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.

Hands

image by bongoshock

I've seen some hands in my day. I expect to see a few more before it's over too. Those dexterous, silent and articulate pieces of body. I think there's a reason we make talking mouths of our hands. Hands will tell. Mouths may stay closed, but hands will talk.

Yesterday at work I sold a woman a Mochaccino. She had a quiet nice voice, and a housewife's body. But her mind was quick, and though she was a soft talker, her voice never trailed off into unheard decibels. She was having a treat while visiting a patient "Small... no, make it a large. This'll be today's treat."
But her hands, oh her fingers. They touched the fleshy thumb part of my palm as she put her dollars and coins in my hand. As coarse as coral. Like moving rock. Pleasant though, like her.

These last few weeks on our forays around the state for family holidays I watched my mother cook. Dad is the house chef, so Mom's dishes are specialties. Pop-overs, apple crisp. Mom and Dad respect each others respective expertise's. I've never had Dad-made pop-overs, or my mothers marinara sauce. They don't exist. They don't need to.
Mom made apple crisp for christmas dinner. She combined the 'crisp' topping in a bowl, measuring ingredients first in old yellow measuring spoons. Then she dropped the powders into her bare cupped hand to be dusted into the bowl, as though she were brushing soil off her hands after working the garden. I believe this made the crisp mixture lighter.
Her hands had a sheen to them as a cloud of baking powder erupted and sank into the bowl. She has young, smooth hands. She's not afraid to get them dirty, though she measures first. She makes an unparalleled apple crisp.

Denoument

Rest by Koda12

I'm not sure when it started building, but it all culminated these last two months in a roiling boil, that high note climax that sends you soaring at the apogee. Move apartments. Find submitters. Find new job. The interview clothes. 11th hour packing. Unloading the moving van after dark. Tanuki's squint eye needs looking at. Start new job. Apply to school. Apply to school. Apply to school hard.

I put the last of my application in the mail this afternoon. Registered mail means it's carried in a locked bag. I imagine by a man dressed in a suit, with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. That's how my application will arrive. I told the woman at the post office how reassured I felt with all the stamps going onto my package. She told me that's what I was paying for.

Then I went for my first visit to my new doctor, paid for by the insurance offered at the hospital I work at. Her waiting room contained one of her own paintings, and I knew I was in good hands.

Then I stopped on the way home to look for winter gloves for Dave, something fair trade, or environmentally or socially responsibly made, because I have some money to afford that now with our extra cheap rent. There was nothing I could find that wasn't either made only of knit (not good for 'driving or making snowballs'), or made in china. So I came home.

We had a roasted sweet potato and green bean casserole, and I laid down for a quick nap before going to our friends' apartment for art night. Quick nap became three hours. But there'll be art night next week. There will be more days and weeks to come, and more fights to be fought, challenges to be met. But for now there's peace. Now I can rest, and glow in the warmth of all the goodness I've found during these latest blessed struggles.

Damning evidence.

I haven't been here since college. Sitting at a computer, finding a variety of creative escapes from doing what needs to be done. My Essay. I've done all the little houseworks I can think of tonight for my grad application. Shot off some base-touching emails to my remaining references, nudge them back to the paperwork they need to do. Switched my Facebook and long forgotten Myspace accounts to private. God forbid the admissions committee comes across a photo of me dressed as a pizza slice, in the hungry embrace of a suited grizzly bear.
In any case, I believe in my heart that I am capable of this program. The tricky part is convincing the admissions people of this. Which is why I'm so cautious about my essay. My transcripts and recommendation letters will speak for themselves, this is the one time I speak for myself. I don't want to wharblegarble all over the place.

It is possible that whatever godly force is out there has let me feel their guiding hand, and restirred my faith now for some kind of Jobian test. I mull on this likelihood everyday. But what do I know about the whims of gods. All I can do now is pull every trick I know, and though I may be facing a crushing defeat, hold the faith, like water in cupped hands.

Returning to the path.

I discovered the root of my general malaise as of late. As of the last year.

