We walked, walked, walked, walked. It was a very journeying night, and for a moment stumbling in and out of blizzardy winding I thought, Thank god I am not superstitious and do not believe that how you spend your Eve reflects the upcoming year. Silly, stubborn & screwed in six inch knee-high boots with no give, bunionette-grinding, posture-altering. And the wind and tights - my long white coat blown open exposing the skinnydaisy legs I'd worn the long coat to hide (Mother: "Oh, sweetheart, please don't walk around Chicago on this night looking like you're only wearing tights. It's safer to wear the long coat").

Free trains at the main stations. We hurried to the Logan Square blue line after learning this, and as we got down into the station saw the twin eyes of the train pulling in. Andy's bellow: RUN! & us leaping down the stairs, the sound of loose change falling from a pocket, and a kind of awe at my very sad feet somehow capable of adrenaline-running around a corner, through a gate and down two flights of stairs, dashing through the doors and grabbing onto the standing-room-only poles. Hoof-hoo-hoof, we panted on the train grinning stupidly. Look at that. We made it. Nice job, palz.

Ten minutes later, Leslie: Oh you guys, I'm sorry, you have every right to hate me, this journey is too long. I guess I am stupid. I didn't expect, I didn't plan, AUGH. Why does it have to be so COLD? Go on then, hate me.

Three minutes later, to a young guy hopping down the steps of an apartment, Leslie: Is this 2443? The guy looked back at the door to double check and we came to the conclusion at the same time that it was.

Inward. Art school dancing. No competitions for sexiness, no grinding. What a relief. My 60's go-go dance hip swing perfectly at home. Leslie dancing after two G&Ts - me: Um, I don't think I know how to dance this way. Dana: Sure you do! Me: Um, I'm not a visual artist, I don't get it. (realizing the idiocy of saying this as I said it). Dana: NOT A VISUAL ARTIST! Oh boy. Move like this, okay, then now like this, and then move this part and OH! OH HEY GUYS WE GOT OURSELVES AN ARTIST!

Haha. Danced blindly, silly, hip throwing, periodically the two of us echoing whatever weird move Andy was throwing in. Me: YOU DANCE LIKE A FUCKING CLOCK! AWESOME! Painting fell off the wall, somewhere a countdown. Happily. Didn't realize how badly my feet and knees hurt until I sat down to watch things. Didn't realize how smoky it was, either. Andy and I, looking at green jacket Leslie bobbing through dancing people - a big silver snowflake fell from the doorway weirdly slow. Andy: I thought that was a lamp. "How is it falling so slowly?!" Me: Yeah, "Wow, I'm more drunk than I thought, GRAVITY IS AFFECTED!"

Then we left, skittering down the snowiness to the California stop, two girls walking by us slanted and tittery. Leslie: HA HA! LOOK AT THEM! (and their drunkenness) (she said, and promptly drunkly fell sliding through the snow toward a light pole) (uproarious laughter from the A and the A). At the platform, a mini-brawl. Then two folks carrying a girl who paused with a faintly self-conscious smile toward us at a garbage can, just in case.

Back at Andy's apartment, Leslie sick and we remainders sit in the dark listening to Wolf Eyes. Beautiful pulses. Then less sick, Leslie returns and we cram onto the couch together. We have a 'goodnight, folks,' and snooze off to the ambient waves and clicks. Suddenly, WILD STATIC NOISE MUSIC, I have no idea how to turn off the player, Leslie whimpers, I sort of laugh and bang on Andy's door, am half-way out of my sleeping bag on the couch when he comes out, Leslie: TURN IT OFF, GOD; Andy: Hahaha, when that started I just laid in my bed for a few seconds laughing really hard.

Halfway through the night, too cold, she left to curl up with more blankets in another bed. I woke a few times through the morning, read for a while, got some water, dozed - read for a while, more water, dozed. Sat for a long while propped up on my pillow looking around the room: white, clean, wildly cozy and full of musics and things, snow light coming in through the three windows. The prettiest place I've ever woken up.

