November and coffee cups

Photo by Niki Clark on Unsplash

 It's a grey November morning. That's the best kind. Well, a grey November morning when I don't have to work. That's the best kind. When all the leaves have fallen from the trees, as most of them  have, and I can clearly see all the neighboring yards in the back, my own yard seems so much smaller. It's strange-in one way, the cold of winter is isolating, yet in another, I can clearly see the happenings of the household behind once the leaves have fallen and the cold has come.

    Tierney and her family are not coming today, as she feels it would be too hard since the baby had his surgery to keep him still, and I fear the light at the table will be diminished. Tierney, Jake, and her boys bring a boisterous torch to the room. 

    I hope it stays grey all day. I also think with the all day, I should have spelled it gray. The double ay looks nice.

    I have decided to just clean 10 minutes out of every hour. What gets done, gets done. Liam is making the turkey and mashed potatoes, and I will make the dressing (just stove top), sweet potatoes, canned corn and warm the pies and rolls. It's simple, but enough. My dad is bringing a turkey breast, and I presume the others will bring something. Honestly, if I could discipline myself to always clean 10 minutes out of every hour when I am home, my house would probably be fine. I want a clean house-I even read books on it (I am pure excitement, baby), but I like the theory more than the practice, I suppose. I have a stack of library books I have not been reading. I finally paid off my fine after a year, and now I am so out of the reading habit. I need to just-do-it. Probably I need to get the television out of my room and keep my phone elsewhere. I used to read so much pre-internet, and definitely pre-smart phone. Eventually some book will be good enough to pull me in, I guess. But those books-the ones that grab you, suck you in, and have you dreaming hard of another life, are rare. Most are just okay.

    I have a lot on my mind, but nothing to really share. In fact, I just wrote a long paragraph and deleted because not everything needs to be shared with my 12 readers, who don't actually subscribe. Hell, it could be the same person clicking on it to read multiple times. Or just clicking on it to make me feel better. That's sweet. 

    There is an airplane above the clouds and I am envious. I want to take my kids somewhere cozy. I want to visit a Christmas market in mainland Europe and then settle in a Scottish cabin and just sit. Somewhere with room for the boys to run and play, and quiet for me to just exist. I don't think that is too much to ask. Then we will head to an apartment in a city and visit the ballet-the theatre-the museums. I suppose that would get old after awhile, wouldn't it? 

    Happy Thanksgiving. A lone bird is tweeter-tweet-tweeter-tweeter-tweeting outside my window. 

I wish my mom were here. She would call several times, wanting to talk about the food, and I would half listen-irritatedly, because food is boring, as you discovered when you read the fourth paragraph today. I feel jaded that the Thanksgiving story was not just as we imagined, all the fairy tales of youth slipping away into something harsher. Obviously,  I wish Caleb were here. He could enjoy a game with us.  Anyway, it's eight a.m. Time for another 10 minutes of cleaning. 

Moby Dick

 I have told this story before-and it has no point-so if you don't wish to gather around now, I understand.

You have been warned.

                                              Photo by Marcus Woodbridge on Unsplash

    Ahab's Wife came into my life in 2002. It held everything I loved about a book-romance, passion, a bit of academia, wistful settings. More than anything I longed to be Una having Captain Ahab crushing me to him with his passionate obsession. I wanted to walk in intellectual circles and live on Nantucket and discuss astronomy with Maria Mitchell. I was drawn in, a little obsessed, and knew that was the life for me. 

    Now my grip on reality is strong enough to realize I couldn't be a fictional character living out life in the 19th century on Nantucket. But suddenly I was interested in Astronomy enough to take classes in college and convince myself I had the brainpower to study it, at least temporarily. I couldn't have a whaling sea captain fall in love with me, but I could light a kerosine lantern at night and fumble through pages of Moby Dick in bed. 

    I never made it through Moby Dick. I haven't read Ahab's Wife in years. I am not an astronomer. I am not a great conversationalist. I haven't had any of the things I though I could conjure up with hope back in 2002. 

    But it is November-such a romantic month.

            

“November is usually such a disagreeable month...as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully...just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We've had lovely days and delicious twilights.”  ~L.M. Montgomery

I always feel a little more like the real me in November. So I am snuggled up in bed, my fake fireplace heater blowing warmth into my room, soft pjs, and wooly socks cradling my body. This is the sort of day when I can be the me I should be. When I can imagine my days are spent climbing over rocky shores as grey, storm-driven waves crash upon themselves at my feet. I am Anne scrambling home to her house of dreams. I am Una of lofty thought and wise words. I long to be free of musts and have-to tonight. 

And I am sleepy and have forgotten my point. 

