making progress

the workmen were here on the dot of seven-thirty, and construction commences once more. it seems that the project, like so much of everything else in life, is composed not of steady progress, but of sudden fits and starts. i have settled on the color of paint for the living room and am now picking one for the kitchen/eating area. strangely, the shade i like best so far is the same shade of robin's egg blue i have in my writing room.

the dollhouse is stripped and sanded and just about halfway primed. libby and i need to make a trip to the paint store for more brushes and color samples. today my plan is to focus on the things around the house - both big and small - that need tending.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

hancock and obama

i dont think it's any coincidence that the best superhero movie i've seen so far with will smith in the starring role comes at the same time that a black man has been nominated for president. the crowds calling for hancock to save them ring with the same fervor as obama's supporters at a rally.

fiction - any kind of fiction, whether it is presented in a short story, a play, a novel or a movie - always tells us something of the truth about ourselves and the world we create for ourselves. like the tarot, it holds up a mirror and dares us to really See. i think this happens because in printed fiction, the words are used to create images in the mind, and in movies and plays of course, the story unfolds in images directly.

what is amazing about this movie is that its hero's angst is genuine. this is no namby pamby peter parker plagued by self-doubt. hancock knows exactly what he can do and does it with a devil-may-care panache that leaves billions of dollars of damage in his wake. wow, i thought, the real people getting creamed in this movie are the property/casualty companies... which may be yet another reason i found the movie so supremely enjoyable. go hancock.

and unlike all the other superheros, who predictably rise from ashes both literal and metaphorical to accept their superhero roles, hancock has no memory of a past other than waking up in a hospital with nothing but a couple of ticket stubs to a movie which was playing at the time - frankenstein.

hancock, with his deep sense of isolation, identifies on some level with frankenstein's monster, and therefore, behaves monstrously, until a chance encounter with someone named of all things (in my universe at least) ray (ick) - but as in sun ray, i think - leads him to the light. but the juxtaposition of the monster, which was more human than its human creator, and composed of many parts, and hancock underscores, at least for me, this connection to obama - a man who is frequently presented in the news, at least, as someone both familiar and foreign all at once, a man made up of many parts.

in the end, hancock embraces his destiny and the world becomes a better place. i suppose we can only hope for a similiar outcome in the fall.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

sheila's doll house

when i was in college, i saved up all my spare change one year and bought my little sister sheila a dollhouse out of the sears catalogue for christmas. it arrived in thousands of pieces and a big flat box, and my stepfather spent hours in the basement putting it together.

sometime shortly after i moved to connecticut, the dollhouse arrived at my house, battered, somewhat disheveled looking, but more or less intact - sort of like me. i spent the first summer in connecticut without my children fixing it up as best i could for meg and libby. it came along when we all moved to pond house, and that first christmas, don bought libby a houseful of doll furniture on ebay.

for the last five years or so, the dollhouse has stood on the now non-existent deck, sporadically played with by visiting children. every once in a while, i used to rearrange the furniture but it really wasn't very comfortable out there, and not condusive to sitting for more than a few minutes at a time.

according to the clutter-busting books i've been reading, the dollhouse typifies the sort of baggage one should toss... an ancient relic that represents not much more than a part of my long-ago past, the sort of detritus that detracts from valuable space and only adds another place for the dust-bunnies to hide.

but i like to play with dollhouses. one of my favorite pastimes as a child was to build them out of boxes and books, because in the name of some perversity too twisted for me to understand even now, i had tons of furniture - but no dollhouse to put it all in. in retrospect, it forced me to be constantly creative, to think in big pictures, to consider aspects of three-dimensional reality i might otherwise have ignored all together.

but, oh, how i always wanted a dollhouse.

i thought this summer that libby and i might fix it up. last night, we went to the craft store, and bought among other things, paper and felt and a little saw.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

the pettibone ghost

on thursday, my friend laura and i took libby to see the pettibone ghost exhibit at the phelps tavern museum in simsbury. our tour guide was a charming new england lady who managed to evoke something of the manner of her forebears in a most authentic way. one had the sense that the stories she told of the people who had lived and worked and married and birthed and died on these lands were the same stories that got told around the dinner table when her family gathered on the holidays.

on the other hand, she was quite clear that while the inn itself may indeed be haunted - she demurred to pass judgement, she said with a prim quirk as much a relic as any ever found in an attic - there was no historically documented record of an abigail pettibone...which is supposed to be the name of one of the ghosts who haunts the pettibone inn, which is seven to ten miles down the road.

