The boxes have been pulled out and the packing has begun. We sold off the tandem bike we have had for years, bought as an anniversary present while we still lived in Colorado. It went to a couple--who surprised me when I walked out and saw the woman to be quite pregnant--who were thrilled at the potential of a tandem bike. You could practically see their visions of Sunday Parkways, trips to the farmer's market and Saturday Market, riverfront rides, and all with a Burley in tow, dancing in their eyes. We sold the Land Rover last month just before Father's Day to a young family who already had plans to take it camping and to the river and up to Mt. Hood. Admittedly, these visions were carefully crafted, drawn up on Craigslist and sold to them.
With our work in advertising, we write some pretty banging copy. Target those families, young adults, campers/outdoorsy types. Scott writes the foundation; I add the panache and polish. It works very well, and nothing stays around for long once it is posted. Fingers crossed this continues to be the pattern.
We promise fun, but all of our goods are in great shape, too. Scott restores the items, particularly items like the vehicle and bike, on the standard that it shouldn't break down or endanger a mother with her children in the car. It's a good policy, really, and it finds its way into each blurb we write up.
Price it to sell; make it move itself. We won't have a garage sale--at least I don't think we will--but the small sales have been working. Chairs, the couch, the dining set, these are the things to go next. The less we can move, the better from what we have been reading and researching. The move is long, and we will be the ones hauling it this time, which is quite different from the move to Portland when we stored the house for three months and then had it shipped to us. This time, it will all be following along with us, packed into the U-Haul truck with the car, carefully covered and bound, in tow.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Covered wagons and mackinaws
I slowly reread through my old boxed set of Little House on the Prairie books over the last year. I loved these books when I was younger, and partly in rereading them is trying to figure out why I loved them as much as my dog-eared, yellow paged, broken spine books suggest. And for those dear readers who call sacrilege here, stuff it. My books are well-worn and well-loved, even if held together with tape.
What has struck me this time around, and twenty-odd years after reading this the first time, are the interesting tensions occurring in them. I still connect with Laura's desire to keep moving and her inner fight to not be settled down, with Charles Ingalls's need for space and adventure--even at the expense and detriment to his growing family of women. I still think Mary is boring as she has always been, even as she confesses her difficulties with being good, and Ma has some pretty interesting ideas for being broke and living in shanties. Carrie is timid and flat with those tears always brimming in her blue cornflower eyes, and Grace is just there. Ma, despite all of these concerns and expectations, still follows her husband to the ends and edges of society, dragging her little china shepherdess with them, finally putting her foot down in the Dakotas and refusing to go on to Oregon. If Ma yearns and aches at all, we see this only in quiet, subtle ways, as when she rushes to get a letter back to family or is uncertain about the styles of women's clothing that are fashionable in the east. It is Laura, as we all know, who is the lifeblood of these books: she feels, she aches, she fights, she lives in a way that the other female characters do not or cannot in these books. Laura didn't fear the things that Ma and Mary did. She was fearful but often bucked up for the others, squaring her shoulders and marching on. She struggled with being female and being constricted and confined by the work, bonnets, shoes, and a corset. She didn't want to go to school, she didn't want to teach, and she didn't rest comfortably in the expectations that females faced.
Apparently not fulfilled with this series, I reread Mrs. Mike and The Snow Child--Mrs. Mike before our decision to move was made and The Snow Child after. Long, cold, heartbreaking winters followed by summers of endless sunshine (and mosquitoes) dotted with tender moments and awe fill these pages. I think this is also why I enjoy fantasy and sci-fi; those stories explore a different edge, but still seek that vastness and the placement of humanity within that. In each of these, there is a nudging at words to describe the vastness of nature, the sweeping scenery, and the feeling of being utterly small and insignificant in the great march of life and this world. It isn't grasping, but I imagine more a holding of the words and letting them sift through the fingers, like sand at the beach. That word is the tiny shell that doesn't fall through but fits well, if a bit imprecisely, because how do we really write pure emotion or experience?
In a world driven by ego and self, and I realize the difficulty of trying to explain this as I write a blog people read that is its own way of being seen, it is this smallness, this insignificance that I crave. There is an indifference that comes with living in the city with neighbors stacked on top of each other, but not necessarily insignificance because we strive to be seen in so many ways, both literally ("don't hit me with your car!") and metaphorically ("I just wish someone would care enough..."). Our neighbors see us through the fence, hear us through open windows, and I often feel watched, whether this is done intentionally or unintentionally.
