My brother & the fox

I'm thankful for the kind of heedless joy and total exhaustion that comes from being used as a piece of playground equipment by several wild little hooligan girlchildren all day. Oh my gosh. We all want to be carried? At once? And you know how to climb a tall girl like a tree? And what's this next game called? Endless running?

So fun, though. I grew up with boys, and when I ever have kids, I would adore any, but man, do I have a soft spot for tomboy girls who like to play outside.

I'm thankful for a beautiful early snow day. I've just finished three different styles of pumpkin pie, and am waiting for them to bake, drinking a spiced lager, and mulling over the day. Also mulling wine.

I know, concentric rings in the bones aside, we've surely grown up

I'm thankful for my job, for as much tumult as it's cost me, especially recently. Even just dipping my little toe into the waters of holiday retail tonight made me sympathetic and grateful for my office with the door that closes (and locks), my big windows, my choose-your-own adventure schedule. That's not to say that it's perfect, or even reasons to stay, but I appreciate those things. If it snows tomorrow, I'll work from home. So many people will be put in dangerous situations to get to a job tomorrow, and I carelessly don't even have to think about it. I'm extremely blessed.

It isn't that I think it's somehow beneath me to work retail or food service. I got my first coffeeshop job at age 16, and I put myself through college and then grad school foaming lattes. It was hard work--on my feet for 6 or 7 hours rushing around--and it was good for me. I talked about some of that in a previous post. It taught me to speak up, to be compassionate, to listen, and to try and understand people better. I also got really good at making coffee. You should see my latte art.

I've been thinking about my first coffeeshop a lot lately. Gosh, I was so little. I didn't know anything outside of the sheltered Christian school microbubble that was so poisonous and lonely to my tiny shy starwars pop jerkoff teenager brain. Then, almost overnight, I was working at this wild new place with public school kids and real adults, people who were so different and intriguing!The star-eyed, bewildered spectacle I made of myself was almost cliche. In particular, there were these two bored twenty-somethings that worked there, Dan and Juli. (I think it was Juli. Something with a cool i ending.)

They seemed to know each other in a way that wasn't clear to me. Dan was super tall, a happy, stoned, sandy-hair vandal. His ambitions included "be really good at spray-painting." Juli, though, was incredible. She was Japanese, with dark, liquid eyes, chin-length hair, a koi tattoo. (Can't even.) She was studying some kind of medical thing at George Mason. Exacting, gorgeous, and terrifying. My manager.

I didn't really know how to treat them, because I wasn't super exposed to young adults, especially not cool ones. The only few I'd ever really encountered were like youth pastors or praise team guitar players in church, which were to be admired at a worshipful distance and not spoken to. I was shy, and I really had no reason to interact with even older teens. I assumed I should treat these twenty-something-year-olds sort of like a cross between a teacher and a Young Life coordinator, and did accordingly, obedient, well-behaved, and meek as ever, waiting for any pearls of wise, spiritual advice to drop out.

One day, Juli was training me on the milk wand. Dan was doing nothing, as ever. We never really seemed to have customers at that place. Every now and then, Juli would cast Dan looks of scalding fury. Mad about him not closing up the shop very good last night, I guess. I was too young and clueless to recognize the body language. I realize, of course, now that Juli and Dan were most certainly hate-fucking--disappearing into the backroom for long periods of time while I naively scraped dried syrup off the wall and tunelessly mouthed the lyrics of Goo Goo Dolls songs. Anyway, between icy silences and loud sighs, she showed me how to grasp the wand with a damp rag and carefully position it above the surface of the milk to create a thick layer of foam on top. It didn't occur to me then, but later, I would see how the whole process is somewhat....well.

To the massive surprise of no one at all, I really fucked it up. Hot half-foamed milk sprayed all over me. Juli sputtered with rage, looked at my spattered apron, and hissed "You look like you've been to see DAN!" Murderous glare thrown back in his general lounging direction.

"Whaaat?" I remember saying, even as I got it, and blushed so hard I could feel my cheeks burning down. Mentally, dying: ahhhhhhhhhhh as my brain tried to reconcile this. Ahhhhh. Because it looks like cum.

