For the next 5-6 days, this becomes a travel blog. Call the papers.

I leaned on the wall and the wall leaned away--can I get a minute and not be nervous and not thinking of my

I call this, another in my series of photos instead of real thought-out entries: self portrait on the kitchen floor while waiting for the rice to finish at the end of December.

here I am with my hand

Sometimes I think there's something wrong with me for how intensely happy it makes me to unload the dishwasher. Especially when they're all hot and warm and dry. Guh. I'm such a dork.

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A thing I've been doing recently is running a ton, but not recording my time at all. It's really helped me get out of the destructive mindset of "I am not fast enough" and back into enjoying running. I also notice I tend to run a lot longer when I'm not paying attention to all that. What felt like a twenty minute run today turned out to be over six miles in a little under an hour, which is in no way un-ordinary, but it made me feel good to realize.

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I really like the swing on my front porch. The one good thing about this lukewarm, stupid, not-snow weather is sitting on it today and looking at my little yard. Thinking about the things I'll plant and the food I'll grow.

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But what am I even gonna wear tomorrow?

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Okay, seriously though, I'm exhausted.

Lights in the night

Fire from a knife part II

My brother made this, including hammering out the pattern on the steel top. It used to be a pickle jar.

My parents and this year's fawn in her winter browns.

I promise a real entry soon, maybe even tonight once I've had a martini and mopped the floor until I feel more like myself.

hail Mary full of grace
our Lord is with you
blessed are you among women

and blessed is the fruit of your womb
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death

Happy Christmas

Fire from a knife

Updates

After a weepy, icy birthday, a lukewarm feverish Christmas week. Feeling ugly, down, and unyuleish. Curled up on the floor in a pile of jack russel terriers until further notice.

Today, walking in high mountains in the middle of nowhere, I met a blonde woman out hawking her juvenile red hawk. She was wearing a Norway hat and looked familiar. On talking to her, I realized I knew her. I had played in her house in Northern Virginia as a little girl probably 24-25 years ago: a feature of one of my earliest memories.

Small world, huh?

still its a shock, shock, to your soft side

I was feeling a touch demoralized as I left work today. I'd stayed late, stupidly, futzing with InDesign which kept crashing until I was actually going backward in progress. I finally decided there was nothing for it and that it was time to go home.

I crashed outside into the cold night and grumped the block to the parking garage that I hate. Half-there, I cracked open my dumb bubble water because I really wanted it. I thought about my pepper spray, detached from its usual place on my keychain after my last run and in the bottom of my purse. The parking garage is on the classical "bad part of downtown" and I've had to brandish my spray at a creep there before. Now that I'm parking there again, I'm always pretty careful, especially when I work late.

Anyway, I headed into the deserted deck, and as if on cue, I saw this man coming toward me. A white guy, dressed entirely in black and wearing a black winter skullcap so I could only see his face. Even from a distance, I could tell he was looking at me in a way that rubbed me wrong. He was my height or shorter, but big. I sized him up, morbid wagers. Shorter men that I don't know make me uneasy as a rule; I know too well from my dating days in college that some seem to take rejection from tall girls with macho over-reaction and, rarely, violence. As his path took him parallel with me, heading in the direction I'd just come, I kept my eyes straight ahead, keeping him in my periphery, alert for any sudden movements. Weighing my options for fight or flight the way I think all women do when placed in a situation like that.

I stepped up my stride, wanting to put him behind me, and suddenly, he called out, "I think you dropped something!"

I whirled, awkwardly, startled. What? Had a misjudged him? Was this a benign exchange that I imbued with womanly, frightened paranoia? I scanned the pavement behind me, my mind blank and buzzing. Nothing. I hadn't heard anything drop. My eyes darted up to his face in question.

He clutched his chest dramatically, walking backward away. "My heart."

Dear reader, I tell you in that moment, I blossomed with the purest fury. My can crunched in my hand. I produced a noise of incredulous anger. I think I would have thrown the dumb bubble water can at his face if the rage hadn't been so sudden and stunning, almost incapacitating. His laugh cut off abruptly when he saw my face, mixture of fear and wild anger, and he quickly went on his way.

I guess it was just that the idiot had scared me, you know? I'd gotten spooked with the dark and isolation. A dumb pickup line is the thing a graceful woman dismissively laughs off, and I was fine. Nothing had happened to me, and I would walk the remaining stretch to my car in unmolested silence.

