."..a wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold..."

from Tapestry, Carole King

There are threads in my life, things that seem to circle back...the first man I thought was a cutie pie when I moved back to Pittsburgh in 1993 was a Duquesne graduate student, studying philosophy. I met him at a table at the South Side Street Fair. Though I never saw him again, I had a crush, and I often thought of that man across the picnic table, as we ate our street festival food. Years later, I dated a Duquesne  philosopher or two. I only remembered the cutie pie recently, and it gave me a start, to think.

The summer D and I were not dating was a hard time for me. I took walks every morning, praying. I didn't know if I wanted us to get back together or not. But I didn't have a lot of friends, work was hard, and so God was the one I poured my heart out to.

There was a dresser that his roommate had, that D had said I could have. I didn't get the dresser before I hastily broke up with him in April. So the dresser was a question mark.

At that time, I didn't own a car. I took the bus everywhere. A friend lent me her car for an afternoon, and I called D, said, I can come and get the dresser this afternoon. He said, um, today doesn't work for me. Oh.

So we figured a time that did work. And the night before, I couldn't sleep at all. I didn't know I was going through a change and that change would soon manifest itself in bipolar disorder. I had about one night of no sleep per month, so by this time, I was used to not being able to sleep and I just used the time to wash dishes and talk to God.

I remember thinking, why God? Why did I get no sleep before going to get the dresser? I took the bus to Kaufmann's, walked across the Tenth Street bridge. But the fact was, the lack of sleep softened me. (I do not recommend it.) But at that time, it helped me. D was not overly glad to help me, but he did. That gruff kindness, the willingness to help outside of the pain we'd caused each other, helped me heal years later when Max and I broke up and he still lived on the first floor and I lived on the third, with no one on the second for a while, so that the house echoed every time one of us came or left, slamming the front door open, closed. He took the trash Sunday nights, and he shovels the walk when it snows.

D and I did eventually get back together. He gave me a ride home after a Memorial Day party, and eventually we were tentatively talking, and we were back together by the Fourth of July. We had a good rest of the summer, and an autumn of wrestling as I wanted to break up with him as he tried to get more serious. I got bronchitis. I was trying so hard to get ahead at work that when I had permission from my doctor to not work on Christmas Eve (I worked retail!) I went in anyways, because I was feeling better. I sat on the floor in the gift area and sorted out the pretty journals our bookstore sold. It wasn't a busy Christmas Eve, but I felt, YES, I had proven something by showing up. I wore my green velvet Liz Claiborne dress to the Christmas Eve service. Eleven months prior, I had worn it in my friend Sally's wedding.

As I think back on that time, almost fifteen years ago, I think, I can do this. Whatever is next, I got this. 

"I'm supposed to attach a brackety thing to the side things, using a bunch of these little worm guys. I have no brackety thing, I see no worm guys whatsoever and -- I cannot feel my legs."

(David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, in the "Friends" pilot)

As I search through my cake pan full of Lego pieces, looking for the item described in my instruction manual, this quote keeps running through my mind. It amazes me that these weird looking things are going to make something that looks like a house!

this is where I am storing my Legos--cake pan to the rescue!

This is the "apple tree house" I am building.

This is the foundation of the house.

Note the red mailbox. Eventually, there are two letters that will peek out.

Progress, with mailbox.

Side window!

The garage door swings open!!

So, I needed a project. During the Great Depression, folks turned to jigsaw puzzles, presumably because you could see your progress. Since my apartment really has no good place to start a puzzle and my interest in Legos was rekindled by my recent trip to the Lego store at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City, I decided to use some of my tax refund for a Lego set. 

The one I purchased (as pictured, above) was just under $50, my budgeted amount. It makes three houses, so I figure that triples the value. Unlike collaging, where I am using my creative right brain, figuring out what colors and words and images go together, making a Lego house from plan is extremely left brained. Follow the rules and it will come out like the picture on the box. Which is not generally how I roll, but right now it's pretty exciting to see progress, real progress, I'm MAKING something. 

And any time that I am working on my Lego house is time that I am not watching A Few Good Men. So that's good. I'm varying my home activities. 

If morning ever comes...

I've been coping. I've been watching Aaron Sorkin's movie "A Few Good Men." (I know, he only wrote it, he wasn't the director, but the script is so good that in my mind, it is his movie.) I have been watching it every night for the past few weeks, after it came on TV a few weeks ago. It has been my baseline, my anchor, my background noise. It has nothing to do with romance. And the concept of military law is so removed from any part of my life that it is an escape. And it has beautiful moments of humor, even as events on screen are as serious as a heart attack.

Today, I've mostly just hung out in my bedroom, watching "A Few Good Men," playing Free Cell and Solitaire on my computer, hanging out on Twitter, Facebook, and feeling numb. At some point, I straightened my bedroom for 15 minutes. (I set the timer.) I sort of watched TV for a while, settling on the Country Network, which plays country music videos all the time. And this song, sung by a very old Johnny Cash, came on. And the pain did something: it woke me up. And I started writing this post.

I think what hit me was the truth of it: "I will let you down. I will hurt you." Because it's the truth. We will be hurting and letting each other down from here until kingdom come. Anyone that says otherwise is lying. And Johnny Cash, well he is like the king of pain, he knows from hurting. 

Hurt by Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails). Johnny covered this song shortly before he died.

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

[Chorus:]
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here

[Chorus:]
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way 
--------

The title of this post is from an Anne Tyler book with the same title. If I knew where my copy was, I'd dig out the reference. Maybe tomorrow.

Can poetry help take away the pain?

I believe it can. The Psalms are poetry, after all, and when I am in my "valleys of deep darkness" it calms me down to think that the Lord is my shepherd. The imagery of Psalm 139 helped me get through a dark valley of my last semester of high school.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.  Psalm 139:9-10 (NIV)

Not to be melodramatic, but this has been a dark week. It's a dark season. But poetry, cosmology, story, the routine of a day's work, all these help. And this is how we get by, day by day. If it's not a psalm, it's a song on the radio, or a favorite cartoon taped to our office door.

This is not a coherent post, because my thoughts are not coherent. I'm writing these out for myself, and also for a friend who wants information about poetry and therapy.

A poem I printed out yesterday afternoon, from Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay. I was thinking of someone who died, and of people I love who are missing people who died.

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen, or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green striped bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.

