patience is a virtue

i've always been told that being patient is something i should think about doing from time to time. and yet, somehow, it's never been my strong suit. i am the most impatient person who has ever lived on this earth. i hate waiting. i want what i want, when i want it. veruca salt, eat your heart out, baby girl; it is i who wants the world, who wants the whole world. i want bows in my hair, and i don't want to share. well, that might be a slight exaggeration. but the fact of the matter is that it is a distinct annoyance in my life that i can't have things ordered as i prefer them. cases in point: the man is still not home, and i still don't know what i'm doing after may 22 of this year. i have no control over anything anymore. i am not a woman who enjoys feeling powerless, and i detest this rootless feeling that's starting to creep in around the edges of my life these days.

i had a job interview yesterday! sweet! that's amazing... until i found out that 42 people applied for the position, which is new-kid attorney at what will be a six-person firm. they're interviewing 14, of which 3 will be called back for a fit interview. uh, yeah. i nailed that interview, i KNOW i did, but i am starting to get the sense that none of it matters. there are plenty of good lawyers in this world. it's just not our market. i will probably not get that job. this is the numbers game i will be forced to play from this point forward, too. this, of course, means that i can do everything 110% perfectly... and it probably won't matter. it will all come down to what some partner wants that day. totally up to chance. and there's no way to control it.

the man will be home sunday afternoon. thank. GOD. i absolutely love how good he is at what he does, and i'm glad he's happy. but i am starting to get the feeling that this is the first of many, many times i'll have to face the notion of him trucking happily off to some other semi-developed (at best) foreign land to work with do-gooders. he'll love it... and two things will be true: i will hate it, and there will be nothing i can do to change it. i have no say in any of this. not that i would, necessarily, invoke a say if i had one. that's the point of adulthood, right? i'm always on about self-determination, so i'd be just the worst sort of hypocrite if i didn't grant that to him. but if i ran things? this would never, ever happen again. i would never have to deal with this kind of uncertainty again. but there's nothing i can do to control this. he's chasing his dream. i'm left to deal with the aftermath.

oh, and there's the place where professional and personal angst meet: what the hell am i going to do if i have to leave this area for a job? what would i do if the only way to make a living doing what i love only exacerbates the separation between us? what then? ugh. there's so much going on right now that i completely detest. all i can do is wait through it, walk through it and live through it. i can control none of it, and i can't accelerate the waiting time. all i can do is try my damnedest to be patient. it's a virtue, i'm told. well, i don't know much about either virtue or patience. but apparently, the world has decided that it's high time i learn.

all right, universe. you're on. let's do this.

grace under fire

today, i rolled my ankle. i stepped out of the car, caught my heel on a thoroughly-invisible lumpy place in the pavement and went down on one knee like i'd been shot. swollen ankle, sore knee, sore hip, and weirdly, sore neck. (i strained my neck monday night - don't ask how - and reaggravated it when i fell.) i got up, reassembled myself and walked into the drugstore. good thing i was already there; i bought an ankle brace, to add to the four i already owned, then put it on as soon as i got back.

good lord, i'm in pain. but what's worse is that no one i know reacted to this with the typical level of shock that usually accompanies an adult falling down. no one said, oh my god! are you okay? good grief, how did this happen? no, what i got was, there you go again, haha. you're okay? good. damn, you're clumsy. another day, another fall, eh? sigh.

there was a time when this was funny. i know there was. but more and more, it's just getting old. i hurt myself so many times in a given day. i cut my finger the other day while sitting still in a car, holding a plastic box of salad. i do stupid damn things all the damn time, and the result is pain every damn day. i've never been particularly physically capable. i used to walk into door jambs and fall down constantly as a small child. daddy always called me "spatially gifted," which was his kind way of saying, good christ, my kid's a klutz. this is nothing new.

but what is new is this feeling of dread when i move around in the world. i should be able to walk places, do things, live my damn life without stupid little injuries. the joke on me shouldn't be, we have to wrap her in bubble wrap to get anywhere. but it is. i feel like a constant, never-ending punch line. there are other things that feed into this feeling, predominantly the new information that, apparently, i'm the most serious, joyless person on the planet (another rant for another time), but it's largely the clumsy, stumbling way i move through the world that makes people laugh at me.

i feel like a joke all the time with this. but i don't know what to do; i am already so careful that the other punch line about me is that i am the queen of the obsessive-compulsives. i don't know how to fix it. so this is my cross to bear, i guess: i lack grace, and everyone in my life gets to have a nice chuckle at my expense. over and over. forever and ever, world without end, amen.

