here i am

This fella has been visiting the tree outside my kitchen window for several months now. Today he was alone but usually his vividness is contrasted smack dab in the middle of lots of plain little brown sparrows. He sits there and looks cute and chubby and chews on his twig as I wash the dishes and, every so often, he looks my way. M

The first snow came today. I'd felt the warning cold for a few days, and dreaded. But the first snow is deceiving. Each year, I forget my hatred of all that is winter for those few magical hours. Woke up. Looked out. Big. Soft. Flakes. Falling. Gracefully, quietly, unthreateningly. And all of the everything all around got quiet under it. A sigh of snow. Safe. Cradled. Calm. Nestled. I pull on my hat, drive slowly to the store in the hush of a muffled white cocoon. It's terribly beautiful and romantic for one afternoon. Then soon, the hatred. M

I spent a good part of today lying on my back in my darkened room, just sort of flopped out in the yellowish light of the windowshades, listening to jangly punk rock on the college station and trying to feel my craniosacral rhythm. At one point I wandered to the kitchen to eat too many left-overs. I'm sick and sickly and sort of wandering foggy in that in-between, feeling too yucky to do much and feeling okay enough that I feel guilty for not doing much. I've got that in-your-pjs-too-long-haven't-seen-daylight-all-day kind of cabin-feverish feeling. Ran Wednesday and wanted to run today but figured I'd better rest-up as Wednesday was pushing it with my almost-cold in the cold (see, now it's a full blown cold!) Speaking of which, why do people ask all manner of dumb-ass questions when you're sick? "What do you have?" Well, I don't freakin' know! I'm not a microbiologist. Do you want a shopping list of my past and current symptoms? ...

So, I finally get the shoes, then my @#$% watch has to go in to the shop! Therefore, since I've had to guesstimate my running time, I've only taken the shoes out for little trial runs - Friday and today. But... WOW! They are super-duper comfy, no knee pain - I feel like I'm running on air! Wah-hooooooooo! It's ON !!! This is the first time I've ever done any aerobic exercise for any reason other than to try to lose weight. This is different. If I lose weight it's incidental. I want to run. Go figure. It feels incredible. As usual, I'll keep y'all posted. M

New Balance 765s As requested - the 411 on my new superfast supercool shoes. M

I got them, I got them, I got them! I stopped at the running store tonight and got the shoes. I walked into the store - all sheepish and silly and awkward - and said, as matter of factly as I could, "Hello. I would like to buy some running shoes please. I've never bought running shoes before." And the man behind the counter was very nice (of course, because I had just announced that I would shortly be giving him some money, and what else would you be but nice when someone is about to give you money) and said, "We would like to sell you some running shoes." (smiles all round) And then we commenced to perform a little parade of barefoot walking and foot measuring and shoe trying on and me trucking self-consciously around the little track thingy in the store (but hiding my self-consciousness by studiously concentrating on figuring out how well I liked the various fits). It was a little bit of a blast, to tell you the truth. And then I gave him a wad of cash (a...

our conversation was like swimming under water. your voice muffled and warbled and coming through. one topic after another, floating by - wavy and blurred in the most vivid blues and reds and some other color that I can't quite pin down. you made some mad uncomplicated sense to my sleep drunk mind and that seemed to me to be the makings of the most reasonable conversation I could have had in maybe a decade. but maybe that's making it make too much of itself. it was in any case, a good thing. you get points for that. for simple happiness. M

I'm Brave! I'm Tangerine Boy! What San-X Character Are You?

I cheated on my hairdresser. I can't pronounce Israel Kamakawiwo`ole's name. A bowl of cereal is not enough. My CD Burner is not working. There was a ladybug carcass in the dish water. Blade 's blog has mysteriously disappeared. ( ! ) My heart got broken this week. I'm pretending it didn't. I didn't know that Jennifer Beals is bi-racial. The air is cold and still with chill. My office is never less than a total mess. I'm a salsaholic. I need to re-pot plants. I want to run. I never thought I'd want so badly to run. I'm pissed that I can't run. Trinity makes me smile. I might go to a hockey game tonight. I have an unexplained urge to buy a Dottie West CD. I must be insane. I'm trying not to miss you. It's hard.

For those of you following my marathon training schedule (snicker, snicker) - here is an update... I did week three of my plan probably for a total of three days (more, perhaps - you'd think I'd be keeping better track, eh?) but these days did not actually occur during the space of one week... because my knee is hurting. This is not good. It is not good to be running as slowly as I am for only two minutes at a time and have one's knee be hurting. Not good. Not good at all. So I gave it time to rest, did some strengthening exercises, then gave it another go, with modifications (different shoes, different running surface, more baby steps, icing and ibuprofen, etc.) but it began hurting again. So - I'm back to walking until I figure out the problem. I think its the shoes. Therefore my plans are on hold until the funds appear for a trip to the running store for proper shoes. Maybe on pay day. We'll see. I'll keep you posted. I know you're on the edges...