abigail just doesn't appear in any of our records, said the lady, and then showed us a sampling of the fanactically detailed documents which the town fathers have been keeping since the seventeenth century. one had the sense that if someone didn't appear in the records of the simsbury town fathers, one could safely assume someone didn't exist.

we had moved into the second room of the tavern when we heard a curious knocking from the first room. it sounded as if someone - or even several someones - had either opened the door and come in, or was jiggling the door. our guide left us to check it out.

they're here, i mouthed to laura, as libby rolled her eyes, even though she knew exactly what i was talking about.

when our guide returned, she said there was no one there and she had no idea what made the noise. on the upper level, i couldn't resist touching a stone of the original chimney as it rose up through the house. the stone was warm to my touch, even though a fire had not burned in that hearth in decades.

one of the most interesting parts of the exhibit, i thought, were the three shoes the workmen had found during the restoration that had turned the building from a private home to more of its original state. dark with age, and creased with dust, the shoes had belonged to a man, a woman and a child. the imprints of their feet were plain - it was clear there were two right shoes, and one left.

it's an old new england custom, explained the lady. its not mentioned much in the records, but we frequently find shoes buried around the chimney - a shoe from each of the original occupants. it's supposed to bring good luck. i wondered if the ones who'd left their shoes there thought it did, but that's the sort of question libby rolls her eyes at, so i didn't bother to ask it.

as we were leaving i happened to glance across the street to the cemetery, with its long rows of stones and monuments, stretching all the way back to the seventeenth century. look, laura, i cried - there they all are. and to libby's utter mortification, laura and i waved and yelled hello.

picking paint

Beloved spent the weekend flinging decades worth of detritus into the dumpster. i spent the weekend ruminating over paint. i narrowed my selection to four shades. the top one looks too yellow, the second one too gray, the third one too dark.

i liked the last one from the first time i saw it in the store. here's a few more photos. what do you think?

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

sources of inspiration

these are the pillows i happened to see the other evening, as i was contemplating what to do about the color scheme. Beloved doesn't seem to understand that i need a sense of where it's all going before i feel i have a framework within which to make the thousand and one decisions we are going to have to make.

for me, it's not simply a question of choosing what we like - it's a question of choosing what we like relative to everything else that we also like. as i said to Beloved this morning, i'm trying to create a vision that hangs together as a cohesive whole. each part has to work together, and some parts have to play the backdrop so that the important stuff stands out.

you clearly care a lot more about this than i do, said Beloved, before he said the magic words: annie, do what you want.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

warm, welcoming and comfortable...

...spiritually-aware, harmonious and ordered.

these are the six adjectives i settled on to describe the feeling i wish my house to evoke. i also found a color scheme last night... quite by accident... as i was gazing moodily into the distance, thinking about nothing in particular.

three of the scattered pillows on the sofa in my writing room coalesced into a palette both soothing and warm, and appropriately pastel. (Beloved and i had a bit of a spat over what constitutes the definition of "dark" wood yesterday.)

the colors are cream, taupe and robin's egg blue. now it's off to the paint store for samples to put on the walls... and maybe even the floor :).

if i can find the camera in all the mess, i will post some photos of what i find.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

do you believe in magic?

well, sometimes.

i've been pondering the questions one gentle reader posed a few days ago, which is essentially this, at least as i understand her...as someone who not only believes in Magic, but has been known to use it on occasion, how do i respond to books that include the use of magic and people who use it?

for me as a reader, i am willing to believe anything the writer can make me believe. in other words, i don't read stories in which magic is used to learn how to use Magic. i read stories for the Story. magic, when it appears in a story, in its simplest terms, is really about the manipulation of either power or energy and sometimes both. however it works, it has to make logical sense within its own universe. as long as it does that, i dont care how far off the mark the writer is from the way i experience and manipulate Magic.

on the other hand, to read a story in which the characters experience magic in a similiar way as i do, is a delight. there is a new author, sarah addison allen, whose debut novel Garden Spells, is an absolutely charming story that reminded me of practical magic - only better.

as far as the more stereotypical presentations of charmed and such, i don't pay much attention. the good thing about them is that they introduce the ideas of magic and spells and witchcraft in a way that is a bit different from previous ideas about witches - at least the girls on charmed are young and cute rather than old and warty. anything that asks the public to think about anything in a new way can only be a good thing in the long run.

