Vulnerability: I hate it.

I am in a very bad mood. Because I had to call out sick from work today due to back pain. I tend not to take these back pain incidents of mine very seriously, since they are usually caused by nothing, and go anyway without me doing much but suffering through it.

Last night I just stepped inside my front door wearing the boots I wear all the time and knew immeadiately something was wrong. And it was definitely still wrong this morning.

I had every intention of going to work anyway, because I HATE TO ADMIT DEFEAT. The thought that I really CAN'T do something makes no sense to my brain.

But I got up, and I made it out to vote on foot, and it was pretty crazy because I was limping really bad and had to walk so slow it took me almost an hour to make to the polling place (someplace I could ordinarily reach in about ten minutes) and I was still planning on going to work until I was getting ready in my room and I had been standing still in front of the mirror and I went to take a step and I screamed involuntarily. And then had a really hard time making it the three steps to pick up my bag.

Ok. Don't know how I'm going to be standing on my feet all day and bagging groceries if I can't PICK UP MY BAG. This was clearly obvious from the moment I got out of bed and limped my way into the shower, yet it took me THREE HOURS of being in serious pain and walking around as if I wasn't to believe it.

Why is it so hard for me to take care of myself?
Guilt. Refusal to admit defeat. Some degree of embaressment over having a stupid pain thing affect me. Because someone joked about back pain making me old last night. Because being physically strong is very important to me.

And I know,
because I will feel better later today, because the only thing I can do for this kind of pain is rest, that when I feel better I will feel even more guilty over having given in, because I'll make sure I don't remember that this rest really was necessary.

And beat myself up over how I should have just gone to work. When really, I couldn't. I would habe prefered to have. Because now I feel bored and displeased with myself and out of my body and restless.

I'm going to try to enjoy being in my bed and reading about ten of my favorite novels and wearing my pajamas and a stolen orange t-shirt that still kind of smells like someone and listening to a lot of music. And remembering that this sort of pain is all psychic and stress related and that being nice to myself is something that I need to do ocasionally or I will be unable to walk.

Hmm. Why?

How come? Since this is gonna be a work day and I'm gonna paint and be messy I've decided not to shower until later. And just wear my jeans and risd sweatershirt and crazy hair. And yet. I still put all my elaborate eye makeup on. Why is that. Oh well. I do sort of get into a performative mode when I paint. Maybe I should start actually dressing up too. Wig. Feather boa. Prom dress. Heels. Why not. Even if I am just going to be alone in my room with glue. Haha.

10 things.

10 amazing things from this weekend (so far).

ten cent coffee because it's "late."
what pump you at.
the insane rhyme and narrative structure of contemporary country music.
"emotion is energy in motion."
green milk from the planet orange.
really good ways to start the way.
what sunshine said.
strange flavor everything.
the las vegas restaurant.
red means stop and green means go.

from this weekend SO FAR. And it's only sunday at 1:18pm.

This will only be interesting to me, I think.

damn, I don't know if it's having four days off in a row or what (have I mentioned to any of you yet how amazing this is? once or twice?), but I am in a really good mood. Drinking coffee and reading and writing in the early afternoon after waking up late on a sunday. And I think I'm in one of those modes where I can finish a whole painting in one day.

I love late fall...
at least sunny chilly sunday afternoon when I don't have to work...
sleep late, wake up pleasantly, walk to stop & shop for coffee, read and write and hang out in my room, go for a walk, and then just when it's dusk head home and have a glass of wine and start looking at my collage materials and get to work.
While I really generally crave sushine in life, I paint best at night, so these short fall days where I sleep late and it's dark at five work out really well for me painting. They suck for pretty much everything else, but for painting? Perfect. Since I can't ever really get started until it's about dark....
I don't know, and there's just something I really really like about waking on these late fall afternoons with the gorgeous light and heading home around five kind of chilly and making art for the evening. Sort of my ideal work scenario...especially after two previous days off of fun and hijinks. Yeah.
Oh and I saw some art work I liked yesterday and some other things that were visually stimulating. It kind of felt like a collage of a day. So my brain is already doing the thing where I'm putting together visual puzzles and connections even while I sit and write this.
Yeah. Most boring blog ever. To anyone but me. Sorry. But I've had fun. That was kind of like a college exercise where you verbalize your motivation or your process or whatever. Yay me. I've been verbalized.

