(no subject)
I love the smell of rain, or maybe it's the smell right before it rains. So earthy, reminds me of childhood.
Made oatmeal cookies tonight. They smell really good, but taste just a little off. Not sweet enough or something. I used butter instead of shortening or whatever it had called for. Maybe that's why.
Painted my nails too. I never used to care about my nails. Rarely ever had them painted. They're red now. Red always seemed so - I can't describe it.... like an uninvited guest is to an intimate gathering, that is what red nail polish is to me. Awkward. Noticeable. Loud. Well anyways, now I can't imagine my fingernails without this red nail polish. I'll take it off and they look terrible, like something was wrong with me and you could see it by looking at my fingernails.
I was going to go apply for new jobs. But Reza called me and told me I could work tonight (though I never called him back, I was tired, and looking forward to the evening off) He also put me on for the weekend. I don't think he's angry at me anymore. When I'm truly fed up with the whole thing I'll find another job, but I think I'm okay for right now.
Wanted to paint my apartment today. I got really whimsical about it. Almost went out to the store. But there was this list of things that had to happen before I could paint.
I need those color-cards to make sure I get the right color, can't just go buy a can of paint without making sure it matched.
Then I felt like it was silly to drive all the way out to Home Depot, drive back, pick a color and drive back out.
I also need to tidy up my apartment. Hang up clothes.
I was going to call up a friend, or my brother. Call someone up and say, "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to come over and help me paint my apartment?"
Today I finished this wonderful book my Mom gave me. The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg.
It's a story about this woman in her 50's going through the life changes every woman goes through at that age. Only she's left her husband (not to leave him, just to be away from him for an undetermined amount of time). It's written through letters to her husband and entries in a journal.
She writes about intimate things, like how when she was a child she had all these dreams and aspirations and she could actually pin-point a period of time in 7th grade where it all became about how to be that perfect woman that other women aspired to be like and men had to have.
In her letters to her husband she would say things like 'I wondered how you'd have reacted to the things I did today, and then I realized that if you were here we never would have just sat on a park bench and watched people come and go. You'd never have stood for it. You'd have wanted to move on to the next thing on the agenda. We were so different in that aspect' She kept accusing him of never listening to her. Never taking the time to humor her, and her sometimes crazy randomness. She was experiencing life and wanted to share it with her husband and he brushed her off like she was a child trying to hand him a bouquet of dandelions.
The other thing I loved was that she was just driving around places. Doing things I've always dreamed of doing. Just moving from town to town, talking to strangers - and not just about the weather. She drove into a trailer park and asked this woman about her life, and how she came to live there. It was all so ballsy. Like maybe I have to be 50 years old to do the things this character did. But it was all so wonderful, and freeing, and reading it was like coming up for air. I'm glad I chose that book to start with.
I was up until 2:00 last night reading it. I got to this one letter to her husband where she as talking about Death and Divorce and I actually started to cry.
She writes.
"Sometimes when I wake up at night it's to do an inventory of what might happen, how I might go. This is not just a function of my age, I know; it used to happen with some regularity when I was in my mid-twenties, not too long after Ruthie was born. I'd wake up and think, "But wait. This won't last. I'll have to die." I think it was because Ruthie was so important , and I wanted to stay forever to make sure she was all right forever."
Continuing on about talking about a time when she and her husband talked about divorce. How the idea just kind of passed, they never really talked about it, and then she says that it just takes time. In time you appreciate all the little details about that other person, and you just have to stick it out until you get there.
She writes.
"Do you know what I mean, Martin? A certain richness happens only later in life, I guess it's kind of mellowing. And now when I think of dying I think, Oh not now, not when I'm just starting to see. And I also think, don't let it be from something that makes me have a lot of pain. Don't let it be from something where I become a vegetable, or a burden in some other way. Let it be this way: Let me be eighty-eight. Let me have just returned from the hair-dresser. Let me be sitting in a lawn chair beside my garden, a large-print book of poetry in my hands. Let me hear the whistle of a cardinal and look up to find him and feel a sudden flutter in my chest and then - nothing. And, as long as I'm asking, let me rise up over my own self, saying, "Oh. Ah."
I couldn't help it, it sounded so much like what my own Mother might want that I just imagined her. In her swing on the side of the house, gazing around the true paradise she's created, appreciating everything in her life, and being genuinely happy and just going so peacefully. I couldn't help but cry. God, re-reading that makes me think of that Iron and Wine song Naked as we Came.
I thought my Mom had given me the book for a reason deeper than that she liked the writer. I thought she was trying to tell me something. Like she was trying to say, "This is how I'm feeling, and I just need someone else to understand and talk to me about it"
But then I came to find that she doesn't even remember the book. She's promised to re-read it so we can talk about it.
Oh it is late. Time is such a strange thing. It was going by so slowly today. I couldn't believe it was only 8:15, and now it's almost 1:00 in the morning.
