marriedtothesea.com

I have to say...

I know little things make me happy and excited and content. The little extra button they give you with your quality 100% cotton button down shirt, a new song that makes you pull into the driveway but sit and wait until it's finished (Billy Bragg New England is this weeks) cooking a turkey with a little poppy bobber thing that works and pops at the total right time, drinking beer with friends, drinking wine with friends, drinking enough that you can talk fast and quick and witty but not too much that you can't drive home, finding $20 in the dryer, green tea that isn't too sugary, Annie in the rain, the puppies run run running, meeting a new guy, liking new guy, and that weird 2-3 month phase where everything is right and laying together saturday morning talking about the US foreign policy feels so right, so right, and believing for a few days, few weeks, that you could be with this guy for a while, discovering a new author and the books that go along with it, discovering new books by an old author, a new haircut, clean socks, sheets that smell like my grandma washed them, my mom's rhubarb pie, being alone, knowing you're being alone, being happy you know you're alone and you're alone, doing what you want, not having to answer to someone, not worrying, a new pen, watching a double play, writing something that even before you click save you know is good.

ANYWAY

The Roomba. I expressed interest in the Roomba months ago. It has finally arrived, courtesy of a friend who is able to get these kinds of things. you push a button, it motors aroung the house sucking up everything and anything. in particular, it's been suckin up the dog hair, so much of which i can't believe either of them don't look like moby. It motors around, making this weird, way louder sound than you'd think, and it's just so cute and loveable...i've named him Frankie. As an aside, it says right on the box that Frankie and family were created to sniff out and destroy landmines, which given my penchant for meeting and keeping very strange men around far longer than should be necessary...is probably a HUGE diplomatic plus.

ANYWAY

Watching the dogs meet Frankie is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

It's made a rather drab day, week, month, life? pretty freakin bright. And that is why my sarah's personal campaign for hermitude with the exception of the dogs because apparently they are the only things that can stand/love me...is back.

Get your button of support today. :)



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ok.

well, sigh, sigh, sigh.

things are busy. and so busy that sarah you freakin idiot have made myself so overtired and underalcoholed that now i have the wicked type of head cold that you take double the dose of day quil and apart from making you feel a bit kite flyey, doesn't even freakin touch you. so. yeah.

we'll start at the beginning which is a very good place to start.

went to the uk, saw tricia and weird b/f. yeah. he's off. like cash is off. just a little off y'know? had fun, over to ireland where i walked the ulysses walk and visited the joyce centre which like most things in ireland apart from government run national museums sits in a little house with two stories and is filled with, essentially nothing beyond a mask of his death face and the door to 7 eccles st. when the university student in her very attractive dublin speech tried to impart on me what 7 eccles st. meant i gave her my best 'you gotta be kidding me face' and she said, 'welp apart from bloomsday we only get one or two foreigners every few months that aren't just here cause it was in the lonely planet book.' ANYWAY half of eccles st. was knocked down for a condo or something including 7 but some joyce crazies kept it in a bar on the north side for like 20 years and when the joyce centre opened brought it to them. here's the thing that struck me, the entire city is literary. i mean there are plaques at each and every dublin pub, howth castle, butcher etc. that joyce mentions in ulysses commemorating it and quoting the passage it is from. at the top of the guinness brewery, there are joyce quotes surrounding the look out over dublin. there's a statue of joyce, parnell (not literary but cool), wilde, yeats etc. and all these writers are commemorated all over, from the dublin castle to their favourite pubs. very cool. and they didn't say THAT in lonely planet. then to limerick on a train bus bus bus bus train but it was worth it and beautiful.

so we stay in a hotel a little out of the city BUT there's a pub and at the pub are regulars and we all get there and tricia and off b/f go up for a nap and i go down for a drink because i understand jet lag and sleeping is not the answer. i come back out to meet tricia and off b/f we go back into the bar and the entire bar turns and says "heeeeeeey she's back" and i just thought gob would like that story because for reasons beyond me and perhaps beyond her drunk people REALLY like me.

um, then back to the UK where we did little in a day, but wandered through the tube and picadilly and such.

