diatribe on holy matrimony

it's amazing to me how naturally evil comes to us...how quickly we can devise the most perfectly cynical and hurtful things to say or do that are crafted uniquely to our chosen target and will slay them at a breath. this is why it matters so much when someone is able to change the tide of their thoughts and choose to act in opposition to these inclinations.

today, as i was walking around my neighborhood...enjoying the pleasantly cool weather, it was very difficult not to think about all the things i could say or do that would destroy mikey. i thought about how sweet revenge would taste on my lips as i made him hurt for ways he hurt me. i got a tiny glimpse, though, of my own destruction in the process.

i don't think i listened very closely to my marriage vows. today, when walking around my neighborhood..."cooling off" from a marital argument, i was thinking to myself that there should be more specific promises (or warnings) in marriage vows. truth be told, i was only really remembering back to the "rich, poor, sick, healthy" part and i had to google marriage vows before i remembered all that stuff about honor, respect, love, comfort, in good times and bad etc. i also ran across that line that always makes me tear up a bit: "this is my solemn vow."

so i started thinking about vows (and wishing i'd worn a bra so i could take off my coat, as walking was making me sweat) and covenants and promises and how they're in a league of their own. they're like ancient sages looking down at "feelings" splashing around mindlessly in a kiddie pool.

i often feel like an adolescent playing at marriage. at the end of our fights, i feel so stupid...like i just can't get it right, like i'm still letting mindless things throw me into despair. and when mikey looks at me and listens to me stumble through my expression of hurt or anger or frustration, i feel at war between the side of me that identifies with the bruised emotion and the side of me that realizes it's a tiny pothole in our journey together.

anyway, the conclusion i reached by the time i turned onto braceyridge is that i'm going to have this fight again. probably tomorrow. definitely next saturday (mikey said he'd put a reoccurring event in our outlook calendar in case we forget). but marriage is a promise. i made a promise, a promise, a $*%&!@* promise.

marriage is a covenant, a commitment, a vow, a promise. a promise, a promise. i made a promise.

"yes, i meant 'ybame' instead of 'maybe.' you're a genius."

i'm the kind of texter that goes the extra mile with punctuation. capitalization not so much, but commas and periods (and even the occasional parenthesis) are important to me because they affect TONE. how will someone know when I mean something as an after-thought and not a primary idea without the DASH??? they could mistake my equal importance on the entire thought without such essential additions. caps I care about mostly when I want to express a frustration or emphasis that the feeble exclamation mark cannot contain.

most of the time, I appreciate and utilize text messages as a valid form of communication but sometimes it causes me to mourn the not-so-long-ago time of real letters with paper and ink. i am brought to such remembrances in moments of using auto-complete when it finds every other possible combination of letters but the word that i want, and i think to myself: if i had a pen in my hand, i would be in control of this.

meat and meetings

meatloaf was a disaster, by the way. well, i heard it tasted good but i didn't eat any of it because i was afraid of it. it WOULDN'T COOK. every time i took it out and dug it up and peered into the folds of meat and bread crumbs, i saw pink and PINK scares me (sometimes not only in meaty situations). so i went out and got us fast food after cooking for a few hours; some friends who like rare meat devoured it later and as of today (four days later), they are still alive. so maybe not a total disaster, but disappointing nonetheless.

i thought of all these great things to write about this weekend, but i didn't get a chance to sit down and now they've all left my head. i've often thought about buying a little tape recorder to talk into when my hands are indisposed. ESPECIALLY for in the car. my best thoughts, best metaphors, best imagery seems to wiggle into my brain in the early hours of the morning commute. on the way home i am grumpy and distracting myself with NPR, but the morning is somehow peaceful and still and i find myself quite enjoying putting on cruise control and sipping my coffee all the way to winston. i hope in my life-time they invent the automatic car. i mean, the kind of car that automatically drives itself somewhere, or at least has the option. i like being in control sometimes, but other times id like to be free to watch the scenery go by or read a book or write or knit. i thought of how they could do it, too...sensors on the side of the road. tracks would be too primitive (that is SO Jurassic Park). i havent though through all the scenarios but maybe this will make me famous once all the trouble-shooting is done (shhhh, i know they had cars like that in Minority Report, but thankfully, no one watched that movie).