Now, though, it's pretty funny! Oh, Dan. I wonder where they are now. Anyway, long anecdote, but I am really happy for the jobs I've had, the good and bad, and the things I've learned from them.

I'm a genuine little monster today, hungry in all the least flattering ways, tripping over my words and feet, lurking about. A little bit of a mood--not a bad one, but distinct. I think there's snow coming in.

My month of saying the things I'm thankful for here is drawing toward a close. I like a lot about doing it: being more forcefully positive and appreciating the good things that fill my life. I've tried to think about little, specific overlookable things as much as the big ticket items.

This is a bit silly, but I also like that it's reminded me to post more--a trend I'd like to keep up in December.

Tonight I'm grateful for small, hopeful things: an easy, healthy dinner, clothes laid out, lunch packed and bag ready, a clean kitchen. I'm thankful for fresh flowers by my kitchen sink I bought myself that make me happy when I wash dishes, for sparkly green nail paint.

I'm not yet used to the noise the wind makes whipping around the corner of the house here. Being up on a hill, it sounds like the whole world is coming in. There's a Cheshire cat smile moon up, and it's hard to think about snow when it's still almost sixty. I just remembered a really dumb hairstyle I used to do back in high school when my hair was long, and so I put it up, dorkily, and now I'm listening to the wind.

I say there's got to be some good reason

Friday: thankful for late-night oreo cookie iced cream, for the end of a hard week
Saturday: thankful for reliable fires

Sunday: the jury is still out on Sunday.

I feel a bit unsettled, anxious, antsy, but still weak and low energy from my cold. Getting out would probably improve things, but I worry a bit about making my health worse. I want to restlessly organize, but it feels like doing so would probably only result in my condemning lots of perfectly-acceptable items to the goodwill bin.

I think for now I'll say I'm thankful for quinoa, and the nice mountains I've doubtlessly already thanked for, where I'm off to go for a lighter longer run just now.

Tonight, I'm thankful for the red. I'm thankful for this blog, which as much as I abuse it, helps me think about things and reflect on my actions and feelings and remember things. I'm thankful for my support systems in this time of year that can be so hard and dark, especially when shit hits the fan like it did so utterly today. I'm thankful for my oversized Captain John Smith t-shirt, which is so comfortable, even if I am to be a mercenary.

Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Rally behind the Virginians.

Poor General Barnard Bee. So many demerits at West Point, one of the very first generals to die in the Civil War, and all he gets remembered for is accidentally complimenting a guy he was actually using his last moments to bitch about.

"There stands Jackson like a stone wall" sounds great, but in context, he meant that he'd just begged Stonewall Jackson to come help him and his men, who were being overrun by Union force. Jackson responded with a no. (Well, to be fair, he basically said "you have bayonets, handle the charge yourself")  Bee's brave, desperate, and often-quoted speech wasn't to implore his men to follow Jackson's amazing example and rally from that. He was saying, "Look, we aren't getting any help, might as well go out hard." And he did--he was mortally wounded seconds after speaking those words.

Speaking of Old Blue Lights, though, I visited General Jackson's grave in Lexington, where he lived before the war, when I went there a couple weeks back to see Jen. I've got a bit of a thing for Civil War generals. The graveyard was oddly run down and mountain-grim. One of the old granite box tombs was cracked open, and we could see something that looked a lot like bones inside. Jackson's monument thing was sort of interesting. People had thrown lemons all around it in tribute; the legend goes that he loved lemons, and fresh fruit of any kind, and his soldiers would often remark on it. It made me wonder who was bringing them, who came to the grave regularly to put fresh lemons down for a man who'd been dead over a hundred years.

I much prefer Bee's memorial on the Manassas Battlefield. You walk straight back, and there's a thicket and deep emerald green woods where I always would see the same doe and fawns.

So today (yesterday, really, but posting today) I'm thankful for Virginia, and for having a homeland not only so beautiful, but rich in history and people and stories.