I want to stretch--something I have apparently been doing or trying to do for much of my existence, according to my mother--and to carve out our own little space. I long for and tremble at the thought of this very big, looming trip in a way that the move four years ago didn't leave me feeling, much as I imagine these fictional characters and the real women they are founded on (at least in two of the stories) must have felt. I can shed some things that I have struggled against here and continue to shape me, reshifting priorities and visions. It's a grand adventure, miles, and cold, and mosquitoes, and all.
What has struck me this time around, and twenty-odd years after reading this the first time, are the interesting tensions occurring in them. I still connect with Laura's desire to keep moving and her inner fight to not be settled down, with Charles Ingalls's need for space and adventure--even at the expense and detriment to his growing family of women. I still think Mary is boring as she has always been, even as she confesses her difficulties with being good, and Ma has some pretty interesting ideas for being broke and living in shanties. Carrie is timid and flat with those tears always brimming in her blue cornflower eyes, and Grace is just there. Ma, despite all of these concerns and expectations, still follows her husband to the ends and edges of society, dragging her little china shepherdess with them, finally putting her foot down in the Dakotas and refusing to go on to Oregon. If Ma yearns and aches at all, we see this only in quiet, subtle ways, as when she rushes to get a letter back to family or is uncertain about the styles of women's clothing that are fashionable in the east. It is Laura, as we all know, who is the lifeblood of these books: she feels, she aches, she fights, she lives in a way that the other female characters do not or cannot in these books. Laura didn't fear the things that Ma and Mary did. She was fearful but often bucked up for the others, squaring her shoulders and marching on. She struggled with being female and being constricted and confined by the work, bonnets, shoes, and a corset. She didn't want to go to school, she didn't want to teach, and she didn't rest comfortably in the expectations that females faced.
Apparently not fulfilled with this series, I reread Mrs. Mike and The Snow Child--Mrs. Mike before our decision to move was made and The Snow Child after. Long, cold, heartbreaking winters followed by summers of endless sunshine (and mosquitoes) dotted with tender moments and awe fill these pages. I think this is also why I enjoy fantasy and sci-fi; those stories explore a different edge, but still seek that vastness and the placement of humanity within that. In each of these, there is a nudging at words to describe the vastness of nature, the sweeping scenery, and the feeling of being utterly small and insignificant in the great march of life and this world. It isn't grasping, but I imagine more a holding of the words and letting them sift through the fingers, like sand at the beach. That word is the tiny shell that doesn't fall through but fits well, if a bit imprecisely, because how do we really write pure emotion or experience?
In a world driven by ego and self, and I realize the difficulty of trying to explain this as I write a blog people read that is its own way of being seen, it is this smallness, this insignificance that I crave. There is an indifference that comes with living in the city with neighbors stacked on top of each other, but not necessarily insignificance because we strive to be seen in so many ways, both literally ("don't hit me with your car!") and metaphorically ("I just wish someone would care enough..."). Our neighbors see us through the fence, hear us through open windows, and I often feel watched, whether this is done intentionally or unintentionally.
I want to stretch--something I have apparently been doing or trying to do for much of my existence, according to my mother--and to carve out our own little space. I long for and tremble at the thought of this very big, looming trip in a way that the move four years ago didn't leave me feeling, much as I imagine these fictional characters and the real women they are founded on (at least in two of the stories) must have felt. I can shed some things that I have struggled against here and continue to shape me, reshifting priorities and visions. It's a grand adventure, miles, and cold, and mosquitoes, and all.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Pura Vida (or something like that)
Some photos from our recent trip to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica for Scott's sister's wedding.
We visited the Jaguar Rescue Center
The sister's wedding day
A day at Punta Uva
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Mercury in retrograde
When life lands a punch, it's a doozy. I am over excitement and surprises; I want a nice, quiet little world tucked away from all things that set the boat to rocking. But this is life, and we always have something to contend with, don't we?
I recently faced one of the strangest experiences that left me feeling incredibly vulnerable, and suddenly, I understand much of what I've always thought I was too strong, too smart, too educated to fall for. I found myself making excuses for another's behaviors, justifying them in some sick way, and Scott had to tell me over and over that the actions I have taken are justified, that I am not blowing them out of proportion, despite what others want to play it off as. I have had to work hard to convince myself that it is okay, and then I look back on patterns of behavior, on patterns of actions, both mine and this other person's, and my stomach wrenches and I fight the gag reflex.
