I’ve been having stress headaches that are translating into a feeling not unlike having daggers shoved through my eyes, and I can feel myself getting crabby and squinty when it happens. They’re exacerbated by sinus issues, but those, at least are mitigated by the effective, if unattractive, method of tracing the path of my sinus passages with Ben-Gay, or any other menthol based ointment (um, the skin on the forehead over the sinuses, not the ACTUAL passages.)

I’ve also learned some things this week, which aren’t particularly exciting, but in lieu of actual content, they’re what I’m offering.

1) It’s a really bad idea to tune a cello with the pegs without loosening the tension on the fine tuner first. I’ve broken my C-string, and even though my current strings are medium-grade (D’Addario Helicores, if you must know) a single replacement will cost $35-ish (though I’m told that certain online places, at least, give free shipping if you spend at least $35.)

2) I’m better at drinking water when I have a house full of sports bottles to pick up and carry around, this despite the fact that we only have them, right now, because Arrowhead left extra water in this week’s delivery because we’re getting a new delivery schedule AGAIN, and they were concerned we’d run out…no idea why they’re in little bottles. But hey, it makes me drink more water.

3) I’m sick to death of teriyaki. I made chicken teriyaki the other night because Fuzzy brought home chicken breast tenders, instead of actual chicken breasts, and I was too far into prep to figure something else out. So, into the frying pan-cum-wok they went, along with a bunch of veggies and some Island Teriyaki sauce. Fuzzy liked it. I’m teriyaki’d out.

4) I really want to trade my Stringworks 4/4 Virtuoso Cello in for a Stringworks 7/8 Soloist Cello. The smaller size is a better fit for my teeny hands, and the step up in line should mitigate the smaller tone from a “lady’s” cello. Anyway, I’m just a hobbyist. But, the trade will cost $5-800 and I can’t really justify that right now.

In other news, I’ve been cooking a lot this week. I don’t really LIKE wrapper-food, and we need to eat more veggies. So this week I’ve made a pasta primavera torta, the afore-mentioned teriyaki chicken, and tonight, linguini marinara and caesar salad. Fuzzy’s been helping in the kitchen more, but he still interprets “clean up” as “bring everything to the kitchen” not “do the dishes.”

Organic strawberries do not make my lips itch OR give me allergy attacks.

I miss blue fish.

And I’ve run out of things to write about tonight.

She sees a man crossing the street, to enter the cafe she left a few moments before. His beard is white, well-groomed, and accents his smile. His blue eyes twinkle below a fringe of hair the same white as the beard. Covering his head, is a jauntily angled black beret. Noting this she looks more carefully at his outfit. Black long-sleeved tee accessorized by a vest, worn open, slim-fitting jeans, shoes that may or may not be ankle-high, but have soft soles…these things she takes in while waiting at the light, and she decides he’s a writer, and French, unmarried, but probably involved. Happy. She imagines he sounds like Jaques Cousteau when he speaks. She never finds out.

She sees the old man every morning at another cafe. He, too, is bearded, but it’s a scraggly beard. Not dirty, just not tamed. He is painfully thin, and wears flannel in summer, the way the very old do, to keep the chill from his fragile bones. His cap is blue, a knit watch-cap, chosen for warmth, and security, not style. She already knows his story, even though the sum of their conversations is limited to those brief greetings that are common among people who are familiar, but not truly known. He is an active member of the local Quaker community, and lost his wife a few years back. Before then, they’d come in together. Now, the empty chair at his table is almost a tribute to the soul gone ahead.

She herself is a toddler on a warm beach, naked and berry-brown, the hat on HER head a red calico thing that might have been taken from a box of raisins. And then she’s older, and her eyes are shaded by a leather visor, just like her best friends, a winter cap, a velvet beret, a straw hat with a ribbon, a denim hat with flowers on the brim, a purple and green plaid “be-bop” cap. She looks at herself in memory’s mirror and smiles.

She watches the hero of the film appear, shadowed, then fighting, with his anachronistic fedora never falling to the ground. “It’s the hat that defines his character,” she thinks. And she’s proven right, for only someone reckless, daring, funny, romantic, can wear a fedora correctly. (She herself has two, one of which is forest green).

She flips through pictures of her family, sees her grandfather in a winter cap made of fur, something leftover from the army, sees him in summer in a fisherman’s hat. The latter makes her smile, and for a moment she smells tangy salt air, and suntan lotion, and newly-turned earth, and baking bread – his smells, his domain. Her grandfather, who means summer to her.

