I was with Gala and Nubby. They wore matching outfits as usual, white and blue, Gala in a dress and Nubby in pants. I suspected they were a couple and I wanted to say to Gala, "How much of this relationship is because you just broke up with your guy?" but I understood the draw to 'dulling the pain in someone new' and I thought our friendship was too new to get so personal right away. I decided I'd wait to talk some sense into her until we hung around for the day, later in the evening over dinner. And because I know that Gala and Nubby always take a picture of what they're wearing each day, I said, "Hey, while I'm here... let me take your picture for Outfit of the Day together!"

They enthusiastically agreed and headed around to where there were a series of stairs at the side of a building. They went to the second floor to pose on the landing there and I shifted the cigarette to the right side of my mouth so I could bring the camera to my eye. I centered them interestingly in the shot using one of the handful of composition tricks I knew. If only I had Dream Worlds, this shot could be so much more interesting I thought, referencing an expensive book I really want but which has to be ordered from the publisher in order to get it to my downtown Denver's Tattered Cover. Up on the stairs, Nubby motioned me to wait while she fixed her hair.

( I started thinking about the cosplay photoshoot I'd done of my friends last week.Collapse )

I was going to work on my illustration skills tonight by going to Dr. Sketchy's after I got off work at 5, but I think I'll take it easy tonight - I'll draw two pages tomorrow. First thing I'll do when I get home is jump under my covers in bed and get warm while I figure out that dream! Then soup and homemade foccacia for dinner, and then I think a little hot chocolate is in order - maybe some popcorn? Oh, and Pawn of Prophesy, my favorite go-to feel-good book! Am I the only one with a book like this, or do you have a favorite book you pick up and put down whenever?

Anyway, I wish everyone a very good evening. <3!

This is the middle of my 'week' - my only free time is Wednesday evening, dedicated to the padawans, which functions as a 'weekend' for me. I have no work or homework tonight, though, so for a wonder I actually have a moment of free time.

I don't want to be social. I don't want to be out. It's the kind of night that I'd really like to have someone to snuggle with, watch a show or two, discuss plot points between episodes. He'd pull me down to lay in his lap so he could run his fingers through my hair as we talked. And when I got excited or impassioned (as I do) I'd sit up and look him straight in the eye, making my point. He'd agree with me, laughing, and then open his arm and gesture in to invite me back onto his lap where he'd resume caressing me absently. And I would be WARM, don't forget that, oh gosh. Warm and content and entertained and full.

Ok, so I have no gentleman friend of my own. No cuddling, no one to play with my hair, nobody laughing fondly at my antics. No discussion. No warmth. But...

...I do have this.

And I do have a Vin Diesel movie. And fresh-baked sugar cookies and a warm comforter on my apartment's big fancy bed.


Hmmmm - not the same, but I think that's the making of a darn fine night right there.

Alone tonight. I haven't been alone in the house for ages - I went for a walk to get my head around some things I explored with Dr. McBride. Not surprisingly, she is very encouraged and proud of my recent development in personal matters but is concerned I don't get enough sleep nor down time. I told her that I would not take 18 hours next semester even though I really feel the pressure to get through this education and into a job in order to better support myself... but it's not worth my health or well-being, of course.

Feeling rather emo tender to myself, I came home and made a lovely shrimp salad and watched a delightful movie, Penelope, which I will be VERY happy to re-watch at my earliest convenience. (They make it sound like a Cinderella tale but it isn't... and it is.) I'm catching up on emails and writing emails I will never send and later I'm going to be working on my drawing homework.

It's very quiet, and it's making my melancholy worse. I'm down to self-censure as the loudest voice in my head not the time to bring up anything, not the time to discuss, not the time to ask what I want so badly to ask - not now, not now! *sigh* Maybe I'll call my friend K for a chat before I settle into work; she's great for a distraction and support when I need it. Now if only she's home... poor girl works long and late hours, she does. (Though in California all the work times seem skewed off bout 2 hours later anyway.)

