a grand adventure

well, this is a fun turn of events. at my exam-week midpoint, after a brutal library day yesterday, i've chosen to reward myself with a 110-mile road trip... to get hamburgers and shakes with my boyfriend. oh yes; we lead a fun life.

we used to go on crazy flights of fancy like this all the time when we were kids together. we definitely drove to florida for the hell of it a lot. one night we all ended up in gautier, mississippi in the parking lot of a jitney jungle grocery store eating snackwells devils food cookies and yelling sassy remarks at the bemused police officers watching us. but to do it at 30? oh, this is magic. one of the things i love about the man is his capacity for wide-open adventure like this. we were, and are, partners in crime, winging our way through the night together in search of a little fun, a little amusement, a deviation. it's beautiful, and all too rare. so if you'll excuse me, i've got a road trip with my man to enjoy.

forever may we rave.

mr. sanders goes to the senate floor

oh, my god, y'all. who saw the filibernie today?

needless to say, i've been a little removed from current events, between exams and the state of my personal and psychological life. but it's no secret that i am a crabby little liberal watching all this go down. so the impassioned, fact-driven, humane and downright beautiful litany of every value i hold dear that senator sanders gave us today was the shot in the arm my civic engagement needed.

people disagree. and in many cases, i truly do believe that people who care about politics, even if they're ideologically disparate from me, come from a place of care and concern for the nation. we're all americans here. but increasingly, the powers that be (and, at the end of the day, what really matters is what the 535 people who vote in congress think; the rest of it is blue-skying) are of either of two categories:

1) milquetoast democrats, far more concerned with looking like they're cooperating than getting anything accomplished.

2) fire-bombing republicans, far more concerned with looking like they're taking it to president obama than getting anything accomplished.

that leaves us... nowhere. we've reached a place where a bill that passes 57-40 isn't enough of a majority to actually change anything (and leaves a just insanely stupid policy in place). nothing is getting done.

so what if a filibuster - or a morning-session soliloquy - doesn't change substantive policy? it was so freaking refreshing to hear someone a) care, b) try to express that care and c) take people to task for their amazingly stupid behavior. to hear someone take americans to the woodshed for our collective greed? MIRACULOUS. to hear credit-card practices rightly described as usury? AMAZING. for this estate-planning attorney to hear the estate tax described properly, factually and accurately? REFRESHING. and most importantly, to listen to someone discuss economic inequality realistically?

lord, i thought i'd died and gone to the heaven i don't believe in. my civic pride is through the roof. hell, even though it took a 70-year-old socialist to kick the democrats into high gear (damn - they busted out bubba hisownself to counterprogram this!), it was so nice to see. now let's hope to all things holy someone in my party was listening, took this to heart, and (GASP!) will actually do something about the sad state we're in.

sirocco

the sirocco is a wind pattern in africa and europe that dries out the sahara and makes the mediterranean cold and damp. wind has been on my mind of late: it's been a constant feature of life here in the nation's capital of late. the identical bookends of my monday was a whisper from the man as we awoke, then again as we drifted off to sleep: "windy." i haven't been able to wear my hair down outside in days.

wind is funny in its casual, reckless and random destructive power. all over town, some signs and newspaper boxes are blown over, while others stand next to them untouched. some branches break; others remain. wind is without prejudice. it just blows, and if it touches you or not, well, whatever. it totally does not care.

wind also forms the basis for just untold metaphors for chance and carelessness in life. call me the breeze. forrest gump, floatin' along all accidental-like (and that feather, which was REALLY bad CGI in retrospect). against the wind. blowin' in the wind. dust in the wind. winds of change, the wind cries mary, blah, blah, blah. if anything, i find wind to be less of a metaphor and more of a constant. i mean, hell, what's more constant than change?

the french have a saying: plus ce change, plus c'est la meme chose. the more change, the more of the same thing. so wind might be random, altering things in its path. but hell, that's just the course of everyday life. what's so careless about that?

home game

i am an itinerant little blogger these days. i have been for... well, really, since i got back to the area this spring. i spend a lot of time in places that aren't my home. i sleep at my dad's. i go to school. and, basically every weekend night for months now, i've carried a bag with a couple of changes of clothes and decamped to the man's house.

his place is more hospitable than mine, i'd say. two people live there; five people live in mine. he has a master suite; i share a bathroom. but i do have to admit that i sometimes miss being, well, in my bed, be it alone or accompanied. as nice as his bed is, it's just not mine. my room is great. it's dark, which means it's a little easier for this insomniac to fall asleep at night. i have about six thousand blankets at my disposal (something which the man thinks is a) superfluous and b) hilarious). it is set up in every way to be, well, perfect for me.

so imagine my surprise when i was able to sweet-talk my beloved into staying with me last night. it was a low-pressure sale, but it worked. and even though he had to leave this morning at an hour i don't even want to contemplate right now, it was so, so amazing. as much as i love waking up next to him, i love it that much more when we're wrapped up in my comforter, here in my little corner of the world. it makes me feel... like a grown-up, really. the feeling of being a guest has almost worn off when i'm with the man, but it's still not my house. i don't have to feel any other way besides comfortable here. my man, my house, my stuff.

there really is just no place like home sometimes. i'd do well to remember that.

headache

my head hurts. it's hurt all day long. not really enough to warrant drugs or anything; just that dull, vague pain that accompanies a series of mild-to-moderate annoyances.

