standing on a star unstable

...but why couldn't 9 show up and hang out with 10? Why couldn't we have a mini-season called Doctors Who and there could be squeeing and awesomeness for six glorious episodes? And bring Cap'n Jack, too. Just for funsies. Man. 9, 10, and Jack. That would be the BEST party.

There's probably some dumb paradox law that Timelords have to obey, but if I were 9 or 10, I'd say, fie on thee, rules, I'm the LAST effing Timelord, and I want to hang with myself, because myself is awesome.

More dumb questions as I think of them.

Here are the methods by which I have traditionally cleaned:

1) Shove everything that isn't where it belongs into a room/closet/cupboard. Dust lightly outside of said room/closet/cupboard. Smile a lot.

2) Make piles. Make piles and piles and piles. As long as things are in piles, the room is clean. Believe that. Fully.

3) Pull EVERYTHING (and I do mean everything) that isn't exactly where it's supposed to be out and dump it in the middle of the floor. Start putting things back exactly where they're supposed to be. When I was a child--and yes, this was my method back then, too, and it drove my mother up a wall--this took me anywhere from two days to a week to accomplish, depending on if I was doing my closet or my whole bedroom. Now it takes a week to two months, depending on if I'm doing my closet or my office.

Guess what I did Sunday night?

The pile is growing in the center of the office.... I haven't done this in far too long, as I have hovered between method 1 and a traditionalist mode where I put things away for nearly relevant values of "away." (Books on bookcases, for example, just not in any order that I can actually enjoy, or, you know, find things on. This got out of hand when I moved a bookcase into a closet in close proximity with a dresser and can't actually, you know, access the bookcase the way god intended. Guess where the dresser is going in the next few weeks? I'm DONE with this. Completely done.)

Further, I have thoroughly determined I do not need such precious items as:

-a pair of red suspenders from that Halloween where I dressed up as Pokemon trainer Misty
-a juliet cap I made for my first Renn fest costume
-developing tongs for photography, new, in the package
-Strawberry Shortcake dolls from my childhood
-puzzles I've completed
-43 jillion sewing patterns, considering I don't actually sew, not really

Ultimately, I will keep the keepsakes that actually mean something--not dolls that smell like lipgloss--and I think I'll keep my drawing implements, too, on the off chance that I might take that up again someday... but for the most part, I'm going to spend the next month downsizing.

Who knows. Once I can actually see my reference bookshelf again, I might go so far as to even cull it. Crazy thought, that.

It warmed up to 30ish yesterday, so I went on my walk. I set off from home to circle the neighborhood a few times at a good clip.

I rounded a corner and came upon two little kids--maybe five years old--sitting out in the gutter, digging at the snow/ice there with serious intensity. It brought back my early childhood in Michigan, in sort of a depressing way. When the snow melts and there's only brown grass and stick trees in the landscape, not even the bluest sky in the world can make up for the unbeauty of the world. I had my camera in my pocket, hoping I'd see *something* pretty to make up for how depressing I was finding the world. The way the sky reflected in the puddles? Prettyish, but I didn't think I'd be able to capture the effect--it was more the way the oak leaf at the bottom of the puddle emerged from the glare as I walked forward that interested me. Same with the small patches of unmelted snow--they sparkle, but they sparkle best when you're moving, and little glints of pink and yellow and blue shift and twinkle at you. Nothing out there for the camera, though.

I was coming to grips with the fact that beauty is small and feeble this time of year, and I was also thinking about the way I broke up ice in the gutters when I was five because I was convinced that "poor people" (not realizing that I was the poor people) have to get their water from the sewers, and if the ice stopped the flow of water in gutters, they'd have nothing to shower in.

I reached the corner, decided to turn back and walk down a different road.

The new road leads across the creek, and I could see that the ice in the creek-bed had broken up dramatically. Big ice-chunks glinted like uncut diamonds in the creek-bed, and my hand twitched toward my pocket as I approached--and then my feet slipped.

I scrambled a little and kept upright, and had that tiny part of a second to congratulate myself on my hard-won balance and strength from all the exercise I've been doing--when my feet slipped again. I grabbed for the hand-rail that keeps people from falling into the creek, and again, kept upright. I had a little longer to think, "Thank god for railings." But then my feet slipped again and shot out underneath the railing. Shit. I still had a grip on the top rail, and it took too long to release it and grab for the second rail, so I wrenched my arm. Then I was sitting down, hard and fast. My trademark oof pushed out of my lungs. I thought I heard joints cracking as I landed. I still had a moment to think, "Okay, now I'm sitting, I won't fall any--" before I realized I was still sliding towards the creek, just this time on my ass. The fall down to the creek would be about another four feet, and the ice was already crumbled, and I knew I'd punch right through into whatever water lay under the ice.