I met a man yesterday as I was walking across campus carrying two ginormous 4-foot 2x4s balanced across one arm while wearing a 10-lb backpack and, for a wonder, sipping coffee. Yeah, picture that. No wonder he was curious what all that was about! Well, he invited me to use him as a resource for 'found objects' and handed me his card: Technical Director for the Center for Performing Arts! Am I right about this, that this man runs the backstage for the opera house?!? Anyway, I have an appointment to go over to the Scene Shop (I have very little idea what that is) tomorrow and see what I can find. Wish me luck! Oh and PS I think the Keywords for this 3D project are Moses, Boat, and Let Go.

Hello, Skye.

You are thrashing about, doing more harm than good.

Let's talk about this.

First... put down the flamethrower. You're going to put someone's eye out.

I know it feels like you are awkward and gawky to a level heretofore experienced only in jr high school. I am here to tell you that unfortunately it's not untrue, BUT it's also for the best. You are unsure what to expect (or how to dress, or act, or...) for school, uncomfortable in social situations because you feel like you are a noob with nothing to add to the conversation, and you feel like no one understands you or really cares about your life other than your sister.

...wow, that IS like jr. high. You remember how you had to go to school for the first few days of St. Margaret's in street clothes rather than the uniform that everyone else had to wear? You wore 'cool clothes' - I remember the cut-up, off-the-shoulder 80s style Mickey Mouse sweatshirt with stovepipe jeans specifically - and though you were quite the popular thing in your public jr high, you were nothing in St. Margaret's; your clothes, cool or not, only served to emphasize the difference between you and every other rich, been-there-since-first-grade person at that school. Yeah, you were alone that year and most of the next, weren't you? In jr. high you didn't have a friend who cared about you, not even a sister (poor dear, going through her own things) - you'd read walking the halls or at lunch, your nose always buried in a book. You were lucky if you had a conversation a day with anyone at school. You understood something was wrong with you - being the only one in all the world who was alone, you must have deserved it. Everyone must have been able to see the Broken you couldn't seem to find, to fix. How sad, but that was just the way things were.

I can see you're going to cry; sorry, Skye, sorry. I have a point. Should I tell you it? Ok.

( All that time, at St. Margarets - it wasn't so bad.Collapse )

I think I handle stress pretty well. In the midst of it I go into this 'emotional macgyver-mode' and sort of do what has to be done, using whatever I have available to get through it, with more or less whining around the edges. So though I have had quite a few blows to my equilibrium lately, I was doing all right - slogging through, dealing with the issues I could and setting up meetings with the people who could problem-solve with me. Oh sure, I have been told (repeatedly) that stress causes illness - but I am an active, hearty woman and I don't believe in giving in to that sort of thing.

...well, not until yesterday. ( OH MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS - I DO BELIEVE, NOW.Collapse )

Maybe you didn't notice, but I stopped blogging about it.


I like to move. Move on, move up, move along. I make mistakes like the next girl but I try to analyze them, turn them every-which-way about and learn from my choices... but never, ever do I want to sink into regret. Regret is an anathema to me because it implies an involuntary inability to move on - you walk forward but some vital part of you is back there, in the past, and you cannot go back and retrieve it. The best you can do, with regret, is cut off the piece of your soul that's stuck back there in the past and hope that you heal clean and don't leave tattered bits hanging out that'll catch on the present. But like an old man, your regret is an injury that's gonna pain you when the weather hits just right, an ache that you can't do anything about and can only hope goes away fast. And often, regret brings a dirty diseased bit of the past into the clean present, contaminating Now with drug-resistant strains of guilt or hate or anger.

*shudder*

( This post is about the end of my divorce, tomorrow. I would not call this a happy post.Collapse )

I stopped blogging about my divorce, and I'm sitting here in this dark room just being with my thoughts, because my marriage and divorce is something that eventually I'm going to leave in the past. And my memories of all this won't be littered with bits of my heart and soul but instead clean, full of adventure and grace and beauty and love. I have faith that I'll have learned from it; my marriage made me who I am and I'm grateful, and so did my divorce and I suppose I will find the humility to be grateful for that, too. In the end, I hope that this whole story, and everyone in it, gets a happy ending. It'll be a surprise ending now, for me at least, but in the end I hope we all live Happily Ever After.

