs.

(the feve from our galette des rois this year.)

What I should be doing:

Putting away the clean clothes.

What I am actually doing:

Coping out with this lame blog post just to appease the rare few who come to this blog still just to see if I've maybe written something.

What I want to be doing:

Taking a long hot bath.

What I should be doing:

Probably cleaning the litter, no doubt.

(Sexy Boo Radley agrees.)

What I am actually doing:

Still wearing half of my clothes from work, wishing there were more hours in the day.

What I want to be doing:

Spending some of those extra hours I don't actually have on writing something creative.

What I should be doing:

Some of the dishes so that Husband doesn't have to do that and cook dinner.

What I am actually doing:

Pulling up loose floorboards in my apartment to see if maybe they are loose because somebody hid money under them. Or a body! (Spoiler alert, they didn't.)

What I want to be doing:

Building a paper mache animal head to mount on the wall. Like this:

(Safari animals or Woodland creatures? What do you think?)

What I should be doing:

My French homework, because I finally sucked it up and am paying for lessons to improve my grammar.

What I am actually (going) to do:

Drink South Africa wine with Husband and probably watch our shows.

Because that's what really ends up happening on a weeknight around here, in case you ever wondered. And actually, we're totally shameless about it.

Finally

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:00:00 +0000

When we were in France, I was reunited with several boxes of my belongings that never made it to this side of the ocean. While at the in-laws house (where it was all being stored) I was able to spend the time sorting and culling the boxes with the intent to take them back to the U.S. with us.

There were books that had to get left behind (oh so many books, oh so much sadness), but the most important things made it on the plane. After a seriously long day lugging our now very heavy suitcases through the airport (and one re-packing so that mine would make it under 50lbs), I now have most of my most prized possessions back in my apartment.

For the first time since 2002 all of my belongings are in the same state, including the innumerable boxes taking up space in my mother’s storage pod. This, my friends, is a damned miracle.

Including a suitcase containing hundreds of dollars worth of art supplies, was this:

It such a stupid thing, but I’m so glad to have my spoons back.

Disjointed

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:59:00 +0000

I’m taking advantage of my liberties this week. I have free time and so I am offering an update. Honestly, I want to take tomorrow off as a mental health day. No one will need me and so I could easily be gone, but I feel guilty taking a day off just after my vacation. It seems like a waste.

Surely I will need that extra day, somewhere in the future, much more desperately.

One leg at a time - that is how we put on our big-girl pants.

I’ve been tired all week. I’m not sleeping well. At first I blamed it on Husband who is sick and has been snoring heavily but last night he slept soundly for the first time in two weeks and I still found myself awake at two a.m.. Anyway, my eyes are heavy. I’m seriously considering the old “nap in the car” trick at lunch today.

On a positive note, the sun is shining today. It makes me think of this version of Bob Marley’s Sun is Shining:

Finley Quaye - Sunday Shining by Dagoba54

I would pay real cash money to go spend a day in the hot desert right now. Anywhere warm, really. Is it wrong to want to curl up in the sun like a cat? (Or maybe just with my cats.)

What I should do is go for a walk around my neighborhood. Or by the river. ~~Or in the woods~~. (Not the woods, it would block out the sun.) Anywhere that I can. I should shake off my urge to be inside and hibernate. I should shake off my urge to get in the car and drive, going as fast and as far as I can.

What is it about winter that makes me feel trapped? Despite everything going the way it should be, despite having everything I need and more, I just want to run away and not tell anyone where I am going.

Maybe I should start looking for a new therapist.

See above: a list of things I should do that I probably will not (i.e. go for a walk, look for a therapist, stop feeling trapped). See this link: Things that I will stop doing because this link made me giggle.

Now see and ponder this:

Prisoners used to wear hats, people. Hats. How dapper is that?

Photos of France

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:51:00 +0000

I will try to caption most of them, but most are self explanatory.

This was the view from the apartment we stayed in. Terrible, right?

"Here, everything is good."

Spotted: Les Halles under construction.

As usual, the tree was breathtaking.

Opera

The terrible, terrible lighting of Paris (sarcasm).

Christmas everywhere.

I don't know why, but it's impossible to get a good shot of the Tower as it sparkles.

Arrival in Olonne sur mer. Pas mal.

I made him do this for the photo.

Let them eat crepe.

Across the harbor, la Chaume.

Love pigeons.

Christmas dinner.

Escargots.

Going.

Gone.

First Week

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:41:00 +0000

No photos just yet. My Christmas present from Husband was a new “point and shoot” camera and I have not stopped taking pictures with it. That means the amount of photos I would share on here are multiplying. I promise I’ll post photos of France first.

This is the first full week I will work since the second week in December. It has been hard coming back, not helped at all by my boss being away on travel. I can’t fight the distinct feeling that I need another vacation. A Staycation, if you will, because I just want to do nothing for a couple of days. I want to catch up on my housework (in a small apartment there is always something to pick up off of some surface) and to read a book. Or watch movies. I’m not above watching movies. (I love watching movies.)