for some reason, since Christmas, my creativity has truly bloomed. i have a new-found love called card making (first sparked by Emily Garrett's mad skills), and i think i might be finally ready to knit again. i'm even entertaining the idea of an account on etsy, but i'll have to stock up on completed projects before i'm ready to take that dive. im also tired of not writing anymore. i used to be proud of my writing, but i practiced a lot in college with my e-journal. i still go back and read those entries and laugh at my own cleverness. these days when i write, i feel like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz when he first meets Dorothy. at least he knew what would get his limbs moving again; i'm not so sure about my muse yet. speaking of Dorothy, i just recently read Wicked and am trying to work up a review of it when I figure out why exactly I liked it so much.

as i drove home last night through my neighborhood, i passed a teenage girl hugging herself close against the cold walking down the side of the road. her carefully applied make-up suggested to me that she was not on her daily work out. on the contrary, as i turned right off of carolwood, i soon passed a teenage boy in the process of zipping up his hoodie and sauntering in the direction of, i can only assume, his romantic dusk rendezvous with said girl. it reminded me of secretive meetings in mikey's old crown vic (that were more often than not interrupted by cautious policemen) and the warm, tingly feeling of being near the one i loved--i'd like to say a more appropriate scenario than the hormonal fling formerly mentioned, seeing as how we're married and all, but i'd have to say "not really" if i were being honest with myself.

but oh how irresistible the draw of love!
(ie: the raging of hormones)

waiting for meatloaf

listening to opera while my meatloaf cooks. i was going to read while i drank my coffee (with a scoop of nancy' s super-secret-recipe of hot chocolate in it!) but i couldnt turn it off. Les Miserables....ah. here's the thing about loving opera music: it's hard to sing along, so you just kindoff have to listen. well, okay, i do actually sing along. loudly. like, top of my lungs loudly. and i imitate all the inflections, and act out just a little bit, too. it's hard to hit some of those male bass notes, but if i dig deep and enter triple-chin mode, i can reach them more or less. at least for the common person, singing along with opera is a very vulnerable, honest activity. when you sing along with a typical pop song or even basic jazz, you tend to at least blend in. but with opera, you stick out like the vegetable plate on the holiday snack table.
at least it's clear you're doing it all for love and not for some kind of accolade or affirmation.

i cant stop typing up the words as i hear them. they're just so brilliant that i want to see them written down. reminds me of the time i watched The Princess Bride and wrote it down word for word. didn't do anything with that little notebook and those hours and hours of tedious work, but at least i know the script of that movie very well.
i like to see words written down; i LOVE grammar. i love looking at a sentence and seeing parts of speech and parts of sentence and clause types...like a secret code emerging from the page that only a select few see.

"a heart full of love. a heart full of song. i'm doing everything all wrong. oh god, for shame, i do not even know your name. dear mamosielle, wont you say? will you tell?"
"a heart full of love. no fear, no regrets. "
"my name is marius ponmercy."
"and mine's cosette."
"cosette, i dont know what to say."
"then make no sound."
"i am lost."
"i am found."

(if only i could rhyme that naturally in my poetry, my husband might understand it :). )
i want to introduce myself in song from now on.

oh darn, the CD ended. switching to disc 2--waiting with bated breath. what happens??!??!?!? ive only listened to it 50,000 times. i hear new things every time, though. new words, new inflection, new notes, new meaning. that's another thing i love about words. endless discovery.