My favorite regular at my coffeeshop is a very manly, curt, stern old man, gruff and exacting, who is a quality inspector for road crews. Picture an old (but never unkept!) sea captain, then name him after a Romantic poet: there ya go. He named his company something like "Accept No Bullsh*t Quality Control" and in the winter he comes in with a few inches of snow on his head because he's been standing outside in the storm and doesn't care? doesn't notice? that the snow is falling!

Everyone is scared of him but me. I tease him about 'pretending' to be gruff and how I'm sure everyone believes him but not me, and I make him the sweetest candy-coffee drinks each afternoon because I know he loves it sweet, though if he comes in with his young, business-school-looking supervisor he drinks an Americano, black. And he smiles at me, and tells me to give up teasing him about his flannel because his daughters have already given up on him, exhausted, and I shouldn't waste my energy. Instead I should spend it making him a breakfast sandwich, extra hot. And I do (extra bacon) while I talk to him over the kitchen half-wall about his men and the mud/rain/snow/sun and whatever.

I really adore him because he's hard to please and yet I do, just about every day, and it's not hard; I pay attention to what he likes and I give him exactly what he wants, EXACTLY how he wants it. The thing I like most about our little relationship is that little by little he's expressed things to me that I don't think he can say to many other people - how pretty the flowers are on the counter, and how he misses his far-away daughter, or how he feels bad for the crews on such a frigid day. I understand that he's gruff and cranky, I just also know that this isn't ALL HE IS, and I choose to respond to the part of him that isn't scowling.


I wonder if he'll miss me, because this summer I'm going to be working shifts where I won't see him.

I'll miss him.

THIS IS IMPORTANT. I read this article and was like "...huh. So THAT'S what's going on with the world. Oh, and hi there future."


Excerpt:

"I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing."

I am solidly in the demographic talked about here, but I myself haven't heard it explained like this and I appreciate how I read the article and a bunch of random blocks of thought fell into a newly-created category bin. Very cool! And chances are if you're reading this post, you already agree with what Clay is saying - am I right? Have you ever had to justify your computer time or computer-over-TV choice? Do you think the Internet is the new model, or just the 'new shiney' that'll only really attract some of us? And perhaps the most important question: Ginger or Mary Ann?

I went outside in a shirt and sweater but no coat for the first time today - I think Colorado was seduced to take up with Spring by the fuzzy haze of green on everything, the tiny red buds on the trees. It won't last: her preferred lover, Winter, is drifting away from her and she can feel it but these flashy spring distractions won't hold her attention long. Winter's no good to her but she's going to go back to him a bunch before she finally leaves him, just like she always does.

Mrs. Adam says I am to not just exercise but eat correctly if I am to be as strong in my body as I am in my head. I am trying to fill myself with all I need but I cannot I CANNOT eat that much protein without eating 3X the fat that I'm allowed and I certainly cannot eat that much FOOD. Perhaps I really am the Little Bird that th3 princ3 teases me I am after all! I have begun to feel satisfaction in my progress with Apollo; I am doing well in Yoga (being the master of animals and plants and warriors); my fast was efficacious. I am progressing and so I have no doubt I will learn to eat as a woman should, instead of as a bird does.

In yoga class today my teacher told me Do not look at your feet as you take the next step. So I didn't.

I should always obey so well and have it work out for such good. My fear is I will and it will not, or I won't and it won't. This is obviously a koan, and I will come back to it once I'm enlightened.

First; help???



Please - will someone tell me the name of this picture and who it's by? Because I need a print of it LIEK WHOA. (Undoubtedly the painter meant it to be a sister leading her brothers (brother and sister?), but this is me and my boys. They even resemble my boys - look at that crazy hair!) Thank you for the help! Once I start school I'll take Memorize a Bazillion Pictures and Artists and Dates Art History and then if YOU need help I can totally help you.

Now onto more photos, under the cut.

(  "Can you hear me now? Good.' Collapse )

WELL ALLRIGHTY THEN.