Our Thanksgiving menu:

- molasses brined turkey roasted with citrus and garlic
- spinach, artichoke & brie stuffing
- bourbon mashed sweet potatoes covered with caramelized bananas
- fresh green beans
- hot crescent rolls
- cranberry compote

+ fresh apple crisp for dessert
+ bitter studded chocolate brownies

+ champagne, bourbon & mimosas

Everything made from scratch but the rolls, everything made by me but the turkey, everything delicious. It was just the two of us, as third year seems to be the year everyone flips out and realizes home is a good place with free food and company (read as: third year is the year everyone feels like a failure, so a stream of hugs from mom & dad and some wine and a huge spread with no effort on the behalf of the student sounds like a sweet deal). So it was just us. We stayed up until four in the morning watching a Law & Order marathon because we are way hardcore.

By about two am we got really antsy and learned that we were in proper holiday mode, which is to say that we had a conversation something like this,

-- Do you ever close your eyes and pretend to be asleep just because nothing is entertaining, but you're not actually tired, you just don't want to get up and find something entertaining?
-- Uh, no.
-- Oh, I do that. Way to make me feel lame. ALIENATOR.
-- Are you bored?
-- Nah. I don't know. What can we do?
-- What do you want to do?
-- I dunno. We've already had sex and eaten and watched TV. Is there more to life?
-- I don't remember...

Yeah! So registration is on the 12th! You get assigned a time to register because our server is so bad that if more than 20 people use it at once it crashes!

So you have to go check your registration time! And you cross your fingers that it's not late in the day because you're a poetry student and poetry classes get eaten fast!

Oh but don't worry! It's not late in the day! It's not even ON THE DAY. IT'S THE FUCKING NEXT DAY. LATE. AS IN LATE IN THE NEXT DAY. AS IN SAY GOODBYE TO GETTING ANY FUCKING CLASSES.

I mean, I know you're a third year, I know you're an upperclassmen and whatnot, but ENJOY. ENJOY YOUR OBNOXIOUSLY LATE REGISTRATION. HAVE FUN WITH THAT.

Also,

The weenie who keeps reading last at Open Mic and being a dick needs to cool it. Maybe. Or at least be clever. You can be a snarky dick all you want, but without cleverness it ain't snark -- it's just a big old penis blabbing into a mic.


Also,

I wish I could see myself all the time. Mirrors! They are good!

My favorite photo from Hampshire Halloween.




I was a jack-in-the-box and Gian was Nietzsche. I didn't realize how chill Nietzsche was until hoards of drunken Nietzsche fangirls started swarming him. Go Hampshire! My favorite was when someone stumbled past and said, "Are you Nietzsche?" and he answered "True dat."


Also, I'm pretty sure the reason we are like the steadiest, most attractive, most intensely awesome and un-Hampshire cohabitating couple on campus is that sometimes before bed I feel cute in my PJs and force photos like this:

I went to a bindery today. Actually I went to an enormous warehouse that has many binderies and small presses and sculptors and crafters (craftors? crafters swinging from the rafters throwing hunks of mod podge and papier-mâché?) and furniture makers, but I visited three book binderies in said warehouse.

I have little concrete to say and not enough time to even say that much - and a bud of a headache low in the back of my skull - so I will mention only this:

It is with bemusement that I notice myself maintaining the illusion that artists and writers who I admire and whose professions I would be keen on adopting can tell my worth by a look in the eye. I still believe that I can express my longing that directly, that clearly, with a well-phrased question and strong eye contact and a warm smile. I still cling to the idea that I can stream out my passion like those hot invisible hands of Matilda through the eyeballs (remember that?), and that it can be recieved loud and clear, and that by the nature of a look and a smile I can trigger someone into thinking, "Yes! Apprenticeship! I can tell just by a glance you're my girl."


