soakin' up some rays

...in hopes of some natural bleach action. These beauties were the $3 deal of the century at a little antique shop nearby. They are each cross stitched, by hand I'm sure, with the brightest and cheeriest colors. The only problem is typical vintage yellowing, which I'm trying to take care of with last night's 24 hour water and vinegar bath and now the first glimpse of sun in days.

14 of 31: (tired of) "giving"

High-fives to my latest over indulgences: 

• Fiction Family - Fiction Family
• The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing
• Rage Against the Machine - Live At The Grand Olympic Auditorium
• Muse - Origin of Symmetry 
• Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
• Brandi Carlile - The Story
• Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You
• Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
• Emerson Hart - Cigarettes and Gasoline
• The Fray - The Fray
• Erin McCarly - Love, Save the Empty
• Flogging Molly - Float
• Radiohead - In Rainbows

10 of 31: giving (because I'm obligated)

I don't want to blog anything, furthermore I have nothing positive to say.  I didn't get out of bed until noon today, didn't take a shower until 3pm and never got out of lazy day clothes nor did I bother with make-up.  I didn't leave the house.  I didn't really ever leave the sofa except to whip up my favorite comfort food - a weird mac n' cheese mixture my mom used to make on Sunday afternoons.  It wasn't a great Tuesday.

And also...(pt. 2)

Grad school (particularly this paper requiring a long-winded refutation of  a critical analysis focussing on the god-forsaken British Romance Period, constructed from extensive research done by qualified scholars), go to hell.

Look out, Martha...

It was a very crafty day at Chez Moi.  I finally conquered those pretzels and might I say, they look and taste fabulous.  I'm not sure I have completely mastered the twist, but I'm not going to complain.  They'll go great with the raspberry honey mustard pretzel dip I'm sending.  I care package gourmet style.  I did not, however, make it to the post office in time.  I crossed my fingers that they were open until 5:30pm.  They weren't.  I'll have to send it off tomorrow but a couple days late isn't so bad.  He hasn't asked for a thing, it's my freak schedule I'm trying to keep to - every two weeks, sent on Thursdays.  We all get through this differently.  It's probably okay that I turn into the package Nazi, right?  

After my failed attempt at the post office, I went by Hobby Lobby to pick up the print I got yesterday.  It wasn't ready but they assured that if I occupied myself for a half hour they could have it ready to come live on my dining room wall.  Of course, what would a day in my life be without 100 totally absurd things going awry?  Naturally the print was printed crooked.  Naturally I had to double mat it for an extra $14 to center it up.  Naturally I got it home and noticed the middle mat was off center.  So I'll be back, Hobby Lobby, tomorrow.  Grr.

While I killed what ended up being about an hour, I browsed for a few little things I needed and considered this sweet idea I had seen in a magazine recently, probably Domino, for monogrammed stationary.  Since I'm a whore for a good notecard set, I grabbed a little something here for myself and then there for a couple upcoming occasions that call for gifts.  Who doesn't love a hand crafted surprise...as long as it's sober-looking?  Then I came home, got cozy in the floor, turned on House and stamped to my little heart's content.  These are some samples of what happened:

Mmm...Tiffany blue, I love you.

[and in other news, I had the phone surgically attached so as to avoid any further missed calls.]

a meditation on pilates

I have almost decided that my bi-weekly Pilates-at-the-Apollo is an intolerable waste of time. There simply must be a better soundtrack for working out. Laying on my back breathing through The Hundred while Whitney-Houston-or-whoever-the-fuck gets her groove back channels more hostility than motivation. As my arms bounce rhythmically at my sides and I'm huffing through each set of five, I am also imagining taking aim at the pretty white Bose speakers that hang from the ceiling and pulling a trigger. The bullet moves too quickly to track the motion and then they shatter and fall to the floor. There are no more slow, soulful leg circles and I can suffer through plank position in peace.

I haven't totally written off the group fitness idea, I'm just saying that the playlist could really use revamping, and the instructor could use some instruction, and the 18-year-old majority could use some serious maturing.  Other than that, it's going great.  The backs of my thighs are still a little sore from Monday's class.  

