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...?

COST

he swore on his mother's grave, but then, he swore on just about anything. like the time he swore on the president's life, and on his brother's. or when feeling more spiritual, to God, the Bible and, just to cover his bases, "on everything holy." funny part is that he never swore on himself, but everyone and everything else around him was game. that was his thing, his motto, his life's goal: all the gain should be personal, but certainly none of the risk.

coincidentally, it is because of this that i met him in the first place, three years ago. three years and i still hadn't been able to shake that friendship off like the parasite it was. friendship only by the popular definition of a person i hung out with and involved in my life on a consistent basis, of course. it was a disease, i think; there was something inherently wrong with me that i continued to answer his phone calls, continued to meet up with him, when i knew that all the money we spent would be mine, all the conversation would be one-sided (my ears, the victims), and i would inevitably be cleaning up his vomit from my living room rug while he snoozed drunkenly in my bed. he wore my clothes (and never returned them), he monopolized conversation and he manipulated me out of money and time. yes, some degeneration of my brain must be to blame.

it was another sort of disease that led to our acquaintance of one another. we were at a kind of AA meeting for workaholics. it wasn't AA by name but we all knew we were there because we realized our problem and wanted to find some connection outside of the office. something that, perhaps, was strong enough to yank us from our swiveling leather desk chairs and mahogany three-piece desks with satin finish. i don't even know how we originally connected. perhaps because he loved talking, and i was lonely enough to listen without reciprocation. my marriage was beyond repair, as my wife had already left me and i had returned to the echoing loneliness of the bachelorhood of my previous life, of my life before her tenderness and beauty. he had never been married, but had plenty of destroyed relationships in his wake regardless.

our group met twice a week after work at a local pub and we sat around a large table in wooden booths nursing cold beverages. the one rule was that we could not talk about work. EVER. even if you had to make something up to be interesting, NO work talk. it was the point of the group, after all, to force each other to turn our eyes outward, outside the glass walls of our top floor, corner offices to the world spinning 30 floors down and beyond. he never had a problem doing that but we had our doubts that anything he said was even true. in fact, we began to suspect that all of the harrowing stories he spun were actually metaphors for work and that when we gave him commentary or advice, we were being accessories to his addiction. two nights of my week with the group, and the other five he somehow claimed as his own. i, of course, had nothing else to do.

so it was really a conglomeration of reasons that when he asked to borrow my car, i refused. the first time, anyway. i was proud of myself for that, since i am one of those people who can never bring myself to say no; even if someone were asking to borrow my arm for a moment to retrieve their lost ring dangling from the jaw of an angry lioness, i probably would shrug and stutter and finally say "sure." that should say something to my level of affection for him--i resolutely and determinedly said "not a good idea." perhaps that statement didn't have the strong "no" that i intended it to, because he was prompted to ask once more. and i handed over the keys. he had his own car--a red Porsche that he paid exorbitantly for in insurance--but it would be so unlike him to risk his own property. he was driving up-state to meet this girl he'd been talking to on the Internet and he was afraid that his low-rider wouldn't make it over the ice that was loosely forecast for that weekend. it was probably a good thing--i justified in my head--seeing as how he took off of work so little that he was beginning to pay the company for his own vacation days. and i would get to drive a Porsche around all weekend. by the time i realized he had no intention of switching cars, it was too late.

i had a cot in my office anyway.

he was on cloud nine when he returned and i had such an awful crick in the right side of my neck that i was spinning all of the way around just to look left. at least i had been able to alphabetize my office supplies, which i'd been meaning to do, and believe it or not, i even rode the train (surrounded by a mass of other humans in the "real world") to the theater to catch a flick and eat popcorn, a few kernels of which i believed were still lodged in the lining of my stomach. he had never had physical evidence to support the alleged stories and alleged people in his alleged life but this time, he had snapped several pictures on his pristine Blackberry Storm with the plastic still on. he passed it around the table, proud of this gorgeous woman he'd somehow scored a weekend fling with (probably fooling around in the back of my Ford Explorer, no doubt), and whom he predicted might become his first real long-term relationship. when it got to me...well.

"i swear on my mother's grave, i had NO idea she was your ex-wife!" i was able to get back my keys before satisfyingly ending that pathetic friendship. of course he got his back, too, but i doubt they'll do him any good. i wonder if a red Porsche at the bottom of a lake is enough to teach him a little about personal cost, or if it serves in no way other than a payment to myself for how much i have lost.

merry christmas

i got an e-mail at the end of the day, kindly informing me that a parent had dropped off a home-made gift: a jar of hot fudge sauce. on my way out, i picked it up, along with a folded piece of paper in my mailbox--a Merry Christmas complimentary month to a local gym. O the sweet taste of irony.

new years eve 2009

what's the worst part about having company?

having to say goodbye. there have been at least three people this week who came to stay at my house to whom i have felt tempted to ask "stay forever?" as if i were proposing to them.

sure, i like my quiet moments with coffee and a book, or some time alone with my husband, and i don't get those very often when my house is swarming with people.

sure, i can stress myself out keeping the house clean behind my guests, and trying to make sure everyone is entertained, feeling special and getting my undivided attention...

but mostly, like 85% mostly, i like to have people around eating my food, using my dishes, dirtying my floor, sleeping on my sheets and lounging in front of my TV. after all, there tends to be more laughter and conversation, conflict--yes--but growth and camaraderie, when you are not living as an island.

my house was swarming with people on new year's eve. 42 to be exact, counting mikey and i. mostly faces that im familiar with, but some new ones too; no matter--i took great joy in inviting each of them to wander through the rooms of my house, peeking into corners and closets, sitting on whatever surface was most comfortable just as long as they promised to settle in, make themselves at home and enjoy some conversation with their cider. people didn't seem to have a problem doing just that, and it made me feel full of purpose; i could feel myself filling up, like a hot air balloon and lifting, lifting up off the ground.

that's why it's so hard to say goodbye. i can feel myself being lowered again, into some of the valleys i was settled in before this welcomed reprieve. i wonder to myself if it's just one of those good things that must come to an end or if maybe, maybe, perhaps i could do this with my life and nothing else. perhaps i could even endure the goodbye part if my life was filled with welcome after welcome after welcome and one good conversation after another.