New Year's Exit.

A couple years ago we had freezing rain on new years. I had gone to an old friends cabin in NH with my roommate, and just past midnight I decided we should go home because she was sucking on her inhaler like a candy cane. Unfinished cabin.

So we get in the car and start driving, and just past the Vermont border the road turned to black ice. We were going down a hill and the car just started spinning, and we were crashing into guardrails. After we came to a stop we stayed there for awhile, until a sand truck came by wit chained wheels. Then I started driving again.

And I was tired, and a little buzzed, and my glasses had fallen off somewhere I couldn't find, and we had to go forward because there was no where safe to go back to. And my roommate was still sucking an inhaler and couldn't get too cold because her lungs were closing iota by iota so we couldn't stop for rest lest the car go cold, and the car couldn't keep running while we slept because we only had enough gas to get to Montpelier and the off-ramps were iced over so we couldn't get a room or more gas.

So all there was to do was to drive. crawling 3mph across Vermont in ice rain for seven hours. And you knew there were long edge of your seat hours to go, and your nerves were blown, but you still had to drive and drive and drive as slow as you could because that's the only thing to do.

I've got a year. A year at 3mph, and I can see the misery on the calender to be crawled over, day by day, week by week, till I'm done with a monotonous yet worthlessly stressful job. A year is my estimate, where home will lie. May even be longer.

At least on New Years I knew where my exit was.

An honest policy.

250 word statement addressing reasons for transferring and the objectives you hope to achieve.

I want to join the nursing program because hands on health care appeals to me. As a part of the Wellness and Alternative Medicine program at Johnson State College I realized that I wanted to treat patients hands on. Wrapping gauze, lifting weak bodies, offering hopeful words.
My objectives are to learn practical healthcare. What does this question even mean? What other objective could I have but to become a nurse? Shall I wax philosophic, poetic? Let me in, all of me is banging at the door. What more could you ask?

A short history

Lavender by Acwraith

I haven't seen much of the family in a few months. Most of my anecdotes will be a degree separated from the people I love.

Mom and Dad went to Florida this last week to see Grandma. Mom has been repeatedly dinged for not sending mother's day cards. So she sent herself this year. I stopped in to check on the cat. Repotted some lavender and left in pot for mother's day. Steps involved:
Struggle with ATM's that won't let me overdraw my account.
Remove money from savings.
Buy two lavender plants.
Buy two pieces of pottery from Burlington City Arts.
Put plants, pots, extra soil in car and go to Monkton.
Rummage through Mom's pot collection to find two pot liners.
Replant.
Clean up.
Place repotted plants in pots.
Leave note and short blue pitcher filled with lavender on table.
Fulfill duty to mess something up in an otherwise logistical masterpiece--
--Leave Dave's Mom's unmarked plant in Monkton.
Don't realize until next morning when we go to take her out to breakfast.
Monday night Mom calls to report in, thanks me for the flowers, guesses to the T what happened with the second plant sitting on her counter.


Read Dad's book on Emmanuel. Books are comforting and make me cry. I go back for a second read on my next trip. I sit on Dad's side of the bed, on a blue plaid bedspread, in a house that's not my house any more but I feel possessive because I recognize the bedspread. I think my Dad is wonderful. He still keeps a box of tissues in his nightstand drawers, and closes it not all the way so a bit of tissue reaches out. I don't imagine Dad cries as much as I do, but I am certain he's handed down his nose to me, and that's a good reason for the tissues. He also has way too many books on his nightstand, same as me, not including the Emmanuel series and others that are inside. A book I lent him is on the top of the stack. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

A Disjointed Descent

DoodlesandDaydreams

The world is fantastic. It's a miracle, every moment, and we ignore it all. I get up every day, put on the same outfit, go to work, think about food and sleep and my needs/wants, and I take every moment for granted.

I imagine there are people who run into the streets screaming from the magnitude of it all. All this life. Out of fear, or love, maybe both. I feel it percolating in me. I squelch it, and I don't know if that shows strength or weakness.

Domestic animals have brain sizes 1/3 of their wild predecessors. They are functionally children at mature ages. The most mature of our domestic herding dogs are adolescents. Society seems similar.

I've discovered why I want to grow up. I don't want to be a sexually-mature infant. I don't want to be domesticated to society.

The only thing that may keep me from running screaming into the streets is being a thinking, actualizing adult.

Stupid sweatshirt.

It feels like I want to climb a ladder but I've run out of rungs. My whole force is moving forward, but there's no where to go. Oh god, is this it? I know you're supposed to play the cards you've been dealt, but I don't think I was taught the rules of this game.

I always believed that life was a great tapestry, molecules of moments spun into threads of stories woven through each other into something beautiful. When I was younger I thought that if I could find the beauty in the melancholy, the mundane, then I'd know peace.

Right now it feels like my thread's the color grey, and I'm woven far into the background, so far that I don't even see myself in the great tapestry. It all looks like meaningless fabric that's no good for anything, not even for soaking tears, just like this stupid sweatshirt.

Zucchini memories

Autumn Horse by JaneDoe87

Once when I was 10 my Mom and I went to visit Aunt Diane and Uncle Ken at their home in New Jersey. A ranch house in the woodsy suburbs, with tall trees and good gardens. After a polite amount of visiting time and settling bags in, I stepped out to let the adults catch up, and crawled up a boulder on the lawn for an hour or so of reading until dinner. My silence was much more at place outside than in.
Something about the familiarity of extended family made me uncomfortable. My own nuclear unit I understood, but relatives I saw once, maybe twice a year, were often strangers to me. Not that I didn't bask in the attention, but I always wondered if there wasn't some elaborate unspoken dance going on, some conversation between the lines I wasn't hearing or speaking, that would have let me into this bright world where the whole extended families were friends together. As far as I was concerned, I had a whole lot of family, but besides my parents, sister, and brother, no friends among them.

Then the unexpected happened. After about half an hour Aunt Diane emerged from the house, with a plate of zucchini sticks. I tried not to look up, lest I appear unappealingly eager for company. But she joined me at the rock like this was a place we frequented. After some small talk, and polite bites of my first zucchini, I expected her to return to the house of grown-up conversations. But she stayed. I can't remember what we talked about, I know we were silent for periods of time most people are uncomfortable with. Eventually it turned dusky, she let me know that dinner would be ready soon, and returned to the lit house. The feeling she left me with was like the shock of a root suddenly touching a cool running stream.

So much of my anxiety over family was that I didn't know how to talk to them. But Aunt Dd was silent with me. She spoke my language. Her kindness, patience, and skill with nuance taught me some important lessons that day. Not the least of which that there were friends in the family.

Also, zucchini is now one of my favorite vegetables-filled with potassium and vitamins A and C, great to saute. I'm honored to have such an awesome Aunt, who opened my eyes to something so unassuming yet fulfilling.

Warm air makes things rise.

Photo by Fallis

I felt funny at work today. Standing at the register as someone rummaged through their purse for change the sun reflected off the reflective beam of a window frame above me, blinding me briefly. When I opened my eyes to the shafts of sunlight I spotted a thin hair of a feather, a tiny downy voyager in the wind. It drifted past me, and rose slowly in the warm air of the light. I made change for the girl in front of me and wished her a good day. When I looked back the little thread had disappeared.
Then my legs felt heavy, and swayed, like tree trunks in a current.