i think the way to create believable characters who use believable magic is to focus on them as characters first, who have needs and desires and flaws. magic in a story is not exactly the same as Magic in the Real World, just as characters in a story aren't really people, no matter how closely from Real Life they may have been drawn. your job is not to make the reader believe in your magic, but to make the reader believe in your Story.

i find that's when i need all the Magic i can muster. :)

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

dancing with the dark side

a month or two ago, I received an email from a writing friend about a new writing circle she was starting a few towns over. i liked the idea of a circle, and i like her, so i thought i would show up the first night and find out what she had in mind.

one thing i like about my friend karen is that she is amazingly thorough. despite being nearly nine months pregnant and the mother of a two year old, she had clearly put a great deal of work into the circle even before its inception. i am never sure about groups, but i appreciate hard work.

our first writing prompt is supposed to be about our fears. i appreciate a challenge, too. here's what i wrote instead of my blog the first morning my internet was down.

“Having trouble?” Her voice is like the purr of a Cadillac’s engine. I hear it deep inside somewhere… but where, exactly, eludes me, just the way so many words, so many sentences and images and metaphors have eluded me this morning.

I hear the echo of a distant laugh.

She knows I’m after her.

She is Published Writer. She is hard and sleek and prefers to wear high leather boots – shiny black, of course – and a lace-up leather corset. Her favorite toys are whips and knives, and she is quite merciless.

She steps out of the shadows and I see the glint of her long white teeth, her blood-red lips, her long red nails. “Feeling brave, are we?” She chuckles. Over the corset she’s wearing a black and white hounds-tooth checked suit. No boots today; her stockinged legs end in pointy black pumps. Her hair is the color mine used to be.

“Maybe,” I say. I’m wearing jeans and my sweatshirt with the ratty sleeves, the one that’s soft and blue as my baby blanket. My feet are bare.

“So what do you want?” She lights a cigarette, blows the smoke in my face. I want to blow it back, but I don’t smoke.

“I want to ask you – no, I want to tell you – to leave my first drafts alone.”

She sneers, rolls her eyes, takes a long drag. “Are you kidding? The way you write, you might as well wander around all day with a paper bag over your head. Who are you trying to fool? You need me –“

“You’re right, I do need you. I need you to make phone calls and read reviews and talk to Jenn, and if we’re ever going to have an editor again, I need you to deal with her. Or him. I need you to – to make the revisions, to sense what sells. But I don’t need you ravaging my first drafts.”

She puts her face close to mine, and I can smell the blood on her breath. It’s my blood, every drop, and deep inside my chest, my arms, my throat, I feel the scars begin to ache, the places that she’s mined and fed. Not for the first time, I hate her. She licks her lips and says, “You think you got all the time in the world, sister? You’re not getting any younger, you know. At the rate you write…”

“You know, that’s the trouble, right there. You’re mean. I don’t like you. You don’t just ravage the drafts, you shred them. You’re hard and you take away all of my joy.” I look over to the wall, where a slim white wraith of a woman is chained. “You took my Muse. I want her back.”

“You gave her to me.”

“You didn’t used to be so mean.”

She laughs, snaps her fingers. “It’s a mean business, sweetheart. And you need me to survive in it.”

“Maybe I don’t think you’re worth it.”

“You blaspheme!” Her face contorts, her lips thin as they pull back from the razor edges of her fangs. Her body swells, lengthens. She is an enormous Cobra, dancing above my head.

“You’re very scary,” I say as calmly as I can, because – besides blood - she feeds on fear. “This is why I can’t have you around the first drafts. You just proved my point.”

Again she shrieks, and the huge head lunges forward, fangs dripping venom. But the snake body collapses as she shrinks, morphing back into a woman, a tiny woman, who runs shrieking into the void: “We’ll meet again, my pretty!”

so many blogs...

