straight to hell.
Work has been wonderful recently. (Here: italics without irony.) Louis Armstrong’s rendition of ‘La Vie En Rose’ walked me through a power-hour of cashiering a week ago; funnily, it’s those lovely old slow songs that get me through the high-stress moments the best, as if outer hubbub bows to Satchmo blues. In the subconscious attic: worries about gradschool to the tune of the Clash’s ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go,’ stuffed in a steamtrunk, but now hauled out into the fore and it’s a yes I said yes I will Yes, not resounding, but an affirmation all the same. Which means I need cobble together a sample and a letter of recommendation in the next two weeks, as well as swing the GRE’s. If I didn’t half-ass it, I’d never ass it at all. My father, after I told him, put on Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’ and we did, in a surprisingly apt succession of Bowie tunes, from ‘Changes’ to ‘Under Pressure’ to ‘John I’m Only Dancing’ to ‘Life on Mars?’ It was really lovely. We danced in the kitchen while the dog frantically jogged around us.
Then today I came home from work and found he’d totally rearranged my room, and exchanged my bed for the broken one in the garage, without my knowledge or permission. We’d argued about this before, but had not decided whether or not to do it, and frankly, territory and space and possession are perhaps my greatest vices - put in a vulgar phrase, don’t fuck with my shit. Dad was raking leaves outside when I discovered it, and I thought about how we’d argued, how my points (ever with a healthy amount of externality) were valid, and how this hadn’t mattered, and I thought, ‘How do I make him feel exactly how I feel right now?’ Which is childish, but as I said, this is my biggest vice, and though I am a slow-tempered girl I do have a temper, which, unfortunately, is all the larger for the infrequency of its appearances. I went into his bedroom and rearranged all the furniture for maximum inconvenience. Dad laughed when he saw it, and we discussed it reasonably … and then we discovered that in the otherwise innocent process of moving his things, I had knocked off a key piece of a $1200 inflation device for his bed, which, erm, broke.
Cue forever headdesk.
Then today I came home from work and found he’d totally rearranged my room, and exchanged my bed for the broken one in the garage, without my knowledge or permission. We’d argued about this before, but had not decided whether or not to do it, and frankly, territory and space and possession are perhaps my greatest vices - put in a vulgar phrase, don’t fuck with my shit. Dad was raking leaves outside when I discovered it, and I thought about how we’d argued, how my points (ever with a healthy amount of externality) were valid, and how this hadn’t mattered, and I thought, ‘How do I make him feel exactly how I feel right now?’ Which is childish, but as I said, this is my biggest vice, and though I am a slow-tempered girl I do have a temper, which, unfortunately, is all the larger for the infrequency of its appearances. I went into his bedroom and rearranged all the furniture for maximum inconvenience. Dad laughed when he saw it, and we discussed it reasonably … and then we discovered that in the otherwise innocent process of moving his things, I had knocked off a key piece of a $1200 inflation device for his bed, which, erm, broke.
Cue forever headdesk.