The anxiety that has made me sick, the nervousness I felt, the desperate desire to keep others around, are not good signs. I doubted my intuition, which has never let me down, because I feared making mountains of molehills, of distorting proportions of the situation. And I am ashamed of this and yet still terribly embarrassed that I caused an "issue," even as I was sat down and told over and over that I didn't, that my actions were warranted and necessary.
I sat and endured, buffered, and accepted that this was "how it goes" and that it was "not uncommon behavior." But I knew this wasn't true; I have had difficult, and I have worked with difficult before. This was not that; this made me uncomfortable, nervous, anxious. I knew to keep distance between, to defuse and intercede, to quell the storms as best I could. It took this person acting out in front of others and these others' very real concern for me to push me to action. And so I did; I reported the actions as we are told so often to do, I described discussions and interactions, I copied and sent emails, and I described in detail to the smallest minute the incident that made me walk to my car with my keys in hand as a weapon, contemplating if I could get a good hit in with my travel coffee mug, and realizing how very much at a disadvantage I was and how utterly vulnerable at that moment. I chastised myself for going soft in these years in Oregon. I no longer had my Chicago edge. Perhaps I just finally realized that, truthfully, I can be harmed, even being strong and aware. It finally hit home that something could happen to me, and it made me very afraid.
It is a gross culture of acceptance that I refuse to embrace and bow down within. I was actually told, by a man in a higher position of authority, that I should have done more, could have done more, and that my situation did not "rise to the threat of a risk." Never mind that all signs pointed to risk, threat, volatility, and more. Another told me that I made myself prey; I cringed as he, in an attempt to clarify a point he was trying and failing to make, yelled and threw a chair to make a demonstration that was appalling, given that I already felt threatened by another. For the first time, I fully understood victim blaming, even in this small scale that I had to handle, and it made me sick for days. Thankfully, for my sanity and safety, others recognized and trusted my instincts, defended me, supported me and interceded for me. I have defended every action I took or didn't take, making my case as though I were the one on trial and not the one who acted and made me feel this way.
A small part of me hated me for "allowing" this to occur and for being weak. I fought the darkness, the jitters, and apprehension and uneasiness, and the stress dreams for a week. I felt I had rocked the boat, finally sending it tipping over, and I hated that. I worried I was being hyperbolic and simply failing at being able to handle this person and the situations that arose. I worried it, analyzed it, worked it over, and exhausted myself with the amount of energy that one person took out of me. I wrung my hands, stuttered; my voice pitched high, and I struggled to find words to express myself. I was frustrated. I was a wreck.
And yet, it came to an end, if a tenuous and uncomfortable one because others really did not want to deal with it. I am a bit more battered and worn for it, but it is finally over.
I recently faced one of the strangest experiences that left me feeling incredibly vulnerable, and suddenly, I understand much of what I've always thought I was too strong, too smart, too educated to fall for. I found myself making excuses for another's behaviors, justifying them in some sick way, and Scott had to tell me over and over that the actions I have taken are justified, that I am not blowing them out of proportion, despite what others want to play it off as. I have had to work hard to convince myself that it is okay, and then I look back on patterns of behavior, on patterns of actions, both mine and this other person's, and my stomach wrenches and I fight the gag reflex.
The anxiety that has made me sick, the nervousness I felt, the desperate desire to keep others around, are not good signs. I doubted my intuition, which has never let me down, because I feared making mountains of molehills, of distorting proportions of the situation. And I am ashamed of this and yet still terribly embarrassed that I caused an "issue," even as I was sat down and told over and over that I didn't, that my actions were warranted and necessary.
I sat and endured, buffered, and accepted that this was "how it goes" and that it was "not uncommon behavior." But I knew this wasn't true; I have had difficult, and I have worked with difficult before. This was not that; this made me uncomfortable, nervous, anxious. I knew to keep distance between, to defuse and intercede, to quell the storms as best I could. It took this person acting out in front of others and these others' very real concern for me to push me to action. And so I did; I reported the actions as we are told so often to do, I described discussions and interactions, I copied and sent emails, and I described in detail to the smallest minute the incident that made me walk to my car with my keys in hand as a weapon, contemplating if I could get a good hit in with my travel coffee mug, and realizing how very much at a disadvantage I was and how utterly vulnerable at that moment. I chastised myself for going soft in these years in Oregon. I no longer had my Chicago edge. Perhaps I just finally realized that, truthfully, I can be harmed, even being strong and aware. It finally hit home that something could happen to me, and it made me very afraid.