And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know,
Trekking off into the living world.
You fetch a shoe-box, but it's much too small, because she won't curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.

But you do not wake up a month from then, two months,
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say
Oh God! Oh God!
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,
--mothers and fathers don't die.

And if you have ever said, "For heaven's sake, must you always be kissing a person?"
Or, "I do wish to gracious you'd stop tapping on the window with your thimble!"
Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you're busy having fun,
Is plenty of time to say, "I'm sorry, mother."

To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak;
Who do not drink their tea, though they always said
Tea was such a comfort.

Run down into the cellar and bring up the last jar of raspberries; they are not tempted.
Flatter them, ask them what was it they said exactly
That time, to the bishop, or to the overseer, or to Mrs. Mason;
They are not taken in.
Shout at them, get red in the face, rise,
Drag them up out of their chairs by their stiff shoulders and shake them and yell at them;
They are not startled, they are not even embarrassed;
they slide back into their chairs.

Your tea is cold now.
You drink it standing up,
And leave the house. 

Yesterday, Maurice Sendak died. He was the man who wrote Where the Wild Things Are. He had an opposite view of childhood, as evidenced in this quote:

"I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You’re going to trip over that for a good part of your life.”

--Maurice Sendak

Also from Maurice Sendak: "I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.”

Some resources for poetry with youth: 

• Using acrostics.

• Bibliotherapy and poetry. 

• Transformative Language Arts.

• National Association for Poetry Therapy.

eating my cupcakes...

The only information you need to know about my situation is this: the boy is in a hard place and it's a place I can't follow him to. He needs to be in his cave and figure things out.

And it's really hard, because all of a sudden, I realize I need him. Not in a bad way, but I finally get those songs that say "I need you." The boy has become a part of me in a way that has nothing to do with kisses or chocolate (though I will take both, thank you.)

Last night, after reading a particularly hard email, and writing a response, my stomach clenched up. It was the way my body was freaking out. So I sent out my mayday call on Twitter: "Send cupcakes." (I also called my therapist, because sometimes you need someone who will talk and listen as only a mental health professional can.) Kleenex' stock might have gone up last night for all the tears and snot I was manufacturing.

And the thing that I love is that people know to send me cupcakes and how to imagine sending them because I taught them by example, giving them cupcakes in imaginative ways when they were having crappy days. It is amazing to see something you created blossom, and then feed you when you need to be fed.

Types of cupcake tweets that I send to people:

"Sending cupcakes"
"Sending talented cupcakes. They sing 'soft kitty'"
"Sending talented cupcakes. They sing 'I'm really Rosie, and I'm Rosie Real.'"

Types of cupcake tweets that I send when I need hugs or prayers or just someone to notice me because I'm afraid I'm fading away into nothingness:
"Send cupcakes."

And they did. On trucks, baked from their ovens, through my skylight, with the colors of the University of Michigan (blue and yellow), *ALL OF THE CUPCAKES", filled with chocolate singing cupcakes with magic, airmailed cupcakes, cupcakes soaked in hard liquor and cuss words, cupcakes and hot cocoa, cupcakes and a happy foot tapping soundtrack (which made me find the Youtube video of the original "Footloose" with Kenny Loggins singing and Kevin Bacon dancing) 

I only follow about 100 people on Twitter, because as an introvert who wants to nurture all my tweeps, I can't keep up with more than that. But I have around 600 followers, and so people that I sort of know came out of the woodwork last night. EVERYONE and their uncle was sending me cupcakes.

And it occurred to me at one point that I had never talked about eating my cupcakes.

Funny, I've never really talked about eating a cupcake. And tonight I have so many to choose from. Thank you, all.
— suziwalks (@suziwalks) April 24, 2012

And isn't that the point of the cupcake? To eat it? They aren't so many stickers to collect in an album (gosh, do you remember collecting stickers??) So last night, as I sat finishing watching "A Few Good Men" on THIS, I ate my pita broiled with olive oil and covered with salsa and pretended they were all the imaginary cupcakes.

The irony in all of this? I have not baked a cupcake in my oven (IRL, in real life) in months, if not YEARS. And the last cupcake I ate (in early March, in NYC) was possibly the first cupcake I'd eaten in months, if not years. But I'm moving towards more actual cupcakes. I am underwriting cupcakes for the upcoming UnCo12. I won't be attending, but there will be cupcakes.

I wish I could come up with a really good way to end this blog post, like, "If Marie Antoinette said 'let them eat cupcakes' perhaps the siege of Paris would have never happened" but I fear I am mixing up my periods of history, and I don't really believe MA even said "let them eat cake" anyways.

So here. Have a cupcake. Have two. They're really good.

There is no fear in love...

There are two important men in my life right now: my boyfriend and my father. As a side note, I am blessed right now to work in a female-run workplace. Both my boss boss and my immediate boss are women. But that is a blog post for another day.

Where was I? Oh yes. The two men in my life. My father, the son of a Reformed Church of America pastor, and my boyfriend, a Catholic who often attends daily Mass. Two men for whom religion is an important part of their daily lives.

And I? A woman who is on a spiritual journey. As a work through it, with fear and trembling and love, I imagine it is one that will take me back to my confirmation into the Catholic church in 2004.

So when I said I was skipping church on Sunday because of the drive from Grand Rapids back to Pittsburgh, the boyfriend says, hey, maybe you'll be back for 7:45 mass. And I said, actually, I was thinking that might work. And he said, oh, I was joking.

Dad version of this conversation:
Me: well, I might be back in time for late Mass.
Dad: (shocked, sort of joking voice) Don't say that!

So, whereas the women in my life are fully aware of the fact that daily, sometimes hourly, I am wrestling with the fact that going to Mass makes me calmer than going to the Presbyterian church where I am a member, the men in my life are sort of clued and really not at all clued.

I'm in Grand Rapids, Michigan right now, visiting Sally (formerly North Hills Sally). While I really miss her, I like visiting her! I'm here on a Christmas present from the folks: The Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing, a biennial conference for writers, readers, and people of faith.

Last night, Marilynne Robinson spoke, and she started with "My text would be, if this was a sermon, 'there is no fear in love.'" She spoke on Calvinism and how it has become a pejorative term meaning everything that is wrong with religious thinking, but she said, "What is essential to you? Embrace it, learn it. Then you can't just toss it over when people say 'you're a what?'"*

And that is how I'm thinking. There are a lot of things to reconcile, but I'm willing to do the homework. Right now I have a lot of books out of the library about dissenting Catholics. 