Made oatmeal cookies tonight. They smell really good, but taste just a little off. Not sweet enough or something. I used butter instead of shortening or whatever it had called for. Maybe that's why.
Painted my nails too. I never used to care about my nails. Rarely ever had them painted. They're red now. Red always seemed so - I can't describe it.... like an uninvited guest is to an intimate gathering, that is what red nail polish is to me. Awkward. Noticeable. Loud. Well anyways, now I can't imagine my fingernails without this red nail polish. I'll take it off and they look terrible, like something was wrong with me and you could see it by looking at my fingernails.
I was going to go apply for new jobs. But Reza called me and told me I could work tonight (though I never called him back, I was tired, and looking forward to the evening off) He also put me on for the weekend. I don't think he's angry at me anymore. When I'm truly fed up with the whole thing I'll find another job, but I think I'm okay for right now.
Wanted to paint my apartment today. I got really whimsical about it. Almost went out to the store. But there was this list of things that had to happen before I could paint.
I need those color-cards to make sure I get the right color, can't just go buy a can of paint without making sure it matched.
Then I felt like it was silly to drive all the way out to Home Depot, drive back, pick a color and drive back out.
I also need to tidy up my apartment. Hang up clothes.
I was going to call up a friend, or my brother. Call someone up and say, "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to come over and help me paint my apartment?"
Today I finished this wonderful book my Mom gave me. The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg.
It's a story about this woman in her 50's going through the life changes every woman goes through at that age. Only she's left her husband (not to leave him, just to be away from him for an undetermined amount of time). It's written through letters to her husband and entries in a journal.
She writes about intimate things, like how when she was a child she had all these dreams and aspirations and she could actually pin-point a period of time in 7th grade where it all became about how to be that perfect woman that other women aspired to be like and men had to have.
In her letters to her husband she would say things like 'I wondered how you'd have reacted to the things I did today, and then I realized that if you were here we never would have just sat on a park bench and watched people come and go. You'd never have stood for it. You'd have wanted to move on to the next thing on the agenda. We were so different in that aspect' She kept accusing him of never listening to her. Never taking the time to humor her, and her sometimes crazy randomness. She was experiencing life and wanted to share it with her husband and he brushed her off like she was a child trying to hand him a bouquet of dandelions.
The other thing I loved was that she was just driving around places. Doing things I've always dreamed of doing. Just moving from town to town, talking to strangers - and not just about the weather. She drove into a trailer park and asked this woman about her life, and how she came to live there. It was all so ballsy. Like maybe I have to be 50 years old to do the things this character did. But it was all so wonderful, and freeing, and reading it was like coming up for air. I'm glad I chose that book to start with.
I was up until 2:00 last night reading it. I got to this one letter to her husband where she as talking about Death and Divorce and I actually started to cry.
She writes.
"Sometimes when I wake up at night it's to do an inventory of what might happen, how I might go. This is not just a function of my age, I know; it used to happen with some regularity when I was in my mid-twenties, not too long after Ruthie was born. I'd wake up and think, "But wait. This won't last. I'll have to die." I think it was because Ruthie was so important , and I wanted to stay forever to make sure she was all right forever."
Continuing on about talking about a time when she and her husband talked about divorce. How the idea just kind of passed, they never really talked about it, and then she says that it just takes time. In time you appreciate all the little details about that other person, and you just have to stick it out until you get there.
She writes.
"Do you know what I mean, Martin? A certain richness happens only later in life, I guess it's kind of mellowing. And now when I think of dying I think, Oh not now, not when I'm just starting to see. And I also think, don't let it be from something that makes me have a lot of pain. Don't let it be from something where I become a vegetable, or a burden in some other way. Let it be this way: Let me be eighty-eight. Let me have just returned from the hair-dresser. Let me be sitting in a lawn chair beside my garden, a large-print book of poetry in my hands. Let me hear the whistle of a cardinal and look up to find him and feel a sudden flutter in my chest and then - nothing. And, as long as I'm asking, let me rise up over my own self, saying, "Oh. Ah."
I couldn't help it, it sounded so much like what my own Mother might want that I just imagined her. In her swing on the side of the house, gazing around the true paradise she's created, appreciating everything in her life, and being genuinely happy and just going so peacefully. I couldn't help but cry. God, re-reading that makes me think of that Iron and Wine song Naked as we Came.
I thought my Mom had given me the book for a reason deeper than that she liked the writer. I thought she was trying to tell me something. Like she was trying to say, "This is how I'm feeling, and I just need someone else to understand and talk to me about it"
But then I came to find that she doesn't even remember the book. She's promised to re-read it so we can talk about it.
Oh it is late. Time is such a strange thing. It was going by so slowly today. I couldn't believe it was only 8:15, and now it's almost 1:00 in the morning.