Girlwich

This has been the damnedest summer. Rain, rain every day, to the point where I just realized I am still waiting for it to be spring. I was sick for a whole month. The rain came down. It was still not spring. June came and went. I was sick. I stayed inside. It rained.

I started to think about that documentary I watched, twice, which talked about The Year Without A Summer, an ice-age year where summer simply didn't come. The snow came down. The animals starved. The wind howled.

I started to do winter things. I made lentil soup. I watched a lot of TV and re-read Agatha Christie. I knitted, for Pete's sake.

I'm forced to admit that I rather enjoyed the knitting. Which just goes to show you how NON-springish it's been around here. (Note to those who've been reading less than a year: I do not knit in spring and summer. It's not that I don't know about the existence of bamboo, and cotton, and linen, and hemp. It's just that I can't seem to give a good god damn about knitting when the weather is warm.)

But I just finished a scarf, which was started long ago, in early winter or fall. It's a cerulean blue hand-dyed wool that Shan sent me, and which really looks to me like the ocean, and I just love it. It got laid by the wayside whilst I knitted a bazillion gifts for people, and then while I knitted the cobweb scarf, and so on. And there it was sitting in my knitting basket calling to me one very rainy afternoon.

It's a short scarf, and a very useful item I think it will prove. Most of my scarves are long long long. Certainly too long to wear on a bike. I may try this one out as a cowl-alternative. I think I can tuck the ends into either side of a jacket and it will warm both neck and chest. And plus, it is blue, blues, bluesy, bluest. I held off posting this until I could get a daylit photo of it, just so you could see the true blues.

Also because lately every time I go to write something here, I end up feeling like I've either said too much or said nothing very interesting. It's been a weird summer so far, and I am not just talking about the weather - though it occurs to me to wonder about the degree to which people's behavior and moods (including mine) might be affected by such a long spell of the drearies.

As I look out my window now, there are again the gathering dark clouds, and the fan is pulling in air that feels oversaturated with moisture about to break into big drops. I still haven't unpacked my books. I think I am waiting for the skies to clear.

It is very warm. I am making the spicy, spicy dal that I tend to crave when it is hot out. I don't know what it is about the one kind of hot that seems to call for the other, but I know I'm not the only one.

I also go through phases where I want the same thing, over and over and over again. An observer might call it a rut, but it feels more as if there's a spicy-dal-shaped gap in my body.

In case reading this is making you aware of your own need for spicy food, here is my rough formula for making the spicy spicy dal (oh I just love even writing that...mmmm). All amounts are approximate, since I just pour spices into my hand and toss them in.

Take a bunch of red lentils, about half a pound.
Rinse them in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear.
Put them in a pot and cover with a bunch of water - you want to have a couple of inches of water over the lentils, so somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-6 cups water.
Add about 1/2 to 1 tsp. sea salt. Set it to boil, then turn heat down to simmer.
Separately, peel and mince some fresh ginger (a piece about 1-2 inches long and an inch wide), do the same for 2-3 cloves garlic, and chop a bit of onion.
Put 2 Tbsp(ish) olive or canola oil in a saute pan, add the garlic, ginger, onion, and also a hefty dose of ground cumin (3-4 tsp.), 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. of hot chile powder (I don't mean the chili powder blend that's designed for making chili; I mean the straight ground dried chiles), about 1 tsp. dry mustard or whole mustard seeds, and a few whole white or black peppercorns. If you have fresh chile peppers, so much the better - you could substitute a fresh serrano or 1-2 jalapenos (depending on how hot they are) for the dried chile powder. Or like 1/4 to 1/2 of a habanero or scotch bonnet. Anyway, saute the spices in the oil, adding a little more oil if necessary, for about 3-5 minutes over low heat. Then just dump them all into the lentil pot. Simmer the vat about 40 minutes, or as long as it takes to cook the rice you're going to eat it over. You will likely want to add more salt at the end, but let it cook first and taste it, since the salt is going to get concentrated as it cooks down. I often end up adding a little more chile, too. Bwahaha. Taste after about 25-30 min. and correct seasoning as necessary. Remember it can be extra-fiery because the rice will chill things out a bit. And because that's what makes it goooood.