________
*Note: these quotes are from my written notes and may not be exact quotes.

 Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing
Marilynne Robinson Appreciation Society

Vienna waits for you...

When we arrived in Vienna (Wien) after a week of pre-trips (Dresden, Prague, Berlin), the bus driver had Billy Joel's song queued up on the bus' intercom.

You've got your passion, you've got your pride
but don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true
When will you realize, Vienna waits for you? 

It's such a great song, and a wonderful introduction to this city I had heard about my whole life. My parents went to Hope College, a Michigan institution of higher learning that has been taking students to Vienna under the auspices of "Vienna Summer School" since 1956. When my father saw the roofs of Prague, he dreamed of working as a diplomat and decided to not apply to law school. (A diplomat's daughter says thank you to Prague, and I was able to do so in person, in the summer of 1991.) 

It was in between my sophomore and junior years of college. My parents were living in Warsaw, Poland, and I had been attending Carlow College in Pittsburgh for the past two years. I was transferring to Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, in the fall, and my parents brought up the idea. Did I want to attend Vienna Summer School? Is the Pope Catholic? It had always been a dream of mine, latent, since I had decided in 1989 to not attend Hope College. (Most students that attend the VSS are Hope students.)

My father was in Vienna twice during the three weeks I lived in Vienna, and so he took me out to dinner the night the group was going to see the Magic Flute. I saw the Zauberflaute later that summer at the Mozart Festival in Warsaw (twice!). The second time my father came to Vienna, he took Derek and me out for dinner. An interesting (romantic?) piece of history: when my dad went on the Vienna Summer School trip, he was good friends with Derek's aunt, who was engaged. They were just friends, but good friends. I didn't know Derek was practically engaged, but 28 years later, he and I were good friends during my time in Vienna. Apparently Derek now has five children and lives in Holland, Michigan, but I've always thought it would be a little odd, looking him up after all this time. After the letter he sent saying he was getting married, I never wrote to him again. I just felt that my crush was a crush, and I didn't want to have feelings for a man who would soon belong to another woman.

I was disappointed that either my camera was dying or the supermarket that developed my pictures goofed, but at any rate, all of my pictures from that summer are out of focus. Hard to believe it was twenty one years ago!

****

References/Further reading:

Billy Joel talks about his song "Vienna Waits..." in a Wikipedia article
The Vienna Summer School Website. 

April is the cruelest month and other vapid thoughts

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. (T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland)

I'm missing Warsaw. Fortunately, I have my Twitter friend Lola to take pictures of things like peacocks. (Maybe insert photo here.)

I miss the pock marked walls, the WWII memorials that have fresh flowers daily. I miss being 18, or 19, or 20. I miss discovering a new place in a city that has been around longer than long, even though so much of it was obliterated by bombs.

I watched the trams go from red and gray to being covered with M&M and Barbie ads as communism's hold went straight for capitalism. The tram stops, donated by the government of Japan? I should have taken more pictures, written more notebooks. Who knew that at 40, I would be longing for those days, when sometimes the depression was too much to bear, I'd sing "Won't you be my neighbor" to myself in the mirror to cheer myself up?

I remember when Derek decided to stay in Spain and not come to Warsaw for his last bit of Europe, the summer of Vienna Summer School. I thought I was going to marry that man. I still have his letters somewhere. Little did I know he was practically engaged. (Not that he really led me on, I just had a wild imagination.)

I remember we took an afternoon to go see Upper Belvedere, the Klimts. There is something about the gold that Gustav painted. We went to the store for dinner after that, got bread and cheese. He let me pick. "Whatever you choose is fine with me." We sat under a tree and I told him how Shawn Colvin spoke to me,

Sometimes I feel so reckless and wild
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
I gave nobody life, I am nobody's wife
And I seem to be nobody's daughter...

I don't understand it now, but somehow the thought of Derek's mother is what helped me get out of bed the day I heard that he wasn't going to make it to Warsaw. I wonder now how he got in touch with me...this is before email, a phone call would have been prohibitive...and I think I would have remembered a phone call, actually. A letter, a postcard? I would have kept a postcard, maybe.

(and how funny that the "i gave nobody life" line was lost on me until just today, now.) My baby blanket is in eyesight of where I usually sit with the laptop and I think I'll give it to my sister when she gets her baby. And then I think...but no. 

***

I have talked about Pittsburgh being the city of my childhood, the rivers of Bonn, the mountains of Tegucigalpa. It is only now that I realize this third floor walk-up, this garret, is my Warsaw third floor guest room, that belonged to me every summer and every Christmas for three years. 

And that is all, for today.

References
Upper Belvedere (wow, I don't remember it being so regal)  (and now I remember Egon Schiele)
Shawn Colvin's song, The Story

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?

PILGRIMS!!

This was my favorite joke in 2nd grade (and forever.) Whenever I tell it or write it, I remember the stairwell at the building where I went to 1st and 2nd grade. I say building because while it was where I went to school, it was just another one of the apartment buildings, with classrooms where the apartments would be. We did have a library, in the basement. We were right near the river, though, and the river flooded, so our library got flooded too. It was the Rhine river. I lived in Bonn, Germany when I was in first, second, and the first month of 3rd grade.

What I remember about first and second grade: my first grade teacher, Mrs. Olson (Miss?) was MEAN. And I was in the slow reading group, so I actually was reading about Dick and Jane and Spot. Whoever thought that was the way to teach reading was nuts, because, c'mon. I didn't care a whit about seeing Spot run. There was a mean boy that teased me, his name was Chase. And then there was this little boy who always wore suits. And he followed me home and would call up to where I lived, in the third floor of one of the apartment buildings. I guess a modern day Romeo, and I was a first grade Juliet? Eventually he quit. (I just wasn't interested.) I should ask my mom about that, if she remembers. I remember one time, I ran home because I had to use the bathroom and then I had to run up all those stairs. (The apartment buildings only went up to three floors, so there was no elevator.)

I remember that there was a piano in the first grade room, and every morning all the classes came together for singing time. We sang "Free to be you and me" and "My Country Tis of Thee." We probably said the Pledge of Allegiance. We were all government kids, our dads and moms either worked for the State Department, the Department of Agriculture, the Air Force, the Army...we had a PX and a commissary. (And a movie theater and a swimming pool.)

