Back on the air...again.

After close to a month of doing reading for work (bah!) I'm now able to spend my off hours reading for myself again--which means lots of self-absorbed chick-lit or anachronistic historical fiction about people who rubbed shoulders with randy kings.

I think it might be time to branch out a little.

Recently I watched the movie Julie and Julia. I have a very low threshold for what makes a movie something I will enjoy (does shit get blown up? do people fall in love? are there sumptuous costumes? is Christian Bale donning a batsuit?) and so, unsurprisingly, I enjoyed J&J very much. So much so that I went to work the next day and placed myself on hold for the book. And it came in, and now I'm almost at the end of the book, and I've come to a few rather interesting realizations:

1. Talented blog writers can take their most mundane, quotidian lives and make them into something that I WANT to read.

2. If I had a nickel's worth of sense (which I don't, as all my nickels are being squirreled away to finance my increasingly expensive honeymoon) I'd actually try to knuckle down and try to update my damned blog on a daily basis and maybe, just maybe my life will seem a little more fabulous.

3. What the hell should I blog about? Librarianship, with a little bit of my personal life tinging in? My impending marriage? Seems like the best blogs all have some sort of theme.

3. I have a tendency to adapt my inner voice to kind of echo those who I am most recently reading (Julie Powell's sarcasm, Crazy Aunt Purl's self-deprecation, my sister's whimsical artsiness). My writing style (I feel like a poseur even trying to imply that I have one) is, as of yet, extremely undefined.

4. Fucking wah.

5. I really dig the whole "blog to books" genre. I think it might be time to pull a Gemini and obsessively study it and then promptly forget all about it.

Over and out.

Self-Helpless

I love trolling through the Relationship, Psychology, and Self-Help Sections of the book store. Completely aside from the fact that I am a neurotic female and think that I can change everything that is wrong with me (even when it turns out that I am not the problem), it's fun to make fun of the titles.

For example:

There were two books that caught my eye: Why Doesn't He Call? and Why Doesn't He Propose? I made the lightning-fast observation that there needs to be a third in the series: Why Do You Give a Damn?

Another title: Loving the Older Man. I mentally noted that the more accurate title would be Loving the Creepy Commitmentphobic Older Man Who Has STDs and a Criminal Record of Domestic Violence. Ahem. Moving along.

Not surprisingly, the book that appealed to me the most was Bitter is the New Black.

A strange victory

It's strangely cloudy tonight, cloudy and gloomy like it used to be back East, in a different land, in a different life. Under normal circumstances, I'd think there's a freakish change in the weather coming. But tonight, I'll accept it as the gift that I'd like to think it is...a birthday gift, of sorts. Three years ago today I came to California.

I keep typing sentences, inane sentences with these empty, vapid words that clutter up the page, kind of like the cheap trinkets and knick-knacks and cosmetics and accessories I buy that are actually worthless, just cluttering things up. I don't think there's any words I can really summon to effectively describe these last three years, and the hopes and disappointments and realizations and resignations that I encountered...there are no words that can effectively summarize the life--such as it is--that I have made for myself here.

It all simply comes back to that thing that my friend Deshka and I told each other, over and over, during that bleak winter and spring of 2006:

It is what it is.

And so it is just that--it is I, who sacrificed a good man to my stubbourn pride within six weeks of moving here. It is my life here, my life of work and not much else. It is the consequence of me trusting one too many of the wrong kind of man, the bad kind, one too many times. It is the friends I have made here, the younger-than-me girls that seem to have it more together than I do, the older-than-me women who talk (a lot) about plastic surgery, it is the harsh sunshine and relentless dust, it is the bird that sings every night, just after midnight, right outside my bedroom window. It is the stubbourn, dogged and ultimately fruitless commitment I maintained for two of those three years, commitment to a boy that didn't really want me that much. It is the gut-numbing, limb-freezing terror that siezes me every time I feel the floor tremble or hear the windows rattle. It is the Pacific Ocean, still freezing cold and foreign to me, it is the three-hour-time difference between me and those who know me and my life, it is the three years of priceless work experience, it is three years in which I can count on two hands the number of cloudy days we've had.

