It was so much harder than I expected it to be this back to work thing and I was exhausted  by 12:30 but I made it through an 8 hour day and then I came home and made baked ziti with garlic bread and it was a good day until my face broke out in an angry little autoimmune rash and my ankles swelled up like tennis balls but I have this compulsion to show my body that I am the boss.

I watched a horror movie called The Babadook on Netflix and it was not bad: both creepy and effective.

I finished reading The Magicians and need to move on to a new book.

I hope I can keep myself going and do ALL THE THINGS.

meanwhile, inside the confessional booth

Back to work tomorrow! Feels so normal. 

Dreamt of playing basketball with a wet washcloth instead of a ball and it kept wrapping itself around my fingers and this made it really difficult to get it through the damn hoop as you might well imagine.  Boring frustration dream.

My jaw is flaring up again but I outsmart it by taking very small bites of everything.

The house is full of baked goods because every possible emotion inspires me to make cookies and cakes and more banana bread.

I have not felt much like writing lately. I think this has been the longest time that I've not really been an active participant in poetryworld. I just want to draw pictures of bees and make pots and pots of homemade tomato soup and watch horror movies and take naps.

I am tired and my joints ache like crazy but I am oddly happy today.

Today

Today I wear a little black box to decrypt the secrets of the rock-hard charcoal briquette that is my tiny, evil heart or perhaps there are no secrets to be revealed except that it beats at the same rate as a hummingbird for no reason whatsoever. I am the queen of hearts, a mysterious arrhythmia. 

Today is earth day-birthday and my kid is twenty five and I will make a pan of gingerbread for his birthday cake as this is the request made EVERY YEAR since forever.  I have made fresh ginger cakes and gingerbread with stout and chocolate gingerbread but today is simply Joy of Cooking plain, dark, spicy gingerbread.  I have a whole stick of butter softening on the counter right now.  The only question is do I garnish with orange peel as recommended in the OLD Joy (the one with instructions on how to skin a muskrat and a recipe for Tomato Soup Cake--so retro!) or with candied ginger as recommended in the NEW Joy (which is a completely different animal, as cookbooks go). 

Today I broke the protective box for my cellular phone. A bad omen? Or good luck as my phone itself is unscathed?

Today I woke up achy and STIFF AS HELL.

Today I will sneak up to my Secret Rapunzel Tower Room and write a poem about something random.

Tuesday Randomness

This morning I slept & slept while listening to the house creak & lean in the heavy wind.  My bed might be one of my favorite places the dark quiet room the pillows & big down comforter it is so freaking peaceful. I think I return to REAL LIFE next week (and probably a buttload of paperwork) barring any new & hellish medical crisis so I am getting ALL THE SLEEP. 

I think I might actually need one of those old lady pill boxes. I am going to bedazzle it with stickers & colorful rhinestones.

My leg is very angry today which might be a reaction to PT yesterday or med changes or my adventures dreamwalking in the underworld.

Reading: The Magicians

Cooking: maybe some giant muffins the size of my head maybe double chocolate which actually makes them cupcakes if you want to get fussy about it.  I wish I had a lemon meringue pie but this would be far too labor intensive.  Maybe soup if I feel ambitious but I do not feel particularly ambitious and of course my leg is very fucking angry today indeed. 

maybe you should write yourself a love letter

It is very strange to have to THINK about walking as in heel-toe-push-off-lift-leg-bend-knee because I have been DRAGGING this leg around for so long and it still has less than half of its flexion or close to approximately half anyway.  M will stop me and say lift your foot bend your knee and he sounds just like the physical therapist so HA.

Yesterday I made a big pot of thin thin spaghetti with garlic and herbs and Z and I ate it for dinner and cooking it made me sweaty almost to the tips of my hair even though I wore a bag of frozen peas on my neck while working in the kitchen.  Then we watched Guardians of the Galaxy which was really fun and it is nice that my very grown up kid still hangs out with me occasionally, even on a Saturday night.  Next week he will be twenty five and this makes me both happy and melancholy.  It feels like I was just tripping on legos and playing board games and taking him to the park and then we crossed the tesseract and here we are.

I am making him a pan of gingerbread for his birthday cake this week.  Maybe some chocolate cupcakes too, because why not?

time time time see what's become of me

***

Dearest darling self,

I want you to remember to have coffee on the front porch remember to bend your knee to listen to the crickets with the windows open to read old science fiction novels and new books of speculative fiction and remember to watch the rain and remember to take the time to doodle something on a note card and to color neatly between the lines if it pleases you.  Remember to eat your soup out of your most beautiful antique bowl or your favorite mug with a big round spoon.  Remember to listen to rice sizzle in hot oil in your wok or to listen to the Pixies or to watch Buffy reruns when you are too tired to do anything else.  Remember to write a poem about monsters or aliens or fairy princesses if you feel the need to say things in figurative language and remember to read what other people are writing about for the sheer pleasure of it.  Remember to call your mother in law and say thank you to text your sister just to say hello to worry less and find the quiet spaces tucked into your days that ask to be filled with nothing and rest when you need to rest and find the energy for your most important tasks and know that it's enough that you folded the socks and then took a nap.  I want you to remember to draw hearts in red ink in the margins of your grocery list and to wear a swirly skirt for no reason even if you are going to be home all day.  Remember to be kind to yourself and to everyone else too even the crows and the stray dogs and the random neighborhood children who think you are a scary witch with a limp and stare like hungry jackals.  All of these things are both real and unreal and wholly beautiful even in the dark.  Remember to let the fireflies light on your wrist without shaking them off immediately.  