talk to me

your humble author, as you have clearly seen, can be a giant ball of anxiety at times. i am given to worry on a fairly regular basis. sometimes, most times even, i am able to seek solace with the fond embrace of my love. but what to do when the source of the anxiety is something that involves him?

i tried to have a conversation with him tonight, wishing to clear up something that had been weighing on my mind of late. but his style is... to call him stoic insults stoics. taciturn. the strong, SILENT type. so my worries and queries were met with crickets. now, don't get me wrong; he wasn't unresponsive. but a simple soothing just was - and is - not gonna get it done tonight. i wanted answers, discourse. his opinion mattered, and he would. not. give. it. just frustrating as hell.

so that's why i'm writing this instead of lying in his arms right now. i love him dearly. but right now, a pat on the head just ain't gonna get it done. someday, that might make sense to him. but until it does, he's going to have to see that silence is not always golden in my world.

literally

i am a writer, writer of fictions
i am the heart that you call home...
 - "the engine driver," the decemberists

i have worked with language as long as i've known how to put my dreams on paper. i've written regularly for basically the last 25 years of my life. fiction, nonfiction, poetry, prose, and even an ill-fated screenplay - your humble blog proprietor has written it all. not to brag, but i think i've got a pretty decent command of this mother tongue of mine. i hone my craft here, there and everywhere, digital and analog, recreationally and professionally. this craft bleeds into my life. i speak as i write, much to the chagrin of my legal writing professors. ("would you actually say that word?" uh, yeah, dumb-ass; that's why i wrote it.) i use metaphor, simile, exaggeration, understatement. i am an architect of words, and it's a talent a) of which i am justifiably proud and b) that has been appreciated by many people with whom i've interacted over time.

so imagine my surprise when it came to my attention that this talent is radically underappreciated by some of the people i love most dearly. i mean, it's not an outright hostility - no one's telling me, as if anyone ever could, to stop my writing. but that sort of foolishness would almost be easier to wrap my head around. it's more of an intellectual blind spot. it's almost as if this crew is thoroughly incapable of comprehending figurative language. it's the weirdest damn thing i've ever seen in my life.

there is a cold, logical literalism at work in these conversations, one that confounds and amuses me in equal parts. words must be chosen carefully in order to get a point across. well, more specifically, to avoid a five-minute excursus as to what i meant and didn't mean, what i said and didn't say. it's important in this crew to be precise. accurate, even. to say that this is a frustrating development in my life is an - ha, ha - understatement. it's funny, too, in that, in the immortal words of jimmy buffett, if i couldn't laugh, i would just go insane.

look, i'm a lawyer. i understand the need to be incredibly precise. but guess what? my linguistic crayon box has 120 colors in it, and i will use every single goddamned one of them. i will not be stultified just because people in this world still use the 8-crayon kindergarten pack. i am a master of the language, spoken and written, and i will practice my art and craft, loud and proud. and if you can't hang? well. i'd advise that you either learn to drive or get off the track, or else you're liable to get left behind...

pardon the interruption

i knew this time was coming. i knew, eventually, that this little... tic, i guess, of yours would eventually become an issue. i'm actually surprised it took this long. but here it is, so i'm dealing with it.

i know you don't like everything i like. we don't have to have the same tastes in everything. never have, never will. but do me a favor? when i happen to mention something related to something i like that you don't, could you maybe not just wait for me to stop talking, then immediately go back to the last thing you said before i spoke, as if i hadn't said anything at all? see, when you do that, here's what you convey: "if i wait her out, she'll get the hint and shut up."

yeah, that's really not what will happen. what'll happen is this: i'll begin to get the idea that you don't respect me. we can have differences of opinion until the cows come home; that's actually a whole lot of fun. you are a worthy opponent, and i love sparring with you. but i will not be made to feel like my interests are SUBSIDIARY to yours. that's when things start leaving the realm of OK and careen headlong into... unpleasant territory.

part of the deal i made with you is that i'd open myself to the things you like and at least make an effort to indulge you. i don't expect you to be able to rattle off hockey stats and learn the difference between colton orr's role with the leafs and brooks laich's role with my beloved caps. but i do expect you to treat my loves with the barest, gentlest modicum of respect. it's not an unwarranted interruption to your life to listen. you can handle it. i have faith in you.