Optional additions: juice of 1 lemon. A couple teaspoons of turmeric.
Rice alternatives: Noodles. Polenta.

Yummity yum yum. Yay, fiery.

Tonight I am thinking some bok choy and sugar snap peas in garlic and olive oil to go with it.

I kept wanting to post something soft and introspective, to show how I was settling down nicely on the couch and recuperating (ha!), but the truth is, I have been champing at the bit, frustrated and furious as a racehorse who doesn't understand why it can't simply get up and run, dammit.

Last night I went for my first (tiny) ride in a while. I just toodled over to a park and did a single lap, down through the crowds of aimless pedestrians and up the one biggish hill, and back home again. I got hit in the face by a cloud of gnats. I had to wiggle through a lot of obstacles on feet, tires, and skates. I was a little lonely.

I got much too sweaty and out of breath for what it was. But I woke up this morning feeling quite a bit better than I have in a while.

That's not to say I am all better, or even that I am justified in thinking I can hop on bike number-three and whoosh into town and back, as I'm about to do when I leave you lovely people.

But it brings home to me the importance of hope, and of feeling like things are right with one's world, in the getting-better process. Either that or it's the caffeine talking (hello espresso, I love you).

It's all very portentous round here of late.

I've been in my new apartment for a while now, but, uncharacteristically, I am still not fully unpacked. I have about 10 boxes full, mostly books and out-of-season or out-of-favor clothing. They are stacked around the edges of the furniture like kelp on a beach.

I know why this is.

Even before I moved in, I was uncertain about this move, and it's not because I don't like the apartment. It's a wonderful apartment. I like the hood, too. The people are friendly, and there's a liveliness here that I find invigorating. The location is magical for serendipitous socializing, and I'd like to stay here a while, I really would.

But I've been afraid the whole time that I won't be able to afford to stay. That I won't, in fact, be able to afford anything. That my whole life structure as I've known it will collapse under its own not-terribly-extravagant financial weight.

It's not by any means an unfounded fear; it's the sort of thing most freelancers experience from time to time, and to some extent we have to learn to live with that in the backs of our minds. But as the work dried up and then the money in savings began to wane, and then to get terribly, terribly thin, I just kept pushing that back into the recesses of my mind. I have no room for that kind of fear in the front, you see, for it would be paralyzing. And it does me no good to be paralyzed.

But all along my enjoyment of this place has felt like a tentative gift, something that might have to be returned in a few months. To someone more deserving? Well, I hope not. I do feel, finally (I think) that I deserve some happiness, and I'd like to be able to experience it here, in this fine hood, in my apartment with the good light and the great proximity to all my friends, and the bike rides and the boys who like to come visit.

It all has the feel of this bedeviling weather we've had. Every time the sun lures us out, it's only ever a few moments between clouds. The threat is ever there; have fun but I'm gonna drench you if I feel like it. Don't get too comfortable.

I am:

1. Leaving a little trail of tissues after me like Hansel and Gretel trying to mark their path through the woods.
2. Missing my preferred boy, even though I just saw him the other day(night).
3. Grumpy at the unrelenting rain.
4. Grumpy at being prevented from riding my damned bike(s).
5. Watching Ghostbusters Deux.

I am not:

1. Taking pics.
2. Posting pics.
3. Amused.

So I was watching this documentary on Edward Hopper, and he apparently once said that all he wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a building.

I came home in light rain today after waiting out a massive thunderstorm, and by the time I sat down at my desk it had turned suddenly strongly sunny out, complete with chirping birds.

Something about the way the light was slanting in made me want to pull out the camera, and it also made me think that Hopper had a point.

I am usually a big fan of color, and my life without strong colors in it would be so empty that I don't even like to contemplate it, but now and then I am struck by the important beauty of black and white.

