halfway

Well, we are at it again. Last January, I posted briefly about what turned into a short-lived experiment in Alternative Medicine. Ever since my grand failure (ending in a satisfying buffalo chicken salad from the now tragically boarded up salad place at the mall .... um ... yeah ... don't think about that one too much) after only two and a half days, I have wanted to give the Master Cleanser another go. I have heard so many testimonies about how it has totally re-vamped countless people's health and general well being that despite the obvious difficulties involved, it seemed like something I should do. Needed to do, in fact, since my tendency to hunker down with a American Size serving of Mac n' Cheese, or a With Whip Mocha wasn't doing my body (or wallet) any favors. There didn't seem to be a good time before the Big Day, but now that that's done and the weather is decidedly warmer, I realized the time ha dcome to give it another go.

Or rather, I was getting desperate to start. Peter noticed that I seemed to be 'on a mission' about this one. I refused to wait for him (terrible! and we are newlyweds, to boot) and started by myself on Monday. I think it had something to do with the dread. Last time, my experience was pretty awful. I had cravings like I'd never experienced before, to the point of dreaming tasteable buffalo-chicken! Also, the most unpalatabale part of the whole affair, the morning intestinal flush, was particularly unpleasant. And the cold, the real excuse for the quit, really did get to me. But mostly, I love food, and I have known for years that it is a major crutch for me. As in : Hello. My Name Is Mary, and I Am A Foodaholic. When papers and exams pile up, I head to the kitchen and bust out some butter-filled yummyness with extra cheese. If I have a fight with someone I love, I head to the drive-through and mow down on a bagfull of saturated fat. If I'm having an energy dip, it's off to destroy the world one Starbucks Grande at a time. Feta Artichoke Dip - I'm not even going to go there. See, I love food, and I'm happy for that. But I also abuse food, and that needs to stop.

I also don't do well with anticipation. Before major hiking trips, where I know I'm going to give my lungs and thighs a good whipping, I can't sleep, I get grumpy, aches and pains develop into excuses. But once the pack is strapped on and we're headed up the mountain, burn there may be, but I'm happy to be in the woods - and getting the elevation change behind us. So you see, I had to start. The anticipation was killing me. But not any more. Peter joined me Wednesday. We are OFF!

I have to say, the going this time around has been rather astounding. The first day was brutal, I'll grant, but I was also on Day 3 of quitting caffeine (again *sigh*) and that landing is never gentle. I'm not going to chronicle the experience in detail here - I am looking into starting a separate blog for that. I have a feeling the gory details (can you say Intestinal Flush? All together now!!) may be too much for some gentle readers. Or at least, if they are posted somewhere else, you can't say I didn't warn you.

The point of this post? Today is Day 5, and I'm shooting for 10. I avoided posting at the start of this (as I did last time) for fear the hubris would trip me up again. But I'm more confidant now, because at half way there I'm feeling great - lots of energy, no hunger. And I haven't craved a mocha or a bowl of Mac in three days. Perhaps a record? Time will tell. I'll keep you posted as the countdown continues.

year

I realized last week that I have been a blogger for a year. With some hesitation, I looked back at how many times I've actually posted over the course of that year and was relieved to find that it came out to an average of about twice a month. Not too bad, for a professional procrastinator who didn't have regular access to the internet for several months of that year while living out of a car, other people's homes or sleeping under the stars. (Sometimes I wish I was still sleeping in the desert. But that is beside the point.) The point is that I went back and read some of my early posts and started thinking about what this endeavor was about in the first place.

I started this blog as a public notebook of my attempt to find direction, and walk out my little journey tangled among the six billion others being mapped across our world. The 'public' part I entered intentionally albeit with some trepidation. I am not a particularly public person, but I am a writer, which makes for some interesting ambivalence in a soul.

Mostly, in looking back at where I started this from, I realized that with all the hullabaloo of moving, of the wedding, of starting graduate school, I lost track of the point of these meandering posts - and of the Drift that inspired them. I have been trying for over three years now to find out what I am running towards, so that I can stop simply running away. Trying to set my path through these mountains. Or find a place in them to build a home. But in the last six months or so, there hasn't been much time for the sort of thoughts I'd wanted to peruse here. I think Maslow might have something to say about why.

Peter and I finally got to our Netflix this weekend. Friday night, we ordered pizza, busted out a bottle of wine and settled back to an utterly delightful Journey To The Center of the Earth (1959 with Pat Boone & James Mason.) We had finally unpacked enough to get to the TV, and even if we haven't cooked yet, Pizza from the little joint on the corner (and Peter's incredible atomic garlic-tahini) was a good start. I am sitting down at a computer without the threat of waking nephews hanging over my writing time. In general, I think it is about time to get back to the point.

photo-op

There are a few early wedding pictures posted in the darkroom.

catch

Wow. I have sat down to post something twice since we got back from our crazy two weeks of getting-married, having-a-(too-short)-honeymoon, driving-back-to-PA. I kept erasing what I was writing, I think because there is so much to say. How do I choose what from the last three weeks of intensity to write on? Although I almost feel like I need to pick something light and funny to give myself a break from all the madness. I am MARRIED. What does that even mean? I'm starting to wonder. I am so happy for it. And so exausted, still, that I hardly have the capacity to think on it for more than the few seconds it takes to glance down and remember I have *two* rings on now.