I have been fascinated with eye contact since my freshman year of highschool, reading Ferlinghetti's Constantly Risking Absurdity -- the poet like an acrobat/ climbs on rime/ to a high wire of his own making/ and balancing on eyebeams/ above a sea of faces/ paces his way/ to the other side of the day/ performing entrachats/ and sleight-of-foot tricks/ and other high theatrics/ and all without mistaking/ any thing -- this was the first poem that ever hit me in the thickest, rightest way, and the first poem I ever touched on multiple levels, and the first poem I ever received 'acclaim' for knowing and understanding (assigned to write a critical response to it, I tapped out a raucous model of the poem that explained its function and mimicked it, and it went sailing around the English department with high praise - at fourteen this felt like queenly treatment; now it's embarrassing). I feel that Ferlinghetti and this poem in particular have thus colored my sense of poetic direction and my feel for poetry. Constantly Risking Absurdity, indeed.


Bemusement & bemusement & bemusement. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Well it worked on my Chair, anyway. Maybe it could work on the Garage Annex School.

_____
oh &: i just pulled out 3 eyelashes - anyone up for a wish?

i. so today i went to the pharmacy in the morning after seeing the doctor yesterday for these headaches. headaches. headaches. over and over. the doctor asked me what medications i was on and if anything extra was working and i said no. aleve has always been my go-to for a bad headache but it has no effect. i'm prescribing you midrin said the doctor. wait i forgot to ask you are there any other drugs you're taking. other drugs i said. illicit drugs she said. no none of those i said. no pot she said. nope no pot i said. no nothin' at all. alcohol but i'm pretty bored with it so i haven't been drinking. okay she said i'm prescribing you midrin, we'll see what we can do with this. stop drinking and don't let your boyfriend smoke around you, too.

so i went to the pharmacy and before i went i realized my hair was a mess and i always get really nervous when i have to pick up anything that is a painkiller, like worried that the pharmacists will think i'm an addict or a dealer. fuckin' midrin man, yeah all the kids are hopped up on migraine meds. anyway i almost missed my bus because i was yanking my hair in this direction and that direction trying to get it to lay flat or at least play nice so i wouldn't look like a strung out fuck.

it was really foggy. i took pictures. ground fog. couldn't see more than thirty feet in front of me - and it lasted through the day. normally it breaks up when the sun comes out but it was like living in a cloud all day. normally i'd hate this nonchangingness, but today it was comfortable. it made me feel safe. like anything that might worry me was on the other side of the fog, and fuck that shit anyway.

it's pretty good to have the day after the worst headache of your life be wrapped in fog. it's a safe world to return to. like the environment noticed how bad the pain was - okay okay okay you really don't need that kind of bullshit, i'll go easy on you today. sorry that happened to you. let me wrap you up little baby girl.

ii. it's like the apple-eating people that we once were aren't there

iii. in the mortimer rare books collection room all the wood is deep and red. the one chair squeaks. in the corner is an older man who is silent and looking at material with enormous kaleidoscope glasses. he has a laptop and he is so absorbed in what he's doing that every time my chair squeaks (ever few seconds; i move a lot) i feel like i'm interrupting him. but maybe it would be even noisier if i got up and moved to another chair. so i keep on squeaking.

in the mortimer rare books collection room the air is cool and feels extra clean. the books don't feel old at all. they don't make me wear gloves. i smile very warmly and sincerely, as if i like being there a whole lot. i worry that they'll think i'm a slacker. but i really do like being there a whole lot. after an hour and a half of working with rare artists' books and squeaking my chair, the curator comes out and asks me what i think of them so far. we start talking about books because who doesn't fucking love books doesn't he have the best job ever. and did i see helga kos's ode aan de kolossale zon yet? i say no and he says that's my favorite of the books i've bought in the last year. really amazing. so i make a point to work with that one next.

i like to think he came out to talk to me because he saw how carefully i was handling the books and heard me laughing in delight when i opened up their cases. or how closely i was scrutinizing them and noting the materials and binding techniques. but it would have been hard for him to read my notes from his office. maybe it's because i'm cute and wearing a big yellow scarf.

