Brain-dead and incredibly tired

This is me at 9:28pm on Friday night, fairly brain-dead and incredibly tired (since when did I get so freakin' old that I'm ready for bed at 9pm??) in a last-ditch attempt to magically produce 8,600 words in the last two and a half hours of Digiwrimo. (Notice that I did not say "2.5 hours" but rather opted for the wordier version. That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.) So to any of you who are unlucky enough to stumble upon this blog post, I apologize in advance for the verbal spew you are about to witness. Although I do not intend to attempt an 8,600-word blog post (that would just be silly), I do intend to vomit some poorly-constructed sentences and paragraphs all over this virtual page...possibly up to 1,000 words. I'll worry about the rest after that.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Digiwrimo, you can learn yourself more here, here, and here.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. I was going to tell you a bunch of random stuff.

Today I am fearful

On my walk: 
My eye was twitching.
The wind was high.
The dog was skittish.
My smile was tight.

A green mini-van
maybe twenty years old
the hatchback open
driven by a dark-haired man
with large biceps
in a track suit.
My imagination made him
into a violent gangster
who'd shoot me in the back
if no one else were around.

The silver-haired man
with the electric mower
was a serial killer
with a bloody basement.

The two dudes on bikes
a vaguer threat;
just don't talk to me, please.

The moon is almost full:
pregnant with dark possibilities.

Your future self

For Jeffrey Gardner

I saw your future self today
on the corner of 39th and Division.
He was clean.
Well-dressed in black 
wool coat, fedora,
funky sunglasses.
Brown Carhartts.
Silver beard shot with black
trimmed neatly.
He still walked like you
ever so slightly stooped
leaning forward
as if battling a wind
or climbing uphill.
He was talking to himself
and looked
like someone I'd want to know.

Update on Nov. weight loss goal

I was doing really well, and then Thanksgiving happened.

I spent two days eating everything in sight and getting zero exercise. I'm pretty much back to where I started at the beginning of the month.

But I walked three miles today with my friend Carly. And I still have six more days to lose 8-10 lbs.

I like my people like I like my coats

It isn't my only coat. It's not the most fashionable or the most rain-resistant. But it is the warmest.

It is my warmest coat despite the fact that the zipper met its end a couple years ago between my dog's teeth, and last year the main button stopped buttoning. No notice, no note, just up and gave up the ghost.

I wear this coat because it is my warmest, but also I wear this coat because people seem to find me approachable in it. They are more likely to smile, more likely to engage in witty banter, when I wear it.

Maybe it's the puffiness. It lends me an air of softness.

A good-bye letter

"Fumar puede matar."

Dear C. L.,

Over the years we’ve had our ups and downs. I first met you when I was seventeen, but we flirted from afar and didn’t really get to know one another until I was nineteen. Once properly introduced, however, we quickly got serious and remained inseparable for five years. Then I called it off for the first time. We didn’t see each other for a couple years after that. We slowly got to know one another again, dated off and on for a few years before getting serious again three years ago. I thought I might be strong enough to do things differently this time. But it’s become clear to me recently that I was right the first time, and we never should have gotten back together. You haven’t changed. This isn’t a healthy relationship for me; it never has been.

Part of me doesn’t want to say good-bye. If not for you, there are people whom I never would have even met, much less would have become good friends with. My relationship with you has led to experiences I never would have had. You are the key to a whole world that would otherwise be shut to me. Saying goodbye to you means saying goodbye to that world and some of the friends I've made in it.

Lost in the forest

Took a minute to check in with myself today, and here's what I got:

When I reach in to get a sense of myself, I find a wide-eyed, mildly confused person who's lost and wandering aimlessly, trying to find a way out of the woods or at least to some place that makes sense as a place to be, for example a clearing or a cottage.

In other words, I fail to recognize where I am now as a valid place to be because it doesn't appear to have any recognizable landmarks. And yet I'm certain that if I looked around I would find animals who've made their homes here. Life among the branches and roots of these trees. And if I paid close enough attention I could begin to recognize the trees as individuals rather than thinking they all look the same.