It is all of these things...until it just isn't anymore.

I don't know when that will be. A month ago, the thought of staying here for countless more years made me want to weep with frustration and fear. Tonight, as I drink a glass of Shiraz and listen to the fan hum behind me and keep one eye on the chick-flick I've got playing, and as I watch my cats fight each other, annoyed with the vigorous brushing I gave them both, I understand that it doesn't just happen right now, overnight, on demand. I don't know when it's going to happen. And right now, at this moment, I'm okay with it.

That feeling will pass. But it's here for now, and for that I am grateful.

Happy birthday to me.

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

'Way back in the day, I was a born-again Christian. Hard-core. Went to church three times a week, sang in the choir, sat on the youth group board, certainly talked the talk, tried to walk the walk. For three years of my life, it defined me, my existence, my future. I loved Jesus, went up to the altar every Sunday morning, didn't drink or swear or do drugs or take god's name in vain or have sex before marriage. After all, that could lead to pregnancy or the clap or a broken heart or an irate Jesus.

One of the most tangible pieces of evidence that remain from that time in my life is my chastity ring. Yes, that's right, you read that right, my chastity ring. Not quite a chastity belt, sure--it was 1996, after all, not 1396. They presented the rings (subsidized by my doting, if somewhat misguided, grandparents) to me, during a church ceremony in which I, along with several other earnest young ladies, pledged to remain virgins until our wedding night.

Shortly after I turned 16, I became a "recovering Christian." Slowly, gradually, I fell away from the church as I experienced a crisis of faith, withdrew from my religious activities, and...well, grew up. Opened my eyes. I began to cuss like a sailor. Socially drink, even. The last thing to go was my pledge of chastity, but even that went out the window, a little later than most, when I was 19.

And life carried on. God (if s/he exists) and I left each other alone. I became more secular, more "of the world", and so I remain, to this day. I retained my honesty, my sense of justice, my code of ethics. I retained my sense of self, even as my self changed so vastly from what I once was. But even as I remained constant in some ways, I strayed very far from who I once was in others.

Best example: within the past year, my friend started dating a new guy. They...waited. Or, rather, he wanted to wait. And so they waited. And waited. We debated why. Was he gay? That was just weird, waiting six damned months.

And it's not a complete anomaly. Another friend is seeing a guy--they've been seeing each other for half a year, and they haven't (to borrow an old phrase) "gone all the way". They are both fine with that, and choose for it to be this way.

Baffling. Or so I thought.

See, I am, at heart, a historian. And I have an eye for how things once were. And I know that once, it was considered weird, freakish, inappropriate, abnormal, or at least taboo, to go all the way. People--especially women, mainly women--were ostracized if it was known that they did. Not a good way to live and love. But yet--we've done an about-face in recent decades. Now it's considered weird and freakish if people don't go all the way before marriage, and fairly soon after they meet, too...and somehow, I've internalized this. I got on board, and apparently, I had forgotten my 16-year-old self, in which I said, "If he loves me, he'll wait."

Now it's sexsexsex nownownow, and those who don't do that are not quite right.

Neither extreme is good or right or cool. But less cool is the fact that I bought into both extremes at different times in my life. Neither particularly helped me. Neither guided me down the right path. And I won't say that I've learned my lesson (how trite would that be?)...but I have learned that there is some wisdom in my friends' caution. And not only that there is wisdom, but that it's acceptable. Maybe not socially celebrated, but that caution, that waiting exists. And there are people in my age group who are wise enough--and comfortable enough with themselves--to wait and not need to validate themselves through quick sex.

If I get around to dating again--right now, not particularly high on my list of priorities; it comes right after getting leprosy of the eyeballs--I'm going to wait. A lot. At least six months. And I am only going to go for it if the person and I love each other.

