The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Irony is being on the way to the bathroom for a file for your nails, tripping and bashing your toes on the door-sill, and tearing off a nail (albeit on your toe).

Or maybe that's not irony, I forget.

So tired! This is like finals week for the retail set. But I get to see my girl in twelve hours or so. I'm really only online for the token final checking of the itinerary. Also, I am so hopped up, cos I had caffeine late.

Sleeeeeeep?


Also, please tell me why my grandmother is blaring the Mannheim Steamroller Fresh Aire Christmas Album at this hour. Much as I like and appreciate that album... It is what's keeping me up.

Tonight I got a ride home from working a long shift at a store that's not mine. I had some Advil and water, I talked to my fiancee on the phone, and now I'm about to pack up the computer to go see her. Give or take, I'm 25.

Five years ago, I was in Baile naNowhere, Ireland, a few days from the burial of the woman I once thought I'd marry. I'd left my decent winter jacket in the morgue in Fall River, MA. I was on more consciousness-altering drugs than ever before or since. I remember she looked like porcelain. I was about 20.

Ten years ago, I was sitting on the carpet in the dorms at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, convincing a friend that now was really not the best time to kill herself. If I went home that night, it was to try and get the oven to work so our house would have some kind of heat, and so I could dry my younger sister's school uniform shirt. I was 15.

Fifteen years ago, I was asleep in our apartment in Vestavia Hills, AL, with my cat and a couple of sweaters, because I slept out in the living room where it was colder. The neighbors across the way left their balcony drapes open, and there was red and green and yellow and blue light from their Christmas tree. I was 10.

Twenty years ago, I was awake in bed reading, in my family's brownstone in New York. Maybe there was snow. I had one of those shortened, satin eiderdowns that one gets in Europe. I was probably reading A Little Princess. I liked Frances Hodgson Burnett, in December. I didn't sleep at night. Ever. I was 5.

Twenty-five years ago, in Witwatersrand, South Africa, I had no hair, I weighed seventeen pounds and I was just over sixteen inches long. And I was nine months old. I was only supposed to be six months old.


...So, yes, it has gotten better and better. I think my tides have finally turned.

Also, yay for Samek Being Alive Day. *quietly has some granola and yoghurt parfait*