We don’t stay home very much. Last weekend I had the full intention of doing exactly what I just described – which is my equivalent of nothing – and somehow I ended up at my home very little. Not that my engagements were anything but pleasant, but I am a homebody. I need a day or two every now and then to just get myself grounded. Balanced.

Husband and I are a funny match that way. He gets stir crazy very easily, whereas I could stay all winter in my apartment and not be too bothered by it. (Slight exaggeration, perhaps. I need to socialize too.) I am one of those people who goes on a beach vacation and is happy to spend the whole day surfside with a magazine but Husband would much rather see the sites. He needs to keep moving. Even when he is not moving his brain is going constantly to and from all the places his mind needs to visit. I love that about him. I am not at all that way.

Anyway, keeping up with Husband (and our social life) makes me tired sometimes. Right now is one of those times.

I don’t get it, really. Our vacation was nothing if exactly what I just described. My in-laws would let us lift a finger. Sleeping and eating were the key objectives. But I guess it wasn’t my bed. It wasn’t my house.

I am a homebody.

I might not get a staycation anytime soon and I’ll have to be okay with that. I’m not on the verge of a nervous breakdown or anything (I did actually have a real vacation quite recently) but I know myself, and that I need to take care of me. I will make time for that person who needs some quiet. Maybe I’ll take a hot bath and start a new book, or maybe I’ll open up the suitcase of art supplies that I brought home with me from France. Maybe I will paint my nails bitch red. I will do something that takes me out of myself for a moment so that I can keep going a little while longer.

I’ve been thinking about meditation lately. I’ve always sucked at meditation but at a recent visit to a spa I heard that if you place a cold compress on your liver this will knock you into a meditative state.

“Isn’t that cheating?” I asked.

“No, of course not,” she replied. “The point of meditation is to let your mind go, it doesn’t matter how you get there.”

I haven’t tried it yet, but I am curious.

Once – a long time ago when I still tried to meditate – I let my mind go enough to image myself in front of my little girl. My future child. She’s always blonde. With curls, even though curls don’t run in my family. I was holding her hand, protecting her.

Or maybe she was some version of myself. I certainly needed protection at that time.

That time was not at all connected to the time I woke up to see a laughing yogi in my bedroom, sitting in my green velvet chair like he belonged there. Or maybe that was just a dream. It all depends on what you believe in, really.

I, personally, cannot believe that it’s only Tuesday.

Merry New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:29:00 +0000

Well, while I was mostly successful at National Blog Posting Month, I managed to eek through December with two lonesome posts dotting my corner of the blogosphere. I guess I was all tuckered out from November? Better luck next time, I guess.

But it is next time. It's 2013. I get the distinct feeling that I somehow missed the holidays again this year. Is that some kind of strange time-space-continuum thing that happens as you age, that the years and months go by more and more swiftly? I can hardly bear it, sometimes. If I could just have a giant "pause" button what would I do?

Anyway, here we are again at the top of a brand new year, making resolutions, setting goals and filling our cups with hope that this one will be better, that this will be the year we really DO IT or that one elusive thing gets achieved.

Every year I say I'm not big on making resolutions and I'm not going to make them just to fail, and I never do actually 'make a resolution' so to speak. Last year I lamented about my weight gain and set a personal goal (which is DIFFERENT than a resolution) to rediscover my sparkle. The year before that I was too busy with the move and a brand new engagement to care about setting any kind of goals, let alone bother calling them damned resolutions.

“The year before.” Two years ago. There it is again, staring me in the face: A brutal awareness that time does not cease to pass.

I did make some resolutions this year, actually, but I’m keeping them to myself. I don’t think of them as resolutions, and I don’t want to call them “goals” either. I am not going to mark calendars with dates of hopeful achievement and even though I do love the idea of filling a goal tracker with little gold stars I am not going to chart my progress – although the things I want to see happen this year could be monitored that way.

I want to keep the wheels turning, of course. Just like all those years before I have lists upon lists of things that need to be done or should be done or I wish would be done and in order to arrive at the desired doneness of any project one must continue to move it forward. Wheels set in motion must be propelled somehow or else eventually they wobble and teeter until they topple over to a dead stop. I will continue (or start, in some cases) to propel. I just don’t think this is a year to keep track of that movement.

Here is the thing about this New Year, that I’ve learned after all these other New Years: Time is going to keep passing. We are going to reach for things, or not reach for things, and time will still continue to pass. At the end of next year we are going to look back and say “Holy shit, that year when by so fast.” And we won’t be able to go back and change what did or didn’t happen.

What am I getting at here? Wheels turning, resolutions, let it be but continue to grow. Be present in it because the hours keep coming, the years pass and there is no turning back and giving every day your all is really all we can do in this one life. Wish for the best. Hope for the best. But mostly work towards the best, and do not be afraid of what might come. It’s gonna come no matter what.