I really miss my pole dance fitness classes.  I do better in a setting where there are concrete goals to reach.  I get bored easily with monotony; luckily the pilates instructor finally decided to change up the routine after several weeks.  I'm sure she's a really great health science major but perhaps it's possible that she isn't a born leader.  I would like her to once explain the importance of posture, breathing, or for the love of lean muscles, to tell us to "pull our bellybutton into our spine and lengthen."  

Happy Valentine's Day to me.

The most sizzle I can expect will be coming from my kitchen.  This ruby red Kitchenaid grill pan is en route thanks to Amazon, and my extreme levels of excitement speak highly of the sexual dry spell occurring in these parts.  

The recipe that made it irresistible: grilled pineapple rings, Mascarpone dollops in the center, warm Nutella drizzled overtop, and chopped hazelnuts sprinkled for a little festivity.  

I'm going to the gym...

Because if I write it, I'll feel held accountable.

Because I've forgotten that I live in the body of a 25 year old adult, not a 5 year old calorie-burning-inferno.

Because The Staff Sergeant keeps asking about those lofty plans I had to get in shape while he was gone.

Because he's in the gym daily and I don't want him to come home flaunting it and find that I am left with no counter argument.  

Because of today's Nutella, Starburst Gummies, and heavy-on-the-chocolate chocolate milk.

Because I can't kick the blues...and working up a sweat is supposed to help.

I hate the phone [but I wish you'd call]

...or IM.

And then he did, rousing me from a Sunday morning slumber. I've never been more happily woken, except, well, there were some mornings when he was here... We christened our webcams with funny faces and smiles and then mimed along with the text. There was a problem with the sound so we made do with written words and motions, though they were lagging on a typical delay.

Now it's finally time for coffee. Oh, sweet caffeine!

And the rest of Bye Bye Birdie - Oh, sweet mid-century culture!

[One day you find out

This is what life is all about,
You need someone who
Is living just for you.
One guy,
One special guy,
One guy to live for,
To care for,
Be there for...]

Relief

My title photo seems quite out of place since our serious Winter broke today after a week.  While I appreciate the season and I like the crispness, the clean sensation of cold air, and our occasional snow, I was kind of glad to hear the birds chirping and to feel a warm preview of Spring.  Also, the sooner Winter subsides, the sooner he'll be home.

I've made it almost two weeks.  I'd be lying if I didn't own up to some pretty wretched days, some horrifying moods, and supplements to help me sleep.  And honestly there was at least one full day I wasn't sure I could do this.  My dad always tells me that the darkest hour is before daybreak and here it's certainly applicable.  There is a full range of uncontrollable emotions that go hand in hand with sending the man who holds your heart off to war.  The one I'm most ashamed of is that particular episode of anger.  Anger that he's gone, that he left me, anger at the universe for fating me to this position, anger at myself for blaming him.  It isn't like that and I know it.  This isn't something he did to me, however the knowing better only amplifies inevitable feelings of guilt.  The Staff Sergeant is a good man, the best, and I know how very lucky I am to so proudly stand by him (most of the time).  Then daybreak--and I awoke a new woman, the fever had gone and I felt like myself again.  

No one ever says that this life is full of ease and rose gardens, but somehow abandoning it is impossible.  I've hurled myself into a care packaging oblivion.  Every time I feel like crying I start planning the next one.  I've gotten back into school and am getting ready to start a new job.  All of that and I'm slowly chipping this new house into some semblance of order.  Tonight I hung my closet bar for all of the clothes I have that wouldn't fit into the tiny crevices this house deemed closet space.  I was so motivated by that small victory that I sorted the storage room and put together my new desk chair.  Now I'm sitting for the first time at my study space and not a moment too soon.  A magenta glow falls over the old tin table top I'm using as my work surface.  I have a victory cocktail to the right of my laptop and soon I'll go fish out a good photo of my courageous soldier to put in the corner. 