In second grade, my teacher was Mrs. Butterbaugh. She was nice. And I learned how to read, in a reading circle, using a book called "A Duck is a Duck." It was a reader with stories. (I think the Dick and Janes were paperback books, not very important looking. I seem to remember that they had the flimsy feel of those early piano lesson books.) We would do "Bloody Mary" in the mirrors in the bathrooms. I never understood that game, but somehow if you said it enough, the you'd see Bloody Mary in the mirror? I learned my first curse word. "Sh plus it spells..." and I went home and repeated this and my mom said, do you know what that means? And I said, no. She said, well, don't go around saying words that you don't know what they are, that's a bad word. I don't think she told me what the word meant.

I wrote my first story when I was in 2nd grade. It was three sentences long, about a butterfly on her birthday. Or a ladybug. And in my head, it was this great story and when I read it out loud it didn't make any sense and everyone laughed. Kids can be cruel. I often wonder where was the teacher? Didn't she look at the stories first to see if they were stupid enough to make people laugh?

Funny the things that come up when you remember just one joke...I wrote this while sitting in the chiropractor's waiting room this morning.

I guess I'm a fool...and it's April.

the bushes with snow, February

my collages, February.

So, Holly asked for a picture of my collages. Unfortunately, just as I was about to do a day by day of that project, my camera died. So here is a mid-February picture, of my collages to date (5 so far, this was taken on the 6th). I haven't decided what to do about my camera. The drug store seems to have some nice ones in the $20 to $40 range but I don't know how many pixels I want.

Things are not so great right now...the boy is going through some family crap and it's breaking my heart to see his heart being broken.

I can't believe it's April. Hosanna...and April Fools! I woke up from a really bad dream at 5:30, and well, it wasn't worth it to try to go back to sleep.

Psalm 137 (KJV)

¹By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
 ²We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
 ³For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
 ⁴How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?
 ⁵If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
 ⁶If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
 ⁷Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
 ⁸O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
 ⁹Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

"We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

(C.S. Lewis)

I'm thinking about change these days. And my mind is a nation of questions.

Do I really want the PhD, or do I just want a job where summer isn't my busiest time?

What would it be like to be an academic librarian? Is there a market for that? Would I need a second master's degree? Do I want a second master's as opposed to a PhD?

What about an archivist? I am tending to like old things more and more, these days. Once upon a time, my dream job was to be a librarian at a museum...this was after I went to see the "Sleeping Beauty" book exhibit at the library at the Women's Museum in Washington, D.C.

I think I want to study women's history as librarians (especially children's librarians) have shaped the field. That is one thing I could have studied at the secret Midwestern school, but why do I need to go there to study it? Research is something I can do anywhere.

I'm finding that as I get older (I know, I'm still pretty young), I'm less interested in the minute to minute trends and more interested in the wide spectrum of change that happens over time. So much of what seems to be "librarianship of the Twitter/Facebook era" is knowing exactly what happened this afternoon on the LJ site (an example.) I don't want to have to be so plugged in that if I miss that, I'm way behind. It's part of why I only follow about 100 people on Twitter. If it's important enough, someone else will tweet or retweet it, I don't need to be "on the scene, at the very minute."

If I did stay in Pittsburgh, what else could I study? My dad apparently discussed with my mother that I should study Education but forgot to mention it to me. So when my mom said, have you thought further about studying Education, I said, "was I supposed to be considering it?"

I'm also starting to have "feelings" for the Catholic church again, yipes. I have a feeling no one from the "old days" is still here, but I've just been going through some of my old posts that I wrote about when I was a Catholic before. From what it looks like, I started the blog after I stopped being a Catholic, which makes sense b/c I remember when I started my blog I had a conversation with some folks at the Open Door.

This is an oldy but a goody post that goes through some of my Lenten feelings from 2006.

"At the baggage claim you got a lot of luggage in your name..."

(Miranda Lambert, "Baggage Claim")

Well, when I went to NYC to visit my friend Andy, I didn't check my bags at the curb. I checked them at the gate, which means you waive the $25 fee and you don't have to wait for the baggage to come 'round the baggage carrel.

But I didn't realize that I had some other kind of baggage. Yes, there's more! In 1997-98, I dated a guy we'll call Dave. And part of his goal in life in our relationship was to spoil me for all other men. Things he did: he ran me a bath with rose petals one time. When I was sick for three months with bronchitis, he sometimes went to the grocery store for me. One weekend when I was visiting my folks in Virginia, I called him to come drive me home b/c I didn't want to take the bus back to Pittsburgh. And the creepiest one: he knew when I got my period (better than I did) and made sure to make me a lasagna b/c he knew I craved tomatoes that time of month. He pretty much made me dependent on him in every way. When we were through, I was more than a little lost. (Oh, and he wouldn't let me break up with him, even though I tried, about once a month for about four months out of the twelve-ish months we dated. What can I say? He was a sweet talking philosophy student, and I did like having a boyfriend.)

He broke up with me, I mourned, I went to live with my folks to deal with my brand new bipolar diagnosis, and I learned how to do things all my self again. Until I started dating Max. Remember Max? I dated him five years ago. He's still my first floor neighbor. Since dating for me = Dave, I expected Max to act like Dave and treat me like the princess I was never meant to be. I only fully realized this today, when due to the fact that NYC airports are mean mean mean (flight delayed FOUR times) and I was going to be with out a ride home from the airport b/c my ride was based on an 2:30 pm arrival in Pittsburgh and I didn't actually arrive in Pgh until 4:45 pm. And the boy couldn't pick me up for whatever reason (it doesn't matter what his reason is--he has a life too.) (I don't know what his reason is.) And I was bereft. And as I ate my airport McDonald's dinner and tried to calm down and sent a tweet to a friend saying "when did I become the damsel in distress?" I thought about Dave. And how that was his goal. To spoil me for all other men. Yep. I got baggage. Throw another suitcase off into the ocean folks, let's get rid of that extra weight.