And even more so, by how beautiful light itself can be - what it looks like playing on a surface, the ripples it makes in reflections, the contrast with a sharp shadow. Positive and negative space.

Positive and negative space has counterparts in life, too, I think. And not just in the obvious idea that life has good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, virtue and evil. I have been feeling my way around in the nebulous area where the values of things are suspended and one simply experiences them.

{I can hear Boywich in my head clamoring about relativism, but I am not talking about that - not really.}

I guess I am talking about opening oneself to experiencing something before deciding whether one likes it or not, before calling it a good or bad thing in one's life, before making any decisions about it whatsoever.

And no, I'm not quite (or not merely) talking about boys, or sex, or any of that, though those things can certainly be considered this way.

It's more about feeling the shape of something. Things have positive or negative space - they can feel bright or dark, or have aspects of both. Again, I am thinking of bright and dark as merely descriptive rather than assigning a value judgment to them. It's a bit like yin/yang, perhaps.

Sometimes I feel that I can detect positive and negative space, bright and dark, solid and airy, manifest and mysterious aspects in interactions with people, and in the people themselves. We all have things that we present easily to others, that we're comfortable showing, and things that we reserve for ourselves for various reasons, and things that move us in a way that's hidden even from us, things which may in fact be gigantic turbine forces arranging our lives and propelling us in ways we aren't aware of.

There is a certain amount of yin and yang in most people, I imagine.

"Great. More exciting adventures in sitting." - Simon Tam

Being sick is always a surreal experience for me. My daily life is composed so much of movement, and being sick is all about sitting still and waiting to heal.

"I hate waiting." - Inigo Montoya

Me too.

Even though I occasionally get something extraordinary out of the experience, like what happened to me last night when, watching PBS with a desultory eye, I had a revelation about what I'd like to do next with my professional self. Or rather, how my unasked-for talents for evil could be put to better use.

I shan't go into specifics, since I like to preserve a little proscenium here. But it was a grand idea, and I intend to see what can be done about it - though I have, of course, no real idea of how to proceed with the transition.

"You keep using that word." - Inigo, again.

Yeah, I do - even though it is perhaps my least favorite activity in the universe. Boywich pointed out to me the other day that, despite my reputation as a change-resisting stick-in-the-mud, I've actually been changing by leaps and bounds. I suspect a lot of it is going on at a level I'm not quite aware of. But I do find myself experimenting with things I never thought I'd be able to do.

{pause for coughing fit that scares cat off my lap}

{another pause to retrieve oatmeal I'd forgotten about. I always forget about oatmeal. However much I may like it, it's just not a memorable food. I wonder if anyone will speak of me in those terms, after I've left. Anyway...}

One of those things is -erm- "interacting" with more than one person at a time. No, I am not referring to the menage a rouge, or any other color. I just mean that until quite recently, it had never occurred to me that I could or would have any desire to juggle multiple lovers. I am not even sure now why I am doing it, apart from the fact that the opportunity exists, and that neither one of them is in any way a serious thing.

Actually, that last bit may be the most surprising of all. There's nothing doing, romantically, with either of them. Never thought I'd be down for (up for?) that. But the list of things I never thought I'd be, or do, or want to be or do, has been getting exponentially longer.

There's always a space on an online personals questionnaire that asks you to project yourself into the future, and I always heave a huge sigh about that. The longer I'm here, the more solidly I realize that planning isn't the point of life. Or at least of my life.

Quite the opposite, in fact. My goal has become to simply get out of my way as much as possible. To let myself breathe, and be here, in this moment, in this place, to see it and hear it and smell it and taste it. To experience the sweetness of that lady behind the pharmacy counter after I joked that I'd gotten sick helping out a friend, and mock-swore that that would be the last time I did something nice. She looked into my eyes, assessingly and with good humor, and said, "You're lying. You'd do the same thing all over again. Because that's how we are with friends and family." I told her she was absolutely right, and we laughed, and it had that delicious sweetness of the real.

Sometimes I feel like we're just here for that - to connect, to interact, to share that knowledge of what it is to be here, to be human.

