1. there are boxes everywhere. i mean, EVERYWHERE. who would have thunk that we had this much crap? it is all over the place. we are in need of major storage for books, VHS movies, DVDs, socks. but the good feeling is, it’s OUR HOUSE!! we could pave the floors in books, VHS movies, DVDs and socks and who could tell us shit? nobody. nobody could tell us shit, that’s who.

(maniacal laughter, insert here)

2. but still, inside my own need for equilibrium and daily beauty, there exists a situation where living on a carpet of accumulated crap is not acceptable. neither is it ok for said stuff to teeter at us from where it stands, stacked up against the wall in boxes we have yet to unpack because we have visions of the wall being a different color (that we have yet to choose) behind the bookshelves we have yet to design and build with tools we have yet to own and lumber we have yet to purchase.

i think we are going to have to suck it up and go to IKEA

but i say all that to say: aside from daily work, and catching up on the work that is backlogged from actually moving, is the daily work of reinstating order so that we can live and be creative in this new and wonderful space.

3. there is also the fact that this is the 2nd of november. i’m already 48 hrs behind when it comes to participating in NationalNovelWritingMonth, a national occasion of GROUPTHINK wherein thousands upon thousands of procrastination-prone individuals gather virtually to pretend to be writing novels, and a few thousand of them actually do so.

each november for the past, oh, say about 4 or 5 years, i have noted this passing fact with amusement, wistfulness, paranoia, dread, excitement, and wishful thinking. i use it as an occasion to pull out the various semi-conceived projects that are laid carefully in tissue-paper-lined compartments of my hard drive, blow off the dust, and leaf through their yellowed, crackling pages with fondness and pleased surprise. wow, i wrote THAT? i wish there was more of it. i’d sure like to read it.

it’s hard for me to imagine being the same person who crafted those words that i find. i know that i did, because i recognize the brainwork. but my mind has fallen out of the writing habit and that’s a problem.

NaNoWriMo is a neat idea b/c it consists of lots of [virtual] peer pressure and support and idea sharing and a place to go and whine about not having ideas or whatever; and is driven by the idea that no matter what, you should crank out a substantial amount of words every day, accumulating 50,000 by a chosen date, BECAUSE YOU CAN, DAMMIT.

but this is the thing: i am not so good with peer pressure. i am hard-wired against the grain and this becomes a problem when it comes down to certain circumstances, like following trends, joining food co-ops, popping my cherry earlier than i’m ready in a way i will come to regret, or joining mass writing movements. i have always found it difficult if not impossible to do any of it. perhaps this inability is linked to my distance from my writer-self?

*big dramatic sigh*

i really do wish that bitch would finish something though. it’d probably be good.

this is not some *hypothetical* perfect boot that i am imagining to exist out there in the ether, like some mythical ‘mr. right’ for whom i am sitting here, alone, wistful and pining away.

i am not the pining type.

this was a real pair of boots, i know they exist. i know where they are. i touched them, even. i smelled the leather. i didn’t try them on, though; there was no use torturing ourselves about it.

you know what i mean? the attraction was there, nearly electric in its intensity. we knew we belonged together, but alas, the price was prohibitive. it was not to be, my money being presently tied up in other investments. it wasn’t them, it was me. it was nothing personal, i just wasn’t ready to make that kind of committment.

we tried not to be melodramatic about it. we didn’t drag it out. we acknowledged our connection, and turned our faces forward, moved forth into our seperate futures, no regrets. it had to be this way. i sang ‘next lifetime’ under my breath and marched on.

(music up…..

….end scene ROTFL)

i am not given to this kind of behavior with little cause. it doesn’t happen often and when it does, i take it seriously. there was only *one* other pair of sole mate shoes with which i had an equally dramatic & similarly doomed relationship.

it was five years ago, and i still remember them vividly. it was in london… a city full of mist and cobblestones and strangely angled streets and much mystery. and amazing shoes.

this pair was an unassuming oxford… the sole perhaps a trifle thicker than classic. perhaps the toe turned up a little, rounded? reminding one of chaplin, crib shoes, elves? the leather was matte & black, so soft it looked delicately weathered. the cut work was hand-stitched. with *brown* sitches, gleaming against the shoe like old pennies.

they were so beautiful, i just had to stop and stare. introduced myself through the shop window at first, being shy, but moving in soon enough, pulled inexorably to them, my earth-tone-addicted flower child self twanging in response to a nudge from an inner dandy rearing its dapper head.

what would i do with a pair of english oxfords? i’d have to rock purple organza many-tiered skirts and denim jackets torn off at the waist and buttoned tight over antique camisoles. i’d have to wear turquoise and white, and have embroidery at my hemlines. i’d have to abandon my many favorite t-shirts and step outside of the cotton jersey/denim family to clothe myself. eeek!

