Archive for the ‘shiny!’ Category

It’s been more than four months, hasn’t it? And that’s a very long time. So much can happen in four months! Of course, I am trying to remember what’s happened in the past four months, but mostly what I’m thinking about is how we have cheese in the fridge and granola bars on the counter and I have a lot of work to do and I want to get some writing done tonight and has anyone fed Porter yet? I am a distractible person, but for you I am ignoring the thing that’s shiny over there. As far as you know. There could have been a week and a half between those last two sentences! You don’t know! There wasn’t. But I thought about getting up to put the teakettle on.

Anyway, what has happened? Firstly and most obviously, Jennette Fulda of Make My Blog Pretty has—wait for it—made my blog so pretty.

I like happy endings. It’s why I read romance novels for so long—I want the romantic kiss and the sunset and the ever-after where the music surges joyfully and has got harmonicas in it and everything is swell and nothing will ever be sad, not ever again.

The problem with happy endings, though, is figuring out where the ending is. Sometimes, it is very very easy. The hero and the heroine kiss, that’s one. The family torn apart is reunited, there’s another. The small, wiry kid wins the national boating championship despite all odds and is hoisted up on his teammates’ shoulders and there is cheering.

Weight loss stories are supposed to have very definitive endings—you reach your goal! You have triumphed! There go the harmonicas, and here comes the hero of our story, wearing a slinky dress in size whatever, newly proud of herself and her accomplishments and her rockin’ bod, and there she goes off over the horizon and into the setting sun that is as hot as she suddenly believes she is and then the credits roll and you are dabbing away a little tear and pressing your fist to your heart because it is throbbing with the beauty of it all, so hard it might just thump right out of your chest.

When I was young, some ridiculous age like, say, five or twenty nine or something, I suddenly conceived of books as objects, that were created. They were wonderful stories full of magic and wonder and whatever the fuck, yes, true, but—someone made those stories. Someone thought up those  stories and wrote them down and other people, then, were able to read those stories. It was a kind of miracle, a book. That someone’s story could exist apart, have a place in the world, be real and tangible and permanent. It was awesome.

I made the leap at some point not too long afterwards—someone could tell a story, right? Well, you know what, buddy? That someone could be me.

I was still fuzzy on the details—how you went from Here is my story! to Here is my book! How it goes from being just yours to belonging to anyone. How did it happen? Where did you go? Who did you talk to?

Before, I really thought I needed a vacation. And then, after this week-and-a-bit, I really did need a vacation, really, really badly. It’s been a hell of a week-and-a-bit, and the thought that I would get out of town and away from everything, soon, sooner, in two days, in one day, tomorrow, has been the only thing that’s been keeping me upright and with my head more or less intact.

By this time tomorrow, I will be on the Mayan Riveria. I will possibly even be wearing the string bikini I bought if my courage does not fail me, and I will definitely feasting on buttery lobster that had been caught ten minutes previously. Icy, salty margaritas, hot hot sun, hot hot like the sun boyfriend, the beach. Oh, the beach. I may lie flat on the sand and not move the entire week, and it will be the best week of my life, after a week of hell. Or the hammock.

If I am not very careful and do not watch my back, I am going to be packing healthy oat-nut granola bars into a fanny pack that I strap onto the waist of my high-tech snow pants, which I have tucked into my space-aged padded socks that peek out of the tops of my light-weight, nubby-soled, extra-tractiony shboots (which I double-knot for safety), snapping the chin strap of my floppy sun-protecting hat briskly, hauling on my survival backpack and snatching up my sturdy, polished-to-a-gloss walking stick as I stride out the door, the dogs at my heels.

“Come!” I will cry out to my faithful companions. “We have mountains to conquer! Valleys to probe! Rocks to scale and small, tree-lined paths coated in sucking mud to wander down confusedly because we’re not sure exactly where we’re going! It is adventure we seek, for hikers we are! And we hike! Away!” The dogs will be wearing hats, too.

I like my life. I like my boyfriend, my cat, having a crazy dog who loves me, writing every day, talking about writing every day, working from home, the people in my family of in-laws who treat me like family, the people in my family who love me very much. My talented friends, my excellent apartment, thrift stores just blocks from me, a coffee shop downstairs. To-do lists that get done. Despite my general fear that I am going to end up homeless or hospitalized and then thrown in debtor’s prison, errands are being run and life is being taken care of, running more or less smoothly and generally on course, pleasantly and in a fine, upstanding way. And yet lately, I still want to sell everything and go live in a van in Mexico.

In Mexico, there is no snow.