a new bike or an iPad?

I have a few hundred extra, unbudgeted bucks.  Someone stole my Cannondale out of the bike room in my building's bike room. There is a code to get into the room so it was probably someone who lives here and owns a bike. Yuck. It was about $700 bucks worth of bike, more if you count the two locks, the bike helmet, the special seat, lights, water bottle and mount, ankle wraps that I kept wrapped on the frame.  I loved everything about that bike.

Or an iPad?  I don't need an iPad. I have a perfectly good, one-year-old MacBook Pro. But I covet the new technology.

Decisions decisions.

Or I could pay down a little debt.  I owe a couple friends some money, not much, but I do owe.

I have just decided. Pay the debt. Wait for the bike. I don't need an iPad.

a memory from raising my child

When my daughter was two years old, we still lived in Omaha. A Fuddruckers restaurant came to town.  Fuddruckers might still exist, but I haven't seen one in years.  I only patronized a place like Fuddfuckers, as I usually referred to the place, to please my daughter.  Fuddruckers mostly sells hamburgers, fries and drinks. Their special thing is the toppings bar for the burgers, and, in the mid-eighties in Omaha, anyway, games that cost money to play. The restaurant had a noisy game arcade.

For my daughter, the favorite feature was the way they announced your name when your burger was ready. "Rosie your burger is ready!"  Hearing her name called in the exotic environment thrilled her.
They took names for each burger so my name was called and her name was called. Thrill city. For a two year old.

She loved to hear her name, then rush to claim her food, and then carefully select her toppings.

My memories of Fuddfuckers are a little faint. I remember that I always called the place Fuddfuckers, pretending I didn't know I was saying it wrong.  I always used profanity in front of my child. I decided, while still pregnant, that I would not be a hypocrit in the way I talked to her, that I would talk to her like anyone else.  No baby talk and no edited profanity withheld. So I said Fuddfuckers, and every time I did, it titillated her a bit.

We loved Fuddfuckers. The clanging, pinging game machines, the endless announcement of ready burgers, background music. A blaring cacophony of suburban, middle class exotica, an escape from our very dull life in very dull Omaha.

At this time, Rosie was really into She-Ra, Princess of Power, which was a cartoon show. At the time, He-Man was a popular boys cartoon and She-Ra was an attempt to  cater to little girls, to sell them junk at commercial breaks, to appeal to the different market.  I didn't let Rosie watch it at home but she spent every weekend with her father during the two years of our custody battle. She watched it there. And she talked about She-Ra, I heard her, I tuned in.

My point about the visitation is that she spent a lot of time with different rules. Her father and his mother, who really took care of her during the visitations, let her watch a lot of crap on television. And Rosie was in love with She-Ra, Princess of Power.

At Fuddfuckers, the kids at the register, very young kids themselves, sixteen, seventeen, were happy to write down 'She-Ra, Princess of Power' on the burger order, and then to call out 'She-Ra, Princess of Power, your burger is ready".

I love all the easy, little ways you can make a kid happy.  It made me happy to make her happy.

door-to-door

I live in an almost new apartment building, less than two years old. In the first year, lots of kids in the building came around selling stuff for school fundraisers.  My policy is to buy from every kid who asks me. I will buy raffle tickets for things I don't want and things I would like to win. I will buy at least one box of cookies -- more if it is Girl Scout cookies because I used to hump those as a kid and I buy them for the memories -- I also hustled GS cookies for my kid.

A time or two, since moving here, I have even just given a few dollars to a kid looking to go on a class trip to D.C. or something like that. I totally want every kid to go on such a school trip. Wouldn't it be awful to miss out because your folks were tapped out?

The door-to-door sales campaigns have died out.  I don't think any building children have knocked on my door to sell something this school year, thus far.

But last year about this time, a brother and a sister were selling fifteen dollar boxes of cookies. They looked like really crappy cookies. And it was irritating that the school fundraisers had chosen such large bundles.  Fifteen bucks would buy me three or four boxes of Girl Scout cookies and most of those are good cookies. Mostly, I give cookies away, esp. cheap crap manufactured ones.

That fifteen dollar box of cookies looked like baked sawdust dusted in crystalize sugar crumbs.

Still, I bought a box. I didn't have cash. The kids balked at taking my check and I said "Well, that's all I have, a check or nothing. Or you can come back."