You know, the funny thing is, with the two boys...despite not being in or planning to be in a "relationship" with either of them, neither of those connections feels false or stale or empty. It's not callous or meaningless, and it doesn't seem to need anything attached to it, or to lead anywhere else, in order to have value. It is its own thing, sitting there in time and space, me and him, in my room.

*with apologies to Talking Heads.

I hadn't quite realized there were discussions about Twitter spelling the death of blogs, but it doesn't altogether surprise me. Not just because I blog less often since I began tweeting, but also because it seems to be part of human nature - or perhaps just the current media-driven incarnation of it that dominates here - to want to make such proclamations.

I think it's related to the way that people in the city get upset about things changing in their neighborhoods. Don't get me wrong, I get sad when my favorite restaurants suddenly close; when the beautiful man with the equally beautiful wine shop forlornly shut his doors and moved back to France.

But I also recognize that that is the nature of the city. It is a living, breathing entity, and living breathing entities grow, change, shed skins, lose hair, and so on.

It's also part of life - and a very difficult one - that things die. People die. Pets die. Relationships die. We die.

I've spent a good portion of my life avoiding that, and another portion fearing it, and still another portion thinking, really, this must be okay somehow. Otherwise it wouldn't be. The world would be arranged some other way. If this is the way things are, then this is the way they are.

I am sure I am not expressing this well enough, but there's not much lather that can be added to the bare facts in this case. Death, dude. It just is. So we might as well get used to it. I don't mean that we shouldn't react naturally when someone close to us dies. That's bound to be - and, I think, meant to be - devastating. I just mean that life is not a standstill kind of arrangement.

Stop laughing, Boywich; I know I am the worst offender. Well, not exactly - it's the transition between one state and another that ruffles my feathers.

I am, of course, in just such a state at the moment. Not so much of transition but of nebulousness. And I'm doing okay with it. Just a faint sensation of spiritual dizziness.

Earth to Lizbon: Honey, you do not want a boyfriend.
Lizbon: Right. I forgot.
Earth: Because, it makes you crazy. Witness how uncomfortable it made you to even contemplate having a proper date.
Lizbon: Right, I forgot.
Earth: Remember how you called me up in the middle of the night and begged me, please, to send you a backdoor man? Or two?
Lizbon: I think I'd actually like three, if you're offering.
Earth: Yes, well, we'll see what can be done about that. So, here, my love, on a silver platter, are two lovely backdoor men. Use them wisely, okay? And don't get all bent out of shape over it.
Lizbon: Yes, Earth, darling. I will try.
Earth: And ride your damned bicycles.
Lizbon: Hey, I never stopped doing that. Give me some frickin' credit.

Me: Complain complain complain. Boys are a pain.
Boywich: Well, it's a transitional time.
Me: That explains why I hate it.
Boywich: Chuckle.

Really, I wonder sometimes if I am actually female. The moment that I let on to boy number two that I liked him, I wished I could take it back. Ack! I'm trapped! Oh shit! Must find a third! Stat!

Changed my perfume and everything. Okay, I didn't change it; I'll go back to the usual tomorrow, no doubt, but I suddenly felt like pulling out all my imps and looking at them.

So I am going out with friends tonight, and getting a pedicure with Special J tomorrow (hello, Sweetie. I love you.). And then we shall see what we shall see, which is a shame, rather, as I'd really like to get laid again sometime this century.

Did I say that out loud? Yeah, probably.

Stop reading, mom. Stop reading right now.

Okay, she doesn't read the blog. Special J does from time to time, but she's heard much worse come out of my actual mouth. Boy number one once teased me that if I were introducing someone as an ex-lover, I'd not only not be shy about using that term but would offer details, "We did this, and this, and this."

He's wrong about that; I actually do have a shy side, but then again I will also absolutely tell it like it is. I happen to like that in myself, but Boywich tells me it's not a quality in high demand these days. I think he's right. People seem to not know what to do with the direct truth, served up plain and in the exact words I mean to put it in.

