thirty: days 14 & 15

**in the raw, lazy, unedited, because... i'm tired. it's MY blog- my rules. enjoy the party**

day 14

change is come, turn my world around
change has come, burn the whole thing down ~OTR?
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to a friend:

i blunder around, and i don't intend to hurt
but i must speak honest, and not pretend any more, about who i am
i gave you false impressions because i wanted your approval, i wanted you to like me
but i don't NEED that anymore
i love you and respect you and i appreciate the effort you've put into this friendship
i am pleased to call you friend. you are dear to me, like family
but i'm not sure what the bond was in the first place-- you moved into my world, you were my age, and reflected my intellect in that time... but we've both grown, in different directions. still our paths cross. we meet because we want to. we adore the affection between your son and my daughter, though there's never been any between us. why are we bereft of that? eventually they will outgrow each other, our children. and then what, for us? it's as if we've outgrown each other now. still, there is this loyalty... this dogged perserverance... i DO care for you. you seem a natural fixture of my life, as if you were always there, and understood me in your way.

i have morphed before you, and i imagine you may feel confused or grieved or rejected. but it's not because of you. it's not what you have done or haven't done. i want you to feel released of any responsibility to me and just be with me because you like me. not because you are obliged to me...

i desire to walk alongside you at times. to experience life with you. but i won't get from it what you do. i won't see it through the same lense. mine is different. not better or wrong, just different. if you can appreciate and celebrate that, then our relationship will grow. if not, it is dead already.
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i don't despise myself as much as i usually might, but i'm feeling guilty about doing valentines "wrong" with Yosie... i thought it would be fun and clever to make her valentines together. i thought i chose an easy type of project, but it proved too advanced for her skills and i ended up making most of them entirely myself, though she did put the pipe-cleaner antennae on several and wrote her name on over a dozen tags, though she griped and grumbled more than halfway through. to be honest, i remember feeling the same at a more advanced age. i don't even remember my mother buying valentines for me to give most of the time. i do remember her baking a heart-shaped cake though, for a very dear student teacher in 3rd (or 4th grade). that may've been the teacher who taught me to journal.

i also finished the heart-shaped box for her to get her valentines in. i had hoped we could do THAT together, but i ran out of time today. she had to be sent to bed in hopes of correcting her sour mood with a nap, and i had a list full of cleaning and cooking to accomplish.

we DID make cookies together. and she watched me prepare the chicken, and remembered when, nearly a year or more ago, i let her help me make chicken nuggets, which also involved dipping and a coating mixture. her memory is frighteningly astute, and mine is failing by comparison.

Yosie managed decent (for her age) table manners while j-and-j were here.she and owen played well together, for the most part, but by the end of the evening his introversion was showing when he hid under the couch, calling it his office. ah, the life of the introvert. makes me smile.

there were TWO hours of Downton Abbey tonite! I made it just in time, walking the full length of my stride and sometimes running, but taking the time to smile up at the striking night sky, with it's clear bright stars. 

day 15

i have a 101 thoughts that roll through my head in as many minutes it seems. i often catch myself narrating my life to myself, telling myself the story of my life in my head. creating a novel sentence for the menial but somehow significant task i am to perform next. or looking back, i create a paragraph about how a certain event took place and trying to define how i felt, or what i thought. i ask myself, why did you not say thus? or, what do you thing personx was REALLY trying to say. i replay the phrase, the look, the body language and try to interpret and draw from it what i did not see when i was present in the moment.is it any wonder my brain too often ends up in an anxious frenzy? the beautiful mind trying to frantically make connections in events that have no relation...

this never comes out in print the way it flows in my mind. lost in translation.

i saw a black man today.
the only person of color i will see all day, besides my daughter, cinnamon latina.
his skin was rich with melanin a dark chocolaty shade. like the fudge cake cookies i baked yesterday. his skin nearly matched the sheen of the black leather jacket he wore.
i was in my car, turning on to a street that would take me a couple of blocks to home. i slowed to allow him to jog across the street, headed for our historical downtown.
i smiled, my heart celebrating his pigmentation.
In a town that is 98% caucasian, his dark face was like a ray of sunshine. a relief from the bleak sameness.
i held my broadest smile back until he passed, for fear he may feel i was mocking him, and his noble countenance, in a place where many shrink back or sneer in fear and suspicion.
if i met him on the street, i may have been hit by the impulse to shake his hand and bid him an embarrassing welcome, making myself a fool, in celebration. but i wouldn't. that's not the way, here.

david talked today about what it's like to live in a town that is bereft of racial diversity. somedays i wonder about my sanity, raising our daughter here. "safer", "hometown", "rural community"? yes. is it worth it, for the loss of connectedness with... diversity? somehow we think we can provide that connectedness somehow, in spite of the odds.

yosie asked me this morning why we named her as we did. i was pleased to be able give her birthmother credit in the answer. it felt good to have a chance to give her the lipservice we have wanted to in keeping the name she gave her newborn daughter. it is a beautiful name.

heart full. i'm exhausted.

heard from a co-worker today about these home ear piercing kits. any of you ever used anything like it? thinking this might be the route to go for y and i...