Love,
Me

&&&

Having a restful Saturday & trying not to be totally weird but I am still off & have the shakes & superfast superfast heartbeart that feels like DOOM.  I keep waking up every morning though so it cannot be as bad as it seems. 

Sometimes I sit very still with an icepack on my neck & try not to explode into some kind of cellular ooze or whatever.

My son grocery shopped for me & brought me a lovely pineapple which I cannot wait to cut up & eat probably in one sitting & I also have strawberries & more bananas so I might make more banana themed baked goods this week in the name of comfort & joy & easily digestible foodstuffs.

I am being fitted with a cardiac holter next week, which isn't nearly as sexy as it sounds.

Tarot readings continue to suggest a period of respite & a need for balance.  Four of Swords, Temperance, Two of Pentacles... Still I want to believe I can will myself back into semi-normal health and be able to function like I used to, but really, nope.  I am tired of needing so much rest. 

In the interim I am wearing my sunscreen & taking my numerous, numerous & ever-changing regimen of pills (the pharmacy staff totally KNOWS ME now)  & doing my PT exercises for my jacked up leg & this is all I can do so at least I am working on this business.

Pursued by a Bear

There have been far far too many wakes lately.  M has attended four in the last couple of weeks, I think.  He has another tomorrow and so do I.  I don't know why but early spring seems like an especially somber time to make an exit. 

I am uncomfortable around loss and feel awkward.

I am also grateful to still be here and then it seems selfish to think like this.  To say: I woke up this morning I had coffee with cream I called my mom I took a hot shower I took a nap I read something wonderful I paid some bills I sent my kid a funny text and to remember how lovely all this is in part because not everyone gets to enjoy one more day one more book one more cup of chamomile tea. 

It feels like you are being chased by something in a bear suit or something in a black robe carrying a scythe or maybe just a good stiff tornado with your name tumbling in the debris.

***

Random

Making my way though a monster list of phone calls today and OH how I hate that soul-killing device the telephone but it is very satisfying to make an X next to a number on the list and whittle it down.  I am also filing a butt-ton of personal paperwork today and generally getting my home office space in order.

Still feeling a bit off and on respite from the real world.  Slightly less anxious about it than I've been though.  I am thinking that I need to make granola or banana bread or both today because it makes the world seem a little nicer when things are baking and it smells of honey or almonds or bananas or chocolate or whatever and I am all for making things seem lovelier in some small small small way. 

Reading: The Devil's Detective

Watching: Happy Valley

Still sweating like a lumberjack even when I am not doing anything so maybe that's some weird hormonal perimenopausal thing or maybe I will spontaneously burst into flames.

Just to the right of the eye of the storm, here's what's happening:

PT starts Monday for my horrible messed up leg! Considering it hasn't moved in forever, I expect it will be long and torturous, but I am so glad to be working on getting better with walking & driving & etc...

(yay)

I am watching The Fall on Netflix.  I am drawn to the darkest narratives, always.

Still reading Duplex, which is magical.

I might bake today.  I feel almost upbeat.  

Social media is exploding with AWP pictures and posts.  I want to buy ALL YOUR BEAUTIFUL BOOKS.

I shall have to order them from my Secret Rapunzel Tower Room hidden in the Wild Midwest.

Fairy Tales for Grown Ups, Issue #11

Once upon a time you saw a rabbit and knew it was an omen.  Your luck has always been nebulous and hard to catch.  You look for signs in the rocks, fragments of bone in the shape of something violent, but old.  Where are the fairy lights that signal egress?  You are forever lost in this wood, looking for things determined to stay hidden, at least from you.  You started out as a girl, then a duckling, a doe.  Whatever you become it will have spindly legs and seem vulnerable.  You have never been a fox or anything else carnivorous.  This might be fate or choice or simply your nature but there is no way to be sure.  You may visit a witch looking for answers but you will only leave with additional maladies- lesions and fevers, a rash in the shape of a crescent moon. Leave your curses where they lie, or better yet, accept that you are something almost-dangerous in that you are becoming bestial.

***

Feeling Alien(ated)

I dislike the concept of illness-as-identity. It lingers, keeps you separate from the rest of the world, here you are in all your otherness catapulted out of everyday life, the workforce, normal physical productivity.  I am a walking fever, a harbinger.  So you look away.  If I could, I'd look away too.

Last night I dreamt of museum tour groups as an elaborate ruse for alien abductions.  Go on the tour, get implanted with alien mind control device and be complicit in the planetary takeover.  The aliens were humanoid, horned, gold and white, glowing.  Later, I was in a warm, brick-walled kitchen making homemade tortillas on an iron tortilla press.  The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the strange, the familiar and the alien seems thematically significant.

I am currently reading Duplex by Kathryn Davis and it is wonderful so I keep stopping after brief intervals because I don't want it to end.   I am watching X-files reruns which might explain the alien dreams and also iZombie which is more entertaining than I expected.  I don't watch The Walking Dead anymore because I got super bored during season 3 and generally am SO OVER the zombie thing but I like this new show, probably because I need my monsters to be sentient. 

Also, social media gives me the blues these days, but it is so hard to step away from it.