281 north Howland call KHAQQ beyond north

Thankful for my small rituals of personal salvation, among them: bad day new lipstick. "Euphoria" is the shade.

I'm thankful for my mom, who never minds my diatribes, confessionals, inadequacies, or irrational grumpiness. Especially on the kind of Monday wherein a lesser girl might be tempted to kick a harassingly-solicitous Trader Joe's employee in the shins and run weeping from a store.

I know I already posted my thankful for today, but I thought of an extra one. I am standing in my kitchen and waiting for my onions to caramelize, and wearing my favorite apron. It is double-sided, blue, green, and pink and covered in little frogs. I like it better than my great grandmother's delicate, floral waist apron, my cool blue ruffley vintage one, the lace one that looks more like a negligée than a cooking tool, the dumb hot lips one--a gift--that says "I kiss better than I cook" (I can only be good at one?) Anyway, I like it so much not because I think cartoon frogs and lily pads are the height of good taste, but because of the woman who gave it to me.

When I was a junior/senior in college, I worked at this shitty little coffeeshop in the communication building. It wasn't an easy job--we'd get slammed at the juncture of classes and have a line of 40 people stretching around the corner and out the door. There were usually two of us on shift, three if we were lucky enough that the lazy, snaggletoothed harpie who managed the business would emerge from her backroom dungeon to give us a little backup. It was my second job in addition to my 22 hour courseload, and stressful, but I had a broke-ass car to fix up and a mile of student loans. The kids we served--my Lynchburg college fellows--were nasty as shit to us, often having waited a long time and impatient or late already for class.

My sole cellmate in this frappe hell was a woman in her late thirties. She was big, with fuzzy orange hair, a take-no-shit attitude, and a single mom from a trailer park. This coffee job--my martyrdom fill-in-the-cracks-of-higher-education employment--was the primary means of income for her and her elementary school son.

 I did not get the feeling she liked me so much. She had something negative to say about everything I did, and her sole topic of conversation: the great unhappiness and dissatisfaction of her life, of which I contributed. Not that I didn't have my bones to pick with her: she called me--from the moment I introduced myself as another name to the last time I ever saw her-- "Jessie." What was more, she had this habit that many women I encounter have: of randomly and insultingly making comments about my body, as if my height and fitness level make me immune to having any kind of feelings or body issues in my own right. Calling me a stick, or beanpole, or that I should eat more, or criticizing my lunch choices, or what. Nobody enjoys this, baggage or no, and I resented it. I judged her as ignorant Lynchburg trailer trash, and watched her scornfully as she drawled and lost and wolfed down candy bars and 22 ounce Pepsi's, with a quiet superiority that I didn't earn or deserve.

Because of my schedule, I'd often come from class or my other job, and not be quite dressed for eight hours of slogging through minimum wage food service. Particularly, the health code regulation about needing to constantly have a bleach bucket on hand for rags was troublesome, and it wasn't long before everything I owned was covered in bleach stains. To this day I can locate the few surviving garments of this era that remain in my wardrobe by searching for the little white constellations of stain that pattern the hip of each.

So this is the backstory of the day that my seemingly antagonist presented me with this apron that I'm wearing now, as an out of nowhere, beautiful, thoughtful gift. She had been working on it for a while, and picked out the fabric specially because something about the happy frogs had reminded her of me. I didn't even know she could sew.

She still bitched and fussed at me. I was still, probably, an entitled, Northern Virginia little ingrate, missing my multitude of blessings and advantages for the fact that some graphic design major just yelled at me over a mocha. But sometimes it just takes a small act of kindness to jolt somebody out of their perspective, and I'm thankful for that, and the lesson there, then and now.

when it sings to itself or whatever it does

Yesterday was a really good day, spent cleaning up my friend's to-be meadhall. I know, vaguely, how to paint: put paint on brush, apply, but I have never been particularly good at it and always been a little frustrated by my (mostly outdoor) applications. But yesterday I think I finally at least started to get the hang of it, and I had a good teacher explain some of the finer points. Now I keep noticing places I want to touch up around the house here, and I feel a lot more confidant in starting a project like that. So I'm thankful for a day of good work, learning, and friends.