They decided to take my check. They cashed it.

And I never got the cookies.

I didn't take their names or apartment numbers.  I don't remember who they are.

Another time, a girl was selling raffle tickets. As I counted out my money, after agreeing to buy two, she began to write her name on the tickets I was about to pay for.  I pointed out that the point was to write down my name so I had a chance to win. I got the distinct impression that she thought the point was to buy herself as many chances to win as possible. She did let me write my name but something felt wrong.

So. Do I buy this year when the holiday hustle picks up? Someone will be selling gift wrap, for sure.

Variations on the Word Love

This is a word we use to plug
holes with.  It's the right size for those warm
blanks in spech, for those red heart-
shapes vacancies on the page that look nothing
like realhearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it.  We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions.  There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
cancook with it too.  How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing thesoldiers raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us.  This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside.  You can
hold on or let go.

Margaret Atwood

Aunt Bea from Mayberry

Several years ago, a new friend wrote me an email and said I reminded him of Aunt Bea.  He said he was imagining that I liked to wear dresses, which I do, and he already knew that I liked to nurture others.

I was insulted being compared to Aunt Bea. I am fat, like her, but she is old and sexless.  I was insulted being identified with a sexless, selfless woman who gave to others and had no life of her own.

Plus I was hot for the guy who said it to me and him comparing me to Aunt Bea gave me a karmic indicator that I did not want to hear.  I wanted him to want me. He wanted, I guess, homemade pie.

I have been in a dizzy tizzie about the aforementioned male for about four years.  I've been out of my mind.  He was living with someone when I met him. That was okay with me. She got him first, fair is fair.  It was fun, to let my feelings soar and roar without having to actually risk getting involved or having sex.  I had a great time, mooning about him.  And I got to see him once in a great while, and then I would feed off of that glory, day in and out.  It was actually a good time.

Then his woman kicked him out. He likes to pick women who own houses, living in the San Francisco Bay Area as we do.  He likes women with some wealth.  He likes skinny women. Pretty women. I don't know what I had been thinking. I have no money, I am fat, I am not a looker. What was I thinking?

I wasn't. I was out of my mind.

Then when he left her, a few weeks later, he called me up and he said "let's take this friendship as far as it can go" and he said "let's do work together like our friends Ken and Barbie do'.  Ken, his business partner, and Barbie had recent fallen in love and I knew exactly what kind of 'work' they were doing. They were doing the work of relationship.  Yes, they were having sex the the work stuff was relationship work.  Ken had said "We are both doing lots of work, lots of old stuff is coming up, lots of healing and it's great, it's all great. But it work. Hard work, you now?"

So I did know.

But then when we started to draw close, he got scared and jackrabbited away. He broke off with me by email. And when I left him some timid, polite voice messages asking him to call me, to just give me a few minutes because I had cracked myself open, stumbled into a deep wound, and I wanted a chance to pull myself back from the brink. And he said that I had debased myself when I had asked him to call me more than once.  I didn't beg. I spoke calmly and politely and said "Please call me.  I only need a few minutes.  I am trying to speak pleasantly and this is how I will talk if you call" And he wrote back and said I had debased myself when I had asked to get my needs met.

He had been a coward. He got scared. And me, complete moron that I seem determined to be in perpetuity, I actualy had empathy for him.  I keened as I imagined him suffering because I had feelings and needs.  I am such a selfish cunt, eh?  I wanted to get my needs met.

And then, two years later, when I was being an idiot yet again and talking to him, I said there were lots of stories that I had withheld over the course of our friendship. And I was talking about the big story that had come up, the one that frightened him into breaking up with me by email.  You know how it is. People decide to get close and they meet their shadow. He had fled like a wounded jackrabbit.  But then, when I said "there are stories I wasn't able to tell you" and the supercilious slime said, superciliously, "You should have taken self responsibility for getting your needs met" and I said "what was I supposed to do, stalk you in San Francisco, shout out my story as I followed you down the block?" I reminded him that he had refused to talk to me, that he had ignored voice and email requests that he call. And he said "I will listen now"

And, moron that I am (only when it comes to males), I trusted him.  I thought it over and realized I still really wanted to tell him a story. So I called and asked him to make an appointment so I could tell him. He did not return my call. He ignored my email requests. I kept calling and eventually I reached him and first he said he had just gotten up and then when I said "can we schedule a good time to talk' he said he didn't have time to schedule.