I find myself thinking today about something I find myself thinking about often, and this is Israel, and her struggle for peace. The struggle for peace, and the struggle within myself to find some way to reconcile my love for the land and people Israel with my desire for peace. Wholeness. Sanity. And I'm agonizing, as I often do, over the fact that this desire sometimes puts me at odds with others (others whom I yet love - kol Israel arevim zeh b' zeh) who seem at times not to be able to look past polemics and anger and rage and self-righteousness, and see the possibility for hope. I know that there are other things that must be looked past too - I'm not unaware that there is also fear, disgust, pain, anguish, grieving, and determination. I know what is at stake. I know why you are angry, I know why you fight hard, stay strong, lift your chin in pride and resilience. I know. I am thinking of a visiting lecture last year from Amos Oz . Two things have brought his word...

Well, it appears as though it's over. I'm honestly too shocked to really know exactly what to say. I still can't believe it. What happened? Where did it go wrong? How could it have happened? Why? Where do we go from here? Something has to change. I guess it's up to us to spend more time and energy figuring out precisely what. I'm afraid of what this nation is becoming. More so than I have ever been in my life. M

Go VOTE!!!!!!! (sheesh!)

Here's the Little Guy

I kill plants. I try not to. I really do. I'm just not sure how or why, but I'm a killer. I have had so many, many plants, and only two have survived. One is a spindly ficus that I rescued while helping a friend's mom clean her greenhouse the summer before I graduated from college. She was just going to toss it, because it appeared not to be doing so well, so I pretended to take it to the garbage can but instead snuck it into the back seat of my car and surreptitiously wrapped its poor naked roots in wet paper towels until I could get it home and in some dirt. It just felt wrong, giving up on a living thing like that. I mean - give him a chance, lady, I thought. Ironic, then, that he's one of the lucky few I haven't killed. He's never really grown up though. Just sort of sits there in his pot, happy enough to have survived, I suppose. The other is an aloe vera which was given to me by a friend who moved to Florida. This gal was the plant maven. Her apart...

1. I forgot to buy Halloween candy. 2. No one who does something to intentionally hurt me deserves anything I have to give. M

I did it. I feel like shouting from the rooftops. When I got it done, I had this urge (which, fortunately for my dignity, I did not act upon) to raise both fists in the air in that sort of triumphant pumping motion one might see as a person finishes a marathon or wins a grand race. All this over having accomplished something that, to some, might seem ah... little: I ran for 10 whole minutes today - two minutes at a time. You'd have to know me, know my life, to know what an amazing achievement this is. I was once of the sullen angry smoking teenage species who muttered bitterly from under a fringe of dyed black bangs: "exercise is for losers." Seriously. I dreaded gym class. I would literally cry every year when I had (to attempt pitifully) to run for that damn presidential fitness crap, or whatever the hell it was called. I was a fitness misfit. It was part of my identity. I simultaneously ridiculed and envied those clean, ruddy faced, seemingly normal folks who co...

Updating this thing after not having written for so long is kinda like writing to or calling a friend who hasn't heard from you in a while. Awkward. Forced. Apologetic. That's not too surprising, considering there's a list longer than I'd care to admit of folks I need to get in touch with but just... don't . I do that sometimes. There's too much to say so I say nothing. Seems somehow more kind than saying something small and unintentional. Suspended. Ever living suspended. Upended. Between. What do I say? How do I answer the questions that no one can figure out how to ask me? But you've gotta start somewhere, no? The problem is that every time I sit down to write I find the yawning silence too deafening. I know it's boring to write about this but I don't give a shit. This is my rant for today. Oh, and I've gotten the notion in my head that I need to run. Having never done something like this before in my life, I'll be following a ...

Well, hello there!

There is a panadería here in town that makes the best Pastel de Tres Leches in the universe. A. turned 5 today, and besides the locura that is the piñata, guess what mom brought? You guessed it! If you have never tried this little bit of heaven, get yourself somewhere to try it now ! (Or you could try to make it yourself - if you are handier with an oven than I am) It is indescribably incredible, and I could eat an entire cake if someone left me in a room alone with one for any amount of time. Now, as for the piñata - you should have seen her parents' dismay as they watched her spindly and timid midwestern classmates hint ever so tentatively at trying to break this thing. I have had mixed feelings about piñatas for a long time; the whole process of beating an animal with a stick until its insides fall out - so you can scurry to collect and consume them - has always been a bit unsettling to me, in theory. But it's so much gol-darned fun! And A's mom brought up an interes...