iv. on the bus to the smith library a young guy keeps catching my eye.

i mean to say on the bus to the smith library a ladybird lands on my hand. first i flinch and shake my hand wildly because i've seen it out of the corner of my eye. then i think how cruel are we, isn't that just like a human being. i don't even know what it is and i'm violently shaking my hand to get rid of it. it lands on the seat next to me with a disgruntled flutter and i feel kind of guilty.

a little later it's on my knee. the bus leaves the campus and trundlerumbles down the road. there's a good warm breeze coming in from the window cracks. i bounce my knee and then i go to touch it like to gently lift it off because i'm cool whatever i can touch bugs. except i can't. i touch her hard shell with the back of my fingernail and i think about her feet on me and how it will feel crawly and that's okay, but i chicken out at the last moment. so i give her a kind of flick. no response. i give her another one, she lifts off, realizes she's midair, unpockets her wings and with a sound i can't quite hear is breezed back onto my shoelace. i give her a flick again and she's actually gone this time, lands on the bus floor and makes a slow path away from me and by this point i'm laughing at our encounter.

a young guy keeps catching my eye every time i look up from my book. finally when we get to northampton he says "rr frr smth?" and i say what and he says "smith college, are you from smith college?" and i say no, i'm not, and he says "oh, because i was told there's a good music store in town but i don't know where it is. i need a few pieces." i say pieces of music or pieces like for an instrument. he doesn't answer and instead asks me if i know where the music store is.

um no, i say. i feel really sheepish suddenly. i know where the ice cream store is and the clothing store i like and the chocolate shop and the sushi place and the other sushi place and the book store and the bead shop because i usually go to northampton for sushi and beads and ice cream. and i've lived here for three years. i've lived here for three years and i don't know where the good music store is. fuck.

sorry, i say. the boy looks at me some more and says "are you a professor?" and i say no i'm a student. he gives me this plaintive look. oh, i mean a student of hampshire, i say. and you? "i go to hampshire," he says, "are you a first year?" no i say. third. but i spent last semester in chicago. but third. he looks embarrassed for his hopeful misjudgment. i say are you a first year and he says he is.

and then i do this thing. we all do this thing. it's this fucking thing we all do. i say what made you choose hampshire and he gets this twinkly look and that's basically why we do it, to see if the new kids get the twinkly look. usually they do. and then there is a bursting kind of thing that happens, as if we've suddenly put them on trial, and why do you want to be here justify your existence and your passions in twelve words or less ready go. and he starts talking about the program and the program and his interests and the program really intriguing program academic style.

just once i want someone to say I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. or THERE ARE LOTS OF HILLS OUT HERE AND I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. or WHY AM I HERE. no one ever will. i didn't. if i was asked i said the program the program really intriguing program and my learning style and the program, hm.

you don't think you'll do this. you don't think, coming in, hm! some day i will take ownership over this place and everything it breathes will matter to me and all new life forms will be important and i will adopt its standards and i will serve as a checkpoint and i will appropriate this mode of existence. but you do.

v. i had a really good time at smith in part because it's beautiful, in part because it was beautiful outside, in part because it was late afternoon, in part because i was alone for the first time in a while, and in part because before the bus came i called gian and said,

-- i'm sorry i left the door unlocked. i was gonna text you that i left our door unlocked but then i thought it wasn't worth a text because it's not like the situation could change.
-- you're silly.
-- i'll be home in about half an hour. the bus should be here soon.
-- did you make it to smith?
-- yeah, i'm at smith now, waiting for the bus.
-- okay.
-- did you want me to pick anything up?
-- no, just come home little slowbee.
-- okay... bye... i love you.
-- love you.
-- eye looooffffff you.
-- you're ridiculous. (pretend angry) god. i love you. okay?
-- (angry valley girl) jesus i fucking love you, okay?

the boy from the bus (whose name was eric) was also at the bus stop waiting. he looked over strangely.