Because, what would I rather have, a man who controlled me so much that he knew when to cook me lasagna and he broke up with me when I was depressed because "you've changed, you're not the same person anymore," or someone who makes me laugh on a cold morning as I check my email, preparing to embark on a day of travel? I have no clue if the boy is "the one" and that is not up for consideration, but I know that the fact he couldn't pick me up at the airport should have been more neutral than it felt at 4:45 when I got his last text saying he couldn't pick me up, with a frowny face. To me: it felt like a slap in the face, like "I can't take care of you" when it was more like, "I have other things going on."

 As I walked through the airport, dragging my wheelie bags, I thought of Sally; (my Sally, not "the" Sally), who last week while I was trying to figure out rides,  quoted Billy Crystal from "When Harry Met Sally:"

I never take girlfriends to the airport. Because at some point you don't take them to the airport, and then they say "you never take me to the airport anymore." 

I need to watch that movie again.

Learning, every day, learning. And now, dear ones, time to go to BED. Because when you spend over six hours of your day mostly in one airport waiting to go home and a little bit in another airport trying to figure out how you're going to GET home....well, it's tiring, physically and emotionally.

How did I get home? While I was gone, I had lent my car to a neighbor who doesn't have a car. She couldn't pick me up this evening, but her husband and daughter came and got me, IN MY CAR, at the airport. So it all worked out in the end. Oh ye of little faith. Good night.

in which Sarah Louise pulls up some baggage and looks at it

Well, I said I wasn't going to go into stuff about the boy, and I'm not, really, this is my own stuff, the boy happened to be a part of it in a small way in that he happens to be my boyfriend on one of the worst days I've had in a while.

So.

Last night I had to face a ton of demons b/c of not getting into the SMS (secret midwestern school) and then b/c I didn't hear from the boy.

And this is what it came down to:

Either he was eaten by hyenas and no one knew to call me because I'm not sure he's told his family we're dating,

or

he was so emotionally stunted that he didn't know how to deal with my pain.

In actuality, he forgot his cell phone, and he probably didn't check his email every hour or when he got home last night.

This has nothing to do with him, it has to do with me. And talking with Sally didn't get any of this out because, while I love her dearly, she's pretty logical and that doesn't help when I'm spinning. Thankfully, Lilly was around, so we talked. And this is what came out: that when Max totaled his car, I was there for him. At 2 in the morning, he was sitting on my couch and I was there for him. When I totaled my car, about a month later, he was not there for me. And he couldn't make time to help me look at new cars. Granted, there was a lot of other stuff going on, but the main thing was: he didn't have the emotional resources. So I made excuses for him. So it wasn't exactly that he was a jerk (unlike many guys who I dated who really really were), it was that he wasn't qualified for the job.

There's a quote from Friends where Monica says, "I'm not high maintenance, am I?" And Chandler, says, slowly, carefully, "so if they say you're high maintenance, that's okay, because I like maintaining you."

Chandler: I’m sorry. You’re not easy-going, but you’re passionate, and that’s good. And when you get upset about the little things, I think that I’m pretty good about making you feel better about that. And that’s good too. So, they can say that you’re high maintenance, but it’s okay, because I like … maintaining you.
(The One With The Joke) 

I HATE how Google doesn't do "cache" searches anymore and I had to go through the whole episode script to get the quote.  Except that it is a good episode. I love that Friends Cafe still has the scripts up.

And now I'm tired and I have to start this day. Coffee. I need coffee. So this is not the best post ever, but it accomplished the catharsis necessary.

eat chocolate

right now I'm eating chocolate ice cream. And wearing my mother's winter coat, which has been mine for a few years now. She's not here to hug me, but the coat is warm. Taylor Swift is singing "Ours" which is thankfully on the Target "exclusive content" version of "Speak Now."

Life makes love look hard
the stakes are high
the water's rough 
but this love is ours.

I got word from the secret midwestern school. There were maybe 25 words in the email, but the only one I saw was no. My heart is broken, a little bit, actually, a lot. I knew it was a long shot, but I thought it was a long shot that I was going to get into the basket, the three pointer from the penalty line. (Is that even basketball speak?)

I am at work, trying to just get through this cart of books. I've heard from my parents, but not from Sally or the boy. And I need to hear from them. But it can't be about my drama. It must NOT be about my drama. They will soothe me soon enough, just as I have soothed them, just as I will soothe them again.

One of my favorite writers, Mitali Perkins, calls depression "The Jailer." Yes. I'm in a physical mental jail right now. My arms feel like lead even as my fingers dance across the keys to type this sentence.

If this was a movie 
you'd here by now.

HA! Yes. But life is not a movie. So I will go back to checking catalog records and Dewey Decimal numbers and then I will drive home, numb.

**the title refers to what you do when the Dementors come. You eat chocolate.

Everything but the kitchen sink...no, everything AND the kitchen sink!

As I write this, "I believe in miracles" by Hot Chocolate is playing on my iTunes. Yes, that would be a clean and empty sink. Not all dishes are done, but we must pause and pay our respect. A clean sink...is a beautiful thing.

Happy Valentine's Day...

This post is a tribute in a way to my friend Holly, who often blogs with a few photos and a few words. I, of course, can't seem to do small things (I'm trying) but also am a little hopped up on cold meds, so I offer this visual storytelling of this Valentine's Day. And a link to an old post, which was not posted on Valentine's Day, but I think fits here.

My tools of the trade. I have committed to doing a collage a day for every day this month. At the end of this month I'll maybe hear from the secret Midwestern school that I have an interview. The collage project means that at the end of the month, I'll have 28 collages, whether or not I have an interview. (I started on the 2nd, I know this is a leap year.)

Cuppa tea in my favorite Polish pottery tea pot. My slippers either need major reconstructive surgery or need to be replaced. But aren't they pretty?

The boy and I both have a nasty cold. Happy Valentine's Day!!

Every year my dad sends me flowers with the same card, "thanks for making every day Valentine's Day." (It's an inside joke.) And every year as I get older, I wonder, will I get flowers this year? So when I bought my vaporizer last night at Walgreens, I bought myself three buds (also, they smell great, which I think is important when you have a cold.) The card is an old one...I keep EVERYTHING and especially those cards. 

Today's collage, from More Magazine, November 2011. Minimalistic, but hey, I have a cold, PMS, and there are no rules for a good collage. Do I like it? Yes. There you go.