I am very hurt and very sad.  I let him sucker punch me again. He set me up.

My best friend P told me he would. I asked her 'why would someone treat someone like that?  Why would they set someone up?' and she said she didn't know but that it was clear to her that he was never going to give me what I wanted and he got some kind of satisfaction out of seeing me dance like a circus pony.  She didn't say circus pony. That was me. But you catch my drift.

special glasses

"Special Glasses" by Billy Collins

 

I had to send away for them

because they are not available in any store.

 

They look the same as any sunglasses

with a light tint and silvery frames,

but instead of filtering out the harmful

rays of the sun,

 

they filter out the harmful sight of you --

you on the approach,

you waiting at my bus stop,

you, face in the evening window.

 

Every morning I put them on

and step out the side door

whistling a melody of thanks to my nose

and my ears for holding them in place, just so,

 

singing a song of gratitude

to the lens grinder at his heavy bench

and to the very lenses themselves

because they allow it all to come in, all but you.

 

How they know the difference

between the green hedges, the stone walls,

and you is beyond me,

 

yet the school busses flashing in the rain

do come in, as well as the postman waving

and the mother and daughter dogs next door,

 

and then there is the tea kettle

about to play its chord—

everything sailing right in but you, girl.

 

Yes, just as the night air passes through the screen,

but not the mosquito,

and as water swirls down the drain,

but not the eggshell,

so the flowering trellis and the moon

pass through my special glasses, but not you.

 

Let us keep it this way, I say to myself,

as I lay my special glasses on the night table,

pull the chain on the lamp,

and say a prayer—unlike the song—

that I will not see you in my dreams.

a lemon moon

My daughter's birthday is at the end of June so she never got to celebrate it at school.

One year, she was at Girl Scout camp during her birthday. The camp prohibited all sweets so I brought the largest watermelon I could find for her cabin to celebrate. The cooks in the kitchen made a mistake and cut up the melon for a regular meal, ruining her birthday treat on her first birthday away from home. She was disappointed. I was devastated. I had driven a couple hundred miles, roundtrip, to get that watermelon to her.

One year, in, I think, the 5th grade, we celebrated her 'half' birthday, the halfway point in the year between her birthdays, in late February. I didn't want to be ordinary and do cupcakes. I special ordered a large, crescent moon of a cookie. It was yellow because it was a tart lemon cookie, with tart lemon frosting. It was a gobsmacking glorious cookie, the kind that would sell for a few dollars a piece nowadays.

When I discovered these lemon moons, the bakery was selling them for about a dollar apiece. They were small half moons, about two inches long. The baker, however, who made our special order lemon moons chose to make gigantic cookies: each cookie was the equivalent mass of about five of the cookies I had ordered. I had prepaid. We got those gigantic cookies for a fraction of what they should have cost.

They were so sweet that none of the children had managed to eat an entire one. And Katie's teacher teased me about giving the children so much sugar. And he teased me that he had shared his cookie with his two children during their lunch break -- and still had leftovers.

Those lemon moon cookies were a lovely, magical gift in bleak midwinter February.

I was just in the Oakland Whole Foods. Suddenly, I craved a lemon cookie. They had some cookies on sale called 'lemon lush'. I knew, at a glance, that the lemon lush would not sate my desire.

I think those lemon moons, from long ago, were a bit like shortbread, with lots of lemony bits in the batter and a very tart lemon frosting. If I had anyone to bake for, I might try to replicate them. Gosh, they were delicious. I won't make them. Too much trouble for one diabetic who shouldn't eat them anyway.

Maybe I will look for a lemon-frosted scone. Sometimes they sell them at my Peets.

there is a solitude of space

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself --
Finite infinity.


Emily Dickinson, of course

W. H. Auden

This poem is almost not great . . . nope, it's great. I am looking for poems about misery, if anyone has suggestions.


Vintage

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Alice Oswald, great poet

Alice Oswald, a poem you should know if you do not (she is British and not yet famous), has just published a new long poem. Here is an excerpt of A SLEEPWALK ON THE SEVERN, published by Faber & Faber on March 5, 2009. I haven't check yet but I am sure you can buy it at alibris.com.

