Still life
I think that in the most predictable and unsubtle way, things are starting to get better around here as spring approaches.
False doors
Last night I had a seemingly never-ending dream about my apartment having three front doors. They were staggered a few feet apart from each other and varying degrees of secure.
The first was a heavy steel door with a deadbolt but it also had a big round glass window that a person could easily crawl through. The second door, a few feet to the right of the first one, was an old-fashioned wooden door with just a push lock on the knob. The last one, a few feet to the right of the second one, was a pair of narrow swinging kitchen doors. No lock…nothing to prevent them from being more or less open at all times.
The last thing I remember from this dream is trying to reassure a friend that I would be perfectly safe even though I clearly didn’t think so.
So, you know, that was pleasant.
It’s unpopular Olympics opinion time!
If your competitive event is determined by judges, then I probably won’t be able to watch it comfortably.
There. I said it.
It isn’t that I dislike, to use the most obvious example, figure skating. I respect figure skating; I do not respect the way it is measured, and that is the crux of the problem for me. I personally require events to be determined by measured outcomes: score, distance, time. It’s the only fair way to judge competitors. It’s the only way to respect their great athleticism, and I think we can all agree that skaters are great athletes.
I don’t know how you can fairly judge an event like figure skating using precise measurements, but I do know that the judging system creates all sorts of unnecessary drama that is inherently unfair to the athletes.
So I will gladly watch curling, obsessively watch it if I am honest, but I will avoid figure skating almost entirely because I can’t get past the feeling that if the outcome is the correct one, it may only be so accidentally.
Snow over it.
Hardy-har-har. I’m so punny! Sigh.
Things are looking up. For one thing, it isn’t snowing. For another, a plow truck and front-end loader showed up yesterday evening and moved a whole hell of a lot of snow out of the way on my street. With some help from Ogre, my car is now completely dug out and moved over to the sunny side of the street.
Today is partly sunny and breezy but not very warm. Secretly, I’d like several days of 70-degree weather (or, you know, an eternity of 70-degree weather) but that would be a disaster with all this snow. The dirty mountains of snow and ice are ridiculous. And depressing. And everywhere. And in the damn way. And did I mention ridiculous?
I hope this weather cycle is over. I can’t imagine we’ll get another big snow storm even though as I type this it is only mid-February AND there is a pretty good chance of a little bit of snow on Monday. Ahem.
Snow globe
Something about this particular storm has slowed time itself. Shouldn’t it be approaching evening by now? It’s not quite noon as I write this and I wonder if February 10, 2010 will be the longest day of my life. At this rate, it seems snow drifts will soon overtake my two-story building and blanket us all in smooth, impenetrable coldness. The snow is continuous while the wind is chaotic…as though I woke up within a giant snow globe. The effect is, in every way possible, unsettling.
Snowmageddon
It’s also being called Snomgasm around here, although the complaints are many about that particular name, mostly because it is too convoluted.
As I type this, the snow hasn’t started falling but it will soon, and when it does I will start the slow descent into madness.
The snow in December, while impressive and crippling, was a colder, lighter, and fluffier snow much like the powdered sugar that fell at the end of January. The snow this weekend will be a much heavier and wetter snow, and this is worrisome because it does this:
And nobody wants that when we’re talking about 18-28 inches of snow (specifically 3-5 inches today, 10-15 inches tonight, and 5-8 inches on Saturday). If I still have power when this storm is over, I’ll be amazed and grateful. If I still have my sanity, everyone else will be grateful.
I hate winter, and I suspect the feeling is mutual.
Nothing under my skin but light.
I just realized that I turn 40 this year.
I mean, I knew, logically, that if I turned 39 in July of 2009, I would most likely turn 40 in July of 2010. Mathematics! But it just dawned on me that I’ll officially be shed of my 30s and have crept closer to being “a woman of a certain age.”
Whatever the hell that means.
Because time passes in fits and starts, and sometimes not at all it seems, I still feel oddly connected, as if by a really long piece of nearly-translucent fishing line, to my early-20-something self. This chick. This, despite living in another state, being a different weight, having much more gray hair, and generally being not that young anymore. I think I feel connected to her because I remember her quite well, even if I don’t remember those years that well. They were a blur of fumbling around trying to be an adult, constantly fighting against myself and my tendency toward giving into the seductive inertia of (mostly ignored and misunderstood) depression. Yet, it never occurred to me to do anything but keep my head down and forge ahead, even if I didn’t always do it consistently or successfully.
I still don’t do it consistently or successfully.
Forty isn’t particularly dramatic to me. I find my own personal milestones unremarkable. I don’t know if that is due to a general lack of ambition on my part or something else. I do know that it is relaxing to not constantly be casting about for deeper meaning all the damn time. Observing other people do it exhausts me even as it sometimes informs me; I can only imagine how exhausted I would be if I tried it for very long. I can easily imagine how much I would exhaust everyone around me. I mean, more than I already do. There’s really only so much anyone should have to endure from me, and I try to keep that in mind, considerable evidence to the contrary.
I guess the point is that I recognize that this is somehow significant or supposed to be, and that’s fine. It doesn’t matter much one way or the other except that I am happy to report that it pleases me to be here.
Turning 40 will, I assume, be satisfactory. I will try not to be exasperated by it.
An unexpected duck
Last night I dreamed that one of my kitchen walls had become an aquarium window, which sounds nice and soothing except that there were lots of ridiculously gigantic fish banging against the glass, angry and relentless. I couldn’t take it and had to leave the kitchen, although I didn’t stray too far because I could still hear the thudding and was waiting to hear the window break and feel the rush of water.
After a little while the thudding stopped and I crept back into the kitchen to see that the angry fish were gone, the window was broken, but the water was staying in the tank as if held in place by some truly invisible boundary. A single white duck was standing on the floor below the opening in the glass shaking himself off and looking around calmly.
Then I woke up.