In a piece of synchronicity I discovered the word for it during my GRE studies: Anomie. Instability caused by lack of purpose. And it's not the first time. Anomie motivated me to leave art school, and drifted with me through my first year of Johnson. It abated, quite suddenly, when I discovered the Alternative Medicine program, which I promptly jumped on. The relief, the rush, of following this path was visceral.

Somewhere along the line I took this all for granted. The program seemed like the yellow brick road, and I never considered what would happen when I finished college.

...

A swirling anomie. Like a storm that slowly but stolidly settles in, occasionally lighting me up and leaving me tearful, wondering what I'm doing. It's been a year and a half.

At some point I discovered UVM's Masters Entry Program in Nursing. I could enter with my non-nursing degree, and finish with a Nurse Practitioner degree. It would be a year until I could apply, and that year is coming to a close. I've just taken my GRE's, I'm working up the nerve to ask people to speak for me, and formulating a new essay every day to speak on my desire to return to this path. Every other day I squelch the fear that I'll be left in a coffee kiosk, pining and aching a moment longer than necessary--because I feel that a nurse practitioner should be made of tougher stuff than that.

Bridgid of Kildare

A wordy album.

Some snapshots from my last week.

The furrows in my mother's brow in the rearview mirror, after we passed a fallen deer. It remained furrowed for 6 miles.

My hulking brother, who punched numerous holes in the walls of our old house, tenderly attending to his girlfriend at the dinner table.

My sister, 8 months pregnant, her house filled with chattering women and a baby shower, as cool and collected and unfathomable as I've ever seen her.

My Dad, lying dripping marinated steaks onto the grill, asking me if I'm becoming a vegetarian.
He grilled veggie burgers for Dave.

Driving home to hang out with Dave on my lunch break, finding myself running to the house unable to not grin.

Afraid of the stilted phone conversations after someone moves away, yet prattling on with Emily when she calls one afternoon.

Emily Margaret.

I once heard that faith is just the knowledge that all things change. Like it's a comfort, as I grew up thinking faith to be, that bad times will end, just hold on a little longer, etc. But if we take that to be true, than we're accepting that all things change. Not only the bad.

Good things can change too. And isn't that what makes life so bittersweet?

I think it takes a kind of courage to face loss smiling, happy that you have something to miss.


This is my best friend Emily Hamlin. She's going to Syracuse University next week, for their nationally renowned Public Administration Masters program. That they're throwing money at her for her to come learn from them is only a suggestion of what an epic person she really is. I'm lucky and proud to know her. That I'm going to miss her is an understatement.

Turning the tides

I'm coming to the realization that I may be a pessimist. I almost remember being an optimist, before some grand teenage disillusionment. Now I can't see a rose but for it's thorns. Maybe this is some long standing defense mechanism, expecting the worst. I rather hate it. Ironically enough, I don't think it will end well.

Now watch, wait and see, as I turn the tides.

I'm grateful for chocolate milk. That shit is delicious.
I'm grateful for aloe plants, that are healing my lobster skin so well.
I'm grateful for the people at the state department, for giving me a job. And for Karen, Darlene, Lillian, Cyndy, Lori, Marcella, Steve, Mrs. Goldwin, Razelle and Stella- for everything they've done for me.
For 'Chuck' at the bike shop for selling me an awesome bike, and giving me a discount on my helmet for working for 'the man'.
For that girl I waited at the street crossing with, chatting about biking.
For Mom, raising three kids and still retaining her sense of self.
For Dad, holding a steady job for 40 odd years, and still encouraging us kids to be adventurous.
For Gavin, threatening to beat up, I believe, every boyfriend I have ever had.
For Jody, my amazing sister, who, on occasion, makes me feel deeply human.
For Brent and Ryan, for loving my sister so well.
For Keefe, who was at times a doggy glue that held our family together.
For Cat, Lobsty, Norm, Figgy, and the whole slew of animals I brought home to foist onto my mother. You were all somehow special to me.
For Emily, for coming out of no where, and being amazing. I never expected to have a best friend again.
For Laura, inspiring my love of science and reason.
For my Wise, Beautiful, and Fun aunts.
My adventursome uncles and cousins.
My old friends, and everything they taught me and let me teach them.
For Dinosaurs, and their mighty talons.
For Cynthia, who sublet us her sweet apartment, when we were so quietly desperate for a place to live.
For Tanuki, an honest, hardworking, heartwrenchingly adorable cat- who could have spawned a legion of kittens, ruling by fluff and mewls alone. Instead she sleeps on our laundry and cries outside the bathroom door when Dave tries to poop.
For the maple tree, for growing new leaves this spring.
For Dave. His good heart and patience. The intent look in his eyes when he puts aloe on my back.