Moments like this let me peek from beneath the layers of Overwhelming just long enough to see the light.  I can do this thing that challenges me, this living on my own, this new town and old house of Murphy's law.  I can wait, be patient, be okay while he's away because he's doing the same thing for me.  

I live in the house of Murphy's Law, the bloody-cold house of Murphy's Law - with frozen kitchen pipes and my feet are numb.  And that's just the latest thing that could go wrong and did.  I hate this house...

But in the house of Murphy's Law cookies are love.  I made a special batch this afternoon with all of my heart and longing thoughts to find him in far off places:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

2 c. all-purpose flour

3/4 c. cocoa

baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 c. dark brown sugar

1 c. granulated sugar

1 c. unsalted butter at room temperature

2 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

6-8 oz. peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees, line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper; sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a medium sized bowl

In a large bowl beat butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until fluffy.  Add vanilla and eggs and beat well.  Stir in the flour-cocoa mix, then fold in peanut butter chips

Drop the cookie dough by the tablespoonful onto the prepared baking sheets.  Bake 8-10 minutes, then let cool on racks.

wasting time

It's almost four in the morning and I can't sleep.  My mind is empty - alert but empty.  And it's really cold outside [and in].  If I didn't have Mom here, I'd clank around in the kitchen and make his cookies, watch the early sun burn the sky into rosy pinks, and fire up every stove eye for its bright orange heat.

6030

A new day and a workless week! It would only be a better Monday if I were caught up on my reading, which is why I cashed in a couple days of remaining paid vacation.  Now I'm trying to make myself move on the active need to love hundred-year-old literature.  I've got my pomegranate enviga close and my Damien Rice love song, but I really have no interest in writing a response to Harper's Iola Leroy no matter how I might try to manipulate my indifference with creature comforts.  

What I would really rather be doing, and what I have had to pry myself away from, is grocery shopping Plumgood's website and thinking over little details for next summer's travel writing road trip.  It doesn't take much to distract me especially when I want nothing more than to be completely distracted.  But at the end of a few hours of procrastination there is defeat and panic and pull-my-hair-out-stress.  So even though I cannot stand another dose of 19th century literature, I must push onward.  Life is unfair and I'm pretty sure that most things are meant to be trying.

Soon and very soon

Sucking low and full into empty lungs, a breath is held. The first seconds are uneventful, novel even, before the warm burning in your core begins. The fire spreads, igniting concern that soon sets ablaze panic and desperation. Skin flushes then glows, and theoretically turns a plummy shade of purple. Following the climactic peak - air, a theatrical and exaggerated inhale preceding a return to natural rhythm.

Hurry up! [and wait]

Pensive, waiting, timing the captive lungful. Days never pass fast enough. Twenty-four hours double and triple themselves into grueling painstaking barriers. And I tell myself his jokes once more. And imagine the reunion, play my scripted Hollywood versions over and over and over. Even my mental cast is tired of running through the scenes.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Eyes shut tight to relive hungry, deliberate kisses. Reread the letters, each word artfully plucked from fathoms too deep to measure. Over and over and over... Try on the first-time-we-meet-again wide-leg jeans and floral halter. Try on the buttercup wedges for full effect. It doesn't matter that we're eons away from reunion. Try them on just one more time. 1200 calories, it's crunch time. Perfection. Shoot for the moon. Be stunning.

Holy blue-in-the-face!

Maybe he will...[not a chance, dreamer]. Walk five miles to imagine how he could but won't. Knowing that reality is the first to go before fantasy takes the driver's seat doesn't stop the imagination. What if he remembers me in some inflated form? What if that last letter said too much? What about meeting his mother? What about heart palpitations from self-induced anxiety? What about irrational fears? Fitful is the new Restful sleep.

...still she reigns

I've stolen away from the grip of retail obligations only long enough to announce my continuing existence. Readership has dwindled, my mind becoming limp with the absence of creative use, and I feel a little helpless in this mental drought. So I've sworn that tonight, after I've clocked out and gone home, had a glass of wine, and slipped into something a little more comfortable, I'll produce something. Anything more than this. Thank you for your continued support even when I haven't been much for giving back.

so THIS is the journey for which I've been longing?