She sees people outside: the athlete in his baseball cap and jersey, the teenager with a baseball cap on backwards, the pair of women in Amish dresses and caps…

Is it the hat that defines character, really, or the character who defines the hat?

I say… and you think… ?

1. Vagina:: monologues
2. Racism:: wrong
3. Mother’s Day:: flowers
4. Fire alarm:: hookey
5. Elvis:: velvet
6. Pregnant:: pause
7. Vacation:: rental
8. Waffles:: strawberry
9. Perpendicular:: parallel
10. Hospital:: corners

Play along here.

So, I’m tired and groggy, and can’t figure out if I want to write tonight, or what I should write about. I therefore invite anyone reading this to help me pick. I’ve scribbled a few opening lines that have occurred to me over the last day or so, and I’m listing them here. Tell me which one you’d like to see continued.

Oh, and…some may relate to fiction in my head.

* * *
1) Every year was the same; on September 1st, the war began.

2) She lay in bed, singing to herself and staring out the window.

3) It�s the hat that defines his character, she thought, as he first stepped into the frame.

4) In the chill of the morning, just before dawn, they woke to the sound of their dog mewling, and pawing at the bedroom door.

5) It was her favorite sort of day: a slightly cloudy sky, and temperatures just cool enough to make a t-shirt too light to wear alone. �Sweater weather,� was what she�d grown up calling it.

6) The water was acid-cold against her sleep-warmed skin.

7) Eight pounds of Chihuahua can feel surprisingly dense when it�s all standing on one muscle.

8) She sat on the edge of the pool, and dangled her feet in the water.

9) Smug. Yellow. Plastic.

10) She loved to watch him in the garden � there was something so delicate about the way he lowered his black nose to sniff a flower, the way his ears pricked up whenever a bird chirped a greeting.

I don’t generally post song lyrics, unless I’m interspersing them throughout an entry, but this song has been in my head all day, possibly because I rented Schindler’s List from NetFlix, and was watching the bonus features earlier today.

I Remember
I remember sky
It was blue as ink
Or at least I think
I remember sky.

I remember snow
Soft as feathers
Sharp as thumb tacks
Coming down like lint
And it made you squint
When the wind would blow.

And ice like vinyl on the streets
Cold as silver
White as sheets
Rain like strings
And changing things
Like leaves.

I remember leaves
Green as spearmint
Crisp as paper
I remember trees
Bare as coat racks
Spread like broken umbrellas.

And parks and bridges,
Ponds and zoos,
Ruddy faces,
Muddy shoes,
Light and noise
And bees and boys
And days.

I remember days,
Or at least I try.
But as years go by
They’re a sort of haze,
And the bluest ink
Isn’t really sky
And at times I think
I would gladly die
For a day of sky.

The lyrics are actually kind of circular and the song is really very simple. Every version I’ve ever heard of it, though, has been over-orchestrated. If I recorded it, I’d keep it simple. Piano, cello, vocal. (Cello because I am not a true soprano, and therefore violin would be too shrill.)

My first exposure to this song was in the very early 80’s, when Judy Collins recorded it, and Amnesty International used it as a sort of theme song for prisoners of conscious. It’s one of those songs that’s always been in the back of my head though, I think because the words are so carefully chosen, the imagery is there, and enhanced with onomatopoeic sounds… I especially like, “Crisp as paper…” Say it. You can hear paper being shuffled, leaves being scuffled.

It wasn’t until relatively recently (February? March?) when I bought a cd of a couple of really obscure Sondheim shows (The Frogs is one of them.) that I realized this song I grew up with was a Sondheim creation.

But then, once you read the lyrics, it couldn’t be anything OTHER than a Sondheim song, really.

Onesome: Something old- Do you have anything that you’ve owned simply forever? A cherished childhood toy, an antique handed down through the family…
Three things:
-My mother’s button box. The tin belonged to my great-grandmother, I think. It’s read, but I don’t remember what was originally in it. The buttons have changed some, over the years, and additions and subtractions happened, but I remember some of them as being on my mother’s favorite coat, stuff like that.

-My grandfather’s red leather chair. It’s older than I am, and it’s the chair he sat in to read to me, when I was very small. Now I sit in it to read. The upholstery needs to be fixed, but I can’t bear to do it.

-A stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh that I got as a gift for my first birthday. It’s about 12 inches tall, maybe 15, NOT fluffy, and from the time before Pooh was disnified. He has velcro on his front paws, in lieu of actual honey, but alas, he’s naked. Somewhere along the line, his red vest got lost.