To my chagrin, I think that some of my pessimism comes from statistics. That no one can be so thoroughly blessed with such good people. That loss must wait somewhere. And that it's immature of me to find them irreplaceable. But these are the jewels of my life. And like the maple tree, I want them to come back every spring, and grow big and healthy.

Being Human.

Recently Dave posted a blog about being a dwarf. More specifically, the experience of being drunk and functional. Unfortunately Dave is not as impervious to liquor as the stout dwarf, and the ensuing post was a source of amusement for all.

I think Dave was only half-serious in his research study about dwarvishness, and I am only half-serious when I say I'm still figuring out how to be human. It seems like other people 'get' this, or at least don't wonder about how to have the most fulfilling human experience. I think I forgot to pick up the starter manual at birth.

I've seen some beautiful and awesome things possible in life. Two middle aged people, married, and still playfully in love with each other. The man would follow his wife around the house, playing songs and singing to her on his mandolin. She would bring him dinner in a crock pot when he worked late, wrapping it in kitchen towels to keep it warm.

I know people who find their jobs meaningful. I know people who wordlessly inconvenience themselves for a friend. These people have something, they are something. What were their trials? What lessons did they learn that this kind of beauty is their reward?

I want to know these lessons, because I think they are integral to being human. Show me, please.

Image hoisted from Sarachmet.

A long vein.

Let me continue on this vein, I think the topic is applicable to most of my generation.

What I know of being Grownup comes from a 2nd hand perspective, watching my parents as a child, when they were closest to myself now in terms of personal development. Now understand that I love and respect my parents, less out of duty than of honesty. And if I wind up as fun and well-adjusted as them when I'm their age than I will have done something right.

But growing up my parents appeared preoccupied with life. If they enjoyed it much, it was beyond my perception at the time. I was the one having all the fun and freedom. Now I see them on my own horizon. Were they zesty when I was young? Or did their spirits hibernate under the cloak of a career, marriage, and parenting winter? How did they ever weather that simultaneously?

I feel as though I'm only starting to know myself, just on the cusp of this Grown-up winter.

Grown-ups.

What a foreign species Grownups have been. Mailing their money away, owning fun stuff like cars and pools but never smiling gleefully over them, sometimes with little versions of themselves orbiting their legs or torsos.

I realize now that I've always had the presumption that Grownups would be another race entirely all my life. It was unquestionable that I would become like my mother, and stop wearing rollerskates in the house.

And yet, I'm increasingly mailing my money away, and when I drive it's never with the lawless abandon that I once dreamed of. My own sister, my template for living well, has what can only be called a 'family home'. For her family. There's a mortgage, and a lawn mower, and a dog, and a son, and a 'baby on the way'. All empirical evidence indicates that she is now a Grownup. What is this alchemy!

I think when she and Brent first announced the pregnancy I said something haphazardly like 'that's not supposed to happen'. I suppose it was an offbeat way to express my surprise. But at the moment my mind was being blown away that my enigmatic sister was now an enigmatic adult, and less like me than ever.

So maybe growing up is inevitable. But the implications of that have never been better expressed than by the great Randall Munroe:

Said I wouldn't...

But I've got this blog now. I found there were thoughts I couldn't fit onto Twitter that I wanted to be seen somewhere. Let's play both sides of the fence, say there are no angels looking down, glorying in my little flashing life. No celestial writer constructing my plot. Someone out there will look into my brain meats and see a spark.

Congratulations, viewer. Welcome to my head.

I realize that this can't be a standard college bitch-blog, and if I spend this bandwidth talking the nuances of my day then I'm missing the point. What I've picked up from my Aunt Diane, and gentleman friend Dave, is that I need a theme. I feel narcissistic picking myself as a theme, but for now I'll have to do.