Sunday

Sunday seemed like just another day, until a certain person came to my mind and wouldn't leave.

The day before, I spent the majority of my day at work visiting a class session. It felt more like a Saturday morning as a result, and I savored the feeling of my own time. I sat on the couch, having finished my paperback, thinking about how if I left for the grocery store right now, it might not be busy.

But then the sound of rain kept me still and I started to lose time. That's when he showed up uninvited and wouldn't go. Maybe it was the rain that invited him in. It was a dreary day, like our second date. How many rainy days have there been since then? More than I can count, so why today? Why this particular sunless Sunday?

Eventually, I started another book and became engrossed in that for a while. Reading about an author's start in a famed New York kitchen, learning knife technique, smelling when food was ready, the politics of arrival times in the prep kitchen, the walk-in refrigerator and how ingredients that were about to spoil are turned into chef's specials to move them out and make room for the new.

When I could put it off no longer, I got dressed. Looking in the mirror, I raked my fingers through my hair, momentarily amazed at how long I have let it grow. I absentmindedly braided it as I stared at the floor deciding which shoes would dry out the fastest should they get wet in the rain. (This turned out to be a good choice.)

My own grocery list in hand, I headed to the store. It was laughable that after reading about fine Italian chefs I was off to the land of simple meal prep in an effort to save money and eat more responsibly. When I got to the checkout line at my Safeway, I handed the cashier the one bag I brought from home and then zoned out as I watched items ring up. If I had been paying attention, I would have told her to use additional plastic bags, but as it was, she put everything in my giant orange shopper and I didn't have the heart to ask her to re-bag. 

I somehow managed to get this extraordinarily heavy bag to my trunk.

A few blocks from home the drizzle became a downpour. Windshield wipers on full speed, I regretted that I hadn't brought an umbrella, nor had I worn a real raincoat! (Not the green and white one I'd worn to the zoo those years ago on that other rainy day. That other dreary but surprising day.)

I felt a surge of good fortune when I got a good parking location, and braced myself to move quickly to get in from the rain. The lucky feeling didn't last long.

As I stepped from street to curb, one longer-than-natural stride over the water that rushed towards the storm drain, the overburdened orange bag's straps snapped. I scrambled to pull it out of the gutter and save my groceries. I caught the lemon, but a handful of cherry tomatoes was lost down the storm drain. I skinned my knee on the curb. I was soaking wet. Gathering everything together the best I could with no straps, I held the wet bag against my chest and walked to my apartment door.

I couldn't help but laugh. If this were a movie, it would have been the perfect moment for a meet cute. Instead, I got to unload soaking wet groceries, figure out what I could clean up and keep, and then go clean myself up as well. At some point, though, my time had become mine again. And despite the skinned knee, that was a good thing.

Sweater Weather

I love days like today. Well, I love the weather on days like today. Nothing else about today was particularly lovely, but I worked from home with the windows open - cool air and sunshine.

Delta (my cat) seemed to really enjoy the open window, intensely watching squirrels and chattering maniacally at a fly that dared buzz around on the screen. To be honest, I watched that part anxiously. I was convinced she would jump and destroy the screen. The danger has passed, and now she stares at me from the top perch of her hideous cat condo, one paw luxuriously outstretched. (What we do for our fur-babies)

At one point, when I stood outside on the patio, the sun was hot and the breeze was cool and I just wanted to stand there.  I could have been rooted to that spot, eyes closed, all morning. I wish I had brought my computer outside.  I've resisted the urge to put on a jacket, so my arms are quite chilly without the sun and I have ice cubes for toes. I wish I were apple picking or picking out a pumpkin to carve. It is the perfect day for it.

I read something that makes me cry. They aren't sad or happy tears, good or bad. They just are. Like standing outside in the sun feeling the heat and the chill at the same time. As the angle of the sun in the window deepens, soon I will have to get up, close the window and dig out a sweater.

I hope tomorrow will be sunny.

I have mastered the Internet?

I've been really curious who it is that reads this. Whoever you are, leave me a comment, say hi. Thanks whoever is giving me +1.

It's weird to me that I can't discover who reads this, especially for such a master of the Internet as myself. You may not know this, but I am the Queen of  Google Searches and Inadvertent Facebook Stalking.

I have learned things I didn't want to know. Once I learned about a lie someone told me, and it was completely by mistake. It hurt, but suddenly past actions came into sharp focus and understanding dawned on me. All this because a name in a Facebook comment thread seemed familiar and I clicked on it.

I once found a woman on LinkedIn who I met at a conference. All I could remember was her first name, last initial and the fact that her DC area company was a 4 letter acronym starting with C. I couldn't help but think how much better served I would be if I could have just committed her full name to memory rather than all these little details.

Monday, I learned of  a Reddit post that an ex told me he had written about a fight we had using a throwaway account about 6 months ago. I was so consumed by curiosity that the following day I set out to find that as well. After a few attempts at different combinations of keywords -- found it. It was actually a pretty fair retelling of the argument, but I felt a little vindicated. Not only because the majority of commenters thought he was in the wrong, but because I managed to find it with no city, no band, wrong ages, perfectly anonymous unless you know us, and it didn't even take long. It wasn't some obsessive deep dive into pages and pages of search results - no this was on the first page! (Before you think I am petty, know that I only learned about this because I finally brought myself to apologize for my actions in this fight and he said "well... actually Reddit took your side so you don't need to apologize." We laughed. I gleefully. He sheepishly. Fine, I'm a little petty.)

It's frighteningly easy to find things if you know what you are looking for, and the more I realize that, the more I am tempted to look... if only because I can. Maybe I have not mastered anything. Maybe it's mastered me.