Twosome: Something new- Buy anything new lately?
-Other than pens and dvd’s? Not really. I bought some lamps for my dressing room a few weeks ago, but they’re not really new now.

Threesome: Something borrowed- Ever borrowed anything and never returned it?
Yes. My grandmother’s red hat. It’s one of my favorites.

Bonus: Something blue- See anything blue from where you are? What is it?
My stapler. It’s a blue swingline. At one point there was a matching staple remover and scissors, but I’ve no idea where those are. I once read an essay in The New Yorker that compared innovations in staplers to innovations in locomotive engines – if you look at staplers and train engines over the years, they really do echo each other – so now I choose staplers based on how much like a train I think they are. Apparently when I bought this one, I was in my Amtrak period.

Yes, I’m eccentric. We knew this :)

Like this meme? Play along here.

I was reading TrekFic earlier, and was so wrapped up in the story that the hum of my computer became the subtle feeling of warp engines, and when I looked up and realized I was in the here and now, I was momentarily jarred. I love that feeling, when a story takes over the present, and I’m not merely reading it, but immersed in it, swimming through words and images and ideas, and feeling them flow over, around, through me. I wish I could harness that kind of energy, but I have so many things diverting my attention. I wish I could afford to stay home and write, and not have to choose between time cleaning the kitchen and time at the keyboard.

I wish I still had legible handwriting. I can barely write any more, and my once-pretty penmanship has become too like my grandmother’s cramped scrawl. She used to send us clippings from magazines and newspapers about famous people with bad handwriting, so that we’d stop bothering her about it.

I wish I had a house with one more room, and a slightly bigger income, because I have a friend who needs a safe haven and a chance to heal, and I’m not in a position to offer it. Am I selfish for not opening my home to someone, because I fear that I would only enable her to not deal with her situation, or worse, that our friendship wouldn’t hold up under the strain? Or is my selfishness of the much more petty variety: I have my own space now, finally, and I don’t want to give that up. I wish I knew. I wish I had a solution.

I wish, I wish, I wish.

I wish I only ever had to deal with reasonably intelligent, competent people. I wish I had more patience and tolerance for people who don’t fit that description.

I wish they’d stop digging up and resurfacing Winchester Blvd, in some endless game of Road Median Hokey Pokey (You put dividers in, you take dividers out, you block the whole damned street, and fuck the traffic all about), because it seems like the days with cones outnumber the days without and it’s interfering with the morning quest for coffee.

I wish I could breathe, and that my eyes would stop itching and that my tear ducts would work with some semblance of normalcy.

I wish Zorro would stop being neurotic about his dinner, and that Cleo would stop barking at everything. And yes. I mean EVERYTHING.

I wish.
I wish.
I wish.

I was expecting to have a horrible day today, but, for a Monday, it wasn’t bad, really. We submitted the one file I’ve been a little concerned about, and received word of more fundings, so, there’s hope.

And then, I got two calls for job offers. . .but I can afford to be picky, and neither of them were in places where I wanted to work, so I said, “thanks but no.” They both said they got a kick out of my “non-traditional” resume. I’m glad about that.

Anyway…
I’m getting crampy and my temperature’s all wiggy. Tomorrow’s a Curves day, and I’m swimming on the off-days. Any form of exercise that allows you to tan while doing it, and doesn’t require shoes, is a good thing. (I love shoes, but I love being barefoot, too.)

I’m craving something cheesy.
I’m out of cranberry juice, which is dire because I have a brand new bottle of vodka.

But, you know, for a Monday….I’m okay with all that.

The cool thing about blogging is that as you browse through your blogroll, you inevitably find that someone you regularly visit has posted the perfect words to uplift, inspire, or just reassure.

Liz‘s post of The Paradoxical Commandments was just such an item.

Go there. Read them.

I wasn’t really in a reading mood in April. There are only six books on my list. Partly this is because work was knocking me out, and allergies and heat have been knocking me out, and taxes always make me not want to read.

Partly it’s because I’ve been swimming.

Mostly, it’s because I just haven’t found anything appealing. So this isn’t just a list. It’s a left-handed plea for some new suggestions. That being said, here’s the list:

Extra Virgin, by Annie Hawes
Twelve Days of Terror, by Richard G. Fernicola
Close to Shore*, by Michael Capuzzo
Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes
Bella Tuscany, by Frances Mayes
The Moor, by Laurie R. King

*Title marked with an asterisk are repeat-reads.