...so little time.

yesterday, as i was bringing sam and buddy home from their annual vet checkups, i happened to hear the local talk-radio guy bemoaning the fact that now, in addition to daily papers and internet news, he's also a blog-junkie and spends hours a day reading and commenting and emailing individuals who write enormously interesting blogs.

wow, i thought. i know just how he feels.

my two days, one hour, five minutes and twenty nine seconds without the internet showed me what it must be like for a heroin addict to go cold turkey. i didn't break out in physically cold sweats, but i was close. deprived of my daily infusions of pixels from cyberspace, i felt disconnected to the point of feeling marooned on an island of Real Life.

on top of that, Real Life has been demanding more and more of me. with libby home from school, my days are not so free, even if my house - at least where its not torn apart - is getting really clean. the construction - or should i say destruction - commenced at a blitzkrieg rate: where once stood a deck, there is now nothing but air.

i have a decorating lady coming over at ten oclock to take a look at the whole mess. i hope i dont throw myself at her feet and sob. i have some tidying up to do - haha - before she gets here, but this afternoon, libby and i are going off to see an exhibit called "the pettibone ghost" in simsbury. it's about the ghost who haunts an old tavern about half way between our house and my grandmother's place. i pass it every time i go there.

the place has an interesting vibe - everytime we've tried to go there, something's stopped us - and every time i think of eating there i feel faintly sick. and yet, they say they have good food.

one of the comments i came back to asked a really interesting question that i continue to ponder even while life continues to suggest other topics. and so, ms robertson (i hope i can call you linda, please call me annie) congratulations on your first publication (do leave details next time you visit). i am pondering the answer to your question:

when you read books with magic in them, even knowing you are reading fiction, especially if they are set modern, do you ever find yourself judging it as too fantastic or too real or do you suspend disbelief and dig in?

but in the meantime, gentle readers, what do you all think?

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

happy birthday, miss elissa

my relationship with my stepdaughter elissa is one of the two more difficult relationships i have with my children. (the other's with my son, jamie, whose behavior reminds me of his father more frequently than i care to remember him.)

in elissa's case, the lion's share of the fault - if there is one - lies in my opinion on her mother, who encouraged elissa to despise her father for no reason other than he chose not to remain married to her mother. on the other hand, i arrived with not just one rival, but four for her father's affections. never made to share anything, elissa was understandably puzzled when the demands on her father's heart quintupled. how could there possibly be enough left for her? the child's fear of abandonment coupled with the mother's need for revenge ignited a fire that i fear will continue to smolder long into elissa's adulthood.

or maybe not.

last night, she came over with two friends to celebrate her twenty-second birthday. over cake - an especially pretty cake in just her favorite flavor that caught my eye the other day at shaw's - she casually mentioned to her friends that "anne can talk to dead people."

i was tired. i really didn't want to be a party game. this sort of thing makes Beloved particularly uncomfortable - he always looks for the exits if the conversation takes a serious veer into the psychic. but her friends looked like sweet girls, girls who wanted to look a little tougher than they actually were - just like elissa. and there were so many bright young spirits around the one who looked at me with eyes as wide and liquid as bambi's.

well, whoever would've thought that, said Beloved, when they left two hours later. elissa spent two hours here on her birthday and most of them with YOU.

i guess stranger things have happened somewhere.

and furthermore the war must end. blessed be.

arte y pico

among the three hundred plus emails i managed to wade through yesterday afternoon was one from my dear friend rose of Walk In The Woods of winsted, connecticut. she was kind enough to present me with an AWARD! - the Arte y Pico Award. i am both awed and humbled she would select me for this honor.

as she explains on her blog, WhatRoseMadeToday:

This award, originally started by Esey, was created to be given to bloggers who inspire others with their creative energy and their talents, be it writing or artwork in all medias. And, I must add, to receive an award such as this from a peer and associate makes it an especially special honor. :)

The Arte y Pico Award is meant to be paid forward to bloggers who are deserving of it. rose has presented me with the award and I would now like to recognize the following five blogs:

Stacie's Homeschooling Blog
Eat Man Drink Water
Cabin Fever in Alaska
Cynwrites: a blog for grownups
Diary of a Wicked Stepmom

So, gentle readers, I invite you to visit each of the five blogs I've listed.

If you have been selected for the award, please pay it forward, following the steps below:

1) Choose 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of the language.

2) Post the name of the author and a link to his or her blog so everyone can view it.

3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.

4) The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the "Arte y pico" blog , so everyone will know the origin of this award.


5) Please post these rules!

The Arte y Pico blog is in Spanish. I can't seem to make the English link work. To read it in English, go back to rose's blog. i am currently attempting to fix this problem, but nothing i do seems to work. :(

a day without the internet....