fall 2. (favorite things about summer)

so after all my ranting about this summer and all that, I was thinking that while in many ways the past summer is a weird blur to me, and definitely a lot of difficult and sad and just crazy things happened, and I feel like I really missed the whole season in some ways (no swimming! no cape! no vacations at all! no beach! no camping! hardly any sleeping in the sun and reading a book! totally neglected garden! no roadtrips! no cookouts! etc)...a lot of awesome things happened...FIRST OF ALL...SO MUCH WINE AND HANGING OUT ON MY PORCH...thanks everyone...who participated...in that...
and
(since this blog always just ends up being a list of things that are great about my life to remind me to be positive):
*the day beth and i were talking on the phone and both realized we were actually in the same park and finally after much confusion found each other and hung out all afternoon laying on the grass, then went to whole foods and bought veggies and katie came over and we cooked dinner...I think it was Art Night ..2...there was definitely a clothing exchange...
*the night Katie & Hilary came over to drink to wine with me and have Girl Night and it happened to be the day all my kitchen stuff had been taken during the day and we had a hilariously good time drinking cheap white wine from pops on my porch and laughing about how I had no silverware or plates
*the night sarah came over and we went to stop & shop and bought blonde hair dye and tabloids and spent our saturday night bleaching our hair together and reading gossip and eating avocados and bread
*the night I was taking a random walk and it was hot and I ran into gwenan at woodstar and we ended up having dinner and so hung out for the first time ever outside of work and also I had shrimp for the first time in forever..the beginning of my vegeatarn downslide...and now I even eat bacon and sausage
*the veggie potluck dinner party at jeff's house, with that lasgana and those vegan ice cream sandwhiches, and jeff and i and jake and beth and rin and ben and matt and jocelyn and jeff's housemates and really good food and conversation
*the night hilary called me really late and demanded i come over to meet jenne and she and jenne were so drunk and i got drunk too and we sat on hilary's porch and there was much wine and nachos too
*all the Art Nights, and especially the one we were all driving around in erin's car and ali and erin were dancing to hiphop and sarah made us pull over so we could steal all those gladiolas and then they spilled off the kitchen table and there was that bad smell in my kitchen for weeks
* the night katie got erin to take off her shirt and then we all got kicked out of the WWII club
*the night I made eggplant curry for gwenan and then we went in the middle of the night for gelato in the pouring rain
*the day katie and I hung out on that raft on the lake at smith and made word collages
* the night I was walking downtown late and emily thought I was ali and called me over and i met matt and we sat across the street from woodstar on a curb and ate pastery at midnight
*going to the tri-county fair with jeff and taking pictures, and then driving around and finding the best free stuff ever all over noho
*NIGHT STREET TABLE TENNIS!!!
*that morning i randomnly had breakfast with kathryn and we had a gossip fest
*and the night katie and i went to walmart at 10pm for our NIGHT STREET TABLE TENNIS outfits, ie shorty shorts and teenaged t-shirts wit risque sayings, and decorated them in my kitchen really late with glitter puffy paint so they said "ass virgin" and "ass bandit"
*having max drive up here for dinner and meeting his wife and and cooking them a really good dinner (my most awesome homemade pesto and ravioli and tomatoes and mozzarella and hanging out and having the best time ive had with max in years and really feeling like our friendship was better after so many years of ups and downs especially that bad period when i was living in new york...its amazing what a good dinner made by me served on my awesome porch in early summer in new england will fix
*dancing crazy at divas, with all sorts of weird combinations of people
*seeing brian reading at woodstar like every single day all summer since my coffee grinder went away and I get my coffee out every single day
*the day that sarah and katie and i had the GIRLIEST DAY EVER and went to oh my for sex toys, then spent all afternoon at the mall, then played LIFE on my porch (remember sarah your career was "professional athlete"), then went to see SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!!
*all those late night trashy movies in hadley with sarah beth katie monica and all ("my super exgirlfriend! the devil wears prada! etc) where i brought my juice boxes of wine from work, and especially that night we stood around AND watched those boys try to break into their moms minivan
*sarah and I going to the blue heron really dressed up and dressed totally identically by accident, in little black dreses and gold hoop earrings...and eating amazing fucking scallops
*the night that sarah and nikki came back here after divas and we all hung out on my bed and I fell asleep and sarah and nikki took a photo of me sleeping and texted it to like everyone in the world I know including people who were not speaking to me at the time
*Art Night, in general, was awesome all summer....that one night that all those random people were there: erin and rachel and katie and ali and nikki and sam and rin and jeff and ross and leslie and sarah and god knows who else...
*the first night katie and i ever when to divas together and we spent most of the night drinking wine in her car in the parking lot and establishing our new friend vibe and I realized how awesome she was...yay wine with TWIST OFF TOPS!!!
*Obviously the night beth and I were having dinner (homemade saag paneer made by me y'all) and sarah came over to hang out and ran out of gas on the way at the interesction of king and finn and we learned that you don't put babies in gas cans (thanks cumberland farms on king street!) and ran around on the street waiting for help and decorated the stop sign on state street and played on the swings....