i am over school. i don't want to do it anymore. i have three exams and a paper, all of which have to be done before the 16th. i can barely, barely force myself to study for them, even though i'm spending ungodly amounts of debt-money to get this stupid degree. it's physically painful to drag myself through this preparation.

and the physical pain triggers emotional dragginess. that in turn leads me to take tiny slights as full-on assaults, non-cues as giant signs of my immense worthlessness, and all sorts of other foolish things. i don't know why this happens, but it does. it makes me, to be totally honest with you, really terrible company. so i try to mitigate this by not speaking, by sitting silently wherever i happen to be. but then i feel like a giant burden on everyone i'm around, bringing the room down with my negativity.

now, none of this is real. but i still end up hurting as if it was. how goofy is this? it's just exhaustion, frustration and disappointment, to be honest with you. it really is. but knowing what it is doesn't seem to help me, y'know, DO SOMETHING about it. so here i sit, tightness in my chest, burden in my heart, feeling like i'm in the way again.

what a headache.

#reverb10: make

[as tumblr has decided to remain, in the subtle terminology of my boyfriend, fucked, my reverb post is here again. back to normal programming in both locales when tumblr, quoting the boyfriend again, unfucks itself.]

"what was the last thing you made? what materials did you use? is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?"

i am no one's conception of a handywoman. i'd be the one who ends up with pictures all over the internet of the spectacularly improbable injury i'd somehow give myself, entertaining millions with my natural grace and giftedness. but surprisingly, i do have a couple of areas of handicraft in which i specialize. we've all been entertained with the ongoing saga of magnolia v. sewing machine for halloween. and while that was shockingly successful, that's not one of my strengths.

i do two things quite well when it comes to tangible works: i make food, and i cross-stitch. i've also regaled you with tales of marathon cooking spates on football sundays, embarking on culinary adventures to the dulcet tones of the greatest football broadcaster ever, scott hanson on NFL red zone. (i totally have a non-sexual crush on this guy. he's AMAZING.) but as for my needlework, well, that's a side of me you may not have seen coming.

when i was in seventh grade at a nondescript middle school in my gulf-coast hometown, we had what could charitably be called a dearth of electives available for us. there was a dearth of a lot of education in that place, though by god, they tried. there was a real "hey, kids, let's put on a middle school!" vibe around there. i started the year in a computer class with 25 students and ONE apple IIe. i was in seventh grade in 1992-93, at which point the IIe was nearly a decade old. clearly, this was not going to work. my only other option, however, was home arts. seriously? well, at least we get to cook, was my thought process. i like cookies, and this class did not disappoint.

our midterm project was a cross-stitched christmas ornament. she gave us a really simple pattern of a tree, and all we had to do was the actual cross-stitching. she did the back-stitch and knot stitches to finish. it took us two weeks, and i was stunned to find the process of preparing the thread, stretching the aida cloth and taking needle to canvas extremely... soothing, really. of all things, a lifelong hobby was launched at that moment. (i got an A- on the project; one of my rows was a little off. i also got a B on my final for that class; we sewed tote bags on sewing machines, and my seams weren't straight.)

so to this day, i tend to save time here and there for large-scale cross-stitch projects. i'm currently waiting for the end of the semester, so that i can finally, finally finish the huge one i started around this time last year. christmas break is a good time to sit on the couch, watch movies or sports, and stab a needle into cloth. not only do you get this really cool-looking piece of art when you're done, but there's a nice amount of stress relief in taking a sharp implement and plunging it into something over and over again. many cases of malicious wounding have been avoided by me using visualization techniques to transfer the urge to stab real people into stabbing cloth.

as everyone would, i'd love more time to sit and stitch for hours on end when i am so inclined. but that's not the kind of life i've chosen for myself. but that's what makes my favorite old-school hobby so much of a treat when i get to do it: it's a rare pleasure. and when i finish a piece, look at it and see all the work that went into it, i am proud as hell. no doubt about it. hell, yes. i made that. it's so, so damned satisfying. that's why making things is still something humans like to do, i guess; any source of validation in a tough, sometimes-crushing world is welcome, but when it's self-validation, it's about a hundred times better. and who couldn't use more of that?

#reverb10: let go

[tumblr's having technical difficulties, so i've migrated here for the day.]

"what (or whom) did you let go of this year? why?"

oh, wow. talk about striking a nerve, and on a day when i'm hung over and have somehow managed to chip a molar. (yeah, a molar. NO idea how that went down.)

you could say i've done some letting go. this whole blog's been about letting go, at least when i'm not on about something political, mooning over the man or generally being zany. i've let go of artifice, of letting other people's expectations define me, and - oh yeah - relationships that just don't work anymore. 2010 was 100% about slicing off, cutting through and moving beyond everything that was, even without my knowledge in some cases, holding me back.

and why did i do it? self-preservation. i reached a point in my life where i just could not tolerate the state of affairs in my head and in my heart. i woke up one morning in mid-january feeling like i was literally bound to my bed. (and not in the fun way, ha ha.) i felt so trapped by waffling, by fear, by indecision and by my seeming inability to move forward. so i started writing it. i opened up my heart to y'all, and through reading, interacting and unburdening the secrets in my soul, i saw the way forward. i pulled the trigger. i went and demanded what i wanted. and by god, i got it.

so yeah, i let a lot go this year. but i'll tell you something: when i let that stuff go, i freed myself up for more bountiful goodness than i could have ever imagined. so let it go. let it all go. you'll be glad you did. lord knows i am.