It is a gross culture of acceptance that I refuse to embrace and bow down within. I was actually told, by a man in a higher position of authority, that I should have done more, could have done more, and that my situation did not "rise to the threat of a risk." Never mind that all signs pointed to risk, threat, volatility, and more. Another told me that I made myself prey; I cringed as he, in an attempt to clarify a point he was trying and failing to make, yelled and threw a chair to make a demonstration that was appalling, given that I already felt threatened by another. For the first time, I fully understood victim blaming, even in this small scale that I had to handle, and it made me sick for days. Thankfully, for my sanity and safety, others recognized and trusted my instincts, defended me, supported me and interceded for me. I have defended every action I took or didn't take, making my case as though I were the one on trial and not the one who acted and made me feel this way.
A small part of me hated me for "allowing" this to occur and for being weak. I fought the darkness, the jitters, and apprehension and uneasiness, and the stress dreams for a week. I felt I had rocked the boat, finally sending it tipping over, and I hated that. I worried I was being hyperbolic and simply failing at being able to handle this person and the situations that arose. I worried it, analyzed it, worked it over, and exhausted myself with the amount of energy that one person took out of me. I wrung my hands, stuttered; my voice pitched high, and I struggled to find words to express myself. I was frustrated. I was a wreck.
And yet, it came to an end, if a tenuous and uncomfortable one because others really did not want to deal with it. I am a bit more battered and worn for it, but it is finally over.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Land of the Midnight Sun
Life is a funny, wicked little imp sometimes. Or maybe that is fate. Regardless, it has us laughing, crying, excited and anxious at the moment. We are a bit of a mess, and the emotions run high, rolling in waves. It is manic and disorderly, and I keep imagining us holding hands and jumping. That feeling that comes of jumping from cliffs into deep pools of water--that is what I have felt for a few days now. We are, again, at the point that brought about this blog and will shift its story once more. We are leaving Portland for bigger lands, and it feels appropriate that we begin a new month on this news.
We came back from Colorado in December and realized how much we love the PacNW. We decided at that point that we were going to start house hunting, to really become a part of Portland. And then, a funny thing began to happen over these last few months. There is a strange Portlandia effect occurring, and Portland is now a curious commercialization of its own brand. "Keep Portland Weird" means that Portland has actually become a diffused mecca for hipster refugees or a "holiday in Goa"/summer camp experience for kids from the Midwest looking for a wild romp before returning home for marriage and children. It is no longer truly edgy; it's just another place where people can be weird, but not really themselves. Perhaps caricatures of weird is more appropriate. It's exhausting and claustrophobic in what feels sudden but probably isn't, if I am honest with myself. Portland has slowly been cannibalizing itself, tearing down historical buildings for apartments and condos, franchising its very Portland establishments, and pricing out and pushing out those who were here. Portland, for us, is no longer "home".
And this move...it's scary. It's exciting but terrifying because we're leaving the lower 48. We will be packing up over the next few months and making our way up the AlCan Highway from Portland to Wasilla, Alaska to begin a new chapter, one that is wilder, bigger, and a bit more on the edge. Alaska's motto feels especially appropriate, as I am sure it did for others before: North to the Future.
We came back from Colorado in December and realized how much we love the PacNW. We decided at that point that we were going to start house hunting, to really become a part of Portland. And then, a funny thing began to happen over these last few months. There is a strange Portlandia effect occurring, and Portland is now a curious commercialization of its own brand. "Keep Portland Weird" means that Portland has actually become a diffused mecca for hipster refugees or a "holiday in Goa"/summer camp experience for kids from the Midwest looking for a wild romp before returning home for marriage and children. It is no longer truly edgy; it's just another place where people can be weird, but not really themselves. Perhaps caricatures of weird is more appropriate. It's exhausting and claustrophobic in what feels sudden but probably isn't, if I am honest with myself. Portland has slowly been cannibalizing itself, tearing down historical buildings for apartments and condos, franchising its very Portland establishments, and pricing out and pushing out those who were here. Portland, for us, is no longer "home".