Good night. 

It was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times

 

                                    Photo by Doyo Hermann on Unsplash

Just kidding, it's probably neither.

    I am worn out. My legs toned up so much from all the walking last week, but I am having difficulty keeping it up. It is just so unnatural to walk in Springfield. I like walking with a purpose to get somewhere. But doing so in Springfield is just weird. I would have to cross Campbell street to go to Walmart and there is very little else to go near here. Yes, I could walk the neighborhood or go to the nature center, but that isn't walking with a purpose to me. That's just boring (occasionally it's fine, but every day?).

    I feel a little sluggish and guilty for not Ubering last night and this morning. Yes, my brain is tired and needs a little retreat, but I feel the need to pay for all my extravagant spending (extravagant by lower middle class standards that I probably am on one income), and just don't want to. My car is about 3 months overdue for an oil change and I am struggling with 1) allocating the money and 2) dealing with the upsell pressures from the oil change shop. 

    I have been a little moody-and I hate that. I hate the even keel of not being moody, too. I like it when I feel just on the edge of depth and sensitivity, but not to the point of depression and darker thoughts. It's a tightrope to feel enough to infer meaning, but not so much it seems hopeless. I don't have a lot to look forward to now that my little weekend trip is over, so I need to plan something to add a little anticipation and excitement to my world. 

    I am a little bored with Christmas. I am trying to eat less sweets, so there is no baking anticipation, and I never am good at anything anyway. I don't mean that as negatively as it sounds, I just struggle in the practical skills department. What I would like to do? Maybe plan a themed Christmas that other people do the hands-on practical labor and skills. But that's not going to happen, and I don't have the funds anyway. I feel like social media push push pushes overdoing everything. I am so burned out with bucket lists and forced excitement. It is starting to make everything feel like a must do and not very authentic anymore. Everything is starting to feel...fake and forced. I am losing belief in everything. And maybe that is okay. Because maybe on the other side is something more meaningful and authentic-I don't know. But right now, it feels like a lot of forced cheer with no real magic in it.

    I am not going to achieve the life I wanted and it still burns a little. I thought about going back to school for writing-I need to work on my writing skills, but most writing programs require submission of writing samples and I have kept nothing from college. And I don't even know that any of it was good enough anyway. Some bright middle schoolers write as well as I do. Wanting to do something isn't talent. I want to tumble like Simone Biles, but it isn't going to happen.  I know this is a me problem. This is a direction and focus problem, and yet...maybe all this sense of purpose and direction and focus is MADE UP. Maybe we are just primates eeking out an existence and reading way too much into everything. I know this is where people choose to cling to faith, but the majority of the faithful are hateful and blind to their own faults, just as I am to mine (Well, I am selfish, hide my feelings behind untruths, share too much and yet am not open enough, am a little boring, crave stimulation and security simultaneously, can be very hard to please-sometimes deliberately so, I brag too much and have too little to show for it, and my pride is off the rooftops, lazy, and lack of vision---there's a few of my faults). Anyway, whatever. Things that are good about me? I don't know. It's so much harder to tally goodness, isn't it, because we yearn to fix our faults, but our good things (there is a word I can't find-which worries me-my brain worries me in the past few years) seems so common place. My ex used to tell me not everyone thinks and cares like I do, and I don't know if that was a compliment or an insult, especially when I know how petty I can be. 

    Anyway, this post is a drag, isn't it? Thanks for being my internet therapist couch! 

    I need to get my house in order. Can the brain be in order when the environment is disorderly? I don't think so. I ordered some cleaning supplies, so I am excited for that. The boys really do destroy things faster than I can keep them up. I know some day they will be gone, so I try to accept that, but I always did yearn for a beautiful home. I need to not get new pets when these are gone. Pets are smelly and destructive. But I do like them and baby pets are so hard to reject. But I have two cats and two dogs and that is more than enough. Shatner doesn't have a lot more time. He is now 13. He may have a couple more years left. I need to have the strength not to replace him, though. I need to think long term.

    Welp, all the deep thoughts I imagined sharing with you are not happening, because I am hyperaware that I need to brush my teeth and it is bugging me. Why can't coffee leave a good taste in the mouth?

    Have a good one!

    Definitely a Hurricane morning.

    

My Big, Bad Trip to New York

 Do I need a comma between big and bad? I am unsure. I remember my writing classes and my trusted Chicago Manual of Style, but I was always so annoyed with the nitpicking of the rules. It was one of the reasons I couldn't mesh well with the English students. Like, I mean, I wanna do it correctly, however, I don't want to HAVE to do it correctly, you know? I want to just do it effortlessly.

