the waiting

the best word for the next ten days would be "interregnum." all i can do right now is wait. i am waiting for my living money to come, so that i can get my place, get my stuff ready, and get myself the hell out of here. there's so much waiting for me on the other side of a thousand miles of interstate: my friends, my city, my new life.

kinda, anyway. even though this'll be such a freeing, amazing summer, it's an interregnum in its own right. i mean, it's only a temporary lull in the stressful period of... tension... that is my personal life. as soon as the summer ends, i'll be right back where i started from, and the waiting will begin again. the timing has to be perfect. if it's not perfect, the whole thing will be botched.

but you know what? now, tonight, is not the time to focus on that. not even close. i'm going to pay attention to how wonderful it will be to pull up in front of that house, to walk into the open arms of my nearest and dearest, to lose myself in that old/new reality, no matter how temporary it will be. this will be so good, and so, so, SO worth the waiting.

destruction [TRUE STORY]

so as i sit here today, there's a giant pile of oil threatening the state i'm about to leave. my god, it's going to be the most brutal ecological disaster we've seen in a generation, if not worse. the beaches i've spent my life on are about to get besmirched beyond recognition. the wetlands that defend this state from hurricanes are about to get wiped out for perhaps a generation. the people who run the national oceanic and atmospheric administration are SCARED. there goes tourism, fishing, the two or three things these folks have left.

i don't know how to articulate my rage. we've been irresponsible for a long time about energy. ah, the insouciance of the american public when it comes to something that's not an immediate crisis. "eh, no big deal. we've got time to figure this out. hey, check out my new yukon denali SUV - it holds thirty-seven people AND their hockey gear!" well, guess what. time's up. miners are dying. oil slicks are about to destroy a large portion of the south. WAKE. UP. sweet lord, something has to be done. and you know what, people out there in the teabagger toddler-ocracy that is the american electorate? IT'S GOING TO SUCK.

things will not be freewheeling and fun the way that the supply-siders told you it would thirty years ago. what we need to do as a country (and by god, this goes for ALL areas of policy, not just this) is to figure out a long-term plan to a) figure out what's wrong, b) prioritize the problems, and c) go about SOLVING THEM. politics is not supposed to be glib, sound-bite friendly, or entertaining. it's supposed to be hard. it's supposed to be smart. it's supposed to take time. if we don't stop electing idiots to office, and i call 'em like i see 'em, we're never gonna get there. you'll end up with stupid, short-sided laws like the arizona "stop all the brown people" rule, that don't SOLVE ANYTHING.

maybe it's me. i am an educated, thoughtful person. (only child much?) but i have one expectation: THINK. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, THINK. what's about to happen to my gulf coast is only the tip of the iceberg if we don't start thinking.

seven days

i've finished seven days of "yoga month 2010: the en-sleek-ening." i'm really not sure what i think at this point. the classes themselves are great. the results? eh, mixed at best. i'm feeling a little stronger, and the poses are coming more easily, but i'm not sure it's translating to quantifiable weight loss (or qualitative toning/shaping/etc.). that's frustrating as hell, given all the work i've put in. but there are 23 more days to go, including today; there's time yet to improve.

physical improvement programs have always caused me angst and grief. first of all, it's annoying to be a girl-type person and lose weight. boys lose weight at a rate that's startling to me. my favorite sports blogger lost 50 pounds in 3 1/2 MONTHS. that is SO not fair. it took me damn near a year to lose the same amount of weight, doing largely the same sort of thing. grrr.

but biological gender difference aside, sigh, i think there's an inherent expectation among the high-achieving in the world that everything should come easily. i am SO guilty of this. i expect to be able to master anything i try quickly, largely because that's always been the way things have worked for me intellectually. (god, that sounds arrogant. but it's the truth.) but as much as i've achieved with my mind, i have struggled with sports, exercise regimens, etc. that kills me.

so this challenge is not only physical, it's attitude-related as well. i need to push to show myself that results can happen if i try hard enough. hell, i got into my dream grad program. i can sure as hell stick to an exercise regime. and i might even get something out of it as well. i hope, anyway.

testing, 1, 2, me

oh, the woes of having to contend with others. the others, they mean well. i know they do. these are ostensibly smart people; for god's sake, they all got into law school. but why, oh why, oh WHY can't people just READ THE WHOLE E-MAIL before asking questions?

this is the major problem i have with being in positions of authority. i can't stand it when people ask me questions that (to me, anyway) have obvious answers. and i HATE repeating myself. oh, my lord, do i hate it. i expect people to listen when i talk, especially if they ask the question to which i am responding. i listen carefully, ask questions during the initial discussion of whatever's going on, then i go off and do it. if something comes up in the course of the event or project, i will at least try to figure out what's wrong before i go ask someone another question. maybe that's why i hate it when people don't do the same for me.

i am radically impatient, and i do not suffer fools well. sadly for me, my definition of "fools" is pretty damn broad as well. needless to say, my irritation gauge is pretty well spiked on a daily basis. i'm working on being more patient, on letting go of more, and generally on trying to be more tranquil. the path of the sanguine woman, though, is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the stupid and the tyranny of annoying people. it's my responsibility to stay on the straight and narrow without going all clock-tower-rifle-y on people. most days, this is easy. some days, however, the others test me. these are the days when i have to put my game face on. breathe in, breathe out - don't maim.

les bon temps

thank the gods for mardi gras. that's all i have to say about it. this year, instead of struggling through a second awkward, difficult valentine's day with the ball and chain, i get to spend the day in new orleans with a group of people, drinking champagne and catching plastic trinkets thrown from floats. nice distraction, if you can get it.

i never really got into the whole valentine's day thing, except in the beginning of new relationships. the only valentine's days i've enjoyed have been so much more about "look at my new boyfriend" than about the boy in question. i mean, in eleventh grade, it was the best valentine's day ever: i got to kiss my shiny new boy at a concert in front of all our friends. gloating much? oh yeah. but in twelfth grade, long after that boy and i parted ways, it was dinner at a chain restaurant with an old friend, commiserating over twisted lime-a-licious chicken or whatever. VASTLY different.

with the ball and chain, it's been an up-and-down situation. we've never had what i'd call that "perfect" experience. there have always been... complications. there was the year we were apart, when i had to work that night and we didn't get to talk. there was our first year of marriage, when he and i were both out of work in a $1,000 a month apartment. there was the year he chose to spend the night playing video games instead of going out with me. (that one, i discovered later, was THE talk of my circle of friends. no one said anything to me, mind you. but that's another rant for another day.)

ironically, last valentine's day would've been pretty much perfect, were it not for the severe complications in our relationship. we had a really good dinner, a round of drinks, and saw a great movie. i was also drunk enough to get through the marital-congress duty at the end of the night without weirdness. but the ambivalence in my heart was - and is - too much for me.

this day, thankfully, will be nice and free of distractions. it'll be good to ignore the slice through my soul that is being stuck with the ball and chain for another year. i seriously thought that this would all be done by now. heh. what did i know? one foot in front of the other. one day at a time. heh. laissez les bon temps rouler. please.