Painting in Layers

I've been dabbling in paint. Literally.

I put too much paint on the disposable plate I use as a palette. I mix it messily with my brushes until they are goopy with the individual starting colors still visible. I have to scrape them off and try to mix in the paint better.

This is why I haven't bought any expensive paint. I buy the cheap stuff that ends up being frustrating to work with, and then I get discouraged.

I've painted crazy, unrealistic things in garish bright colors. For some reason painting an elephant in red and turquoise takes the pressure off. It doesn't have to be perfectly realistic -- because it's red and turquoise. Realism was never the goal.

I think that is why I have liked it better. It frees me from feeling as though I have to get things just so. I did one crazy landscape with insanely bright green background, purple and blue trees. I didn't like it at first. I still don't if I get too close to it. But from this vantage point on the couch, it looks pretty good.

Painting has taught me about layering. I sit at my table with my cheap paint, brushes, and canvas and a hair dryer cord stretching out across the room. Paint a layer. Hair dryer. Paint a shape. Dry. Block out shadows. Dry. Don't get impatient with the drying, or you start to muddy up your brushes and lose your colors. What color should a black shadow be when I don't want to use black? I stop and take pictures along the way so that I can see the progression. It helps me see where I go wrong too. I can wipe off some paint if I haven't already dried it.

I feel like there is some deep life lesson there. Infer what you will.

I'm looking for what to try to paint next. It's a nerve-wracking moment to begin. Like I said, I was so frustrated with my paint the last time I am almost afraid to tackle something I like for fear of not doing it justice. My background got a bit muddy on my last. Paint quality is obviously poor and doesn't have nice even coverage, and is far too matte. Even so, my giant purple hare against a copper sun is kind of wild and cool. I thought about Watership Down when I painted it. The rabbits' mythology imagines the sun as a god they call Frith. I love the face against the sun. the body could use work. It's a bit off kilter.

I guess that is my fate, to have a bunch of slightly off paintings all over my apartment until I get better at it.

Walking home

I miss walking through the park.

These days, I drive. I drive everywhere. I live off another busy road, but this time with no walkable metro station. At least my window looks out onto a courtyard with a big tree and I can forget when I am home that I live off of a busy street. I have planted all sorts of things on the patio. This morning I ate two small strawberries that I grew myself. But the driving... 

The week I interviewed for this job, actually the DAY I interviewed for this job, I was hit in the parking lot by a FedEx truck that backed straight into me. It totaled by 2004 Honda Civic that was 56k miles young. I turned around and bought the 2015 model shortly thereafter. I spend an awful lot of time inside that car. 

Traffic in the DMV (DC-Maryland-Virginia, for the uninitiated) is terrible. Fortunately, I get to avoid rush hour much of the time because I end up going to recruiting lunches all over the region. I work from home, go to lunch, go to coffee, come home, relax a bit, do more work later. So for all the time I spend in the car, it's really not so bad. 

But, the park. Who would have thought I would miss that park?

The walk to the metro in the morning was peaceful most days. Blazing hot or bitter cold, the only time I didn't like it was after a certain time of night when the silhouettes of trees became menacing and I imagined who might be standing concealed there. Last May, a man was killed. That is why I moved away.

But it's where I saw the fox. Walking to work one morning, a fox, looking as though it were grinning at me. I could have forgotten it is a wild thing. I saw it again, years later, crossing the field in the dark carrying something in its mouth. Of course I don't know it was the same fox, but I like to imagine it was. 

A year after my mom died, one early evening I was walking in the twilight, still enjoying the walk. The air was warm until the wind blew cool, and bats filled the sky. My mother loved bats. She used to wait out in the backyard for them to come out at night. She wrote a story about them and submitted it somewhere. She was proud of it. I remember walking through that park and a smile breaking across my face. The bats careened over my head with their strange erratic flight patterns, making their strange whistling sounds. I slowed down. I stopped. I stood. Looking up and smiling, I closed my eyes and let the warm air hold me for a moment. 

The field is where I found four-leaf clovers. I found them fairly often. Once several in one week. Once after dreaming the most vivid dream about my grandmother. Of course, my mother reminded me that four-leaf clovers are just genetic mutations and, therefore, likely to be repeated in the same population. But I still felt a leap of joy in my heart when I looked down and found another one. 

I wasn't made to be in a place with so much concrete, barreling through the day covering the miles and smelling exhaust. I need a walk through the park.

Nothing/Everything Changes

Note: Written a long time ago, never posted. My mother has since died.



On the days I feel reflective, I oscillate between two completely opposing themes: Nothing changes / Everything changes.

I begin : I find myself in similar situations, emotionally bankrupted, hurt, ashamed of my poor choices. Obsessing over trying to find "the moment" that everything began to turn, and whether or not it's possible to backtrack. I am not proud. Is it inevitable that I will always feel this way?

I continue: If I could stand at the center and call out for everyone to slow down, stop, wait for me, I would take the time to memorize every line of my mother's face. Every modulation of her voice. I would watch her sleep, feel the magic of a little girl looking at her mother's dresser, dreaming of wearing pretty jewelry, delicate clothes, perfume. I would breathe her in; I would fill my heart with her love and my hands with her hands. So rapidly have these years passed, I don't remember the details. I will fill in the rest, embroidering my life with wishes for the changes that I so desperately want her to be there to see.

I find myself in this heartbreaking stasis, longing for the milestones of life that a mother and daughter should see together. Marriages, first homes, first fights, children, children becoming teenagers.... There is so much wisdom that I will need, so many instances in which I will look to my mother for support, but I know with a heavy heart that she will not be there to give it. I am buckling beneath this knowledge, devastated.

In Brief

There were trees there once.