Month: September 2005

You know how you live with something for a long time, and it’s kinda stressful, but you get used to it, and then something changes, and it just blows you away?

Last night I came home from work and opened my front door to a recarpeted living room, with no tool carts or stacks of building materials, with comfortable chairs arranged for both conversation and movie-watching.

I almost fainted. C spent all day yesterday moving stuff and laying carpet tiles, which explains why he wasn’t answering his phone. It’s not all the way done, but it looks so lovely, the rich colors and wacky pattern of the carpet, a new curtain in the front window.

And all the elements of the kitchen are in the kitchen (we did that together last weekend), so it’s starting to feel like a real house. I’d say again, but it’s more like for the first time. It’s full of light now, and I can be in the kitchen fussing over something and still participate in conversation.

This morning, while I was taking my shower, he said, “I did all that because I thought it would help you feel better.”

sigh. We’ve been through so much these last few years, with us and this house, and then he goes and says something like that. Perhaps this is what the upward slope feels like.

this morning we were stuck in a traffic jam, and a bicycle passed on the freeway shoulder. seriously.

point the first: DVD player died this weekend, following the microwave to an early electronics grave. actually, I’m impressed by the longevity of the microwave, which belonged to C’s grandfather, who died shortly before he & I started dating. the DVD player, not so much.

point the second: a lot of work stress, which of course I can’t write about. some days the whole thing just seems too big for me, especially since I lost a lot of ground fighting my depressions this last year.

point the third: there’s only a 50/50 chance that the front room will have carpet by Saturday, which is the day of the big birthday D&D fest.

OTOH….

we can still watch DVDs, with some fun laptop-related jerry-rigging. and I’m surprised at how well we do without the microwave. only time I’ve really, really missed it was when I made enchiladas last night. (best way to quickly soften a bunch for rolling.) most reheating, even, can be done nearly as well on the stovetop, oddly enough.

all of the pieces of the kitchen are back in the kitchen, with the exception of the dishwasher, and I’m really enjoying having everything right at hand again. we have been making progress, even if it seems glacial sometimes. (seems, nothing: it really is glacial.)

I’ve been riding more again (to & from the van, even!), and doing morning exercises, and generally paying more attention to how I wake up, and it seems to be paying off.

oh, but I’m tired, and panic seems continually right around the corner. too much going on, and when has that not been true?

I guess at least it means I’m alive.

and, randomly, I’ve been reading really good books of late, which is a source of immense pleasure for me.

“Who once was a pillar of strength to you? Write about him/her.”

[this is a fiction piece in the voice of the main character from my long-abandoned novel.]

Marcus was my pillar, always, after saving me from death. Not my own death, but the death that gathered all around me, the dead on the beach, the feeling of being the only person left in the world.

He gave me the rest of the universe, after my world collapsed, but more than that. He kept bringing me back into the real world, teasing me with knowledge, and the simple fact that I was a curious child. (Else why would I have been out in the woods when everyone else was in the village?) His encouragement meant that I didn’t simply survive, but that I thrived.

And I did thrive. I found topics that interested me, I found happiness in my own body out there in the jungle when people were too difficult for…

for anything, really. Except Marcus. I don’t know why, really, even now, why he took me in that way, took on the responsibility of becoming a parent to what was essentially a tragedy-stricken and technologically-backwards teenager. Just that overwhelming compassion for what others treated as subjects, pawns in some great experiment. Reboa, even though she was so angry with him for that childhood abandonment, had responded to his openness, his warmth. The sisters, who were always resistant to outsiders, fearful of being coopted, tenuous in the power they’d accumulated…they too saw his natural curiosity and compassion. Radla more than the rest, and that was where I lost him, finally.

At first it was almost like the crater, being in his house, the two of us quasi-alone with the world, the father and daughter. But as time went on, and no news, and no news, and never knowing anything of what had happened to those we left behind…. We both went numb at much the same time and in much the same way, and so neither of us had anyone to rescue us.

Except that I was young, with that sort of resiliance that feels a bit like insanity, and then, finally, there was the one I loved, not in the same way, but enough. For then, anyway. So I was able to crawl back out of despair.

Marcus just faded. And I stood back, looking at him from far away, especially after Ani was born, and he seemed to have crumbled. Like the walls of those houses by the shore, where we’d gone so long ago.

It occurred to me today that I never wrote about my birthday, which was a week ago yesterday.

There was no painting…

# a couple of people couldn’t come, and another had a sprained ankle
# we hadn’t picked a paint color
# and then it rained.

I had a nice day anyway. Nothing terribly exciting, but definitely pleasant: there was chocolate torte.

Now we are heading for fall, but it’s the nice part of fall. Cooler weather, which means more comfort in doing things outdoors and around the house. Beautiful weather for cycling, too. This morning I rode downtown to pick up some coffee and apples, which means just falling straight down the hill, not really all that much slower than traffic. And I cheated: took the bus home, so I’d still have energy to get other things done!

We are inching forward in our various projects. Very, very slowly…at least things are happening. The weather is beautiful, but it holds a latent threat. The weather is not getting better from here, and at a certain point we need to be able to just enjoy our home.

The stretch between birthdays (his is the 28th) is always somewhat significant, but especially so this year….

character encoding makes baby Jesus cry.

My dream job….

is a craftsperson’s job. HTML wrangler, CSS wizard, PHP junkie. I don’t want to be the boss, but I want to have a boss who lets me participate in decision-making. I want to be known for skill and approachability. I want to telework most of the time, or have an office that feels like home.

My dream job is only 20-30 hours a week. The rest of the time I have for my own projects.

because I find I can only write about this elliptically….

“suffocating, if you will”

early in the morning
on the radio

stately trees I’ve only seen
in books I loved and in my mind’s eye

the live oaks
five feet, eight feet,
ten feet of water

salt, brackish water
chemicals, gasoline
(this, too, only in my mind’s eye)

green leaves turning brown, says the reporter
1200 years old, says the society historian
drowning, says the urban forester,
and our people have been evacuated

and still I can’t cry
(the trees, even the trees are dying)
a scream, unheard, has lodged in the back of my throat
and will not go away

working sucks. not that my job sucks, per se, but the whole thing of being away from home, garden, kitties, for the whole day: that sucks.

after an extra trip downtown to the library, I got home at nearly 7 pm. and if I get up at 5:30 or 6, then I need to be in bed and dozing off by 10.

sigh.

I’d give up some of my vacation time to have a shorter work day. hell, maybe I will do just that, one of these days.

oh, post-vacation angst.

or maybe I’m just hungry for dinner.