The excerpt. .. the poem is set at night, on the River Severn (Alice loves nature):

A SLEEPWALK ON THE SEVERN


Flat stone sometimes lit sometimes not
One among many moodswung creatures
That have settled in this beautiful
Uncountry of an Estuary

Swans pitching your wings
In the reedy layby of a vacancy
Where the house of the sea
Can be set up quickly and taken down in an hour

All you flooded and stranded weeds whose workplace
Is both a barren mudsite and a speeded up garden
Full of lake offerings and slabs of light
Which then unwills itself to listen

All you crabs in the dark alleys of the wall
All you mudswarms ranging up and down
I notice you are very alert and worn out
Skulking about and grabbing what you can

Listen this is not the ordinary surface river
This is not river at all this is something
Like a huge repeating mechanism
Banging and banging the jetty

Very hard to define, most close in kind
To the mighty angels of purgatory
Who come solar-powered into darkness
Using no other sails than their shining wings

Yes this is the moon this hurrying
Muscular unsolid unstillness
This endless wavering in whose engine
I too am living.

it aint easy being brilliant

The air is thinner. It's a little isolating. It is a lot of fun, though, to think and see, dream, feel, love, see more. Love more.

I think I have written about Luciferic vortexes before. I am caught in one right now. I am in a mobius orbit, moving closer to the love of the gods and goddesses. Resistance is futile. I will be love. I will be loved. I will be loving. I am love. Closer. Closer still.

I am Goddess.

So are you.

back in the swim

Finally, I returned to my local swimming pool. I haven't been swimming in Mountain View for an entire month. I did swim one day last week while I was out of town. I only swam half an hour on Friday. Today, I gutted out forty five minutes. And now, it's 8 p.m. and I am falling asleep.

Gosh, it felt good to resume to my normal routine. I walked to the pool. Then I walked to the grocery store. Then I hopped a bus to the drug store. Then I walked to the post office. And, finally, I took a bus home. If I had walked all of these errands, I would have walked about ten miles. As it is, I walked, maybe, five miles. I am feeling a little guilty. I was inactive long enough that it affected my fitness. Gosh, I am drained.

Still, being out and about today, doing dull, ordinary things, well, I felt like me again.

It helps that it is sunny again. My tan had faded. This evening, my skin has that sun-kissed feeling, the very sleight burn of fair skin out in the sun a smidge too long. It is, generally, a good feeling.

I was going to try and push myself to do an hour but after twenty laps, I had a bad headache.

This is such a boring post. I have heard from a few friends who became aware that I had been way sick. I love it when people who care about me inquire about my wellbeing.

I took a nap today. It's only 8 p.m. I am going to bed right now.

On the mend. It feels great.

One more thing: it is fun to be hailed by my swim buddies. Everyone had heard I had been sick. I love having people care about me. Pete doesn't swim on Tuesdays but I ran into him at Whole Foods. It is a sign that I am knitting myself into a community when I run into people I know at the grocery store. I had strong urges to give Pete and hug, even to kiss him chastely. . . but I didn't. I write a good game but I am shy. Pete said that he had heard I was sick, that he had worried about me. And then he said 'how do you feel, you look like you don't feel so great'. I

Lake Woe-Is-Me

Goddamm.

Goddamm.

I was up most of the night. I just went downtown to return some movies to the library. The overdue fine is a dollar a day, per DVD. I renewed them once. I couldn't renew them again.

I am so crabby. Worn down. I am so mixed up about being sick. Am I sick? Or am I imagining it? I am so tired. So very, very tired.

Once I start moving, though, I do all right. It is nice to be out in the sunshine. Gosh, it feels like the whole world has changed since last I was well. It warmed up. Blossoms everywhere. Daffodils. Birds of paradise. Some big flowering trees are flowering. I don't know what they are.

Wah. I want. I want so many things that I do not have. I think I am sick because I want.

When I was a kid, I survived my whacko mother, well, survive might be putting too much positive spin on my story. I avoided more damage by needing nothing. I couldn't even let myself ask for things for Christmas. I would try to ask for humble little things. And, of course, I got positive reinforcement for asking for a book for Christmas. I never asked for a doll. Deep down, so far down that it was not conscious, not at all conscious, I wanted dolls.