made it to the end of the first week...the first week back from Christmas break. (switching subjects now. like when you transition with a new acquaintance from small talk to some serious get-to-know-you stuff. keep up.) i was so exhausted all week that i almost had no hope of getting back into my grove. today was better though; amazing what a little sleep will do. or, rather, a lot of sleep. i dont mind going to bed early. i dont think it's the sign of old age--i think that's just from irresponsible people trying to make responsible people feel bad for being prudent. besides, it's not even about "not being able" to stay up late. its simply that i love sinking into my bed and relaxing. bed is one of the only places where i'm not doing ANYTHING so forgive me if i'm there when 8pm rolls around. sheesh.

i used to sing this song--"On my Own"--all the time when i was in high school. high school is a good time to identify with Eponine since she's usually singing about how she would surrender everything for marius and he wont even look at her. id like to say i'm a realistic kind of person who usually falls in with the character who doesn't get everything they want, because thats a true reflection of the world we live in...but i'm totally not. i buy into the heroine everytime--especially when she is getting the money, the man, the perfect job (which is a total crock in movies, by the way, because main characters always seem to have money but never work and have all this time to enjoy what they have; can't blame them though. i dont think id want to watch a movie about a couple who get up early, go to work for 8 hours, see each other over dinner for 4 hours and then go to bed and start all over again. not very exciting stuff.) i think i changed subjects in my parenthesis because i cant remember what i was talking about in the first place. oh, yeah, im absolutely the person who wants a happy ending. ill admit that a movie is good even if it has a sad ending (point in case: 500 Days of Summer), but if i'm escaping into a movie, i sort of WANT it to lie to me and leave me happy and hopeful.

oh yes, "Little Fall of Rain." i memorized this one too, and often sang it with my friend jessi elder. i always sang the guy part because i could reach those notes, and could pick out the harmony. i liked to sing the girl part, though, because of that one part when she has to pretend to be in pain...it was so...DRAMATIC. marius does have a weepy tone at the end of his part, though, so i did get to be theatrical. we thought we were SO COOL. well, I thought i was so cool singing operatic songs with my friend. now that i think back on it, i'm sure we were ridiculous.

MEATLOAF!!!

zombie day

i am trying so hard to be a productive, motivated employee today.

...

i am trying so hard to try hard to be a productive, motivated employee today. well, this whole week, really. i sit at this computer with these lofty goals but always end up on Facebook again. a whole planning period clicking from Profile to Home to Profile to Home as if something had changed in the .5 second delay from one page to the next. i even changed my picture today to one i like less than the previous one just so i could see something new when i switched back for the fiftieth time.

i just want to do the minimum and go HOME, where i will find myself even less motivated, still on Facebook, but certainly more comfortable. something about the soft light of the Moravian star hanging above my dining room table and the flicker of lighted candles and the earthy aroma of freshly brewed coffee beats the fluorescent oppression of this cold room. i cannot help but feel that these evil elongated bulbs are burning through the top of my head into my skull, killing my brain cells. maybe that's why i cant concentrate or get anything done. i even tried playing classical music and drinking coffee at my desk, but the outside of my knees keeps hitting the frigid metal of this infernal desk and im getting indigestion from sitting in this position, leaned forward with my nose next to the screen.

"two more hours" the clock says in its drawn out monotone.

...

how do you complement someone that you hardly know on losing weight? it could go one of two ways, really. they could either be highly appreciative or a little offended that perhaps you are implying they had weight to lose in the first place. i pretty much just opt not to say anything, and i try not to notice because it makes my own failure at shedding pounds that much more apparent. i'm the young one here, too. doesn't that count for something? where's the Olympic-sprinter-speed metabolism that i have a right to for age's sake alone? how are all these old people losing weight faster than me (no offense, it's just an exaggeration)??? well, i'm trying but after billy just one day this week, i can hardly walk and i'm shuffling around like a geriatric on a park trail. i cant really even bend my knees so i'm just pulling my feet along in my best zombie impression.

and hell do i feel like a zombie today...in the i-have-no-brain-or-energy-so-i-walk-like-this way, not the my-face-is-jacked-up-and-i-want-to-eat-your-brains kind of way.

hey, maybe i'm on to something. maybe if i just eat my students, this will all be over and i can finally go home.

...

and how did i digress that far...?