plus i was in london, in college, and had my first credit card ever. i was still cringing off the joke i’d played on myself with the exchange rate and a pair of buster brown-esque wooden platform sandals (which worked with my tshirt aesthetic, let me tell you, but freaked me out when i saw the statement. those were HOW MUCH in american money? LOL)

with the sandals, see, i could continue dressing like i did in second grade, which is *really* my aesthetic preference. all my fashion fantasies aside, my inner child is skipping down sesame street in bellbottom blue corduroys and a striped turtleneck. it is risk-free to follow her there.

but hand-stitched english oxfords… that’s changing the game a little. that means i was going back to atlanta and completely re-examining my wardrobe. sorry, i should have written ‘wardrobe’ in quotes. as in, “so-called wardrobe.” english oxfords meant making whole different level of committment to the act of dressing myself.

was i ready? could i do it?

puh-leeze. i dropped those shoes like a hot potato and bought a pair of british adidas.

yesterday, from three different people, i got that email forward.

you know the one.

“you’ll lose your hotmail if you don’t forward this to 10 — 20 — 30 of your friends and also you’ll catch the plague and get yr kidney stolen and die but if you forward it bill gates will send you a check for $4,835.93, i know because my cousin got hers!”

we’ve all gotten this annoying-ass missive at one time or another, usually from some well-meaning and friendly soul who thinks they’re doing a good & helpful thing.

they are not. they are killing electronic trees & cluttering up my inbox with cyber trash. this morning i was inspired to commision an educational initiative from honeychild-hates-forwards, inc.

what follows is a couple of unmitigated truths of email, hoaxes, and the art and science of forwarding nonsense to innocent cyber-bystanders. this information is good to know in general but has particular good use as a guideline for what not to send to ME. please feel free to forward THIS around, far and wide.

1. if something increases font size three times in the course of the email, it is ALMOST CERTAINLY BULLSHIT.

don’t send it to me.

2. if it tells you you have to forward it to 10 people, 20 people, or “everyone in your address book,” it is DEFINITELY BULLSHIT.

don’t send it to me.

3. if it threatens you with the loss of your email, or promises you money from some corporation, but doesn’t come directly from the corporation or service provider in question, it is NECESSARILY, OBVIOUSLY, INDUBITABLY BULLSHIT. nothing somebody forwards you is or can be official correspondence, it can never be traced by the company supposedly involved, it is NOT real, and it is annoying as hell.

don’t send it to me.

4. if it promises good luck, or threatens bad luck, it’s KARMICALLY EVIL BULLSHIT.

don’t send it to me.

aaarrrghhghghg!!!

this has been a public service announcement brought to you by jamyla-hates-forwards, inc.

fooey on that person, whoever it was. i mean, what is the purpose of cramps? what is their reason? is it about fitness? am i building hidden muscle power in some secret velvet place? my body is doing something fabulous & necessary and kind of clever, after all; purging and renewing its very cells! why should this not be a fun time filled with wonder and the delicate crystal song of new electrons dancing?

i read somewhere once that our bodies do not retain sense-memory of pain. we just can’t do it. you know those little orgasm after-shocks that rock you an hour after a Good One? no such physiological equivalent for ouches. once the pain is gone, it is GONE. perhaps this is how women come to give birth to more than one child. (hee hee.) more relevant to my own experience, perhaps this is why each month i sing the same broken lament: in the face of sudden & always somehow surprising crampage, i mourn my absentmindedness and demand of myself the IMMEDIATE development of better pain management skills.

i imagine it needn’t be that hard. i imagine it would simply require greater attention paid to the dosage/schedule/timing of the soup of random chemicals i ingest for two days every month.

i’m talkin the good stuff. ibuprofen, acitometophen, aspirin, naproxin sodium. sometimes combined in strange and intoxitating ways with that kick-starter, caffeine, by the people at MIDOL or EXCEDRIN (yeah daddy, talk those sweet chemical compounds to me.)

now, normally i’m not a huge supporter of the medical/industrial complex in general. i much prefer unadvertised and organic substances that can be plucked from the fertile earth and swallowed, smoked, steeped and sipped, or used as a fabulous conditioning rinse, depending.

but once a month, like many other Good Witches In The West with extremely low pain thresholds, i take my meds. i pop them when i feel the twinge, then languish in agony until it’s gone. and in that moment, that’s my only thought. not, ‘fight the power’ or ‘affordable healthcare for all’ or ‘the earth is our mother, she has all i need,’ but ‘GET THE PAIN GONE.’

and then once it’s gone, because i am a dunderhead, i forget i’m supposed to be in pain at all and go gallavanting around living my ordinary life of constant discovery and joy in everything. until WHAM-O, back it comes and i’m like, “oh, that’s right, my period just started. my uterus is doing stuff, huh? i should’ve probably taken another one of those little pills like twenty minutes ago, and then i wouldn’t be curling slowly into a fetal ball right now.”

o, cruel attention span, thou art mine own worst enemy.

grumble grumble.