ok. just some random awesome things I remember from this past season. Many thanks to everyone involved. xoxo

fall .1

Because tonight was such a classically fall dusk, and when I got off of work at 5:30 the sun was already setting (gorgeously, with very dramatic clouds), and then I just got home from a long walk in the dark, and stood on top of that hill near smith looking at the clear fall night sky and the mountain, it just hit me that this weird summer I've been having is over.
I've know that, obviously, but I haven't really felt it at the same time. This past summer was so fast, or at least time had a really strange quality much of the time, and I felt so unconnected to things, and so detached from any control of the way events were progressing. I think it was a great summer overall, in the sense that it was a transitional period, and I think essentially all the changes were good, too. I would much rather be where I am today then where I was last june, for instance.
But so much time passed, and I never even noticed. The theme of the summer pretty much was that it would take weeks for me to accomplish the simplest things, like buy toilet paper or do laundry, or clear off the kitchen table. Or anything. One day seemed to just follow the other with complete fluidit, and before I would know it, an entire week would be gone and I couldn't even manage to wash a few dishes. I think the turning point of that in a weird way was that night right before my birthday when I made massive amounts of sushi and had katie and sarah and ali over for dinner and almost killed them all with the thai dragon peppers in the sushi, and they helped me move my bed and rearrange my room. Ever since then, I've started being so much more phyiscally grounded again. I cook myself good dinners. I buy vegetables. I am not out every single night, but spend sometime home alone in my house, enjoying the space to myself. I read again. I collage in my sketchbook. I carry out my ideas for art projects, at least sometimes. The house is usually fairly clean, at least acceptable. The kitchen table is usually free of piles insane clutter. Although I guess there's a few other reasons I might be feeling physically grounded right now, too. Haha.
But hell yeah, having my focus and sense of control back is awesome. Yay seasonal changes and being aware of them.

physicality/food/breasts Part 1.

I keep thinking again and again about the space I take up, the amount of space I fill, etc. Size, physicality. Eating. Taking pleasure in eating.
I think it's because I recently just got back into cooking elaborately again, after this whole summer of being totally unable to prepare meals for myself. Of eating hummus and hot sauce sandwiches late at night. Of not eating a vegetable for three months I think. Of not even noticing that I didn't have a frying pan anymore. Of realizing around september I hadn't turned on the stove since early july. Of not taking care of myself at all.
In my worst cases of food self-denial I still never ever do the diet and calorie things. I'll not eat all day then eat cheese and mayonnaise straight out of the fridge. When I do cook, I cook everything in butter and white wine. Or half and half. I eat giant cookies for lunch with hot chocolate and whipped cream. I drink endless cups of coffee almost entirely composed of cream and sugar. I believe fundamentally in the pleasure principle, and after having almost starved myself to death ondce, I do believe in taking pleasure in the taste and sensuality of things. It's like my main philosophy in life. So I'm not even sure exactly what my deal is. Because then I won't let myself eat because I what? Don't deserve it? Hate the way I look? Am just seriously obsessive-compulive about everything? What? Plus I think food issues are stupid, anything. So why do I debate in my head whether I deserve to eat breakfast?
And how does this tie into my own attractiveness anyway? I do not fundamentally find anything attractive about starving, so why do I do? I think my breasts look at lot better larger, so why do they still make my feel fat? I really really think my cleavage is so much sexier now that I am not totally underweight, so how much comments about my breasts still make me feel outrageous large sometimes?
Yes this blog will from now on be entirely about my breasts. I think it's the tattoo. And because my size issues are like the most major unadjusted thing about me. Other then that, I'm really pretty mentally and emotionally together. If I could just eat reasonable meals without some retarded waste of time debate going on in my head, I'd be unstoppable.
So I'll continue this. I had this whole train of thought really well worked out in my head when I was taking a walk earlier today, but I've lost it. Proably due to the trauma of almost being decapitated by a tree branch while walking in a torrential downpour.

