time ponderance

I am lying on the couch, watching the leaves of the ninebark jitter in the wind in the golden light from the sun that's finally appeared at just about the last moment possible. If the sun's arc slowed to infinity, I could watch this dance forever. I can't tell if it's because I'm so tired that everything becomes hypnotizing, or if the movement of leaves is always a fascinating thing. I suspect the latter.

I tell myself I'll take time for this-- some day, I will. Time to watch the clouds take lingering leave of the West Hills, with arms outstretch in goodbye. Time to mete the westbound morning bridge traffic, to make sure that everyone makes it back to the eastside before sundown. Time to poke a stick and my camera into every hole from missing squares of purple sidewalk glass in all of Old Town.

I'll have time to finish thoughts and ponder the last dream I had. Time, even, to see every episode of Dr Who from its start til present day.

Roll my die, Change this life

All I can do is be vague. It's Friday night again. I'm at home, listening to the National on my ratty second-hand headphones. Taking photobooth pictures and wondering if my face will ever show emotion. The facial tic-- my lower lip on the left side, where I pull it down in a little "eep" move-- has finally abated after forty-eight hours. I think it came about from trying to control my expression in meetings, to appear what I hope looks like positive neutral.

Erik's gone to bed and I've used up all the phyllo dough wrapping triangular packets of the roasted pumkin, ricotta, and kale filling I made during that cooking jag Tuesday night (the other dishes I made were lettuce wraps with a PF Changs-copy filling, and stuffed peppers). I also used the chocolate ganache-- left over now that the chocolate cupcakes are all eaten-- as filling for a vanilla-snap cookie crust pie with peanutbutter warmed and drizzled on top. The kitchen is tired of me.

It is often that I wonder how I got here. In the past few days alone, I've had the age-flash no less than three times. This first was thinking about some of the clothes I have, including the first thing I bought in my favorite color green. I don't quite have a handle on which thriftstore I found it in, but it was 1996, and I saw the color and fell in love. I haven't worn it in years, though, nor the army pants I bought some time in high school which still grace the pants shelf. The flash is what came next-- thinking of my glittery things, especially all of the new socks I bought. Will I get looks for wearing sparkly things in another year? It's generally looked down upon to go in for glitter after 30. But why should I even care? I walked out of my closet with those thoughts, my doubts left behind.

The next flash was seeing the birth year of my favorite contestant on a reality tv show: one year before mine. But he seems so old! I can't believe he's only a year and a half older than me. He's such an adult. And mentally my nose wrinkles and I know that's not me at all.

Wednesday night at Oba, ordering wine for Erik and I, the bartender is cute and has a full sleeve on his right arm, and he says to me something like "We can say you're 21, right?" Well yes, honey, I'm pretty sure I'm older than you.

I harp on this theme, I know I do. Call it my age-orexia, my bul-year-mia. Or stop me before I make up these terrible puns, that would be preferable.

What I feel is: there's a fine line between childish and childlike. I am dancing on that line. Some days I'm pretty sure which side I'm on, and other days the fire in my belly will demand a switch of sides. What I've determined is that there are more times to be quiet than there are to expound.

I may well be the most actively social hermit in the Pacific Northwest.

weekend time

It sounds like either the setup for a joke or a trite epigram, but for all of my life I have struggled with time. I remember the mental struggle to learn to read analog clocks in kindergarten, and Sam, the one boy in our class who already could. We all looked up to him for it.

I've always lost track of time, underestimated the amount of time things take, hated wasting time, searched in vain for ways to kill long awkward hours, and pondered the extreme subjectivity of the length of passing time. Time is a problem, but also an answer, of sorts. Thinking of time as a fourth dimension helped me to be able to imagine multiple dimensions for the most difficult math class I ever took. I could never mentally comprehend above ten dimensions, however.

Lately I just don't have enough time. I'm not sure where it goes. Sometimes I can tell that I fit a lot into my hours, but sometimes it seems impossible to do more than go to work, go for a run, and make dinner-- that's a whole day.

My Saturday was swallowed up by getting our taxes done. Erik used TurboTax to fill out the forms while I went through our files and got rid of records older than 2005. We had so much extra paperwork that I had to go out and buy a new shredder, which itself overheated from use. We also went on a wild goose chase for takeout for lunch, and later to see "Pan's Labyrinth" at CineMagic down the street.

Sunday morning I walked downtown, ran the Shamrock Run, waited in the long line for the beer garden, and walked home. Then I did laundry, tidied up, called my mom, and ran errands with Julie, who was dogsitting a friend's pug. One of our stops was Portland Nursery, which should probably not be attempted with two pugs in tow. It was flat-out exhausting. I spent the afternoon working in the yard a bit, trying to salvage some plants from the mess that stump-grinding made of various garden beds. I was pretty disappointed that after the tree trimming and removal didn't damage a thing, the stump grinding destroyed at least one entire bed.

I still feel like I'm getting back to normal after being gone for two weekends in a row, since weekends are the main time I have that's truly my own. The stupidly rescheduled time change didn't help. That's why my goal for this week is to make more efficient use of evenings. It's like a New Year's resolution, without having to wait for a turn of the calendar. Little tricks like this often work for me, as I'm easily amused and pretty gullible. I'll let you know if I come up with anything really good.