and now i'm back and working my ass off and sick and out to a conference in san diego next week which will be nice because a lot of the team and husbands are coming and i'm bringing new car guy who's too nice to me and frankly scaring me a little. like i'm waiting for him to throw my keys into the bushes and call the cops or throw a kettle at me. neither have occured. and that is so easy and refreshing and nice and lovely. and i think it's been a very long time since there's been someone normal who doesn't have any immediate weirdities and isn't trying to gain anything and is just kinda there. and sometime all you wanna do is be sure someone is there, and of that one thing i am sure, and also sure i like it.

oh and i'm buying an invisible fence for the dogs so i can just kinda let them out and awaiting big sister gob's comments on that.

when she bought a bark collar for her dog, tracy tried it on her own neck and has commented that i should do the same. i might on my wrist but don't know if i can do the neck thing.

and that's all the time i have today.

the next one will be better. i promise.

off to ireland...

back to the homeland and all that stuff.

And Patricia booked the 'cruise' to limerick...i have a funny feeling it might look like this:

this kinda freaks me out frankly...

And before I left I thought
about waking you
sleep filled and downed
your breath one and laid between
nestled between
my own

I thought
maybe I should stay here
tonight (forever)?
maybe it’s good here

but if you think
you’re the only one
with black dogs
demons and
those before
you’re not alone.

they follow me too

I promise.

and there’s nothing about this
whatever this is
you and I or us
two beings floating
guts streaming and scared
shitless

and the insane perpetual manner
in which I am falling
into
you and I or us

that will be easy

(but maybe
so much easier
than before?)

this is just
you or I or us
and I am just

trying to fall
as hard
(hurt)
less
as possible

and yet
when you look
at me
eyes deep blue pools

I can’t help but think
this is all
you and I or us
there ever was
to be.

i'm alive

how does it start.
it starts like this.

you go to visit someone, could be anyone, could be a random party that someone who knows someone who knows you or a stupid freakin hallowe'en party in which grown adults dress up like random whorish somebodies because tonight is the night where it's acceptable or it could be your friend who jumps from one guy to the next but never has anyone on valentine's day and so every valentine's day throws a valentine's day sucks party and invites you because she correctly believes you agree, valentines day does suck, and you go every year because although you often do have a guy you couldn't care less about this day out of all the days and holidays and made up nothingness all in all it is a complete and random start of a complete and random trip down the getting to know someone well enough to stop by randomly and this time it happens fairly randomly but not without some pre-meditation on the part of the surprise friend who's walked into you and stayed, enough so if it were a crime she would be guilt guilt guilty. so you go and meet everyone after saying you'd never do this again, after writing it off, after being happy at home with the dogs running under your feet and having your couple heinekens and going to bed holding a pillow in one arm and a puggle in the other, you throw the comfort, the write offs, and put on your gap jeans and low-ish cut shirt and go out and feast your eyes on the quiet relatively good looking guy in the corner and start doing your thing where you get that look on your face as you're going in for the kill kill for the killer kiss kiss and you two hit it off because you always hit it off and he's quiet and normal and has a house and it's clean and and and he cooks and his kid knows your sister and they talk and you start taking the short drive to his house for a beer once in a while, and he always hugs hello and hugs goodbye and says your name with a glitter of the mouth and he invites you over and you invite him over, and everything's good again and you kinda have someone again and you're learning and watching and talking and figuring him out and scared as shit that once you figure him out he'll annoy you and why this pattern? and in back of your mind you know this isn't a forever thing might even be a lonely thing might even be a tired of everyone else thing and then you open up and then you let people walk into you and then your friends stop by on their way home or to work or out and you sit, beer in one hand, smoke filled kitchen, puggle runs and stories and stories and laughing and teasing and suddenly you've opened yourself up to a town you hate(d) more than anything and you have a community of people who stop by, a community of surroundedness, a community(!) and from this community from all the stop bys and all the parties, lame as they are, all the mundane and utterly unintellectual conversations you stop by one night for a beer and have the single best kiss you've ever been given in your entire life and when you look at him in shock and ease and mutter 'you've got a mouth on you' and he smiles and leans in for the killer kiss kiss you think the move, the loneliness, the town you fuckin hate(d), is all

worth it.

“Just remember, the same as a spectacular Vogue magazine, remember that no matter how close you follow the jumps: Continued on page whatever. No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. We're just warming up.” chuck palahniuk...