And this move...it's scary. It's exciting but terrifying because we're leaving the lower 48. We will be packing up over the next few months and making our way up the AlCan Highway from Portland to Wasilla, Alaska to begin a new chapter, one that is wilder, bigger, and a bit more on the edge. Alaska's motto feels especially appropriate, as I am sure it did for others before: North to the Future.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
A story of a hawk and a snake
There is a terrifying limbo that occurs and entraps when bad news is received. My mother has this voice she uses on messages when she is delivering News with a capital N, that usually means I will have to climb onto a plane and face down hours of misery because something terrible has happened. The voice is the smallest voice of doom.
Little did I know when I posted that last post about sleep that I would spend the next several days with little to no sleep thanks to that terrible voice.
The message is usually along the lines of, "I'm going to need you to give me a call back as soon as you get this message." Early into it my stomach has plummeted to my feet, midway I'm in a cold sweat and can barely hold the phone, and by the end I'm fighting off the little dancing lights in my periphery and the ringing in the ears that means I may throw up or pass out. The trembles when I call her back are enough to shake the phone loose from my hands.
This time, though, she didn't answer when I called back. Either time. So I called my dad and was met with a rather chipper hello. The tremors calmed. If he was calm and sounded happy, then things couldn't have happened. Also, it meant he wasn't the one her call was about.
That proved to be false, though, as he explained that he was in hospital because he fainted at dinner the night before. He and I have been known to do that if our blood sugar gets too low, but this appeared not to have been that. The faint followed on an illness and indigestion, some pain. It had all the classic symptoms of a heart attack, minus the heart attack. He was expected to be released in two to three days, no worries, and we joked about the possible valve replacement years down the road:
Me: So you'd have either a pig or a 3D printed heart part?"
Him: I'm hoping for pig if it happens.
The quick release was a false hope. I got another voice of doom call on Friday. Things were bad. EKGs and a catheter revealed severe blockage of a main artery and a valve that was no longer functioning properly. It meant bypass surgery and valve replacement, which meant open heart surgery. This sent the world tilting a bit. The surgery date, though, was uncertain; I didn't want to make a move until I knew what was going on. I had to tie up some loose ends and take care of some business before I could go. Things aren't real until you're actually there, right? So if I delayed, then it wasn't real. I hoped for Tuesday. I got on a flight on Saturday and raced across the country for a Sunday surgery instead. He could have gone back at any time, and I didn't know if I would see him before the surgery (procedure just doesn't work here; it's innocuous. This was not that).
I caught the flight at 11:59pm Oregon time and landed at 10:20am Oklahoma time. I slept (the only sleep I got) for the duration of the flight from Houston to Oklahoma City. He had not been taken back, and would not, in fact, for several hours. And so we waited in pauses of laughter, somber, silent tears that escaped despite our best efforts, and jokes and stories. It was a small, rather private affair. We texted, messaged, talked to the concerned few who knew.
At 4:30 or 5:00pm, they came for him. At 10:30pm, we were able to see him. He was ventilated, tubed, wired, and beeping, but he was there and responsive, squeezing hands, blinking at us, and even winking at my mother only an hour or so after being stitched up.
The time expands and contracts weirdly in hospitals and times like these. Minutes manage to fly and trudge along simultaneously. There are strange tensions and shredded emotions as we wait for every scrap of news that comes to us through the old land line phone in the Courtyard Marriott-esque waiting room. Our jokes are dark (the body is not frozen during heart surgery nor is it the stuff of unicorns and fancies like that; the doctor is not a magician coming to whisk you away on your adventure with the magical hand wave and phrase, "Come with me"), and we dance and parry against anything that isn't hopeful.
At some point, my sister and I went home to let the dogs out and take care of house things. I can't remember when this happened, though, because it disappears into the miasma that is this species of waiting. When we were driving, we saw a hawk, large and grand, swooping and diving, to come up with a snake in its mouth. We slowed the car and paused overly long at the stop sign to watch, and I realized that it was something my dad had always done--that pause to witness nature's spectacles, brutality and wonder. It struck me enough to put a note in my phone:
A family friend stopped to chat with me while I was sitting in the waiting room yesterday. Our conversation was a two-step as we spoke about the day before (he sat with us the entire day, arriving before I did and going home just before we did).
"You know, you're dad is strong. It was never a question, for me..."
"Me either."
"I mean, I just knew...it would be okay...that he was strong enough."
"Yeah, me too. There was...nothing else it could have been."
And it was the truth.
Little did I know when I posted that last post about sleep that I would spend the next several days with little to no sleep thanks to that terrible voice.