Maybe they're so used to reading behind the lines that they start doing it anyway, and think - oh, just to coin an example - that when I said "like" I really meant "love." And they get all gawky and weird about it and wonder what it means that I am looking them directly in the eyes all of sudden.

What it means, cutie, is that I happened to notice what a pretty colour your eyes are; hadn't really looked too closely before. Sigh. You can see how I get myself into trouble, yes?

I feel that I should carry a warning label, sandwich-board-style. "Warning: Truth Teller. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say."

"Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet and you bet big, then you take the house." - Daniel Ocean.

With apologies to Juno, I am borrowing her very own format to relate a conversation we had over IM yesterday. Okay, it's excerpts from two conversations, but the second was really a continuation of the first.

Juno: You told him you wanted to like, date him and stuff?
Me: I will tell you exactly. It was very cute. (long tale of how I asked new boy out)
J: I'm so proud of you.
Me: I'm glad I didn't make myself wait for the "perfect moment" or the perfect way to do it.
J: You just have to observe Dan Savage's campground rules.
Me: Campground rules?
J: When you are older than someone to a significant degree, your obligation is to leave them in better shape than you found them.
Me: That is a lovely rule.

Do you ever find yourself learning the same lessons, over and over and over again? I mean, it isn't even exactly re-learning them, but trying repeatedly to learn them in the first place.

Today's lesson: coping with uncertainty. Okay, not just coping but learning to hover right above it, to be at peace with it, and maybe even to enjoy it.

I'm not saying all kinds of uncertainty should be enjoy-able (as in, something that can be enjoyed, rather than something that is automatically delightful). Fiscal uncertainty sucks.

But uncertainty about this boy or that boy liking you or not liking you, and uncertainty about your own feelings toward him, well, that seems like it ought to have some element of pleasure about it.

I've tried and tried to enjoy the grey area. Or rather, the brightly colored area, the haze of uncertainty in which the air can seem to be dancing with motes of electrical energy, with a look in his eyes or yours that might or might not mean something is going on between you. And you just don't know. And moreover, you don't even know if you want it to mean something.

I woke up this morning thinking, oh I'm glad I didn't tell him yesterday that I have a crush on him, because now I am not certain whether I do. I mean, I kind of do. But then, there are so many cute boys in the world - just look at them all. All those boys on all those bikes, and they are all flirting with me, and we are all going to ride down to the beach together. And there we will play in the sand and pretend, for a day, that there's no reason for anyone on earth to have a care other than, perhaps, frisbee, and wondering if the water's too cold yet for swimming.

So I had this great day, despite the uncertainty, and though the uncertainty was a tiny bit painful, it might have also been a bit delicious. Does he or doesn't he? Somebody hand me a daisy and I will find out.

Or I will just wear the daisy in my hair and think, He might. He might not.

PS. Nikon. Click for bigger.

My heart changes so rapidly that I sometimes wonder who's driving this thing.

Yes, I am madly juggling. Yes, that's been a charming change of pace - though not as consistent as one might hope. There are availability issues with both of them.

There are also issues of sorting out which underlying feelings, if any, are which. And which are just free-floating trouble looking for a place to roost.

I never trust myself in these matters.

I suppose that sounds unnecessarily harsh, but you see, I have a propensity to get, as one online dating personality test put it with uncanny (and annoying) accuracy, "sudden and ferocious crushes" that strike without warning and tend to leave me hanging upside down wondering what happened and who made the world suddenly flip on its axis, and hey, can anybody help me figure out which way my feet are supposed to be pointing?

It reminds me, somehow, of lying on the big rocks atop my favorite mountain, and looking downwards into the sky and having this tremendous, delirious, and rather scary feeling of vertigo as my whole being tries to figure out what to do with the whole up-is-downness of it all.

I went for a bike ride today with one of the boys, who is a friend, and I wanted so badly to take him home with me, or at least kiss him, and it just wasn't happening, and I am disappointed.

I don't know whether it's just because I want something that goes in that place that's all woken up and clamoring for attention, or that I've been spending a lot of time with him recently and have discovered that, to my surprise, I like him.