Vindication for my love of Kathryn Stockett's book "The Help."  How did "Kitty" come about writing this book? THROUGH her friendship with Octavia Spencer. Her friendship with Octavia inspired the book. And then, hello, Octavia won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for the movie. This article in November 2011's copy of More magazine was about women's friendships. I'm not trying to start a fight in the comment box.

a piece of the collage on my bedroom wall.

The monster from "Pat the Beastie" a book that parodies "Pat the Bunny." I gave it to my grandmother and well, I got a lot of those gifts back when she died. The safety pin earrings are my own addition.

Valentine card from the boy, with my Valentine card to him still in the envelope.(Yes, lucky me, I got mine early b/c he wanted to make sure the address was correct.)

A long time ago, someone told me about someone buying a pair of men's jeans at Goodwill and praying for God to fill them. I bought this shirt at Goodwill YEARS ago and prayed for God to fill it.(It looked a lot better then, it was beautiful and pressed.)

My breakfast. I am cooking more and enjoying both the process and the results. Also, there's a whole raisins thing with Song of Solomon if you want to go there.

Our family has always loved frogs b/c my mom's friend V. always says, "someone you know needs a frog." So I have a lot of plastic frogs. This is the top shelf of my kitchen shelf. It is a formerly gray utility shelf that I painted white.

Some cute toys I've bought at Valentines Day over the years. Yes, a frog. Push his "heart" and he says "I love you."

My watch, ring, earrings, from when I took them off last night.The pine bookcase is one that I've had since I was at least 7 years old.

"Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time." Georgia O'Keefe. This is from when there were stamps of some of her flower paintings, years ago. If you bought a sheet of stamps, you got this great image. It's pasted onto a cover of an old ledger book.

My grandma and me. The cigar box is probably a Honduran box, from when we lived there. The wood smells so wonderful, and the boxes are so great for holding stuff.

A paperclip that I twisted into a "W" ages ago. The books are mine, too, and the "W" is on a Jacob's Ladder, an Amish toy.

Close-up of a tray that is also made of Polish pottery.

some fake pearlish flowers. I like the colors.

"My God, we're going to have to skate home. Hell just froze over."

(Miranda Hobbes, as played by Cynthia Nixon, Season 4, Episode 13)


So, first off, I am hating this new Blogger interface. I might have to start composing in Word and then importing, the way Babelbabe did in the day.

Secondly, the reason this place has been blank (and previous to that, all about poetry) is that I *have* met a guy. And like Samantha, I'm not kissing and telling.

Samantha: I don't want to talk about it.
Carrie: (sing song) Samantha likes a guy, Samantha likes a guy.
Samantha: I do not.
Charlotte: You do! You do! Or you would tell us all the dirty details. 

He is a special guy and I want to be private about it. We've been going out for a month. (I think I'm becoming a grown-up, now that I'm in my forties.) (Wow, that sounds crazy. Me? Forty? I don't feel a day over 29.) 

In other news, this is the month of waiting. At the end of February, I will know if I have an INTERVIEW (read: the last hoop to jump through) with the secret Midwestern school. So, because the only thing I can do is pray and ask everyone I know to pray (for God's will, for his purpose to be known), I have given myself a creative project. One collage, every morning before breakfast. 4 magazines, one piece of cardboard, go! It's very freeing, sort of like morning pages from Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. I may take pictures and post some here. At the end of February, I may have nothing, I may have to start my school search all over again, but I will have 28 collages. (I started on the 2nd of the month.) It is also serving as an excellent way to clear out all the old magazines I can't bear to throw out because I need them for collages. I think maybe next month's challenge will be to work with all the pages I've torn out but not done anything with yet. (And I have tons of those. Especially since every day this month I'm tearing through 4 magazines a morning.)

How are things in your world? What projects are you working on? What's the weather like where you are?

I am hearing my first birds of the new year, as I sit in my chair in the front room.

Hope is the thing with feathers...reminisces of poetry class

HOPE is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;	5
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;	10
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Thanks to the folks at Bartelby.com/verse, I have access to Emily Dickinson. I found her this morning in my Modern Poems anthology (she is a precursor to the moderns, with Walt Whitman, Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins...) This poem was not in the poems anthologized, nor the one I was looking for, I don't know what it was. I'd know it when I saw it.

I need to get a copy of Miss Dickinson's poetry in book form, but for now, the Internet will do. My Modern Poetry class was my sophomore year at Carlow, and Sister Maureen was my professor. She never gave A's, but I got them from her. It was about that time that I realized I needed a harder school. I wish I had gone to see her after I'd graduated. She died...I should find out more about that, maybe. Her class was where I became an English major. I loved dissecting the poems, looking for why THAT word. She taught us that in a poem, every word means something. So you might as well look up every word in the dictionary, because it's possible that the poet did. Nothing is a mistake, nothing is wasted. I was a new Christian, and I loved all the footnotes in Eliot, finding the Bible verses he referred to. I was happiest, on my bed on my room on the tenth floor of Frances Warde Hall, my Bible on one side, my Ellman/O'Clair* on the other. I suppose I had the dictionary out too. I would then go, at night, to the library, and use one of their eight computers to pound out my papers.

My windows didn't have screens. So some days, when I was bored, I would make a paper airplane and fly it out my window. I had never lived that high up. It was the top floor of the dorms, and from my window, I could see forever. Across the river, to the last working steel mill. All of the roofs of Oakland lay before me. I loved that scene, and I have many photographs that I would just take out my window. Maybe I'll find some and scan them for here.

***
Writing this, I realize what a different time that was. Students now sit on their beds with their laptops. No need to go to the library for a PC, they have one right here. No need to touch the paper thin pages of the anthology, the dictionary, the Bible, one can find all the poetry one needs (with commentary) online. I hope there are students like me, though, that prefer the feel of paper. For whom writing is partially a workout of the arm, pages of ink across a pad of paper.

__________
*Ellman and O'Clair were the men who wrote Modern Poems. Mine is the Second Edition, from 1989. By the time the second edition went to press, O'Clair was the "Late Professor Emeritus" from Manhattanville College.

Sort of a "guest post"...

Sara Zarr posted a link to this blog post on Twitter, and it's short enough that I'm posting it here. The writer is describing bipolar disorder.