...is like a day that didn't happen.

at least, not according to my blog.

a bad storm on sunday afternoon during jamie's graduation party knocked out our modem, and consequently, it was almost exactly 48 hours until our connection was restored. i signed on to find SEVEN comments - THANK YOU to all who took the time to consider the answers (they were most illuminating as was stacie's feedback, cause she's actually been HERE - i should ask questions more often, i see) and over 300 emails. most of them were from freecyclers, but still... 300 emails is a lot to cull through.

so here it is, a brand new month. joe the builder and his crew showed up early. my brother had the good sense to plan to leave today. now half the deck is mostly demolished. the other half is packed up in my living room.

to warm, welcoming, comfortable and spiritually attuned, i am determined to add ordered to the list.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

setting the intention

ive been giving a fair amount of thought to intentions, lately. intentions are powerful things - properly focused, they are prayer with punch. a prayer, as far as i can tell, is something you ask for, then allow for the will of the divine to work. an intention adds an element, at least for me, of MY will into the mix. it represents a conscious joining of my Self with the Divine Flow.

not just thy will, but mine, as well, be done, so to speak.

and so, as i've been clearing and decluttering and simplifying (three big garbage bags filled today, in fact) i've been giving thought to my intention, to what sort of home i wish to create, to the idea of our home as an entity of its own, to what sorts of energies i wish to call to me, and what kinds i wish to release.

i've been trying to think of six adjectives i'd like my home to evoke. so far, i've come up with warm, welcoming and comforting. Beloved has suggested eclectic, colorful and spiritually-awakening. i like the last, but find eclectic and colorful too verging on chaos for me.

so what about you, gentle reader? what six adjectives would you use to express your home's chi - for lack of a better phrase - and would you care to share?

going for the gold

my brother john arrives this evening with his two little girls in tow. they're staying with us until tuesday and then going off on a round-robin tour of the east coast that extends from ocean city to boston. my mother, stepfather and other brother are coming tomorrow for jamie's graduation party. im planning on sending my brother to pry my grandmother out of her bed.

i doubt that my sister sheila will join us, however, because she has sold her house in boston, and now she and her husband have to find another place - within six weeks - for themselves, their two very small children, and their au pair to live. as i remember, they got themselves into this fix the last time they sold a house and ended up buying one that was eerily reminiscent, to me, anyways, of the house we grew up in after we moved out of ocean city.

sheila is much younger than john and i. when she was little, she had a bed with drawers under it. one of the favorite things john and i used to threaten to do to her was to ask her, whenever she misbehaved for us, "do you wanna wake up in a drawer?" i know we were never serious, but i guess because she was little, she thought we were. she still talks about it.

this past year, at the ripe old age of 37, sheila took up ice-skating. this is significant because we were never a sports-minded family - team spirit, playing well with others and joie de vivre weren't things much mentioned when i was growing up. no one ever suggested i should join a team of anything after my ill-fated experiences in girl scouts when i was nine, and my brother's days in little league ended early. sheila had asthma, as well, growing up, and my brother david's needs simply didn't allow my mother much time to encourage any after-school activities.

last night, my sister won a gold medal in a skating competition. not only is this the first gold medal that she's won, and the first skating competition that she's ever entered - it's her first competition EVER.

there'll be no putting her back in that drawer now, im afraid.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

twelve years ago tomorrow

... i woke up for the last time in a house i shared with my ex, showered for the last time in the one tiny bathroom, and drove off to a new life in connecticut with not much more than my clothes, my books, and my three girls.

i remember that when i turned the engine on after filling up the car, the tail end of thunder road was playing on the radio. "it's a town full of losers and i'm pulling out of here to win," sang the boss.

you got that right, i thought.

this morning i woke up in a rosy dawn to a world all emerald and gold, punctuated by the woodpecker's drill, the bullfrog's drone and the chipmunk's cheep. the air was thick with mist, the long grass wet with dew. the puppies rolled at my feet before breakfast, Beloved rolled over and loved me before i rolled out of bed.

this morning i read in an email from my lawyer in bethlehm that in court yesterday (mister ex hasn't paid his child support) my ex - the possessor of three degrees, including a jd - is no longer employed as a purchasing agent for a cement company - which is what he was doing as recently as march.

he's now working at the crayon factory, putting boxes of crayons together.

oh, how the mighty have fallen.

i remember how he used to talk about his father who died at 55 a broken man, largely, ray said, because he lost his job as a skilled tradesman and ended up as a janitor. now it seems his son is headed in the same direction.

the email also explained that ray plans to file a new motion to reduce the amount of the support he owes each month, based on mental illness and disability.