I've concluded that I am really quite dull as a newly-graduated, single-but-not individual. Today's high point was a pair of paisley pajamas, that mind you, match the latest purchase of my table linen craze.

[Make that painfully dull.]

Oh, and I can't leave out the errand I was hopefully looking forward to following work - exchanging a pair of unmentionables for The Staff Sergeant. Annnnd just for good measure, and because I am not absolved of my pathetic solitary existence with only those few sad confessions, I stopped by the cologne counter on my way out of the store to douse a card stock sliver with his scent. It should be easy to make an evening of drinking [alone], huffing the magic of Kenneth Cole, hypnotized by the over-dramatic absurdities that constitute Lifetime television, all clad in said paisley jammies.

Enviable, no?

you show me [I'll find my way]

I'm draped in this navy North Face t-shirt, many sizes too large and soft like infant skin. He offers it to me as he's packing to leave, he gives it to replace the one I had kidnapped and he has since borrowed back. It feels just like the powder blue shirt he wears as he folds this one in his hands and asks if I want it while he's gone. I tell him it would be better on him, sandwiched thin and tempting between him and my finger tips. Calling my bluff, he reminds me that I don't seem to need the lure.

[True.]

I've given in to the taunting, bothersome self-sorrow of those who wait. I've grown tired of shooing Lonesome from my breathing space, and invited her instead for red wine and channel surfing, and a pitiful blog dispersion. I want his letters to spill from my mailbox into mounds of envelopes addressed in his hand. I want him back from parts-unknown so badly that tonight it's choking.

Tomorrow is another day, and that's what he would tell me. "You'll feel better in the morning," he would suggest in his usual, steady optimism. But it would be better to hear it come crisply from his own lips, and in a perfect world, from the pillow beside mine upon waking.

so close I can almost taste it...

I'm here, I'm still here!

[albeit frazzled and should-be-studying]

I feel neglectful and unresponsive, but school, these last, painfully long days of school, has called shotgun to the rest of living. 4 exams stand between me and that long sought after diploma, and so as tempting as these warm nights of spring can be to throw caution to the wind and...relax or blog or do anything other than pore over stacks of hand-crafted flashcards, I must power on through the jargonny fog.

Next week I'll be back and full of jubilation!

[hopefully...]

A diversion was necessary

Last night when I came in from work, I had mad plans of starting on this monster paper I've been deliberately putting off. Fifteen pages of intricate analysis regarding some large corporation about which I do not care. Knowing myself and also the luck of myself, I should have expected nothing less than downed internet, still heightened emotional instability due to a chronic lack of sleep, and the tear-jerking power of that stupid chick flick [where Deborah Messing gets to have wild, steamy sex with that guy in a boat and the most action I'll see is the loving 10-word text from afar]. I'd actually rather have the text from him than boat-sex with anyone else, but I'd really prefer...

[...you know where I'm going without having to spell it out]

When my computer was obviously not going to allow for corporate research and the most compelling plan for the night was to bury my head in a pillow to wail in animalistic fashion for 10,000 reasons other than missing him [namely stress from school], I instead tied on my proverbial apron, instantly making Martha jealous, and whipped up these tasty little pastries:

Morning Glory Muffins

I've been waiting for this si-lence all. night. long.

Against the better choice: to accept the emotional state of right now as the mere result of sleep deprivation and one of the less flattering aspects of femininity - I sit, fingers resting on tired keys, poised and ready to release whatever it is that is contained.

Instead, I am a heavy hollow, all of my insides alarmingly dry, yet I could drain a tear or two.  Dare me.  I would do it.  I realize that this is the furthest I will ever be from his return.  I'm still laughing at last night's jokes, still looking into the memory of his eyes.  Every lucid bit of recollection hangs vibrant and vividly in the boughs before it succumbs to the dilution process, one atom at a time.  I hate that, and I hate that I haven't heard from him yet, to know that he's there [safe].