    My trip is over now and it's time to process (which I do through writing and preferably sharing with others-it's my thang!). Let's break it down.

    Friday

    I woke up in the morning feeling like-no wait-nevermind. I felt tired. It was about 2:00 a.m. when my alarm went off. I got dressed, brushed my teeth, had a quick cup of less than stellar coffee, and then at 2:30 or so left to get Taryn. I awoke Liam to come down and lock the door and left the key for them to lock up later.  We went to the airport. As it turned out, the gates to the gates don't even open until four a.m. so we definitely could have slept another hour. We flew to Dallas/Ft. Worth and then on to LaGuardia. Initially, I had considered using Ubers to ride to and from the airport, but that's a lot of money, so I decided just to park in long-term parking in Springfield, and then take public transportation to Manhattan. It was fine. We got on an M70 bus which was free from LaGuardia to get to the subway station and then got on the train google maps told us to get on. It was going in the wrong direction, so we had to ride to the end where it turned around, but that was fine. So we left Queens and went into Manhattan. Really with a smart phone nothing is hard anymore. We walked around a bit, until it was check in time for the hotel. The hotel room was small, but good. Very clean. The worst part was the coffee maker didn't work, which made mornings a wee bit foggier than normal, and there wasnt't an iron. I am sure they could have gotten me an iron to use, if needed, but I decided a few wrinkles didn't matter.  

    Romeo and Juliet

    After that we relaxed until it was time to go to the show. The show wasn't far (is anything?), but we wanted to leave by 6. I had heard the actors came about about 15 or 20 minutes before the show and you could take pics/videos then. We headed out and it was so crowded. We stayed in Times Square area and I felt like we were in the center of the world. Everyone was relaxed, probably mostly tourists, and the atmosphere was happy and fun and ALIVE. We got to the theatre a little before 6:30. After going in, we went downstairs into a basement lobby where people were hanging out and there was a table set up encouraging the youth vote. I bought an adult beverage-the Capulet-which was crazy expensive at $38 dollars and tasted like tropical punch with some vodka or something thrown in. It was like something you'd get a college party in a well, basement. But hey, I got a plastic souvenir cup, so there is that!

    Then we headed to our seats. Our seats were really fantastic. We were in the front row, although the theatre was intimate enough that any seat would have been fine. There was some floor seating around the corners, but I was happy where we were. So this is where the evening got a little bumpy. I took a couple pics of the supporting characters as they came out, as did many other people. The instagram rumor was that it was okay before the show started. Obviously I was waiting on the main stars to come out to snap some pics. I wanted Kit Conner in my own phone, damn it! I would take some of Rachel, too, to avoid being creepy of course, gotta hide the crush at my age, but still. Anyhoo, some lady walked directly up to me and told me no pictures and videos. Okay, that's fine. I had only taken two pictures anyway. Now was I disappointed I wouldn't be capturing Kit in my own phone? Absolutely. Was I, as a teacher, going to take a pic anyway, No way. I am one of those people who do not get away with things. So I nodded and said, " Oh, okay." Unfortunately, my phone was upright in my lap and my camera was on, and I was embarrassed and fumbly and didn't notice.  She immediately cracked down on that, and said she knew I was planning to wait for her to leave to film more and it would be very bad she had to ask me to leave. I was mortified. I might have done that when I was 10, I would NEVER have done that now.

    So here I am, trying to look agreeable and cool, feeling all the eyes on me, and just not really happy. I planted a contented smile on my lips trying to look cool, and put my phone in my purse. Then over the next 15 minutes watched a dozen other people taking photos and selfies and noone saying anything to them. Like really, did she just not like my face or something? To get over the embarrassment because I was determined to enjoy myself, I started sipping my adult beverage more quickly. This was my downfall however. about 45 minutes into the show, I HAD to pee, so badly. And it was in the middle of the balcony scene. I waited until Kit slipped away momentarily, because I figured that would interrupt the scene the least, and went to the bathroom (which was down another long flight to a second basement). Of course,  then I and several other small-bladdered females had to wait in the lobby until intermission. I left right before the iconic pull-up kiss, too. I had already seen it a dozen times on instagram, but still.