words?...breasts...

I noticed that I had a lot of words in my outfit today. That was interesting. My earrings said "fabulous." My pin said "i love me." my t-shirt said "upstair used books new bedford, ma." I had on my kitty cat jacket, which has the pin holding the pocket together which says "I'm a cowboy's cowgirl." My bag says "f*@k" a lot. I was in line at the woodstar and some guy in front of me was staring at me, and I realized he was reading me. Or he was staring at my newly giant breasts which katie wouldn't stop commenting on the other night. I guess it is pretty outrageous to wear a pin right at your cleavage reading "i love me" and wear a lot of glitter between your breasts and low cut white t-shirts, but whatever. If they have to suddenly be giant, why not.

my room

I know I write a lot about my room lately. But I'm still kind of in love with the fact that I have one. It's was so many years that it was "our" room and it had to be decorated the way "we" wanted it. I haven't had my own room since that time in san fransciso when I lived with amber and that was always only temporary since I was still with burns long distance and I was always going to move to new orleans eventually. So the last time my room was my room was my apartment in providence, barnes street, june 1997 to june 1999, with maia and kwi-hae...and I loved that room. But that was a long time ago.
So having my room here be the way I want it, and be lovely and be a place I can read and make art work and be alone happily means to much to me, sometimes lately I just sit in my chair and look around. I have all my things on the wall the way I want them, from my penthouse centerfold (brittney skye june 06) and my ginger spice playboy cover from 1998 and my rauschenberg reproductions and my favorite wayne theibold new yorker cover and hideous pictures of meat from my 60's cookbooks and my photos and collages people have made me at art nights...and my bed is the way I want it with quilts and comforters and nice sheets and colours and loud prints everywhere and everything pink and my two desks, one for computer and writing and one for my sketchbook and collages and all my plants, my crazy geranium and my giant thai dragon pepper plant...
I can't believe how much having my own things in a aesthetic space of my own creation matters. I'm not sure that I ever want another person sharing my room full time. Overnight guests are fine, but I think my room has to be my room. I might change my mind over time, but right now I feel very strongly about waking up in a space entirely to my own taste. I feel so much joy now every morning when I wake up in my own bed facing my window and my favorite new orleans painting of mine. I'm having trouble making it anywhere on time, I like my room so much right now. Which is a very wonderful thing.
ok, sometime soon I promise I'll stop being astounded by very simple, obvious things. I really promise I will. Or not, I guess.

thoughts about broccoli (sort of)