My best friend, Tammy, she had dolls and was very generous about sharing them with me. She even let me bring her dolls to my house. My mom hated Tammy (she hated Tammy's mother, which amounted to the same thing). Mom liked to rant about the stupid presents Peony Montag bought stupid Tammy. Weren't they stupid to want dolls?

One year, Tammy's grandmother gave me a Barbi doll. I loved that doll. And I loved that woman for giving it to me. But I behaved like I did not want the doll. My mom went ballistic when Tammy's grandmother gave me a Barbi doll. She felt, and probably correctly, that Tammy's grandmother was judging her. Mom was embarassed. So was I. Finally, I had a doll but I never played with it. Eventually, I kept it over at Tammy's. I could not play Barbie dolls in front of my mom. My mother said Barbie dolls perpetuated bad female images and she was right. But I was still a little girl.

Some time after I got that Barbie doll, my mom announced that she was going to spend $100 on each child for Christmas. She said we could all place our orders, she would buy us exactly what we asked for. For some reason, I believed it. I poured over the Sears catalogue for many, many hours, carefully choosing how to spend my hundred dollars. I factored in sales tax, shipping costs. In my fantasy, I spent the entire amount on Barbie outfits. I had so much fun picking them out. When I was very sure which ones I wanted, I presented the lists to my mother. I was such an idiot. I must have had some weird issues. I so believed she was going to do what she said and get us exactly what we wanted. My mother hated Santa Claus. She didn't like to go along with the Santa Claus bullshit at all. Her hundred dollar game was really her way of scorning Santa Claus. Also, she was probably angry with my dad, who always bought us way too much stuff for Christmas. Way, way too much stuff. She probably came up with that hundred dollar plan as a futile effort to control my dad's spending.

So I put in the order, with mom. And I did not ask for anything else. I expected mom to keep her word. One of the incentives for her hundred dollar plan was that we were supposed to make a list of what we wanted, keeping her budget in mind and then no nagging, no pleading.

I kept my end of the bargain. I made my selections. I gave her the list of Barbie outfits I had chosen. I thought long and hard about going strictly with Barbie clothes. There was plenty of other things I could have asked for. But I believed this was my one chance to spend money, to direct the purchase. I so totally believed her.

I sincerely expected to get ten new Barbie outfits for Christmas. I couldn't believe the magic in that. Tammy and I talked

I've lost my mind

I have lost whatever was left of my mind.

My apartment is pitted out. I've been sick about two weeks. I get sloppy when I am sick. When I don't have enough energy to walk across the room to get a drink, a drink I am just about desparate for, well, gosh, I don't stop to put anything away. I drop things in their tracks.

I am interested in food. I don't exactly feel hungry. I am bored. Food is something to do. But my kitchen is all clutter, dirty cups and saucers. It is too much trouble. I have never been able to cook in a messy kitchen. You clean, first, right? I am feeling a mild panic, thinking about all the work that lies between me and food. Even if I wake up tomorrow and declare myself well, gosh, it seems like it will take days for me to tidy up enough to do food prep.

Laundry is not a problem. I have tons of clothes. I can go weeks without doing laundry, esp. since for the past two weeks, I have been wearing the same things for many days in a row.

I have dirty clothes dropped all over the apartment. Cups and saucers all over. Empty water bottles that I tried to drop in the recycle bag and I missed. Tea bag wrappers, kleenex.

I am not a very messy person but right now I am surrounded by two weeks of untidiness.

Yesterday, I was very excited. I had called my doctor and been promised she would phone in a prescription. they told me to wait until 6 p.m. to check with my pharmacy. At 6 p.m. I learned that she had prescribed a cough syrup.

I know that

something wicked this way comes

Ray Bradbury's 1962 novel, Something Wicked This Way comes, deeply affected me when I read it.  I think I read it when I was bout twelve, which meant I read it about 1965.  I am surprised to learn, as I just did this afternoon, that this novel was only published in the nineteen sixties.  I read very little contemporary fiction in grammar school. There are so many 'classics' for children to read.  I dedicated myself to reading everything that anyone said was good. I don't know how Ray Bradbury entered my system.  I am pretty sure he wasn't promoted at my provincial Catholic grammar school.

