Things I need to take into consideration

All anybody has ever needed is a little perspective.

I have extra days off this week, due to the holiday. While my bank account cringes, my sanity falls to its knees and weeps grateful tears. We were going down a bad road there for a while.

In updates:

I actually got my shit together this summer and I began running like a real athlete. I ran in a 10k (my first race ever) and made a very respectable fifty two minutes. For my troubles, two beautiful girls covered themselves in tiger lilies and offered me a bonsai tree and an ice cream cake. Then we flung ourselves into the ocean in front of a class of scuba divers, all while laughing hysterically. It was gorgeous.

About two months later, I realized I did not have the means to afford the entrance fee for my half marathon of 13.2 miles. So I woke up one saturday morning and just did it. For myself. Entirely alone. I ran 13.4 miles in two hours flat. Then I walked the 3 miles I always walk to work, and worked an eight hour day.

NBD.

Later, in early september, the charm of running was worn. I was sick of dragging myself out of bed so I could have barely enough time to shower after my run and scamper over the bridge to work. I was not reading books. I was not writing. I was just running.

And I think I needed to know that my body was capable of that.

But I choose to emphasize my brain's capability.

I have been really stressed out this year. Beyond any levels I have ever grazed in the past. I got migraines, insomnia, I ate until I wanted to throw up, I starved myself for a day or two. I ran and ran, I slept and sat. I drank glass after glass of red wine and one day my pants fit me and the next day they didn't. I had sex, I didn't have sex. I had shingles. I healed.

I have some ideas about how I want this year to go.

I am going to really attempt to let go of this obsession with food and my body. Really.

I am going to finish editing the book.

I am going to edit a dozen of my short stories and launch a writer's website.

I am going to drink more water and do a little yoga and meditate for a few minutes every day.

I am going to be more fucking confident.

Every gesture, every motion a purposeful one. I will not be afraid to disagree and have an opinion.

I am going to make time to read for at least an hour. Every day.

If I have to write out schedules for myself, I will do so. This is important.

I am important.

Today is thanksgiving, a holiday I have never felt moved by.

Instead of spending the day driving to my parents' house way the hell up in maine only to be trapped in limerick for six hours before the meal and the inevitable drive home, B and I have decided to spend the holiday with our non-blood family.

Yesterday I drank coffee in my living room with darling jess. We laughed and relaxed. In the evening, we went over to Benjamin and Lisa's house (where the festivities are today), and I used their fabulous kitchen appliances to make a sweet potato pie and individual garlicky bread puddings for the big meal.

I drank a beer and a half. I ate hawaiian pizza. B and Benjamin and jess and I hung out in the cozy kitchen and listened to music. It was lovely.

Today, I am going to remind myself that there are beautiful things happening every day. Every minute. I want to take a little time to breathe them in, and be thankful that I am alive, I am healthy, I have food and friends and a husband who looks like a bear cub when sleeping.

I am love.

CAUTION: I will whinge you to death.

So I'm pretty sure the only time I ever blog anymore is when I'm having a particularly nasty bout of pms...er...depression...er...self hate...er...meltdown.

All of the above.

Which is where this beautiful flaming chariot of failure has brought us today.

This past saturday night was the biggest full moon of the year. If you were a lady or an ocean during the last three days, I am so very sorry for you, because most likely your tides were absolutely bananas. In a related story, I am sorry to all you super awesome dudes out there who put up with one or more of us and or any salty, sexy fishermen (I prefer the gloucester variety, deadliest catch can eat my ass) who dared to troll the oceans so very unfair this weekend.

As the witchy lady I am, I like to spend most days that I feel like absolute shite pawing through various witchy literature that tells me this is the coldest part of the year, I should be huddled around a fire with a goblet of wine and half a pig smoking on the hearth in front of me. I should have friends and or family snuggled up under blankets someone way craftier than me crocheted, and I should be plowing through self inspiring literature and trying out new slow cooker recipes and loving my curvy woman self and letting the rough winds of winter rouge my cheeks with the healthy blush of accomplishment.

I mean the holidays are over, ergo, gluttony is shameful, indulgence is a no no, and it is time to rise grogeously from the ashes of credit card debt and crinkly bon bon wrappers to become the ethereal being I need to embody to greet the first day of spring in an ultra clingy, practically illegal linen-type dress garment.

Pleh.

I find myself feeling oppressed by it all.

I can't even open the document my book is in because I'm so terrified looking at it will reveal the travesty it really is, and I will be so ashamed of it I can't even bring myself to edit it, and in some passionate fit, I'll drag the whole thing to the trash icon and click until I hiccup. What the fuck?! I can't even burn my manuscript in a wicked lavish victorian fit of hysterics? Tearing pages and sobbing while sparks fly, soot and heat streak my face and my hair swirls wildly and fragments of words crackle and pop in the flames? What is my life coming to?

I have worn the same clothes for about three days running now. Bob must think I'm some kind of hela monster grunting and plodding from room to room, which might be okay because he somehow manages to think our bearded dragons are cute.

Maybe he'll be all right with his wife turning into a great big lizard.

I came up wit the crackpot idea that it would make me feel good to run a marathon.

I told a bunch of people, and I ran three times this week (for the first time since october). I thought I was the shit.

Then I went to the gym with bob yesterday.

Bob is so amazing.

He's just totally redone his entire bank of bad habits, and he's going to the gym five days a week, and eating three super healthy meals every day. He even eats fruit, and he hates fruit! He's a foxy number anyway, and already I have terrifying visions of exactly how retarded hot he will be in about six weeks time, and all the lookyloos will be scampering around the purple palace of planet fitness perspiring perspicacity, making little perfumey winks and excuses "Oh, I'm so sorry, however does this big machine work" *titter* "Your arms are like sooooo big, they must be the size of my waist!"

My imagination sucks in technicolor. Often IMAX 3D.

Anyway. So I think I'll be cool, and I get on a treadmill, and I start it off, and I can barely run for twenty five minutes (three-ish miles)before I begin hallucinating, and the marathon I picked is 13 miles, and it's in may. Is this just the dumbest idea ever? I think it might be. I think I told everybody I was going to be a rockstar, and then I picked up a triangle and stuck my dick in it.

So I spent today moping for a number of reasons.

Those I have already listed, and the usual bubbling cauldron below the surface: ohhh how can you be almost twenty eight and done nothing with your degree? You suck at writing and your ears are really big. You will never be actually in control of any part of your life and will probably wind up fat, homeless, alone and most definitely scribbling on the walls of your cardboard box in your own fecal matter, and not in the marquis de sade/geoffrey rush from quills mega sass way.

So I am reading bonfire of the vanities and hating most of humankind and wanting desperately to live in a bret easton ellis novel and flickering through the colorwheel of jealousy over any of my friends who travel or live in sf right now and don't need to worry about silly little items like seasonal affect disorder because it never ducks below forty-five degrees in northern california, and the sun doesn't leave to alone for five months like some terrible parental figure, but flirts with you on a daily basis behind the seven veils of every gossamer type of fog you can imagine.

I wanted to drink red wine and read and at least be depressed in a sort of enviable locked in the turrets sort of way, but I couldn't even manage that. Instead I watched 500 days of summer (which was pretty forgettable) walked the dog and didn't even make it into to town for coffee like I usual manage on my days off.

You know.

I wonder sometimes if I'll ever look back on blogs and journal entries from this time period of my life when I have kids, and if I'll invent a time machine just so I can go back to this moment and punch myself in the face for being so bloody self wallowy.

*oof*