The message is usually along the lines of, "I'm going to need you to give me a call back as soon as you get this message." Early into it my stomach has plummeted to my feet, midway I'm in a cold sweat and can barely hold the phone, and by the end I'm fighting off the little dancing lights in my periphery and the ringing in the ears that means I may throw up or pass out. The trembles when I call her back are enough to shake the phone loose from my hands.
This time, though, she didn't answer when I called back. Either time. So I called my dad and was met with a rather chipper hello. The tremors calmed. If he was calm and sounded happy, then things couldn't have happened. Also, it meant he wasn't the one her call was about.
That proved to be false, though, as he explained that he was in hospital because he fainted at dinner the night before. He and I have been known to do that if our blood sugar gets too low, but this appeared not to have been that. The faint followed on an illness and indigestion, some pain. It had all the classic symptoms of a heart attack, minus the heart attack. He was expected to be released in two to three days, no worries, and we joked about the possible valve replacement years down the road:
Me: So you'd have either a pig or a 3D printed heart part?"
Him: I'm hoping for pig if it happens.
The quick release was a false hope. I got another voice of doom call on Friday. Things were bad. EKGs and a catheter revealed severe blockage of a main artery and a valve that was no longer functioning properly. It meant bypass surgery and valve replacement, which meant open heart surgery. This sent the world tilting a bit. The surgery date, though, was uncertain; I didn't want to make a move until I knew what was going on. I had to tie up some loose ends and take care of some business before I could go. Things aren't real until you're actually there, right? So if I delayed, then it wasn't real. I hoped for Tuesday. I got on a flight on Saturday and raced across the country for a Sunday surgery instead. He could have gone back at any time, and I didn't know if I would see him before the surgery (procedure just doesn't work here; it's innocuous. This was not that).
I caught the flight at 11:59pm Oregon time and landed at 10:20am Oklahoma time. I slept (the only sleep I got) for the duration of the flight from Houston to Oklahoma City. He had not been taken back, and would not, in fact, for several hours. And so we waited in pauses of laughter, somber, silent tears that escaped despite our best efforts, and jokes and stories. It was a small, rather private affair. We texted, messaged, talked to the concerned few who knew.
At 4:30 or 5:00pm, they came for him. At 10:30pm, we were able to see him. He was ventilated, tubed, wired, and beeping, but he was there and responsive, squeezing hands, blinking at us, and even winking at my mother only an hour or so after being stitched up.
The time expands and contracts weirdly in hospitals and times like these. Minutes manage to fly and trudge along simultaneously. There are strange tensions and shredded emotions as we wait for every scrap of news that comes to us through the old land line phone in the Courtyard Marriott-esque waiting room. Our jokes are dark (the body is not frozen during heart surgery nor is it the stuff of unicorns and fancies like that; the doctor is not a magician coming to whisk you away on your adventure with the magical hand wave and phrase, "Come with me"), and we dance and parry against anything that isn't hopeful.
At some point, my sister and I went home to let the dogs out and take care of house things. I can't remember when this happened, though, because it disappears into the miasma that is this species of waiting. When we were driving, we saw a hawk, large and grand, swooping and diving, to come up with a snake in its mouth. We slowed the car and paused overly long at the stop sign to watch, and I realized that it was something my dad had always done--that pause to witness nature's spectacles, brutality and wonder. It struck me enough to put a note in my phone:
A family friend stopped to chat with me while I was sitting in the waiting room yesterday. Our conversation was a two-step as we spoke about the day before (he sat with us the entire day, arriving before I did and going home just before we did).
"You know, you're dad is strong. It was never a question, for me..."
"Me either."
"I mean, I just knew...it would be okay...that he was strong enough."
"Yeah, me too. There was...nothing else it could have been."
And it was the truth.
photo courtesy of Abby Coyle Photo Artistry
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Waking dreams
We have these weeks every now and then that really do us in; we trade off who gets to sleep and we revert back to an early college diet (yesterday was donuts and pizza with beer). This is one of those weeks.
I have seen the sun come up three times this week, and it's only Wednesday. No, Thursday now. I have not seen the sun rise because I am an early riser; quite the opposite, actually. I have watched, as that cold, clammy chill just before dawn creeps over my skin and makes my already strung tight body convulse with the shivers, the dark night fade, turning from shadows and depth to a foggy gray and then into a fully blush. The sun, damn him, wakes up shining. I am usually whimpering by this point, frantically and madly dashing out words and letters and numbers, hoping it's coherent enough to hide how close I'm clipping my deadlines.