-- omigawd i fecking lawv you jesus fecking chriyst. haha. gian i made a friend on the bus and now he thinks i'm weird i think i just alarmed him.
-- you're ridiculous, go catch your silly bus.
-- kay i love you bye.
-- bye bee.

_____
TO BE CONTINUED? YES.

Sometimes he reads or works with his feet up on the desk right in my peripheral vision, and sometimes when we study we momentarily miss each other, so if it's me doing the missing I tickle his feet and if it's him doing the missing he gets up to squeeze my shoulders.

It didn't occur to me that this was a regular thing until I turned to stroke his arch and saw this:



It's just: Ha! It's not alarming, but if you take a moment to think about it, it's really weird. That he did this, quietly, undetected, and then put his foot up without a word. Knowing I would turn back? How could he have focused on his reading, knowing at any second I could look over and start laughing? The anticipation! He hates suspense.

The more I think about it, the more it makes me laugh.

Right now I'm sitting in a loose babydoll in my undies, listening to my favorite Smashing Pumpkins album on headphones. I'm revising a contract that outlines my academic plan for the next three semesters. I'm finalizing the plan to work with poetry, fiction and small-press publishing until I graduate. I'm rolling over the words from the only professor of poetry on campus, who is highly sought but can only work with six students, whose parting words to me the first and last time I saw him included but were not limited to, "You're making an incredibly good impression," "You're bold," "You know your stuff," and "Yes, I can tell we could work together very well." Who is now the Chair of my committee. Hells yes, O hells yes.

To my left are rolls of handmade paper, a stack of precisely cut Japanese print paper to turn into a stack of folios, stamps and measuring materials and binding thread and things for cutting and strings of lights, and spilling over onto my dresser are books of poetry that I've checked out from the library. To my right Gian is sitting pantsless with his feet propped up on his desk and his keyboard on a pillow in his lap, scouring JSTOR for critical work on aesthetics. I've just turned our fan to cool him off and he's patted my hand in thanks. The flowers are dry and black in the vases and the sheets are rumpled and it smells like sweat up here. I've just washed my face. It's hard to get a cool breeze. I couldn't be happier.

I'm developing an addiction to plums. How can one fruit be so impossibly, impossibly perfect. If I was told to sit in a room and eat nothing but cold plums all day, one after another, from a neat pyramid on a white plate, I would be the happiest lady.

Some serious domestic mishaps today. See also: getting ready for an early meeting with a prof who wanted me to TA and inhaling toast and chugging chocolate soy milk and dropping my mug (spilling 1/3 c.) all over my reading and laptop right as I was walking out the door.

"SHITFUCKSHIT goddamn now I'm FUCKING late!" I hollered, shaking a cold plum out of a pathetic half napkin in my bag and watching the napkin float across my Foucault reading in a chocolate river. Gian, for his part, rolled over in bed with a muffled "Whu.. I'll help.." and promptly fell back asleep. I grabbed a cruddy towel and did my best to mop it up, tossed the drenched brown towel in the corner (hoping like hell I wouldn't return to a sour room) and did a one-footed hop-leap-combo down the staircase while zipping up one of my boots.

It poured all day.

Without deciding to do so we both wore black 3/4 sleeve shirts, dark blue jeans, black socks and black boots. It was absolutely disgusting. To make matters worse, we attended an advanced poetry class together. In black 3/4 sleeve shirts, dark blue jeans, black socks and black boots. To make matters still worse, I didn't even notice it until I came back from another meeting late in the day. "Gian. Gian. We're fucking wearing the same thing."

"Gosh," said Tia. "You totally are. You guys are so gross."

I decided to make orange honey brined broiled pork tenderloin with garlic bread and fresh garlic green beans. It was all turning out perfectly and we were watching Law & Order while the tenderloin finished up and I was in the kitchen listening to them bust some guys and Gian shouting "Fuckin' OWNED," to the tough-talking uncooperative electronics salesman on TV and I got out a plate and started piling it with my perfect beans and turned around and the toaster oven was on fire.

