Spend a Little

I sat down and wrote 14 letters. Some were overdue. Some were way before their time. Haphazard in order, careless in calendar, I didn’t really care if some of them should have been written yesterday or others could have waited another month. I had things to say and felt now is the time to say them. Now, regardless of the proper when.

This is how I spent my Presidents Day. Presiding over letters. Dear You. I approached each like a confessional, rich with ritual. If you get one of those 14 letters this is what happened on the other side. I found a picture of you, usually my favorite one. Don’t worry, I didn’t use a too fat or too freaky picture. Even you would agree I found a good picture. In it you look happy. I held this picture and smiled back at you and remembered the where and when of it all. Remembering what we were doing when the picture was taken. The particulars. Next, I found a card or pretty piece of paper that most reminded me of you, one that suited you, was you. Then I thought about what it was I needed to say. No rough draft. No copying. Straight from the heart the very first time. From heart to paper. Pinpointing the exact thing I needed to say, the very thing I needed to say.
Some of you got mere words. Some got short sentences. Still others got longer lines. It all depended on where we were in the conversation before we said goodbye. When we last said hello.

You see, I’m in practice. Steeling myself for the time I tell my cousin goodbye.

Not Because You Have To

Every year I write about how little Valentine’s Day means to me. Every year I tell people I would rather have the show of affection on a different day. An indifferent day not designed by Hallmark or designated on the calendar. Show me love on an ordinary Sunday. Surprise me with affection when it’s not be expected.
I think this loathing of 2/14 came from the irrational fear that people did things on the day out of obligation. Because they had to and not because they wanted to. How much of it was pressure from the mark of the calendar and how little of it was from the heart? I always wondered. The wondering made me worry.
Relationships are hard work. Day in and day out they aren’t a walk in the park. It takes giving and taking to make IT work. Every. Single. Day. Over the weekend I got my hair cut. Of hair that reached the middle of my back I asked for 4 inches to be cut off. It now sits a healthy one inch beyond my shoulders. I hate it. I lost the longest four inches of my life. Oddly enough it’s longer in the front that it is in the back. It looks hacked. My kisa shrugged and said, “maybe that’s the style?” Whatever it is, it isn’t me. But, kisa likes it because it’s on me. So, for him I make the best of it. For him I stand in the mirror and style it. For him I patiently pluck out the short silvers that crop up. If me, myself and moi were single we would hide it up in a hair tie and forget it. If we were single I would be seething about this style.
Kisa and I, we aren’t celebrating Valentine’s Day. We’re ignoring 2/14 completely. I think we’re having hot dogs for dinner. I am all together not a fan of a day designed for dumb gifts. I’ll be happy when that chocolate-dipped-fruit advertisement goes back into hiding. I’m sick of seeing it every 20 minutes. And that ad for flowers! The one with the woman gloating about how all the other women in her office are green with envy; she’s practically gleeful that her man made all the other men look bad. Let’s see…Flowers that inspire jealousy and showcase romantic incompetence. How heart warming. How thoughtful. Give me a break.
Kisa and I DO have “Valentine” plans but I think they’re on the 21st or Mexican Flag Day. Sometime. I’m not sure. However we celebrate what’s in our hearts it won’t be guided by a day on the calendar or a stupid commercial on television.

Bathroom Breaks

I think I’ve said it somewhere else. My husband is a klutz. I don’t know how he does it but he can break things I never knew I had. In terms of sheer volume I think he has done the most damage in the kitchen. It stands to reason. Ceramic, glass, china all live and die in this area. But, it’s the bathroom where he has broken my past.

I used to have a jewelry box made out of china. Shaped like a fish coming out of water it held earrings and other small trinkets. With the fish, white and tinged with pink and pale orange, as the lid, a small dorsal fin was the handle with which it could be lifted. Wispy white, blue and green waves of the ocean were the base, the actual box. It was made in the late 40s, an antique. When Kisa broke it I didn’t know how to be mad. It had been a gift from a clever exboyfriend with an eye for the unique. With him out of the picture and Kisa in it, it was only fair that the box should break. It was only fair that I should be glad there was one less reminder of Him. Yet, I had loved this fish box in the material sense and mourned its loss just the same.

I had another jewelry box from another ex. This one a dark blue, round, felt-lined music box with a celestial theme. Stars and moons circled in pale yellow and gold. It played the show tune “Memory” from the Broadway musical, Cats. Yes, Kisa crashed into this one, too.

I don’t know how to feel about this latest breakage. In a twisted way I have always connected this music box to my father. It’s a link that doesn’t quite make sense even to me. Twenty years ago on the evening after my father’s lethal stroke I was sitting in a darkened theater enjoying my first Broadway production. I had just dined at the famed Russian Tea Room and was now enthralled by the actors crawling and purring around the dimly lit theater. I was in the dark about my father’s condition so this is what I was doing while my father lay dying in a hospital room four states away. A short time later, when I was presented with the music box as a memento of my New York excursion, I could barely accept it. Now, twenty years later I had it still. It had become one of my dearest possessions. Until yesterday. shattered.