My dad said a funny thing to me this weekend--genuinely funny, not funny like talk too much about it on your dumb blog funny. I don't actually remember the context; I had done something of which he approved--something bravado-ish. He was joking with my mom, had me proudly by one shoulder, claiming me. He declared that I had turned out so much like him, that I was just the female version of him. My mom rolled her eyes, and mugging for her, he told me in a theatrical aside: "Aww, I'm sorry I couldn't make you a man, sweetie."

I like the woman package. I like my long hair and my breasts. I glow under the affirmation of a loved one. I'm a sucker for chivalry. I like to be nurturing or dainty in turns. I wear skirts. I buy that old-fashioned stuff about learning to be a hostess, to be graceful and a creature of great household efficiency, and I think there's value in my abilities there. Secretly, very secretly, I think I'd like being a mom, and that I'd make an okay one. I like these things about myself.

But sometimes, also, being a girl really sucks. I hate not being able to go places alone (my standard setting) or coming off as helpless, clingy, needy, or weak. I hate crying, and the way I do it sometimes even when I'm desperately trying not to.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I guess it was just a stupid thing, and it made me feel weak and shitty, so I wanted to write it out. I'm tired, a little lost, and okay, this week, go ahead and take your point. Shuffle, deal again.

but I'm just made

I must've looked like a busted up bitch today. No makeup, pretty nice facial bruise from taking a faceshot in combat this weekend. I feel like a busted up bitch from today. I don't know if I'm really looking older or if this is part of my usual pre-birthday week freakout. I'm coming along. It was lukewarm on my run tonight but my ears were cold. I need to remember my small maintenances like a hat and gloves, but I don't.

I feel small and vulnerable tonight, a far cry from the big smashy girl of the last couple days. I can't seem to get into the right headspace. I think I read--or listened to--the wrong thing on the car drive home through the snow tonight. The repetitive beat of the flurries against my hot windshield, nursing my brokeass car home. I want to stretch out tonight and work my body hard, but I feel so feeble doing my little floor exercises. What I really want is a treadmill--or a gym again. I don't know.

I have lost my eyesight like I said I would, but I still know

 This weekend I lit the little moss/jar lanterns I made for my mom and sat outside on my parents deck and thought about all this month and the lessons of my gratitude experiment. Being thankful for those little things like life, light and warmth on a cold night.

This has been a good exercise, even if it's been especially vivid, at times. Feeling anything is a good change, though.  Last winter, when I was so dissolved, I floated around in an emotionless fog, got lost wiping down counters. I'm different now in a lot of ways.

Spacing out is a thing I just did, though, leaning in the doorway of my dining room and looking at my floors and surfaces. Not loss or grief,  but just thinking and looking at my materials. The great tally of the things that are important or not, the tightropes of expectation I'm always trying not to hang on. The rain pounding against the house.

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Friday: I appreciate my past, which has felt at times like my constant, grim companion this month. The things I left behind and the things that I lost. Sometimes it feels like this fragile egg I can't open without shattering. I've tried to learn from it, to put everything into scale. I know it's made me harder, sharper, brighter.

Saturday: I'm thankful for my health. This season there have been almost constant reminders about how fragile the human body can be, and how easily things can feel tipped over into something life-changing and irreversible. I've bitched endlessly about my calf injury this fall, but at the same time, I've realized how blessed I am to be able to be as active as I want, to jump fences and throw myself over creeks without even thinking. I don't look when I jump. It doesn't consume me. Even when I'm anxious and wild, I can feel this steady reliable persistence to my body. I feel it working. This little warm animal of myself that likes good, healthy, things, and behaves, responds, beats, wants.When I tilt my head back, now, my hair is long enough to nearly brush the top of my ass.

Sunday: Thankful for my fine tribe, the loved ones who make up such a strong support during these dark and wonderful months.

Tonight, gosh, tonight. I staggered off my front porch to go for a run I was almost rabid with desire for, and yelled "are you fucking kidding me?" at the sky as a sudden summer-level downpour poured down cartoonishly on me. I looked over just in time to meet the eyes of the sweet young blonde mother who is my next door neighbor, her two little toddler boys in tow. A great impression I made, doubtless, yelling at the clouds.

Later, I lay down on the floor of the bath and filled up the tub with the shower going.

I know-- I have three thankful-fors left, and I'm trying to make them very good. Happy fall. I survived November. I have a lot to be thankful for. Here is a picture of my face and body and fence, and I look like I'm the cover of a country mall photo kiosk.