I grabbed the second rail and stopped myself.

Legs dangling over the side of the bridgelet, my pants soaking through with snow, I thought, "Okay. I guess I'll look at the ice now." I thought about taking out my camera and getting a picture. It wasn't beautiful, though. It was just brownish ice broken up in the bottom of a creek bed. As beauty goes, it wasn't even small and feeble. Then I realized I didn't feel so great.

I wondered if I'd be able to stand up without falling down again. I examined the snow-covered ice beneath me. I turned over on hands and knees and scrabbled up the incline away from the snow-ice patch, and then got to my feet. I limped home. I kicked off my shoes and took off my coat at the door and went upstairs to undress and crawl into bed. On the way, I managed to step in a pile of cat vomit.

I took off my socks, shivering and cursing. Took off my wet pants. Crawled into bed to wait and see what would hurt first while I warmed up. Other than a little strain yesterday in my wrist and ankle, I'm good. And that's the story. It's not all that good, but it is what happened.

And the possible morals of the story?

• Quit trying to find the beauty in February. February sucks, especially the March-end.
  
• At least you didn't end up in the creek, but it would have been a better story.
  
• It's worth not having a good story to avoid getting badly hurt.
  
• Someone really should salt the bridge over the creek.
  
• There's a reason you have a gym membership, and that reason is "ice."
  
• Don't forget to look for the cat vomit.

I went to nab a Nutella crepe at Rendez-Vous yesterday (because yesterday was that kind of day, and I'd failed to take my lunch properly, and, and, and).

I sat reading Austenland by Shannon Hale (which I love) and tried not to listen to the chatter around me.

Except there was one young couple I couldn't ignore.

Dude: *takes a bite of banana*
Girl: "That's MY banana!"
Dude: "I gave you a sip of MY coffee."
Girl: "Not at all the same. You have a lot more coffee than I have banana. My sip was small, your bite was big."
Dude: "But... quid pro quo."
Girl: "It's not quid pro quo!"
Dude: "Sure it is. Banana. Coffee. Quid pro quo."
Girl: "Do you even know what that means?"
Dude: "Yeah... It means..." *clearly has a grasp of the concept but can't articulate it* "It means..." *falters* "I want banana."

Today, I realized I'd not encountered enough fiction where people are struck by lightning.

I will surely remedy this before the weekend is out. By writing it myself, of course.

Spring this year has taken me unawares--not that the green grass hasn't been a big tip-off. But the smells, my god, the smells. I walked down a flight of stairs in iuliamentis and helaaspindakaas's apartment building, and the scent was just like the apartment building my mom and I lived in after the divorce. I was four years old again, and I don't know if it's the smell of cheap construction or a kind of paint or the mineral tang of the water in that part of the state seeping into the concrete blocks, or all three, but yes, I was four.

And earlier this week I was three again; the wind hit the trees, grass, and moist dirt just right on the Diag, and I was tromping through the back acreage with my dog before the divorce, thinking I was alone with the world--when in fact, my mom was probably watching from the window or something. That's the scent of Michigan in the spring. Nothing at all like North Carolina in the spring.

And just a moment ago, I was petting Merlin the Cat, and now my hand smells like cat, which most days I would tell you doesn't smell like much--maybe the lingering odor of fish on their breaths or perhaps the sickly-sweetness of fresh litter, but no, this smells indefinably like cat, and I'm seven again, snuggling the innocent cat I dressed up in doll clothes on those first excruciatingly hot days in Durham.

I don't think I particularly like any of these memories--I don't hate them either--but it's interesting that they're here lately. Usually, things don't smell like I remember, or I don't have much of a memory associated with them. But. Here we are.

Scene: a bathroom stall. The floor is wet (per usual) but also littered with confetti-like strips of toilet paper and...

Cake crumbs?


Speculation: one-person bathroom-stall birthday party. For the loneliest, creepiest girl in the world.

So, I came across this note that I jotted down just after waking from a dream:

Catsthetics

(You see, in my dream, I had lost my left arm, but instead of a prosthetic arm, doctors had installed a cat. Cat prosthetic=catsthetic.)

Next to it I wrote:

too weird to be a story.
not funny enough to be funny.

What I remember of the dream is that my left arm didn't do much of anything I wanted it to--but it was a good mouser.

Way to ruin my childhood! At least Dwinn ought to appreciate this.

Things I have learned about writing:

1. Doing a meme about what I've learned about writing would be a very good way for me to avoid writing.

END