Question is: what would be the consequences of stopping to really look around? Would I get lost in cataloging this corner of forest and forget about how much more there is to explore? Would I realize I already have everything I need right here? Would I be able to stop long enough to recognize the uniqueness and validity of this place and then be able to move on with a greater eye for detail and a better appreciation of the entire forest rather than just its clearings and cottages?

Guess who's a naughty monkey

Sigh. Well, so, okay, I guess the bright side is that I haven't bought any cigarettes, which is good, since one of the main reasons I wanted to give up smoking was to cut back on expenses. But the bad news is that I've found, now that Octsoberfest is over and I'm drinking again, that it only takes one drink to lure me back to cigarettes.

The other main reason I wanted to quit smoking is because I didn't want to be addicted anymore, and I can't yet say I'm not addicted. All I can say is that my body has become accustomed to doing without nicotine during the day. But I only have one cigarette left in the stale pack that someone left on the arm of one of the courtyard chairs a couple months ago, and I am committed to not buying any more cigarettes. Gonna do this.

On the plus side, I totally broke through the word count barrier for Digiwrimo! This happened yesterday, when I ended the day at 23,630 words so far for the month, which was 292 words above where I wanted to be. Yay!

After-dinner stroll

He had some time to kill before he needed to be at the airport, so my dad and I teleported to Prague for an after-dinner stroll. Neither of us had ever been there before, and I wished we could hear the street-noise and smell the city-smells, the din and odor being essential to the travel experience. But there were other delights. A few steps was all it took to bring on a change in strangely ordered seasons: bare branches now obscured by the fullness of summer's leaves; a few more steps and spring's new buds and early green abound. The sun shone eternal. We began near the National Museum and wound our way--past graffiti'd doorways and people whose faces never came into focus--to the Old Town Square, where the tops of buildings hung disembodied in the sky like heavy clouds. Next to the copper sculpture green with age, the tree, hung with streamers and balloons, suddenly here now gone.

My eye won't stop twitching

My eye has been twitching pretty much non-stop for the last three days. Okay, well maybe not my eye exactly, but the little muscle just underneath my left eye. It's gotten beyond annoying. When I asked my friends if they knew of any remedies, the only response I got was that a twitch is usually a sign of stress or anxiety. And my first thought was, "What do I have to be anxious about?"

One thing I've learned about myself over the last 30-some years is that my body is pretty good at letting me know when something's up for me emotionally. For example, when I was teaching college, the morning of my first class of the term my stomach would be in knots and I'd spend a bit of time in the bathroom with diarrhea. "Shitty puppy syndrome" is what I called it. You know, when the puppy is all scared or nervous and shits all over the floor? Only thankfully, in my case, it wasn't all over the floor.

It's a little bit embarrassing, actually, that my body has to tell me that I'm nervous or stressed out or happy or whatever. I mean, shouldn't I be aware of these emotions? Evidently not.

So back to that question: What do I have to be anxious about? 

November weight loss goal

Between Dec. 2011 and March 2012, I lost 20 lbs, going from 180 to my goal range of 155-160 (but mostly 160). There have been a few moments since then when I actually got down to 155, and I was amazed at the difference between 155 and 160. In my head it doesn't seem like that much, but it feels and looks very different to me. So I decided I wanted to get down to 150-155, thinking maybe then I could get into a pair of Size 8 jeans again without fat spilling out over the waistband. It really ruins the silhouette.

Unfortunately, one of side-effects of my smoking cessation efforts last month was a propensity to Eat All the Things, which meant that I gained some weight. Only a few pounds, but I'd already planned to try to lose a few more pounds this year, which makes it just that much harder. But okay. Here we go: November goal of losing 8-10 lbs.

Things were looking good for my weight-loss goal when I woke up on Nov. 1st with food poisoning. (As I said earlier this year and my friend Joe likes to repeat often, "I'm only one illness away from my goal weight.") Unfortunately, the diarrhea and vomiting only lasted for a couple hours and couldn't have given me more than a 1-2 lb. head start. But I'll take a small advantage over no advantage.