I like him and I am finding him rather cute all of a sudden. And he's not that boy about whom you've heard at length; he's the other one. The nicer one.

What the frack I am supposed to do about it - if anything - I have no clue. Hold my breath, I guess. I ran in the water like a big dog at the beach, with my heavy bike bag on my back, and he was not melted by this, so perhaps it is a forlorn hope.

Because even the blonde couldn't resist the happy dog move.

PS. Pocketcam + golden hour, in case you were wondering.

Once in a while, the city remembers to show its love, in that magic way that only it can. Happily, it decided to do that on the day of our picnic. The forecasted thunderstorm did not materialize, the weather dawned sunny but crisp, and the picnic grounds were green and pleasant.

A local DJ decided to provide accompaniment of his own accord (presumably one of the city's overworked angels had sent him), and then passed a striped railroad cap.

We had all the right ingredients of a successful picnic: too much food, little people and big people, a bunch of lemonade and iced tea, a frisbee, a cute puppy dog, a neighborhood basketball game to watch, and lots of room to run around.

I'd ridden my practical bike, loaded with about a gazillion pounds of pasta salad, and brought my good camera. The Nikon had several friends there, all fancier models, but I still think I took the most pictures.

All the ladies got flowers to wear in their hair or wherever else they liked. There was a bit of sneaky wine and beer. There were a considerable number of homemade cookies. There was a beautiful bundt cake. I ate everything about four times over, and we later adjourned to the hosts' apartment for some after-picnic laughter and more wine.

I rode home in a cool breeze, jacket zipped up, taking it carefully since I'd had a bit of that Riesling.

(Click for bigger, if you like.)

Fresh ginger tea with lemon and honey.

Watching Chocolat made me feel, for some reason, beautiful, even with my dirty knees and the scarf tied over my hair. Or maybe because of them.

I was an irascible, enraged creature today, with various pieces of my life falling to bits like a snake's used skin, flakeity flake flake.

Everyone wanted to know why, and I hadn't a significant explanation. Which is to say, there were so many possible reasons it was difficult to know which was the true one. If there was a single one.

It's been a year or more since I slept outside the confines of this city.

It's been a fortnight or more since I had a day where I didn't ride in traffic. I only rode tiny errand trips last Saturday, but still the traffic has its effect, I guess.

Spring appears to have brought out the worst side of humanity. Yes, that's right. The nicer the weather gets, the nastier your average human on the street gets. Don't ask me why. It's been two straight days of unfathomable, unending bullshit, and I have lost any patience I ever had, plus all of my reserves of self-control.

I think it might be insufficient peace and quiet (I have a daily quota to maintain sanity levels, and it's been woefully undernourished this week), plus the traffic, plus the random horribleness, plus perhaps a drop in daily endorphin levels because of my shorter rides. That last is going to be hard to address because longer rides entail more time in traffic, and as noted, that's part of my difficulty.

"Yes, actually, I am an invincible secret agent from Mars. How did you guess?"

I'd pledge here and now to install the pocketcam in the bike bag once again so you can have some visual stimulation to go with all these words, but at the moment I don't feel like making promises of any kind to anybody. And at the same time I am wondering if my anti-boyfriend plan might have a small flaw in it.

PS. Yes, I decided to throw you a bone with the crappily fluorescent-lit tea pic.

Movable Type: Hello Lizbon. Your last entry was 5 days ago.
Me: 5 days ago? No way!
MT: Way!

I've been holding off on posting till I had some photos to round it out, but I still don't have any, and I don't have much to say other than a bit of random updating.

(Blog reader: Dude, that's all you ever say!)
(Me: Well that's what a blog mostly is, isn't it?)
(Blog reader: I guess. But once upon a time you wrote us nice essays.)
(Me: I wrote one of those about 5 days ago.)

Right. Anyway.

To the tune of a cat licking herself much too loudly, I will sing you the following song of mundanity.

