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.