The pieces of the broken box will go in my rock garden joining the other shards of a past life and Kisa’s clumsiness. The lid, the musical part of the box, is unscathed. It still plays “Memory” exactly as it had twenty years ago. I’m keeping the lid. A memory is a memory is a memory even though Kisa killed the material.

Signed, Sealed, Committed

I celebrated another birthday recently. Nothing outrageous, nothing wild. It was pretty quiet except for the discovery that I am committed to be crazy. Hook. Line. Sinker. I am caught up in a colossal challenge I can’t (won’t?) escape. to explain:

In 2006 someone gave me Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust (better known as simply ‘BL’ in my world). Nothing more than a compilation of recommended reading for “every mood” as Pearl put it. When I first flipped through it I thought, “how quaint.” After some serious page turning I thought, “what a great idea to catalog all these books in such this way!” Funny how first impressions are so innocent. Hindsight definitely reveals a stranger, more elusive obsession in the making. I really don’t know how it all started. I don’t know what made me decide to read every single book indexed in Book Lust. All I do know is that after I was given More Book Lust (MBL) soon after that sealed the deal. Somehow that second book committed me to the challenge. I found myself promising to read EVERY book indexed in Book Lust AND More Book Lust. I wasn’t looking for a fight; no throw down. I didn’t challenge anyone to join me. This was going to be a battle fought by me, myself and moi. I remember meeting Nancy Pearl at a convention. After she signed my books I told her about my insane challenge. She seemed excited when she asked, “are you the one with the website?” but was definitely deflated when I said no, I wasn’t. To be fair, at the time I knew there was at least one other person with the same such project. She had a website and was soliciting book buyers to help her with her reading. I wasn’t that person. As a librarian I could do no such thing. Circulation is at the core of library success.

Anyway, fast forward to Happy Birthday to me. I’m opening a package from my sister. Sitting in my truck with the engine running because I just couldn’t wait. Despite being in my own driveway. I had to laugh when my own eagerness revealed Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers by Nancy Pearl. Here we go again. I knew myself all too well. The only question was how long would it take before I would decide to add all the titles of BLTG to my challenge? Not long. Not long at all. In fact, I hadn’t read a single word of BLTG before I was formulating a new plan. Adjustments would have to be made. Between BL and MBL I had amassed over 4,000 titles to read. At first glance I estimated BLTG would add another 2,000 unique titles…give or take.

And so it begins. I have a feeling LunaSea will be busy.

Caught in Ugly

I had to laugh when I found this blog from 2006. What, exactly, was I so worried about?

I’m exactly where I feared I would be. I predicted this. Caught in ugly. They say mean, hateful things about the other them and I don’t know how to respond. I can’t won’t respond so I hide, hide, hide. I used to have people I could talk to about this. I used to have friends who understood. Now everyone has chosen a side but me. Meanwhile I’m still clinging to the middle of the road. I’m like that animal, flattened out by fear on the double yellow line, teeth bared, body shaking in terror. Please don’t hit me. Please don’t turn me into roadkill. Please. I can’t go to that side…nor that other one. They didn’t do anything to me so I’m not choosing them, nor did you, so I can’t chose the other you. So. I can’t chose at all. Don’t make me. I’m in the middle of ugly. Why can’t I be neutral? Why can’t I be Switzerland? Can’t we all just get along? No. It’s beyond that. It’s beyond me. I bother my husband with my heartache. I bug close strangers with my sorrows. I am pitiful and powerless. It aint pretty. It’s stupid, really, to be caught in ugly.

In the end I did chose. When you don’t do something one way or the other that in itself is a decision. I chose neither. I’ve lost the melody of one choice and the rhythm of another. Am I any worse off? Not really. Five years is a long time to forget and I remember less than I thought. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say and yet I find myself loving ugly.

Bronchial Waiting

Is it wrong of me to be waiting for bronchitis to set in? As my husband hacks up a lung every night I wonder when, not if, I am going to come down with this particular affliction. I fear that I will. It’s only a matter of time. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Since being home from CA I have managed to go to work, do laundry, clean the litter boxes, take out the trash, make dinner every night – including a killer Thai soup for Kisa (if only to clear out his sinuses with a healthy dose of red curry paste) and read (I have started Personal History by Katherine Graham and Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien and finished Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban for those inquiring minds). What haven’t I done? Walking. In truth I have done minimal walking. Like less than two miles a day. Let me repeat that. Less. Than. Two. Miles. A. Day. Pathetic, sad, crappy I know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t confuse jet lag with what I am feeling currently. Every morning I say This is the day I will log 10,000 steps (or five miles, however you want to look at it). This is the day I am going to downward dog and sit up. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen.

I think it’s because I am waiting to get sick. My preemptive strike is to take it easy before the illness takes me out. I should have stocked up on all those catchy named catch-all cold remedies like Emergen-C, Cold-Eeze and Airborne. My relatives were handing them out and chugging them down like frosty margaritas on a muggy fourth of July. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. I’m full of excuses.

In truth, the bronchial waiting is over. I should be giving my lungs something else to worry about, like a hard New Guinea run. Enough said.