"Letter to an old friend"

Is it okay if I call you friend? I’ve known you for so long and it is time for you to be a friend. You are with me always. Sometimes you sit in the living room of my house, powerful in your presence. At other times you are like a guest taking a nap in an upstairs bedroom. I used to fight you or plead with you to leave, but I don’t do that anymore. I let you be. I’ve discovered the gifts you bring with friendship. I am grateful for the clarity you allow, for whatever energy you permit, for writing, above all for that, for the daily work of living. Who would have ever thought that we would end up being friends, that even as I do all I can to keep you gentle, I could welcome you? I accept you and limit you all at once. Come on in, there’s a rocking chair for you by the fire, but it is still my house. Now that you’re a friend, I don’t know what to call you. Your medical name sounds too formal and distant. You are more than a condition. You’re not me and yet you are a part of me. The metaphors used to describe you seem too impersonal. Darkness, grayness, the words lack accuracy. You are painfully bright at times. To call you by your symptoms is to treat you like an enemy and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’ll simply call you my old friend. I call you my old friend because I know you, I’ve seen through you. I’ve even seen compassion and hope in you. These are the things that only friends can see. I know you now, so well, and so I call you my old friend.

THESE ARE NOT MY WORDS, they belong to Francisco X. Stork. But they resonate so strongly.

Under construction -- RSS beware

So...I'm going to be working on labels. Which means that a lot of posts will be republished. Which will mess you up if you get this blog via RSS. So in advance, I apologize, and if you're wondering what's going on, that's what it is.

xo,
SL

Happy Birthday, "Story of a Girl"!

Five years ago today, Story of a Girl by the first time novelist Sara Zarr, arrived on the scene.

I celebrated by reading it over breakfast. Last month, I read Kathleen Norris' Dakota over breakfast. What a difference between those two books, written by equally talented writers. Congratulations, Sara!

Raindrops on roses and pink satin sashes...

("My Favorite Things," currently listening to on Carole King's Christmas album)

If I look past the venetian blinds on my windows, I can see the Christmas lights on the big house on the corner.

If I look to my left, Meryl Streep is smiling out at me from the cover of this month's Vogue. I cannot WAIT to see her latest movie, where she plays Margaret Thatcher, I think the movie is simply called "Iron Lady."

If I look down, I see that I still have some Gatorade from this afternoon's stomach ickyness. Yum. It's blue. I have no idea what flavor that's supposed to be.

If I look straight ahead, there are some purple dried flowers that I saved from the birthday bouquet from my dad. (He's a big believer in flowers, as am I.)

If I look to my left, and up, I see a poster with the cover of Barbara Cooney's book Eleanor, about Eleanor Roosevelt's childhood. It's signed, was a gift to the Barnes and Noble I worked at in the mid 90s. Barbara Cooney also wrote Miss Rumphius, one of my favorite picture books. Cooney died in 2000, the year before I entered library school.

On the bookcase to my right, I have an eclectic collection of collectibles, (would they be called curios?) including a plastic figurine of Smurfette wearing a cap and gown. It was made in Hong Kong in 1981, but I think it was given to me on the occasion of my sixth grade graduation in 1983. At the time I lived in Honduras, not everyone went beyond sixth grade in their schooling, so the sixth grade graduation is a big deal. (At the American School, it was assumed that kids would, but it gave parents another excuse for a big party.) I had a new dress made, a pink dress that I wish I still had because it was exquisite. Next to Smurfette, a piece of bleached brain coral, from the Cay Islands that lie off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Next to it, a pin cushion that was a craft in ?? grade. A Dalmatian puppy Happy Meal toy is next to that. The puppy is perched atop a blue post box and if you spin it, it's a snow globe with an envelope and glitter. I got a lot of Happy Meals the year I was in library school, I drove through for dinner on the way to my evening classes. Next to the Dalmatian puppy, an ornament I made for the staff Christmas tree, the last year we had one at my library. It's a birdhouse with glitter for snow on the roof and a red bird perched on the front. I painted it green. Behind the ornament, a wooden tulip, red, of course. (In my mind, tulips, if they are not living flowers, are red. I always draw red tulips, no other color do I draw.) A tiny blue and white windmill in the Dutch Delft style is perched on a square glass box. Inside the glass box are very old dried rosebuds. Behind that, a colorful memento from Niagara Falls, where I went with my parents as a graduation gift when I got my Master's in Library Science. A Sacred Heart of Jesus candle, a tea cup and saucer that belonged to one of my grandmothers. (I have another one somewhere else, that is from my other grandmother, but I can't tell which one is which.) Inside the tea cup, more dried rose buds, and two spoons from my paternal grandmother's spoon collection. One spoon needs polishing, and badly! It is from Amsterdam, and on the handle, depicts a church that could be a Cathedral. (But I can't tell, because as you may or may not know, a Cathedral is the seat of the Bishop. So even if a church LOOKS like a Cathedral but is not the seat of a Bishop, it's not a Cathedral.) The other spoon seems to be made of stainless steel but has a cameo at the top that looks to be Wedgwood.

And that's only half the items on the top of this particular bookshelf. Maybe a full tour and photos next time?

My things have so many memories. Writing this soothed me...and now it's time for bed.

2011: or the busiest year of my life...

My friend Kristin Tennant wrote a great "what do you think about 2011, what do you hope for 2012" post, which included these great questions. Since I was thinking of doing something for the end of the year, I stole her questions:

1. What experiences most shaped you in 2011?

2. What is something you learned (or learned to do) in 2011?

3. What is something you want to learn to do in 2012?

4. Is there a hurt, frustration or fear that you’d like to heal/let go of in 2012?

5. What inspired or encouraged you in 2011?

6. What gift could you use to inspire and encourage others in 2012?

7. What do you want to experience more of in your life this next year?

8. What do you want to give/share more of?

9. Is there a word that sums up 2011 for you?

10. Is there a word you want to carry with you through 2012?

[plus one] 11. What book, movie, or show really jazzed your year?

***

1. Most shaped me in 2011:

Working on my PhD application. (It's in, btw. Now we just wait until the end of February when I hear if they want to interview me.) Even as I was working on re-writing the article in January, or working on the presentation in October, or studying for the GREs, all of those were cumulative work to the final December 15 deadline.

2. Learned to do this year:

Work a deadline. Discover that I do my best work in the morning, so work then, and veg in the evening. Keep the laptop in the other room. Separate laptop (work) time from (veg) TV time, but that when it comes down to the last minute, I can keep my tush in my chair until I'm done.