if there's one thing i know as surely as i know the sun is setting in the west tonight is that ray is mentally ill. if he sees it too, finally, perhaps there's hope for healing after all. i don't know if the law allows a parent to escape completely from the obligation of support, but i will not stand in the way if the court, in its blind rendering of justice, decides to reduce it.

because there is a part of me that's sad. there is a part of me that even now, after years of legal and mental and financial harrassment and abuse, weeps for the wreck that is ray. i escaped because it was either leave or die, but, oh, how hard i tried to love him better. i didn't understand at the time that the only kind of love that can fix what's wrong with ray is self-love.

but there is a part of me that stands dazzled and not more than a little vindicated by the Justice that has condemmed this man of such ability and education to stand all day in a factory putting rainbows into boxes.

because, after all, that is what he tried to do to me.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

apologies forthcoming

.... by xujun eberlein (livingston press, june, 2008) is a collection of short stories about life in china both immediately before and after the cultural revolution. ms eberlein, who emigrated to the united states from china in 1988, and now holds a phd from MIT, tells these stories from her unique - at least to most westerners - perspective as someone who not only witnessed, but grew up, during that tumultous time period.

my interest in all things chinese was initially sparked by Beloved, who has been studying mandarin for the last four or five years. i tried it and it made my brain swell at a time when my brain was already under assault writing the silver trilogy. it is becoming increasingly clear to all, i hope, that china has emerged as an important player on the global stage, and it seems to me that anything that can be done to facilitate understanding between our two very different cultures should be encouraged.

and so, i highly recommend this book. ms eberlein is a gifted storyteller, with a unique viewpoint, not to mention an impressive command of the english language. her characters are drawn with great tenderness and sensitivity, as they struggle to create lives and loves and relationships against the enormous backdrop of the cultural revolution. i found the stories addictive... it was hard to stop at just one.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

decorating and other dilemmas

i love to play with paint and fabric. putting up curtains, tearing them down and making new ones is one of my favorite ways to freshen up a room. i like paint, too. i'm not a very good painter - i dont have much of an eye for detail - but splashing around in bright colors always makes me feel good. my ex used to say i painted like i was drunk. but im such a happy drunk, i used to answer.

i wish i had that feeling now. this renovation is bigger, even, than the kitchen - if such a thing is possible - because it affects more rooms. and each of the rooms has different choices. it isn't a question of JUST choosing walls and floors and window treatments. it's cabinets and window placements. it's electrical outlets and overhead lights. it's furniture arranging and refinishing.

it's an off-center fireplace, a ceiling fan, a picture window and a set of couches Beloved is wedded to with a passion almost great as the one with which he is wedded to me. it's my grandmother's piano and my mother's Singer in its mahogany cabinet, with the little leather topped stool i used to use for tea parties.

every time i start to think about it all, my head starts to ache and my brain starts to swell in the way it did when i was writing the silver books. and on top of this, im having a party for 20 people on sunday, my brother is coming on saturday from california with my neices, allie and zoe, and i have no idea when the construction might begin in earnest, although the mess continues to mount.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

feeling the burn

i got home from kickboxing cardio class about half an hour ago. Beloved has gone to dip in the town pool, i preferred to shower and ice my muscles over pot roast.

i remain puzzled by my body's apparent inability to drop weight according to the scale, although it's clear to me that my clothes are fitting more loosely, and my muscles are becoming more defined.

i must assume that the older i get, the more room i will require.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

decadently delicious

the first official day of summer vacation begins with a downpour so heavy the world wavers behind a sluice of silver water. buddy curls at my feet, terrified of thunder; sam, who has claimed the larger of the two dog beds i brought home the other week, has tucked herself comfortably in a corner.

libby went to katie's house with meg to play with baby jake last night, and so Beloved and i went out to dinner. i remember i felt, as we left the house, an amazing sense of freedom. children dispersed, dogs attended to, grandmother visited, parents spoken to... i could pick up my bag and walk out the door, free as a kid on the first day of vacation. we lingered over dinner - lingered for us, anyway, and got home later than usual...(nearly 8 o'clock! practically pumpkin-time in our universe!)

and we slept late, too, lulled by the chill in the dawn air, the sound of the torrential rain.

it was a most deliciously decadent beginning to this most decadently delicious of seasons.

it isn't very often that i have felt that way in the last twenty-some years or so. it was a glimpse of a future that still seems so far-off - a glimpse of days and evenings free to wander wherever i would.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.