I know I have at least one, perhaps two, more days of this. I am fighting down all that threatens to flood into my mind because there is not enough room or time to deal with it at the moment. Anxiety? I'm so sorry, but you'll have to take a number and hang out behind crazy, despair, uncertainty and fully coherent back there.
My Kindle is lonely, my own writing quietly huddling in the corner, lurking and teasing little snippets of guilt here and there. Scott and I keep teasing that we really just need to give up sleep to maximize the time in the day. Think of all that time given to dreaming. While I find my dreams to often be exciting, if quite confusing, I could make do without them in lieu of more time. They are often pretty epic:
And then there was an ambulance, and we got into the ambulance because this plane just tumbled out of the sky, end over end. Somersaulted down the field/runway (it was just a field but then it became a runway) and there was destruction. THINGS WERE JUST FALLING OUT OF THE SKY! So we stole an ambulance, but we only stole the ambulance after these giant blue beams of light came shining down from the sky. AND THEN PEOPLE WERE OBLITERATED. THEY JUST DIED. The ambulance we stole because it was better than a Hummer; it was a beast, and it could go anywhere, plus it had medical supplies. We had to drive around collecting people, and some were going to meet us at the safe house....[a lot more happened here but it gets confusing and really hard to explain--you try justifying why do you what you do in dreams]
Eventually there were some dinosaur-like creatures (aliens?) hunting us, and the safe house was compromised. Everything was in tones of brown and sepia inside the safe house.
The trouble with these dreams, though, is they leave me exhausted. I'm never sure if I would have been better off just staying up and watching the sun rise and then falling into that deep, dark sleep of the utterly exhausted for just two hours or going on to bed and wrestling with whatever my brain decides to throw at me for a full eight hours. For the moment, I suppose it doesn't really matter; eight hours of sleep this week (and possibly next week, too) is only a dream.
I have seen the sun come up three times this week, and it's only Wednesday. No, Thursday now. I have not seen the sun rise because I am an early riser; quite the opposite, actually. I have watched, as that cold, clammy chill just before dawn creeps over my skin and makes my already strung tight body convulse with the shivers, the dark night fade, turning from shadows and depth to a foggy gray and then into a fully blush. The sun, damn him, wakes up shining. I am usually whimpering by this point, frantically and madly dashing out words and letters and numbers, hoping it's coherent enough to hide how close I'm clipping my deadlines.
I know I have at least one, perhaps two, more days of this. I am fighting down all that threatens to flood into my mind because there is not enough room or time to deal with it at the moment. Anxiety? I'm so sorry, but you'll have to take a number and hang out behind crazy, despair, uncertainty and fully coherent back there.
My Kindle is lonely, my own writing quietly huddling in the corner, lurking and teasing little snippets of guilt here and there. Scott and I keep teasing that we really just need to give up sleep to maximize the time in the day. Think of all that time given to dreaming. While I find my dreams to often be exciting, if quite confusing, I could make do without them in lieu of more time. They are often pretty epic:
And then there was an ambulance, and we got into the ambulance because this plane just tumbled out of the sky, end over end. Somersaulted down the field/runway (it was just a field but then it became a runway) and there was destruction. THINGS WERE JUST FALLING OUT OF THE SKY! So we stole an ambulance, but we only stole the ambulance after these giant blue beams of light came shining down from the sky. AND THEN PEOPLE WERE OBLITERATED. THEY JUST DIED. The ambulance we stole because it was better than a Hummer; it was a beast, and it could go anywhere, plus it had medical supplies. We had to drive around collecting people, and some were going to meet us at the safe house....[a lot more happened here but it gets confusing and really hard to explain--you try justifying why do you what you do in dreams]
Eventually there were some dinosaur-like creatures (aliens?) hunting us, and the safe house was compromised. Everything was in tones of brown and sepia inside the safe house.
The trouble with these dreams, though, is they leave me exhausted. I'm never sure if I would have been better off just staying up and watching the sun rise and then falling into that deep, dark sleep of the utterly exhausted for just two hours or going on to bed and wrestling with whatever my brain decides to throw at me for a full eight hours. For the moment, I suppose it doesn't really matter; eight hours of sleep this week (and possibly next week, too) is only a dream.
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