(And also, maybe, wear sunscreen?)

Morosish

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:46:00 +0000

This week I messed up at work. It happens and life goes on but it never changes the feeling of disappointment in oneself. No, we can’t be perfect, but when your job description is to try your damnedest to be, the bar gets set high.

The frustration I felt this time was, at first, that I had failed in my job. I was not perfect. Then, however, the frustration was that I was not perfect, but that it wasn’t even for something that I had been spending my life striving towards.

I fell into this particular job and for the most part I love it but I cannot pretend that it fulfills me creatively. Someday, maybe. Or maybe not, ever. I like it enough to stay and keep trying and find out. In the meantime I get angry at myself because all of my personal creative projects have gone by the wayside.

What personal creative projects? I don’t remember anymore.

I don’t even journal these days. I haven’t for a year and a half. I used to journal every day. I would do it on the train during the comings and goings, but I can’t journal while I’m driving. I don’t find time otherwise. I make excuses not to. Lots and lots of excuses.

Last night I laid in bed thinking about how creative I used to be, a million years ago when I was in high school. It wasn’t the last time I was creative, but it was the last time I was superfluously creative. I drew in every notebook. I had pages and pages of poetry. I wrote short stories with (semi) abandon.

I was maybe never very good at finishing things though. Short projects - projects I could leave out and come back to – those I could finish. Those I would finish with a flourish. Edit, maybe never but who cared, the creative juices were still flowing. I dream about a room of my own that I can make messy.

Once, I wrote a series of anonymous love poems and left them in the mailbox of the hot lead editor for the school newspaper. I thought because he was a writer and I was a writer we would connect. He never sought me out and I never came out of hiding. We never fell in love and got married. I don’t remember his last name anymore, though I’m sure I scrawled it coupled with my first name many hundreds of times.

But out of sight, out of mind seems to be my biggest problem. If it’s not open, right in front of me, I won’t do it. If it’s not in my hand or under my finger, it goes by the wayside.

For several months I have been okay with that. I accepted that maybe my true calling was always to do what I am doing – maybe that is what I am good at. But then weeks like this happen – where I feel so under appreciated and worthless. Where my best isn’t good enough, in fact it’s crap. I’ve disappointed people who ultimately don’t even think about me when the day is done, and yet I am supposed to work harder now for their approval.

It’s weeks like this I don’t want to be working for someone else, I don’t want to be underneath people who aren't at all grateful for the work that I do. I want to be putting that effort into my own projects – into my creativity and into my family and my home.

I want to be. I’m still not.

These are just things I feel and think about. I get over them, then, and I move on.

Did I Forget To Mention

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:11:00 +0000

We are going to France for Christmas. In all my not writing and then writing again and then getting sick as a dog it must have slipped my mind to tell my blog friends that we're leaving the country. I'm going back to the land of cheese and wine, folks!

I cannot express how excited I am about this. And how quickly it's coming. I can barely remember to be excited because of how fast time is going by these days. Wasn't it just October? What happened to August?

I don't care because I am exactly two weeks away from going home.

Even though I only lived there for two years, Paris is somehow still a home to me. A home. One of my homes. Just like Austin and Colorado and Philadelphia are all my homes, Paris was and always will be a place for me to feel embraced by.

It made me feel alive and free. It made me feel young and creative. It made me feel heartache and love. All of those things describe a home to me.

I cannot wait to feel the tilt of the plane as we touch down over Paris, with the Eiffel Tower peering into the little windows. I can't wait to be on the RER A zipping towards Chatelet. I can't wait to eat a fresh baguette with a big hunk of cheese.

Both Husband and I have plans to immediately satisfy our cravings upon our arrival. He doesn't like cheese, so he will get a sausage instead. We'll probably eat in silence. I might cry a little bit.

Husband is actually going to get there a week before me - he has more vacation than I do this year - but he will meet me in Paris so we can spend a day visiting our old haunts. We plan on seeing the windows at the Galeries Lafayette and maybe we'll walk down the Champs and drink some hot wine. Paris in winter is one of my favorite times.

(Hint: All times of year are my favorite times.)

None of my friends are in the city when I will be there, which is unfortunate, but we're taking the train the following day to visit his parents anyhow.

They live by the ocean. His mother is going to make snails for Christmas dinner. I am going to sit by the fireplace and maybe catch up on some reading. We will probably eat more sausage and cheese while we're there.

I'm actually sort of glad we're not staying in Paris longer. It will be good to rest our pocketbooks and our tired heads.

This season is so busy. We need a rest.

That Feels Better

noreply@blogger.com (Evolutionary Revolutionary) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 03:31:00 +0000

I finally decorated. It feels wrong to not have a Christmas tree, but twinkly lights help immensely.