And I am going to know that it's okay.

The ones who can know you so well are the ones who can swallow you whole...

It's my 29th birthday, and I am spending it in Washington DC with my family (good), where it's raining (better), and where I am not freaking out too much about turning 29 (best). I thought it would be hard, but it's turning out better than I thought. Maybe I'm just coming to terms with getting older, or maybe I'm just comfortably numb, but I'm okay with which ever it is.

Being back East helps--being in the humid, green climate (if not location) of my childhood, being with family. Both are familiar, and comforting, and I've felt more like myself than I have felt in a very long time. And I think that's the best birthday gift I could ever get.

Decisions, Decisions

Generally, I don't believe in love at first sight. But with Indiana, it's always been a little different.

Technically, it wasn't REALLY first sight. But we don't need to worry about that. From the second I crossed over the state line, back in 2004, I was hopelessly in love with it. I remember John the Saint and I stopped at a rest stop about twenty miles in. It was late in the afternoon, maybe around four or 5. I stood at the edge of the pavement, where it met up with a field. My back was to the moving truck and John and the car; I was facing the field and the tall, burnt-yellow grass. A warm wind was blowing, and it promised excitement.

Indiana? Exciting?

Later that night, after we arrived at Duncle's in Bloomington, after we had all gathered around the dinner table and gorged ourselves, after the plates were cleared, after the sun had set, I went out onto the screened porch and settled onto the porch swing. A late-evening storm was brewing, and silver lightening lit up the sky, the back yard, Aunt Jo's vegetable gardens, and the hay bales beyond her yard. Even the air felt different, after Florida--a little less humid, and a lot more electrified.

John the Saint joined me, and together we watched the storm roll in. And then, between flashes of lightning, there was something else lighting up the evening--tiny little gold lights, burning silently and bright for a second, and then disappearing just as quickly. An enormous smile spread over my face as I realized I was seeing fireflies for the first time since I had moved away from the Midwest, almost twenty years before. I glanced over at John, who smiled back, enjoying my simple bliss.

And just like that, I was hopelessly in love with Indiana. With the whole Midwest, really.

Now, as I am beginning to contemplate where to go next, my mind keeps drifting back to the Midwest. Should I try to go back? Am I only considering it because, after the disappointment and emotional desert that is California, it seems safe and comfortable and familiar? Or is it time for me to return? It's felt more right than any other place. Or should I leave that love in the past and move on to something else? Should I try to forget the fireflies, the haze settling on the landscape in a summer dusk, the iron-grey skies of an endless February, the shabby nobility of 100-year-old barns, long abandoned to decay in overgrown fields, the chilly autumn evenings?

I don't think I can forget it.

But I don't know if I should try to go back.

In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning...

This never used to happen, but lately, it’s getting to be an almost regular occurrence. I awakened around 4 this morning, and could not go back to sleep. A full bladder may have been the culprit, but I suspect the real cause was a distubing dream in which I was a caregiver to an old lady and her 101 (not Dalmatian) cats. Fears of becoming my mother, much?

Anyway, any normal person would have used the litterbox, shaken off the dream, and re-commenced slumbering, but that would be a normal person. Not the Sassy Kitten, here. I’ve got about a billion things on my mind lately, so as soon as I awoke, all one billion of them slammed back into my awareness like an inconvenient tsunami on Boxing Day. And stupid me, I spent the next hour in bed, thinking about them, until I gave it up and rose to meet the day at 5 AM.

There are worse ways to go–I tend to roll out of bed 30 minutes before I need to be at work, and this barely gives me enough time to bathe, let alone prepare my responsible, professional (fraudulent) self. So having three and a half hours to get ready is an unexpected luxury–it gives me time to make my oatmeal. Clean. Write some emails. Blog about pointless minutiae. Spend time on the exercise bike. Fold laundry. Even lay out my work clothes. Not bad for a Monday morning!

But lord, I will be hating life by 4 PM today.