Regular Rumination

I realize that is the worst graphic ever, but it’s all I could do with MSPaint.  Please see these other folks who are much better at MSPaint than I am.  I also find bad graphics to be charming.  So I’ve done it!  I’ve posted 100 times!  And now to celebrate, I’m going on vacation.   I’m heading to the beach and I cannot wait.  Last night I was all jittery and couldn’t sleep like a little kid at christmastime.  I would wake up and check the clock and say something along the lines of “Oh good, I can get up in 2.5 hours.”  Or… “Yes!  Only 30 more minutes of sleep time!!!”  This is an EPIC JOURNEY because, as you may or may not know, I am carless.  I will hopefully not be carless for much longer, but for the moment, I’m hitching rides all over the state.  This morning my boss drove me to the town where Z lives (about an hour and a half from my house).  She happened to be going to a meeting in the building across from his apartment complex.  So serendipitous!  Next step, Z and I are driving south until we get tired, then we’ll stop and sleep.  After that, we’ll meet my parents at our rented cottage and will hang out for a few days.  I still haven’t figured out how I’m getting back to my house.  That will be another story for another day.  Hopefuly with the help of some more serendipity.  Now I’m on the first part of my epic journey, the part where I still have internet access.  I’m going to try to schedule some posts, but I’ve been having bad luck with the post scheduler, so we’ll see.  I promise to do the comment catch-up when I get home.

As for packing, I have a problem.  Last summer when I went on this same vacation, I didn’t bring enough books.  I brought House of Leaves and maybe one other book because I thought it was going to take me the whole week to read.  I ended up reading it in two nights… even though the first quarter of the book had taken me six months or so.  So then I was bookless and it was painful.  But I think I might have overcompensated.  To be fair, I brought a nice combination of library books and books I own so I don’t have to ruin library books at the beach.  Sometimes I try to ignore my grandmother’s voice in my head and bring them anyway, but I always feel guilty.  

Books I am bringing to the beach:

Tender Morsels  by Margo Lanagan 
Beside a Burning Sea by John Shors
2666 (the first book) by Roberto Bolaño, for Steph and Tony Investigate!’s readalong
Herzog by Saul Bellows
The Mystery of Grace by Charles De Lint
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

It could happen.   Maybe.  

It feels so good to be on the road again.  I am a nomad by birth.  I have lived out of a suitcase during the summer for most of my life.  The rhythm of the road and the passing of the miles, the open windows and the perfect weather early summer weather makes me so happy.  Every ride is like going home, no matter where I’m going.  

Because you just sat through and read all that (I’m very grateful), I am hosting a giveaway!!!!  It’s the 100th Post Celebration!  

All you have to do is leave a comment and tell me your favorite beach location!  I’ll random.org it when I get back on June 1st.  If you are already a subscriber or become a subscriber, I will give you another entry.   What do you win??  Um, well, it’s kind of a surprise.  Like a care package?  With bookish things?  I don’t want to give it away.  Doesn’t that make it more exciting?  Sort of?  I hope so!  

Happy holiday weekend everyone!  Have lots of fun and eat lots of good food and enjoy the sunny weather.  I’ll see you all on the first!

I know, I’m being really random.  But I’m still reading The Wood Wife, and I have a review of Pretties and The Geography of Bliss that I could be bringing to you.  Saturday, my friends.  Saturday will be a day of catching up between family visits and homework.

This is what the poets.org Poem-A-Day email sent me today:

Nocturne
by Wayne Miller

Tonight all the leaves are paper spoons
in a broth of wind. Last week
they made a darker sky below the sky.

The houses have swallowed their colors,
and each car moves in the blind sack
of its sound like the slipping of water.

Flowing means falling very slowly-
the river passing under the tracks,
the tracks then buried beneath the road.

When a knocking came in the night,
I rose violently toward my reflection
hovering beneath this world. And then

the fluorescent kitchen in the window
like a page I was reading-a face
coming into focus behind it:

my neighbor locked out of his own party,
looking for a phone. I gave him
a beer and the lit pad of numbers

through which he disappeared; I found
I was alone with the voices that bloomed
as he opened the door. It’s time

to slip my body beneath the covers,
let it fall down the increments of shale,
let the wind consume every spoon.

My voice unhinging itself from light,
my voice landing in its cradle-.
How terrifying a payphone is

hanging at the end of its cord.
Which is not to be confused with sleep-
sleep gives the body back its mouth.

Man, that’s a beautiful opening stanza.  You don’t get much more beautiful than that.

This post is not about books.  This post is about my father.

My father and I have not always had the best of relationships.  He and my mother were separated long before I could walk – I never grew up with my parents as a couple.  He lived four states away, but I still saw him once a month and six weeks during the summer.  Our relationship was fine until I reached my teens, and I guess, retrospectively, I’m not sure how many of our problems were real and how many were teenage hormone-infused melodrama.  I guess we’re both to blame, but we would go three, five and then six months without talking.  I feel like he missed a big part of my growing up.  And for a long time I was angry about it.

Eventually, though, life happens and you stop being angry because you realize there are bigger and better places you could be directing all that energy.  There is nothing in this world I hate more than being angry or having someone be angry at me.  So I let it go and over the past two years, the relationship between my father and I has improved.  I rarely agree with what he says, but we’re content to agree to disagree and it’s ok.  There is no resentment, no anger, nothing but a relationship that we still need to work on.

I guess you’re probably wondering what brought all this on.  I guess I didn’t have the greatest day.  I think I’m in a funk because of the weather – I like a really good rain now and then, but there is nothing worse than a cold, constant drizzle.  I’m stressed out because school is getting crazier and crazier.  I’m stressed out because I’m starting a job and I hope it’s the right time to start and I hope that I won’t regret it.  So today, when all these thoughts were running through my head, and I was laying in bed in the dark, just trying to rest a little before the intense homework session I have planned for tonight, my dad called.  I don’t know what I was expecting.  Just our normal how’s it going oh fine I guess I’ll talk to you later conversation that we have every two weeks.  But it ended up being something quite different.

After asking me questions about what my plans are for grad school and everything he stopped and he said, “I don’t think you realize how proud I am of you and everything you’ve done.”  And I guess after everything today, after all the uncertainties I have about the decisions I’ve made over the past year, it was just exactly what I needed to hear.  For the first time, in a really long time, I remember what it is like to be daddy’s little girl.

This is what I woke up to this morning.  And you can’t really tell, but it’s still still snowing, and it’s snowing fast.  So I’m sitting on the couch, in my pajamas, baffled.  I’m baffled, readers, because my professors have not emailed me yet to tell me that my classes are canceled.  Why?  Why?  Why?  You mean I have to walk approximately 1.1 miles in THIS?  Now, I know this may not look like a lot to some of you other bloggers out there, but THIS is like a blizzard where I’m from.  It’s not unheard of, but it’s rare.  We’ll get a snow like this maybe once a year.  It didn’t snow like this last year AT ALL.   Did I mention that school is UPHILL?  BOTH WAYS?  AND I HAVE NO SNOW BOOTS?  And I’ve only finished crocheting one mitten?

Oh well, kids, I’ll stop whining, put some plastic bags over my shoes, and enjoy that snowy silence we only get once a year in our neck of the woods. 

Update: Class was canceled at 2!  Woo!