Today I'm thankful for a quiet day to catch up on house chores.

The rain came in early today, spoiling my run. It was supposed to be twelve miles, so I don't know that I can make it up during the week in one go. There's about one hour of morning daylight before the time I really should get a move on for work, and I'm not that fast. Otherwise, things have been nice and productive. I finally found and bought some curtains I like, so I hung those, mopped the floors, did some laundry, washed the sheets, and generally tidied. I'm going to roast my first chicken of the season and do a side of asparagus and a prosciutto/red onion/swiss chard dish that I think I saw in my old lady housekeeper magazine but I might just be making up. Half my hair is up in a long braid over my shoulder and the other half has fallen out of said braid.  

Later I might make a little mead, or conquer the Celts, or read an old story: who knows?

I'm the new blue blood

I'm thankful for my long, stupid body, its strength, health, tricks, trials, improper balance, and height.

My hair is getting proper long.

we will repeat this message, we will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait,

Today, I'm grateful for a house with heat that works in spite of my ice cold, for hard knuckles, for bitter beer.

I'm thankful for my little busted Volvo station wagon: thoroughly uncool, needs an oil change, but still able to accelerate out of the playful side-swipe of an inattentive eighteen wheeler.

I'm thankful for my grandfather, the Lieutenant Colonel. A lot of things in my very military family would have been different if he hadn't served. Right now, he himself would be different. I talked to him tonight on the phone, and he kept laughing with obvious happiness at the sound of my recognizable voice, but unable to say more than these joyful, stunted "yeah... yeah... yeah.." because of the long-term damage from the agent orange he was exposed to in Vietnam. He couldn't tell me where his middle son and wife were taking him to dinner, or how his Veteran's day had been, or my name, or his. I remember before he got bad, he was so sharp, so practical and productive: he used to tell me gruffly, his highest piece of praise: "Keep up the good work." He could be brutally hard on us kids--harder still on my father.

He has grown soft and affectionate as this health issue has taken hold of him. My mom sometimes tells me that she thinks this is a blessing, in a way, that he's so much gentler now for my little cousins' childhood. She tells me stories of the way he used to be as if I didn't live them, as if I didn't know how he used to be when I was growing up. Scornful, contemptuous, exacting. The Tank Commander in everything, barking orders, getting things done, filling up a room with his personality. He was always telling you how something could be done better or more efficiently, how a lack might be turned into an opportunity. This is the same man who as a boy used to wait on the front porch for my worthless drunk of a great grandfather to come home so he could knock him senseless so he didn't beat my great grandmother.

Tonight, I also talked my grandmother, the woman I try so hard to emulate. I feel a kind of kinship with her beyond my hero-worship of her charm, tact, hospitality, grace, and her sheer, womanly grit. Fire in a man can be a beautiful thing. I think she loved my grandfather for being the commander, the war hero. I think she chose him for those hard traits.

I'm thankful for my family and all the facets that make up this weird, beautiful unit of which I am a piece. I'm thankful for the sound of geese flying over head, for little reminders, for a clean sink.

wake me up when the bluebells are ringing

Top of the list of things I should've already learned is that putting my hands to work is a fine antidote to feeling irrationally miserable, unwanted, and chaotic. I'm thankful for that.

and I'm not afraid to die

Grateful for a good run, a pretty warm day, and a blue sky,

last night I dreamed that you and I had words, Cyprian

Haven't forgotten, just haven't had much of a voice the last few days. There's this detached, off-dry part of myself going, like, "Really, Jessica? We're doing this again?"

Friday: grateful for my little brother, a calmer, wiser male expression of my genes.
Saturday: grateful for the unexpected, and for the sharper lessons I should've learned a long time ago
Today:  post about today later once I've had a little more of it.

day 6

Feeling a little deflated, so I'll post this now while I can still gather myself into some coherency:

I am thankful for directness, and I'm thankful that this week is almost done.

even still you're calling me: not tonight, Josephine

White sycamore trunks, ice water, quiet.