Some boys are teasing me. Some boys are calling me back after a date I distinctly do not want to repeat. Some boys are, well, giving me to think, or rethink. And the timing of everything is rather dreadful, as usual, and I've made a clumsy ass of myself in about six different ways in the last few days, though not in anything really irretrievable, I don't think. Just sort of ordinary clumsiness. Social clumsiness and the other kind.

Okay then. (The cat has quit washing and fallen asleep in that sudden way they do.)

I am enjoying my proximity to various aspects of my social life. I am closer to several friends. I am closer to farmers' markets. I am better placed for spontaneous fun. All good.

I find that I am a tumbling assortment of things these days, so I will give it to you straight, because that is my wont. (Not a spelling error. Look it up if you don't believe me.)

I am content, I am nervous about money, I am gleeful, I am lonely, I am curious, I am sleepy, I am pining for the beach, I am wearing legwarmers, I am in lust, I am annoyed, I am giving up on that one, he is a pain in the ass, I am suddenly attracted to another one but that may only be because he laid hands on me unexpectedly and in a gentle, appealing way that made my brain spin.

Well hello lovelies.

See my pretty new curtains? See?

Much more fiery than the last batch, and somehow that feels appropriate to me. Yay, fiery.

Some things here are the same, and some are distinctly different, and I am still adjusting to that.

It occurs to me that I've made myself at home in various places by bringing a small group of (unremarkable to anyone else) objects with me. So that my space feels familiar, no matter where it's located. I'm not sure what that means, if anything, though I know that I like to feel that I am entering my own brain when I come home.

I'm watching a movie I've seen before, in which the main character has short-term memory loss and essentially has to reinvent her life every day, to remind herself of where she is and everything that's going on.

It means she approaches each day with a certain freshness, a zest for the most minor things - waffles she ate yesterday but can't remember, kissing a boyfriend she has to re-meet again and again, a pineapple upside-down cake. She paints giant lily plants on a wall each day, and each night her brother and father whitewash over it so she can paint them anew.

There is always something evocative about this movie to me, which is why I've watched it many times.

Tonight what's hitting me is that this is a bit what moving to a new place feels like. It's still me, it's still my things (or some of them - the ones that I didn't get rid of, and the ones that escaped the clutches of the world's worst movers). The cat is much the same. But even she senses that maybe the rules can be rewritten here. She's been climbing on certain pieces of furniture she never climbed on before. She's testing her limits, even as I'm rewriting mine.

I hadn't realized how much my days are shaped by habit. It's disconcerting, in some ways, to not have access to the same rhythms, the same resources.

I can't find some of the things I always took for granted at the local grocery stores: red lentils, frozen lemonade. And the prices are exorbitant compared to my old neighborhood.

I have a shorter bike ride to get to my haunts, and while that frees me up to do a lot more socializing, it also means that I have to think about getting exercise. Which is weird. In the old place, a 40-minute ride was built in.

There are parks and other beautiful places here, but the hood itself is a bit rougher-looking, and I am not sure how safe I am walking home at night.

Essentially, there is a whole new language to learn. The language of days, and I am a rank beginner.

Feeling downright beautiful at the moment. The sun came out, literally and metaphorically (yes, I am aware that there may be a quasi-causal relationship between the two). I unearthed my box of bike tools and lubed my chain - thank god.

I get uneasy when my bikes are ill-cared-for. I feel their pain when their chains are dry, and ashamed when there's visibly crusted dirt in the bends and elbows of their frames.

So I rode my newly sparkly bike into town, and on the way got a text message from crushboy asking if I was coming into town that day (yes, right this minute, sugar), and then we had coffee, and then we went shopping (he's a girly-man and likes these things, and a very pleasant quality that is, if you ask me), and then I had a rather delicious hug and went to get my nose jewelry changed.

On the way home I stopped in to visit a friend who lives near me, and she miraculously produced out of her stash of goodies the perfect curtains to replace the ones I managed to lose in the world's worst move. My curtains got thrown in the trash, I think, which sucks beyond all suckitude, since I adored them, and had made them myself, at considerable expense, from long panels of linen in indigo and turquoise-blue (living room) and aqua-tealish silk Dupioni (bedroom).