it's amazing the little things that seem big sometimes. like that today I came home from work and cooked myself broccoli and chanterelle mushrooms and habernero peppers. With cheese, of course. And ate a healthy lovely dinner all for myself. and that my room is clean. And my bed is luxurious and I love sleeping late there on my days off and staying in bed half the day with a book once I wake up. And fall. It's so beautiful right now. I live here for this weather, you have to be grateful to be alive. Just the air coming through my windows as I'm waking up makes me so happy.
And that last night I came home from a party I didn't want to be at and did some art work. It was kind of a revelation, when I was trying to be out and be social, and getting home and realizing how much I wanted to be alone in my room with a bottle of wine and the random collage elements I've been collecting in my bag these past weeks, and a blank canvas and my sketchbook. And I ended up having a good conversation about trucks and cheese too.
So I'm happy about crisp fall weather and really delicious mushrooms and my lovely clean room with my books and art work and plants and pictures in it. And being able to cook for myself because even at 28 it's hard for me to believe that I deserve to eat. So when I remember I have to celebrate myself. And all the wonderful people I know who keep me going even when I wonder if anyone can really be trusted. Cause sometimes I feel so low about people. Because, man, will people ever surprise you for the worse sometimes. But then Diane give me a random hug at work, or Katie keeps trying to give me soup and advice, and ali is always awesome, and rin keeps on being super adorable. Just for instance.
I realize this blog is mostly lists of things I need to remember to appreciate, but I think that's what self-reflection is for me. Just lists of things I need to remember to appreciate. Because even when I'm driving in my car weeping with the music really loud, I know my life is generally really great.

I noticed...

the other day I was driving up prospect street taking the trash to the dump and was waiting at the intersection by the park, and on one side of me, that odd restaurant with the pink flamingo flags had a sign reading "NEW ASIAN CHIX" and the florist on the other side of the street had a sign reading "OCTOBER IS NAME THAT ROSE MONTH." I found the combination to to be very strange.

That's all I got today. I slept over at diane & sarah's last night due to wine drinking and snuck out really early in order to enjoy this gorgeous fall day before work, and yet here I am on the internet. At least I could be doing the dishes if I'm not gonna go outside, but no. Ok, time to leave the bedroom, I think.

well, ok. I'm 28 now.

I think I had a really good 28th birthday.
With some major ups and downs. But I still think it might have actually been the best birthday in years. I definitely have really amazing and lovely and fabulous friends who know how to have a good party. and give good presents. sarah and the fuck bag! thanks guys.
And I had a couple of life milestones pass, and figured some things out, too. So ok. Not bad.

my birthday morning

I just woke up on my 28th birthday...woke up to a picture message from my sister, and I woke up under my lovely new pink quilt and both of those things cheered me...
as did last night at the strip club with katie and ali and walley and sarah and monica. I love that group of people. especially katie and ali for saving in the tunnel bar when I started to cry randomly (Birthday tears, I guess they are inevitable)
and for starting our own party on the steps until I recovered. and matt dineen! for randomly being there at the tunnel bar!
and rapping to jay-z with ali in the car on the way to anthonys!
So I think I feel good about it being my birthday. I'm sitting in my underwear listening to the mix I made myself for my birthday and playing around on the internet. I am not going to work. I do not care that my presents from my mom were lame and the rest of my family seems set on ignoring my birthday.
I'm gonna go get mochas with ali. katie is going to let me drag her to savers because she's nice that way. then I'm gonna come home and make a huge platter of sushi for my party. then there will be a party. I haven't had a party since I was 19, and that was pretty out of hand, but I'm going to be optimistic.
And, for the rest of the day, I'm gonna ignore anyone who is making me feel sad right now. And I need new underwear and earrings. It isn't a birthday without those things.

feet full of glass. yay.

so tonight after I got home I finally got around to emptying that box that burns mailed me last week. So much broken glass. It's almost all glassware, and half of it completely smashed. why why why did she packed all that stuff up, take it with her, then mail it back haphazardly so it's broken? I didn't ask for it. And where the fuck is my silverware, if she mailing things back and all.
So that was a fun box of broken glass. And being me, I dumped it all over the kitchen, and now I have feet full of glass. yay.
I don't know. I was already in a weird mood. Probably that's why I dealt with the box tonight, even though I didn't get home from work until after 11:30, and I managed to get pulled over for speeding on king street on my way home too.
I feel like a need to deal with things. Like there are both literal and figurative objects in corners that need to be taken care off. Damn it, I need to sit down and pay bills too.
Why oh why can't I focus?