Okay not on fire but smoke was pouring out of it.

"SHITFUCKSHIT goddamn open a window or door or something!" I hollered, slamming the big oven door shut again (and dooming the pork).

Gian jumped up shouting What what and I said I lit the fucking toast on fire oh fuck and ran to the door and he pulled the smoking toasts out of the little oven and we stood in the kitchen waving towels around under the smoke alarm trying not to cause the whole building to have to evacuate.

We were successful.

But the pork was not.

Greece is burning.





Chicago is rainravaged and largely lightless.

_____
I spent last night in a powerless studio in Roscoe Village, writing songs by candlelight and sitting out on a tiny stone balcony while the sky went from grey to green grey to deep blue to pale green to brown blue to grey brown to the evening pink of Chicago light pollution. Dished on coworkers, drinking rum and coke out of coffee mugs.

"You like that mug? Everyone at the office bought me that. They bought me a set of fucking dishes once. They all kind of know my situation. What a good family, right?"

"I wonder if they all went together to pick out the pattern. 'What do you think Steve would like more, the red stripe or the floral...?' I would like to see that."

"It's a good stripe." Steve smoked. Sky changed. The uprooted fifty foot oak across the street rested between houses, stubborn. "Your shoulders are hot in the moonlight."

"That's not moonlight, Steve. That's pink... light."

"Whatever." Steve smoked.

The Management would like to recognize the discarding of whatever husks of retro slowbee existed and the glorious return-rebirth of slowbee nouveau. Please stay with us as we chart the uplifting story of a new start, a feel-good blockbuster record-breaker best-seller that begins, like all good stories, with movement. Or rather, a move.

The slowbee is boxing up some things. She has a small box and many strangely shaped and spacious awkward ballooning space-hogging items with which to stuff it. But she is an expert packer, and in twenty minutes or less has folded an exercise ball, tucked it on the bottom row of a spice rack, set the spice rack neatly against the wall of the box, added an old flaking water-damaged smaller box containing poker chips to the larger box, deftly wrapped six small excellent vases and bottles in newsprint (with - The Management feels compelled to add - minimal smudgings of fingertips) and tucked them also within the boundaries of the spice rack (two - The Management feels compelled to add - expertly tucked onto the very same rack that holds an entire exercise ball), as well as placing four blue plastic margarita-esque beverage receptacles in like snug Tetris pieces, as well as a heavy steel thermos befitting a miner. She has tucked a brand new black cutting board behind the spice rack. The Management would also like to note that there remains almost half the space of the small box to fill.

The slowbee is boxing up some things. She is moving. Chicago to Amherst. Mod 69. Though The Management is reluctant to disclose the methods instrumental to recovery, The Management feels compelled to add that the slowbee has made a near complete recovery of mental health and sense of self. She is boxing up some things. She is smiling. She is moving.

That is all.

I changed from my play-going-clothes (Catherine: That's a very pretty skirt. Polina: Look at her in all her red; my Ari), & stripped down to a bra and bottoms and stood looking in the mirror and then re-built - striped tights, striped leggings, leg warmers, socks, another pair of socks, jeans, sheep's fleece and suede boots, silk shirt, a long shirt, a tank top, arm warmers, a sweater, my coat, a scarf wrapped three times, a too-big hat pulled down over my eyes and pushed back every few minutes by mitten hands. We tramped out around the edge of campus, slipped into moony woods, followed the path and listened for bears. Followed the path. Followed it, and followed him until the thick blacknesses of trees thinned and to our left was a field glowing greenywhite blue with the moon. Through the trees it looked like a lake. We left the path and went to the water, cornstalk stump waves unmoving, trying to convince eyes that it was ground & not a drowning place.