Since then my weight loss plan this months seems to consist mainly of eating pizza, cheese-laden burritos, and pasta in cream sauce. But I believe you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight, so long as you eat in moderation. For example, I did not consume half a pizza in one sitting; I only had two pieces. And that cheese-laden burrito with refried beans on the side? I made sure to order the burrito with shredded lettuce (counts as my vegetable for the week), and I only ate half of it at a time and so got two meals out of it.

Probably the most effective part of my strategy is the walking. I am walking two miles a day now, which is an improvement, and I've already seen results in the form of dropping a couple pounds and feeling more energetic. Depending on what time of day I weigh myself, how much clothing I'm wearing, what stage of my menstrual cycle I'm at, and how many potato chips I ate the night before, I'm back down to 160. Next week I'll start walking 3 miles a day and/or incorporate some steep hills into my walks.

I figure if I can get down to 154-ish this month, I can continue the good work in December and lose those last few pounds. Then I will feel sleek and energetic and will finally be at my goal weight just in time to spend my Christmas cash on Size 8 pants and a glittery blouse for New Year's. Oh boy.

Voting makes me feel stupid

There are more than 2 candidates for President? What?!

"What do you mean there are five (or six?) people running for the office of President of the United States? How could I not know this? I mean, how can they call it a presidential debate and not invite all the candidates?!?"

And this was the beginning of my several-hour visit to the Land of Feeling Stupid while I blundered my way through the Oregon voter's pamphlet, trying to decipher titles, platforms, measures and explanatory statements.

You'd think that living in Oregon, what with our vote-by-mail system, voting would be a snap. You'd think that, in order not to vote, you'd have to be a) seriously negligent, b) a missing person, c) mailing address-less, or d) dead. But the truth of it is, I only vote in presidential election years.

Now wait, before you start throwing stones--Ow! Hey! Just hear me out, will you?! As counter-intuitive as it may sound, the reason I don't normally vote is because I take voting as a civic duty very seriously.

Digiwrimo-ing

Yesterday was November 1st, All Saints' Day. Also Day 1 of Digiwrimo. Also my second-to-last day in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where I was visiting my very good friend Jackie. Also the day I woke up with food poisoning and spent a couple hours getting to know Jackie's toilet before suddenly feeling much better and going back to bed.

At some point yesterday afternoon I had a computer in my lap and thought about writing a blog post as a way to make some progress toward my daily goal of 1,667 words. I thought about starting that blog post with the story about food poisoning. To make it clear that my slacker-dom on Day 1 of DigiWriMo was mostly due to circumstances out of my control. (Note: I could have said "beyond my control" rather than "out of my control," which might have sounded better but would also have been one word fewer. This is the level to which I will stoop in order to reach my word count by the end of the month.)

But then I remembered that I wanted my next World Citizen post to be a Dear John letter to cigarettes, in honor of having quit smoking (except for that one day). That seemed like a lot of work. And I didn't have the energy. Or at least that's what I told myself. So I decided not to write a blog post. Instead I decided to watch TV on the Internet with Jackie.

My excuse for not writing yesterday, therefore, was that I didn't have the energy to write what I'd planned to write. I had the energy to write something else, but I felt attached to that plan. I think that's kind of dumb. I think, in retrospect--meaning from my current position of now having to figure out when I'm going to make up all those words I didn't write yesterday--that I should have just written whatever I had the energy to write rather than letting "the plan" or what I was "supposed" to be doing prevent me from writing.

I've written about this before, this idea that I want to stop trying to beat my Muse into submission. But clearly it is a concept that I have yet to master. (Or mistress?)

Did I mention that in addition to my goal of writing 50,000 words this month, I also have a goal of losing 8-10 lbs.? I did? Just now? Oh, okay then.

You'll have to forgive the scattered nature of this post, friends. Though it's only 11pm in Portland, it's nearly 1am in the time zone I just came from, and I've been traveling all day, and my eyelids each weigh ten pounds, and my brain, which was never that sharp to begin with, is currently about as sharp as a cotton ball.

 But this is me not using perfectionism or "the plan" or "supposed to" as a reason for not writing. This, instead, is me writing.

Go, me.