thanks

I am so happy that this is now and not last year. What a horrible birthday 27 was. fighting in the street in providence.
Let's all take a moment and appreciate life changes.
thanks whole foods for bringing a lot of lovely people into my life whom I now couldn't live without. thanks burns for finally leaving. thanks ali for putting up with my nonesense all summer and still always being my sister. thanks katie for plates, silverware, and table tennis and so much more, wow. thanks sarah for being lovely and always wearing the same outfit as me. thanks victoria for bailing me out of jail at five in the morning. thanks walley for being my favorite fellow supervisor, thanks rin for being adorable. thanks erin for moving in with me even though I am a giant slob and am crazy. thanks jeff for feeding me and reminding me how good it is to take care of myself physically. thank you all art night people for making me feel cool and arty and like I am creating my own social scene. thanks forbes library in northampton for lending me the magnetc fields 69 love songs which I listen to everyday. and thanks everyone else I love, I don't know how I got on this train of thought. ok I'll stop, I think the bleach fumes from my hair are getting to me...but I do feel really really grateful right now. and thanks to me for not going nuts and for surviving over just a riduiculous glorious painful reawkening nuts awe-inspiring crazy year.

my tattoo rocks, I'm happy

I'm just taking a moment to appreciate my lovely new anchor tattoo, and to celebrate my own personal ritual where at pivital times in my life I go off by myself and get a tattoo on a whim. It's been a while since I did this, but I feel like this experience lived up the other two nicely.
And I went to work immeadiately afterwards, wearing a bandage and no bra,
and took the bandage off and cleaned it in the work bathroom,
And ali said I was dead sexy and a pin up girl, and heather said I was bad ass, and I think someone might have said it was hot. which is all kind of how I want to feel right now.
I'm trying to be in my full on lady pirate mode. It's who I need to be right this minute. so I got an achor tattoo over my right breast, over my heart. It pretty much is dead sexy, too.
And I feel sexy lately too, due to a complicated combination of factors.
So now I'm home from work and it was a lovely drive in the fog and I'm bleaching more blonde into my hair and cooking rainbow chard and drinking red wine and listening to music and I really feel pretty good. Good start to my birthday week.
Don't know why I'm so addicted to this blog thing, but I do feel like paying attention to details, so maybe that's it.

strangely happy

I've had a very lovely day of very cinematic experiences. I keep feeling like a character in a film, having some classic, essential experience. Also I feel like I've gone a full range from teenager to glamour girl through the course of the day, to back in my own bedroom.
I've bought a lot of vegetables, I bought a lot of books, I bought a lot of makeup, I bought glue sticks and a black marker, I took a nap on a dock by a lake in the sun, I walked in the woods, I had a cookie for breakfast, I had fancy cocktails on a porch in the dark, I spent a lot of time in the sun, I wore high heels and bright red lipstick...and I had a lot of good conversation too. And good food. And I feel really alive and energtic and interested in words and images and people.
And in my life. I feel really interested in my life, and it's fall and the air feels so good to me and pretty good in my body right now, and even sexy in a way.
This is really cheesy, I know. But I really do feel oddly content right now, even though there's no real reason why I should be.
I'm sure by tomorrow my emotional rollercoaster will take me someplace else, but right now, I'm ok.
And I like writing this blog. Gives me something to do to indulge my verbal side besides identical surveys.

Weirdness

For the second time this week, in just a couple days actually, waking up early on a mattress on the floor to drive from amherst to northampton to shower and then back to hadley to work, all before 9:30, driving in my truck,
on a really really lovely september morning (september already-I'll be 28 in less then two weeks)
in my cowboy boots and sunglasses and trench coat, listening to jenny lewis really loudly and trying to figure out myself and why people react to me the way they do,
and I come home this morning (and I never came home from work last night) to both $100 from my mom out of the blue that I really need, which she can't really afford, so there's relief and guilt there, and a really large box from my ex-wife of a lot of the stuff she took in july that I have been ranting about missing all summer. Is that closure?
On top of a night last night of some really hardcore talking and thinking and exploring about and of sex and friendship and different forms of love, it seems odd to get the rest of me back from my first love, just this morning.
I'm spending a lot of time driving in my car back and forth on rte 9, listening to music (a lot of magnetic fields, jenny lewis, & death cab for cutie) with the windows open, feeling the fall air, feeling cinematic, like I am a character in something.
And now should shower or I will be late for work...time to get back in the car in the other direction...at least the bathroom's clean, thanks to erin & friend.