When my daughter was growing up, I tried to gift her all the books that had been important to me as a child. I always bought Katie lots of books. She had a hard time reading library books. She fretted about the germs of strangers.   When Katie was ten, in the fifth grade, her therapist diagnosed her as obsessive-compulsive, then he referred us to a psychiatrist to 'manage' her personality disorder.  Both Katie and I recoiled at the idea of psychotropic meds for a kid but we made an appointment to meet with the shrink, to see what he had to say, to sense into the idea.  Neither of us expected that we would go the med route.  Both of knew my Katie struggled.

I knew as soon as we entered the waiting room of the psychiatrist that Katie would never return.  The waiting room was dirty.  This was not a public clinic. It was in a medical office building. It was a private psychiatric practice.  The carpet was noticeably dirty.  I am not OCD. I am not very fussy about someone else's carpet.  If that carpet was dirty to my unfussy eyes, I knew, the place was unbearably filthy for my kid.  I knew we might as well leave without seeing the doc, knew she would never agree to come back but, for reasons I no longer recall, I felt like we had to stay for the meeting.  Perhaps my insurance would have charged me if I stood the doctor up whereas if we met him, then our insurance would cover things.  I don't recall.  I just remember beging creeped out in that waiting room, trying to hide my discomfort from my obsessive daughter. As if.

The doc kept us waiting way long.   He came into the examination room, after keeping us waiting far beyond a reasonable amount of time. He was very fat, he reeked of cigarette smoke and he leaned over my daughter (surely her records indicated she was OCD?) and hugged her.

She cried out, pushed him back and said "Please, mom, let's get out of here."

"Fine with me, honey," I said as I rose, gathering my coat and bag, she doing the same.

"I think you are making a mistake," he said, "I think you should give me a chance. I don't think you should indulge your daughter like this."

"I would normally try to overlook your dirty waiting room, your surly receptionist, your keeping us waiting and even your cigarette smoke, even though you must have kept us waiting so you could smoke that cigarette, after  you had already kept us waiting way too long, but I can't overlook the fact that you are a psychiatrist, you are supposed to know that you were meeting a new patient, a child, with a personality disorder for the first time and that you touched her before you had exchanged names.  You touched her."

I knew, Katie didn't have to say anything except 'get me out of here' that she had noticed all the same things that had creeped me out.  

touch you all over maybe touch your flame which is me

I want to touch every part of your body with every part of mine. Lips over everything, yes, of course. But also knee over everything, elbow, forearm. I want to touch everything there is to physically touch of you with everything physical in me. I want to be ignited by your flame, which is my flame, which is me.

I understand sex for the first time. I know desire for the first time. Before, I had sex and I enjoyed it. And I knew some physical desire, although not much.

But then, in june 2006, I experienced desire. I want you inside me. Suddenly I knew what it would have felt like to have carried a baby co-created by someone I loved. Oh my gosh, it would have been almost unbearably wonderful to have had your flame inside me for nine months. Oh my gosh. In the first moments when I knew desire, I also knew much grief because I can't have any more babies, I can't have you inside me for nine months.

I have had to settle for loving you. No touching. I don't even get to see your face much. sometimes I love you so much, I am so aware of the flame of you, that it seems almost unnecessary to be physically near you.

I came, just about a year ago, to accept that I am about as married as a person can be. I decided I was going to have to love you as you shared our life with Karen. My man sleeping with a woman named Karen. I thought it was unbearable but, as I am forced to learn and relearn, nothing is unbearable. I think I learned more about unconditional love last January than in the rest of my life altogether.

We saw one another last January. We went to the Kiefer show. You picked me up at Palo Alto Caltrain. Karen called and you said you had to pick it up, you said 'it's my honey". I had mixed reactions. Mostly, I cringed because she was not your honey, even I knew that. I cringed for you because it seemed to me that you were trying to force it to be so but when you said 'it's my honey', gosh, I felt clearly that she was not and I felt a little bad for you that you were faking it like that, I thought you were faking it for your own benefit, not mine. But also I cringed because your honey had my man.

stumbling and fumbling

Something unusual has come over me. Normally, I am great with detail but in the past couple weeks, I have become a stumbling fumbling doofus. I am having trouble managing the minor administrative details of my applications for MFA programs in creative writing. Very minor administrative details. Minor. Very minor. And I am flubbing them, missing deadlines, failing to track basic detail.

It is so weird for me to be befuddled, at least with detail, that I don't have the problem-solving skill to fix my confusion. My mind becomes pink cotton candy when I try to pause and think about what I have to do to fix my pixilation.