3. Want to learn next year:

Create systems. I started using a 7 day pill box in 2010. It has made my life easier. (I take pills 4 times a day.) I have started to learn (see #2) to break items down into pieces, and would like to create systems for paying bills, doing dishes, doing laundry, cutting clutter. I have learned in the past couple of weeks that just doing dishes for 5 minutes (or while something is cooking in the microwave) makes a big difference. If I only did housework for 5 minutes a day...I have tried all the self-help, reduce clutter books and none of them have worked. I have to figure out my own system, one that works for me.

4. Fear that you want to heal?

Two:

• letting go of my sister (she got married!) and learning to love her husband (I do like him a lot. I see how they are a great couple, but I'm not "there" yet.)
  
• Re-learning that I am enough. The PhD process scratched a surface of insecurity...what if I don't get in, what if this isn't the right path, what if, what if. I would like to be able to say, I'm enough. Whatever happens, it's going to be okay. (Not that there's anything wrong with being scared, but I don't want the fear to rule me.)

5. Inspired you this year?

JUST DO IT. When I went to speak to the woman in charge of children's library programs at the Library School here in town, she said, try to get published, try to present. In 2010-2011, I did both (one of each.)

6. Gift to encourage others in 2012?

CUPCAKES, of course!

7. Experience more in 2012?

More time with friends. In person. Face to face.

8. Give/Share more of in 2012?

This one gave me pause...I don't think "writing" is the right answer, but it's what I came up with.

9. Word that sums up 2011?

BUSY.*

10. Word that you want to carry into/with you in 2012?

Acceptance.

11. Movie/Book/Show?

Bones. (Show) I am totally obsessed with Bones, the same way I was totally obsessed with SATC when I first discovered it back in 200?.

____________

*January: Polished my first scholarly publication

February: Sister got engaged

March: I got the flu, I picked out a maid-of-honor dress

April: I gave my sister a bridal shower (big thanks to cousin Kiki and Mom!)

May: prep for Summer Reading, New York for unco11, blasted cold that developed into third sinus infection for 2011.

June/July: Summer Reading

August: learn I have food allergies, prep for the wedding, the wedding

September: family vacation, study for, take the GREs

October: my first professional library presentation, sinus surgery

November: Recover from surgery, research for my PhD application essays, Thanksgiving, my 40th birthday

December: finish my PhD application essays, Christmas.

...talk us down from the ledges...

(Amy Grant, That's What Love is For)

A girl's gotta have friends.

And this girl has the best ones.

Last week, in the middle of writing my research proposal for the secret Midwestern school application, I found a reference in a bibliography that I hadn't looked up. So I looked it up. And instead of seeing it as a piece of the puzzle, I saw it as the arrow that burst my research, that made my work invalid. Panicking, I picked up the phone and called Sally. Who, I had forgotten, had a house full of guests. She took a moment to assure me that no one was doing work on Third Culture Kids in libraries, that my work was important, and that this was just an application to graduate school, NOT a dissertation. She took five minutes away from her guests to talk me off my ledge.

All week, I have been screaming on Twitter, wanting to throw in the towel, and friends like Deb have been sending me reminders of what I want to do in the form of cupcakes.

Thursday morning, I sat my tush in my chair and filled in the online application. It took me all morning, including a trip to FedExKinkos because the watermarks on one of my transcripts made it impossible to compact it beyond 2000KB. The file needed to be under 500KB. Murphy was alive and well, but I had set aside the entire morning, so I beat him at his game.

Anyways, as I sit here, kind of like a couch potato, stunned that my year of striving is almost over, I want to say thanks. Because your encouragement is what got me through, you talked me off my ledges.

I'm leaving out a big plate of cupcakes.

[Anaiis Nin quote here]

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." (Anaiis Nin)

Well, I'm still working hard on my Midwestern essays. Exhausted, but I am working. Or like we say on twitter, #amwriting #amworking. I took this morning off work to take time to write. And I thought I would have a chance to do so much more. But it has to be enough. I have 7 days. 8 if you include the 15th. In those 7 or 8 days, I have to gather together my research proposal and I have to update my resume. Oh, and show up for work for 5 of those days.

I wrote these bits when I was putting together my "statement of purpose" but I think they fit here more than in an application for "further schooling." (Yes, I have to be secretive.) (Yes, you'll know when I find out, which won't be until late Feb for an interview, and after that, I think March or April.)

A little bit of background, as I sort of start in the middle here: I had been writing about my teen years, reading with sibs, how it kept me interested in picture books as a teen.

...While all of this was happening, something else was happening that would shape my life’s work, though I didn’t recognize it then. My father, a career foreign service officer, was preparing for his next post, in Warsaw, Poland. He and I both had a lot of homework my senior year of high school; while mine was in English with a little bit of Spanish, his was entirely in Polish. My parents and siblings lived in Warsaw, Poland from 1989 to 1992, as communism was being replaced by the private sector.

In college, I was trying to live the normal life of an American teenager, but I couldn’t ignore that my life was markedly different from the lives of my fellow students, most of whom spent Christmas vacation in a place called home. I spent Christmas vacation with people I called home, in a foreign country where I could barely tell cab drivers my parent’s address. In high school in the suburbs of Washington, DC, I was able to pretend I was just another kid. Now, at 17, I was faced yet again with my heritage: of many languages, many houses, and many different “homes.” The concept of the third culture kid was not yet mainstream, and most of the writing is still non-fiction by adults, for adults. As a confused teen, I would have benefited from some books to mirror my experiences. Instead, I took all the “windows” and made some of them into mirrors.

In high school, I could forget that I had lived overseas. I found teens like me in the books of Judy Blume, Cynthia Voigt, and Paula Danziger. I didn’t talk about my childhood abroad, and no one asked me about it, because I blended. I no longer looked for books about kids like me who had lived abroad, because I pretended that I had lived in Maryland my whole life.

**

There is much more there, but I need to drive home and take in some restorative television. If you are the praying type, please pray. These next 7 days are going to be FULL. Thankfully tomorrow I have two things on my side (which also mean I won't get any writing in): a massage at 8:30, with a guy who is also a third culture kid, so I'll be able to tell him about my project, and a woman at the library school I graduated from, who has agreed to talk to me. She can't help me with the writing, and I was sure I'd be done with it all by now, but she can also be a "bounce ideas off" person.

Setting out a plate of cupcakes for you all,

xo,
SL