I swung the flashlight over broken bottle bits, kicked around an ashy piece of log shaped like an arrow head. Thin clouds covered the moon but ("I predict lucidity on the horizon!" I'd said as we walked out to the site) they were gone by the time we reached our spot. He set up the camera, fixed it on the milkdrop. I laid my blanket on the not cold thin dirt of the field, right up to the stalking edges. Laid on my back and pulled my scarf up over my nose. My glasses fogged and I stared straight at it, mothy. After a while Gian asked me what I was looking at and thinking about and I said, "Moony things. It's so bright. My glasses are fogged completely but it still has a clean edge."

"Are you cold?"

"No."

He opened the shutter with the lens fixed and sat down next to me, puffing steam. My glasses were swimming with fog and white water snakes and glittering things from the fragmenting.

"Still clean," I said. He moved to lie down next to me and I wrapped under his arm. I remembered that freezing to death is falling asleep, and I closed my eyes. The hills had one red light for planes. My elbows chilled, eventually. We stayed out for hours steambreathing and fluttering on the edge of sleep, then packed and followed silver splashes of paint back to the woods, through the trees, to the road. The streetlamp was yellowpink and too bright, by comparison. Walking back to campus things felt too decided, specific and clear.

I'm working on (and by "working on" I mean "started and haven't worked on since") a chapbook. It is made of descriptions of people sitting comfortably and uncomfortably. The front cover will just be tiny ink drawings of different chairs and sofas and stools and benches and seats.

MR. Bald sits down heavy. The kitchen chair. He is conscious of his bones pressing against the wood. He wishes he could sit gently and light, but he's a heavy sitter. He looks for the forgiving give in every upholstered seat cover, in every arm chair and sofa, the bed, the earth, and sometimes the kitchen chair.

.

MR. Bald sits down. Her leather monstrosity. Again he is conscious of his bones, how he fits in the chair. How his knees jut stupidly into the room, close together, how he folds his hands, how his eyes dart to her. How big his tongue feels. He's tired, the chair might give but he doesn't feel like taking. Glances at her again. Leans a stiff side against the hard arm. How big his tongue feels.

Well. Other things I am doing are: trying to write an essay, feeling nervous, rubbing the white smudge of pesticide off of cold green grapes one at a time because I don't want to get up to wash them.

Rough and bumpy things happened in our social and personal lives, recently. To celebrate our back-to-normalism and in recognition of the sheer waves of awesome we exude, we held a dinner party. The theme was French. Each of us was required to secure a recipe and ingredients (to be kept secret). Then we met up last night and spent the evening cooking together, eating together, talking together and, after the foods, snuggling and watching pirate porn together.

Don't have any other words on the subject, except that these photos only make me want to laugh happy.




( +5 )

Really mundane note, but charming: last night we all felt so completely miserable that we broke into the House Office (read as: I went in with a key) to nick construction paper and spent a few hours watching Scrubs and making Halloween decorations. The hall is now adorned with orange and black paper chains, bats, pumpkins, and tissue ghosts that I taught folks how to make. I made: a ghost, a dad ghost (ghost + moustache), a mom ghost (ghost + lipstick), an albino ghost (ghost with red eyes), a clown ghost (clown makeups) and a pumpkin head ghost (guess).

They are pretty fucking cute.

People are getting sick again.

Yesterday's Staff Meeting made me bitter. I get very cranky when people I like & love & respect are not picking up on the frustration and drained-ness of other people I like & love & respect. When a number of frustrated and drained people are in a room together, different things can happen: apathy, nonprogress, inspiration, empathy, or heightening the tension. The trouble comes when frustrated and drained people cease to have empathy for other frustrated and drained people, and this was happening in spades from all different directions. I have a broken empathy valve which means I cannot turn it off even when it would be in my best interest to do so. So I watched people I like be angry and not pick up on other people's quieter anger. So this made me feel anger, which I did not like, so this made me cranky afterward.

But.

My yellows for today are the berries on the tree outside Gian's window. They are bouncing in the drizzle and robins keep landing on the branches to suck on them and nibble. Sitting at his desk I am less than two feet away from three robins. The window is there, so they feel safe and don't mind me watching.