    

But I survived. I really loved the supporting characters; a couple were quite fantastic. Rachel is cute as a button and brave, and Kit is very fine looking, although his youth was very apparent, I totally felt like a creeper, and just seeing his young face helped quell the crush. I was determined not to be star-struck like I was I went to see Counting Crows and was too embarrassed to look at Adam Duwitz, and I didn't want to be a creeper and just stare at Kit like I desired. So I made a decision to only look at the person talking. I know, I know, I have issues. Almost everyone is there to see Kit or Rachel, so it doesn't matter. But alas, I do hide my feelings quite often, and I was determined to do so now as well. The unfortunate side effect is I remember almost nothing about Kit from the play. I don't remember facial expressions or anything. I gazed so easily upon the others but I just didn't glance at his handsome face enough. Oh well. My impression of the play was that it was fine. Nothing stood out too much, but I was not moved to tears and as someone who cries easily during movies and plays, that was odd. Perhaps if I had seen Mercutio slain I would have felt more, but I was in the lobby awaiting intermission at that time. We didn't stick around for autographs because why? After that we headed back toward the hotel. It was so nice just to be out in the world with the sea of people around us.

Was New York dirtier than I remembered? Absolutely. As we walked we were met with intermittent odors of garbage and sulfur, weed and delicious food smells. All of these could be within 20 feet of each other and it was absolutely wonderful. Were there homeless? Yes, but Springfield has homeless, too, so that wasn't anything new.

    Saturday

    We awoke on Saturday morning which is when I discovered my coffee maker was not working. We had tickets for the American Museum of Natural History, which for some reason I thought was at nine, but it turned out to be ten a.m. We took a subway ride closer to Central park (only $2.90 to ride the subway), and then got out, found the park. At some point, I realized my mistake with the time we were going, so we decided to walk around a little more. Central Park was in the midst of autumn glory and a marathon was ending around the edge of the park, so the blue-skied crisp morning was greeted with occasional cheers as someone passed the finish line. The skyline against the park horizon was absolutely lovely. We have all seen Central Park as depicted in movies and this did not disappoint. Everything felt so familiar and comfortable. I could almost swear I saw Ansel Elgort in the park, but obviously I pretended not to notice. There were a few more people who looked like I had seen them before, but they weren't big enough that their names jump out to me, over the course of the weekend. 

    

    The museum was lovely, but that was more for Taryn. My interests are pretty solidly around space and earth science. Taryn was especially interested in the minerals and gemstones so we spent time looking at the shinies. I am probably more of an art museum person. I want to contemplate the person who created the thing and wonder about their motivations. Following the museum we headed back to the hotel to put our bags down and rest a bit. Taryn got some very spicy falafel over rice from a street vender and I am on generic Ozempic, so I don't get very hungry. I did slowly nurse a turkey wrap over the course of the day. We hopped a subway to head to the Harry Potter store further downtown, realized we were going the wrong way and fixed that and got to the store. It was so fun. The Harry Potter store was done SO well. I wish I had been able to save more money so I could have had the full experience, but just being there was a lot of fun. After the store, we stopped at le pain quotidien for a cup of coffee and then wandered around 5th avenue looking at touristy gift shops until our reservation time for the Empire State Building. It was so interesting to look at the 5th avenue apartments from the outside and then google their rent costs. They were outrageous of course. Some people were stepping out into private cars waiting for them and just looked like money was oozing out of their pores. Of course, tourists and students were everywhere. 

    The Empire State Building was well done. It was sleek and elegant and everyone was cheerful and excited to be there. I was exceptionally happy we went at night. The lights of the city stretched out 360 degrees away from us promising excitement and life whichever way we turned. And yet, when I stepped out on the balcony, the brisk cold wind made me feel as if I had been transferred into some other, surreal place. Inky black beauty bejeweled with lights of ruby and topaz lay all around us, and the city sirens, the constant city sirens, were faint and otherworldly. It was truly lovely. 

    After that we decided to walk back to the hotel to drop off our things and freshen up. Then Taryn had reservations at La Masseria where she treated me to a wonderful Italian dinner. The atmosphere was festive, the languages were intermingled and the Italians were looking very Italian. Even the Cabernet was superb, not a twinge of sour or too sweet, just mellow, warm red goodness.

 

       Sunday

      Although we had to awake at 5, the clocks fell back so we got a good seven hours of sleep or so. We popped up, tucked everything into our backpacks, and headed for the subway. I really love the subway system. It is easy and convenient and you can go wherever it will take you for only $2.90 a trip. I wish we had such amazing public transportation around here.  We went into Queens and then promptly missed our bus to the airport as we tried to get our bearings after we emerged from the subway tunnel. Thankfully, we had chatted with some young women who also were on the way to the airport as they looked for bus stop, too. The temperature was in the 30's and they decided to just call a Lyft and allowed us to share it with them. And that was that!

We walked over 5 miles on both Friday and Saturday and let me tell you the muscles in my hips are screaming. I wish I always had opportunities like that (walking with a purpose in a city that kept pedestrians in mind). 

    I am so grateful for my amazing family who helped with my boys and for the opportunity to go. Will I be paying for years for this trip? Maybe, but life is short and experiences are what it is all about.