turn these diamonds straight back into coal

One of the first things my grandmother taught me to do was to separate egg yolks. When I was tragically young, she and I used to pick sour cherries off the tree in the back and bake pies together. She's a talented baker: a true artist, a professional. There are pictures of us: her beautiful, made-up, Jackie O babysitting effortlessly in high heels and me, the messy, artless little blonde child, three or four years old. I still remember watching her manicured fingernails as she broke the eggs and cradled the orange globes between the two halves of the shell, egg white sliding cleanly away. 

Now I'm making lemon curd in my kitchen, which smells like lemon and magnolia blossoms. Artless as ever. The moon is a sliver in the clean indigo after-sunset sky, a perfect mirror of the one I had tattooed on my back that particular day in January, although then it was going and now it's coming on, waxing.

I feel achingly sad and foolish. 

One of the things I get the most shit for among my friend group is my persistent, strong, yet deeply inaccurate belief in my own ability to forecast weather.

This is not any part of the charming pseudo magic bunk I subscribe to, but a real thing I think I can do by spending too much of my free time looking at weather sites and radar images and reading about atmospheric trends and patterns. When I was younger, I was very obsessed with/afraid of certain types of weather, especially after being caught briefly in a tornado, and it translated to a psycho-interest. I devoured everything I could find about it. I read text books. I tried to understand airflow charts. To this day, I read amateur meteorologist blogs on a recreational basis. I check the radar for myself--and people I like in different areas of the state--multiple times a day.

But I'm garbage at it.

Typical exchange:

Friend: Oh no, it's raining.
Me: Mm, yeah, but it's about to stop.
*it rains harder*
Me: I can smell that it's about to stop. Actually, any minute now.
*hours of rain*
Me: These summer thundershowers get blown out of the Valley in no time. They go around the mountains. Let me tell you about the topology and why that is.

It comes out a lot when planning camping trips, as I'm inclined to use my meteorological skills to help belittle the opinions of those who are concerned that perhaps the adverse weather will negatively impact the time we have. Eventually, now that we've got good enough at it that doesn't much matter what the weather is, it's just become a bit of a joke.

*

I haven't written in this blog very much in the month of June. This sounds silly, especially with all that's been going on in my head and life the last few weeks, but a large part of the reason I haven't been writing is because up until recent, I've been happy. Not easy happy, not all beach days, happy endings, and carefree times, but I guess the happiness that comes of doing the good, hard work in myself. Or maybe all that progress has just made me too tired to feel like unpacking stuff? Either way, it seemed positive. I love this blog, and I'm never going to stop writing in it, but having a break for that reason felt good. Back at it, now.

It's been weird and interesting and hard and sweet trying to figure out what to do with myself when the all-consuming festering bitterness and anger that I'd made my life is dissipating. What's under all that? Certainly not the person I was, but maybe some other, better thing. Maybe nothing, and I have to make up the difference. I don't know. I'm trusting the process, though. I may write more about that all later.

But now! I'm probably losing my shiny, wonderful job that made me feel so good about myself and that I was so proud of being successful at. It's entirely unrelated to my performance there, and out of my control, which makes it worse somehow. So, I don't know, I'm having a time about it all.

*

It's the summer solstice tonight. There's a silly line by the worst character in The Great Gatsby, a hateful book I can't help but love, that's something to the effect of "Do you ever wait all year for the summer solstice, and then miss it? I always wait all year for the summer solstice and miss it." Oh Daisy, I didn't miss it this year. (I used to think I was a real Daisy, then I thought I was a Jay, but now I think the main thing is to try to not be any of the terrible characters. Still, we beat on.)

The graveyard is full of fireflies. The black bloodstain from where I smashed my finger making a fire circle is moving up my ring fingernail slowly, a little further ever week. I keep dreaming this same recurring dream that I'm trying to juggle several social interactions, but also keep this random bird's egg from smashing, and then in the course of my fumbling and multi-tasking, I smash it accidentally anyway. I'm left alone, and so sad that it's broken.

I feel like I want something tonight, but I'm not sure what it is.

hope was a letter I never could send, love was a country we just couldn't defend

My orange mountain lilies are blooming. The Iroquois used them in spell for faithfulness, or maybe it was for something else.  

give me slanted looks when I'm lying, give me fingers when I'm crying

Having gotten up for an early morning hike, now I am tired and wish I were still hiking. I liked being in the forest at an early hour, when the slant of the light is striking and unusual. There was a lot of wildlife still out: rabbits, deer, even a fishing raccoon. Saw a very pretty, muscular snake the color of obsidian and then later, a big old cricket the same shade when I was mowing the lawn. I must be so lucky.  My janky horoscope suggested that I don't listen to the relentless ones saying no, fond, soft advice I will take, at least for a little while.

I ought to do a few chores, but right now, I'm just sitting on the front porch. The yard is looking good--I planted a few more tomatoes and jalapenos, and weeded all the beds. I have a little bit of a headache, but the breeze is soft, playing, and I'm drinking a glass of cold white wine. My sunscreen is making my eyes water.