Okay, I am getting sad again just writing this. But the friend's replacement curtains are really marvelous and just what I had in mind for this apt, but could not have afforded to buy. So it all works out fabulously - well, I assume it will, once I buy some new rods (the ones I have won't work in my quirkily dimensioned windows) and rings and put them up. I hope they'll be long enough. I think they will.

And then, making the giant vat of soup turned out to be another sort of missing link in making me feel at home.

It also didn't hurt that I had a rather wonderful, social weekend - bike rides with friends, and a party five minutes away from my house, and just general delight in being here.

Ahhhh. It's about time.

PS. Kitwich likes it, too - much better nook-and-cranniage for her to enjoy.

The city is often an object-lesson in hardcore checks-and-balances living. Today was one such day. I offer you exhibit 1:

Plus column: I got a pedicure. Lavender.
Minus column: I got into a bike vs. car accident with an SUV on the way there.
Plus column: Neither I nor the bike appear to be damaged.
Minus column: The damn SUV cut me off so shortly that there was nowhere to go and no time to stop. Smashed into his bumper with a nice "crunch!" Eck.
Plus column: Ran into a friend on the street five minutes later and had a nice little chat. A cute friend. Not that cute friend; a different one. We had gone for a bike ride once, long ago, that might have turned into a date but I kinda thought no. Still cute.
Minus column: A little shook-up for several hours following accident.
Plus column: Another friend made me dinner on my way home. Yum, and relaxing.
Minus column: Somewhere along the way I managed to step in crap and get it all stuck in my bike shoe.
Plus column: It was the kind that comes off relatively easily and doesn't smell super-bad.
Minus column: I think I will be throwing those bike shoes away, anyway. Just in case.
Plus column: Cute young blond boy asked me out on a date. Interesting cute young blond boy.
Minus column: Since it's an Internet date, there might be zilch chemistry.
Plus column: Delightful hot man offered to help me shift some heavy objects around my apt.
Minus column: Delightful hot man might not actually follow through with it.
Plus column: Kindhearted husband of friend also offered and would follow through.
Minus column: Hard to decide whom to take up on offer.
Plus column: Even if doesn't move heavy things for me, delightful hot man might come visit and help me move some, er, other things. Like earth and sky.
Minus column: Delightful hot man also somewhat problematic.
Plus column: So the fuck what? He's adorable. Let him come visit you and admire your pretty toes and help you find new uses for your delightful staircase.

And so forth.

In other news, Kitwich likes her new windows.

I am hungry and in need of chocolate.

Oh for frack's sake, that was just ridiculous. Let's not do that again anytime soon, shall we?

If I am feeling whoopdeelio ambitious, I might stick an old photo in here for entertainment value, or I might just relegate you lot to my increasingly cranky and undelicious words.

To list the things that went wrong would only take too much space and make me cry (again).

To tell you that I spent a recent birthday a: getting rained on and b: crying would only be a pity party - not that I don't deserve such a thing, given the dearth of actual party.

To tell you that I've been a week sans Internet, sans TV, and sans DVD player (until I remembered I could just call Boywich and have him tell me how to hook the latter up) would be...well, complainish.

Would it help if I told you the damned movers broke nearly everything I owned?

Would it help if I told you they threw everything in a huge pile, and that I've spent the last 8 days digging myself out from under it, in little increments punctuated by my back going massively and horrendously out?

Would it help if Baby Kitwich mewed piteously at you from behind the fridge?

Well. It's all true, and then some.

Today it is pelting, but absolutely pelting down rain outside our window. I can see rivers in the streets and the drops are coming down so hard they are positively loud.

I saw you-know-who earlier; he's been sick and is still not well enough to play with me, though he was kinda nice. Kinda very nice, on his spectrum of weird-to-nice. I wanted to take his clothes off, there on the street corner, and eat him like a handsome little birthday cake. I mean, I didn't have cake, after all, so the universe owes me.