Day 4

I'm thankful for the 6:45 AM sunrise that lets me at least get a little sunlight in before starting the day.

push me around a bit, shake my pockets, I store everything in my mouth

Dreams of my death seem to be a November trope, but last night, they left me with this weird, raw feeling. All day I've just wanted secretly to be pretty, which seems like the shallowest, stupidest thing, and a poor reaction to vivid imaginings of death by exsanguination. I feel self-conscious. Maybe it's a fierce little counter-surge to mortality. (Or maybe it's this hot new red bra putting a bit of extra fire in my chest.)

I'm thankful for hot new red bras in the face of death unpredictable joys, hot pink dregs in the sky from a leftover sunset, scalding hot alive showers.

Day 2

Today, I am thankful that my mother raised me to be the kind of woman who gets it done. I am also thankful for cut grass.

wear the blood in our cheeks like red roses

First snow out west over the mountains, but it hasn't come in yet. I'm watching it on radar like a creep. Today was good. I had a really nice time getting outside, even if it was chilly and throwing rain in my face the whole time. I guess the long run and afterward wandering gave me a lot of time to think.

I feel like Augusta Springs is mine a little, in the same jokey, earnest way I recognize. My mom used to say Burke Lake was hers back in the days when she would drop my brother and I at our grandmothers so she could get out and run for an hour. Hers like "What are these people doing in my private park?!" on busy days. A good joke for a kid. She would go every day when I was little, if she could, and run it twice to make ten miles. She's said that place saved her life--saved it from us, my dad, everything closing in, I guess.

It's not that Augusta is an escape quite in the same way as running was for her, I don't have little accidental kids. But I do love it so much. It's so quiet and solitary, all my memories there are the happiest, and I do feel like I found it just when I needed it most. I prefer it in winter: the starkness, the cold sharp light, the known path, and the way the clouds sort of slide down to fill it on really bone-chilling days. I always run more than I expect to there because of the way the circle divides up. It's so easy to say, "Oh, I'll just run a little more." I love it best in early March.

I don't do well this time of year. It feels like a confluence; I can't tell the chicken from the egg in ordering the bad things and my terrible reactions that cause and surround them. Am I such a poor little Viking that the sun goes away and I get sick for missing it, or have I just had an unlucky couple winters? What's the normal range there? I guess it's been on my mind recently.

But the thing I kept returning to as I was running today, and turning it over in my mind, was how much it's all my own fault. I have a hard time when I don't listen, pay enough attention, or think about other people's perspectives. I get deeper in when I don't eat and take bad care of myself. I can't not take responsibility for my energy. I don't know if this pops up more in winter, when the light is gone, but it doesn't matter if it does or not.

I see that some things are just lightning strikes. I had one of those last year, with my health, but I also had a whole hell of a lot of landslide I brought down on my own head. I feel like trying to excuse myself because of the freak accidents is missing the point somehow. So, anyway, I know it's not lent, but I really focused today on the alternative of winter crushing. Rather: what I could be doing to make my life a productive thing. Even if I spent every day of the next forever years picking up dumb beer cans, the smallest thing I could do, that would make somebody's life fractionally better. So I need to focus on that stuff, and not trap myself in this sunless mire for the next two month. (Just got to make it 'til my birthday, anyway, and then it'll start getting lighter. Plus then I'll be too old for it to matter.)

In the meantime, I need to remember to be thankful. So that'll be my month.

On...sort of an unrelated note, I have a backlog of dumb pictures, so here they are:

Halloween front porch.

One of the only trees that hadn't peaked was the red oak. The drive was just through a forest of blood.

Doesn't it look good enough to eat? It's almost certainly frost-killed by the time I'm typing these words, only 6 hours later.

So true story: I used to be afraid of this plant (some kind of sumac) because when I was little (like first-memory-near kind of little) I reached out to touch one, and a wasp was sitting on it, and stung my fingertip. And from that day forth I haven't touched this plant. Until today.

Spoils to decorate the mantle, trash bag, rage lines, running attire.

I love sycamores this time of year. Better than weirwoods.