Maybe I am not supposed to apply? Maybe my best self is trying to send me a signal?

Or maybe dementia has set in and I am going to be a goofball for the rest of my life.

Gee, I hope not. I have come undone.

the new year or something

Lots of things are wrong about me but something that isn't wrong about me anymore is that clinically depressed is no longer my baseline. Clinical depression was my baseline for about 45 years. The thing wrong about that is I didn't know. I didn't know I filtered my entire experience of me being me through a dark glass. Inside a dark lens, well, you don't even know it is dark.

I am not sure what my baseline is now but it is better, I think, than it was.

It used to be that when something happened to upset me, I would hunker down, assuming that misery was going to last and last and last. And then misery would last and last and last. Of course. You get what you expect. Or something.

Now, I'm muddled but in general my life is much better. I have a lot of grief. Everything about my life would be different if I had not been clinically depressed since I was about seven. Everything.

I would never have become a lawyer. I would never have had Katie because I never would have met her dad. I might have had and lost some other child, true.

I would have lived an entirely different life, one, I am pretty sure, that would have much less grief. I know everyone faces struggles in life. I don't suggest that I would have avoided heartache. It's just that everything would have been different. I'm just thinking about that. The new year or something.

I guess lots of folks engage in such reverie, the path not taken. Can we avoid our destiny? I don't think so. All the lessons I have had thus far in this life, they were lessons I needed. I guess I chose, sometime, to

I been wracking my memory

I've been wracking my memory for some new year's memoir. I have squeezed out a few.

Back before I married my kid's father, when I was still in law school but he was out earning a living, he bought us tickets to a New Year's Eve party in an old art deco hotel in St. Paul. There was going to be a swing band and a cash bar. I have avoided reasons to get dressed up most of my life. He-wh0-shall-never-be-named should have known from this single date that I didn't have the chops to be his wife. And I should have known that he was not the guy for me, also based on this single night. Maybe I'll write more about this evening some day but for this evening's trip down memory lane, I will limit myself to my standout memory from it. This particular New Year's, the hotel, the swing band, I think it might be the only date I've ever had on New Year's. I have spent many New Year's Eve's with people but this is probably the only one that required special shopping for evening wear. I actually had to buy a pair of high heels just for this night. Is someone ever going to explain to me why anyone wears spiky high heels to go dancing? I admit that I never have given high heels much of a chance. I don't get them.

Anyway. to the standout memory. We got dressed up, we drove downtown, we got a table, one of those little cocktail tables. And ordered drinks. Then we danced to that swing band. This was fun. Then he got way drunk. This was the night I realized he had a drinking problem. He kept drinking and drinking. I got drunk, too, but I remember dimly deciding that I was going to have to stop, that I couldn't possibly keep up with his drinking pace. I decided, right there in the old Commodore Hotel ballroom, with F. Scott Fitzgerald Daisies-wannabes and Gatsby-wannabees partying all around me, that I was going to have to discipline my drinking. I had this little epiphany in which I flashed back and realized that I had been more or less keeping up with him when he drank. In this little moment, I resolved to stop drinking when I was out with him. Later, when I would order cokes in bars, he used to get angry at me. He said spending a buck for a coke in a bar (this was the eighties) was a waste of money. I said spending if spending a buck for a coke was a waste of money, wasn't it also a waste to spend a buck on a beer? Anyway, I concluded, in the middle of my one New Year's Eve date, that my boyfriend was a lush. And I married him

where's my flying car?!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The number 2008, it sounds, I don't know, off.

I crawled over to the Starbucks tucked inside my neighborhood Safeway, wanting out of the house but also not really wanting to go anywhere. If you could transport me, yeah, I'd like to be a lot of places. If I have to walk downtown to the train station, thanks, but I'm gonna stay home. Thank goddess the holidays are over.

I order my ghetto latte, my grande drip in a venti cup, which gives me lots of room for cream. I can eat fats. Carbs, I control. Fats, I eat.

I ordered the drink and while the kid is pouring, I said, almost under my breath, more to myself than the barista, '2008, it sounds so, I don't know, so, well, wrong."

The kid said "I know what you mean. If it's 2008, where is my flying car?"

Another perfect, meaningless moment in the golden tunnel. Happy 2008.