We arrived back in PA on Sunday night, after a solid three days of driving (barely missing the storms in Tennesee.) We didn't even unpack the car before heading over to Monkey and Turtle's house (who are now walking just fine, thank you, at barely ten months *sigh*) as their Mom had to go out of town for a few days. Nanny Team To The Rescue. Monday, my graduate classes started. Tuesday, I had to begin dealing with make-up work from missing two weeks of community college classes. Yes, they are ridiculously easy. No, that does not making catching up easy at all. Especially when one professor is a tyrant worthy of a Dickens novel. But more on him later. Poor Peter is working six days a week, still. Tuesdays, his bad days, today, start at 5.30 AM and don't end until around 6. And he's got class to catch up on as well. (yes, easy. no, not *that* easy.)

I woke up with him at 5am to finish some papers and make up work for various classes, and just e-mailed the last two (for today) in. The babies have not woken from their morning nap yet. I am holding my breath.

I was hoping we could get back, unwrap presents, settle into our apartment. I imagined we'd have time to start watching movies at night, again (we've had the same three from Netflix since February.) I imagined we'd start cooking (correction: Peter would start cooking) like we(he) did before the "W" word (no, not bush) took over our lives. No such luck. The movies are still unwatched - we can't get to the TV for the unpacking still piled in the livingroom. And we've been subsisting primarily on Easy-Cheese and ButterMints from a thoughtful basket my aunt gave us for our honeymoon.

But I make it sound so awful. It is not. I love Peter. I love being married to him, I love our life, as un-ideal as it seems when looked at from the wrong angle. My graduate classes are fascinating, the toddler-tornado is delightful, we spent last Sunday hiking up to FlatRock and it was perfect and beautiful Nyssa has been in a coma (thankfully) for two days from the effort. Our apartment is cheap, with a view of the mountain and the ancient Susquehanna River. Alaska is less than three months away, now.

And Monkey is awake ...

tucker

Yesterday was the last day for Tucker, the landlord's ailing lab mix. He was an old guy, riddled with tumors and arthritis. But a big-hearted sweetie, as most old dogs are. He always barked at Peter, but wagged his tail when I came home. He waited wherever he lay in the yard for someone to come pet him, though. He wasn't about to move around more than he had to, even six months ago when I met him.

One of his many inoperable tumors finally got in the way of his daily functioning, starting Monday. At seven in the evening last night, Peter and I helped hoist his near 100 lb bulk into Norm and Evelyn's old van, so they could drive him to the Vet to "go night-night" as Norm euphemized earlier that day.

I was sad for Tucker, and sad for his owners, who have seen so much loss in the last few months. (Although sad themselves, they seemed to be taking it in stride, as many of the WWII generation do.) Last Saturday, Evelyn told me that they had been to eight funerals in the last three weeks. Her sister died in January, and their Aunt Madeline passed away at 100-and-three-months just after I moved in. (She was living in the downstairs apartment, and I was there when they took her away - with her second broken hip - in the ambulance for the last time just before Christmas.)

My paternal grandmother had to move out of her home of nearly forty years last month, and into an assisted living facility near my parents. She has attended increasing numbers of funerals herself, as her contemporaries’ memories and independence give way a little more with each passing month. It will be decades before my generation is faced with the same dilemma, but I wonder how much the current trend of generational segregation is going to affect how gracefully we cope. I hope I can breach those walls a little and learn from my elders now, listening to their stories (however many times in a row) and advice, and do what little I can to help them through their own transition - even if it means helping lift a stinky greasy old Labrador up for his final ride in the car.

lifelike

Peter and I have been upending every poetry book we can lay hands on trying to find a bit to be read at the wedding. We are trying to add something of ourselves into this ordeal, even though most of it has been out of our control. Nothing came of perusing the 'appropriate' anthologies, most of which were worthless. Even if we did find something one of us liked, the other wasn't so keen on it. And so it went.

The problem with poetry (and with well written, thoughtful music ... dylan and van zandt, not aiken and jessica ... hence our inability to find a song to 'first dance' to) is that it is attempting an accurate reflection of life. And in life, as we all know by now, there is always an unmistakable thread of darkness through the most joyful bits. The most beautiful poems we found wound their way around grief and loss. The ones that left this out were hollow and full of pastels. We know what we are embarking on is joyful. And hard. But we don't want to dump cold water on the people who come to celebrate with us.

Enter the venerable Gary Snyder, to the rescue. (I was introduced to him indirectly, while reading Kerouac's Dharma Bums two summers ago.)We went all the way through Turtle Island to no avail, but picked up No Nature this evening at B&N. Thank God for the zen inspired beat poets, trekking through the Sierras with their wool pants and ruck-sacks and scribbled-over notebooks. We read Off The Trail and both knew instantly that it was exactly what we were looking for. Thanks, Gary.

We still wanted *some* kind of William Carlos Williams, as I think his poetry is beautiful and he was Peter's favorite for a long time. So we are adding his three-liner on marriage to the back of the order of service.

:::: Post Script ::::

I saw Anne Lamott's name on the AWAD mailing a few days ago and I wanted to give her a shout out for making it into Anu's Ending Quote.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
-Anne Lamott (1954- )

yesterday

Yesterday I slept in, and dreamed about being married. I woke, cleaned the kitchen and made coffee, listened to Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me (my favorite weekend NPR installation.) It was warm, and Nyssa sunbathed on the picnic table in the yard. I joined her outside, and talked to my landlords about the weather, their aging lab, the plants that the late tenent of my unit planted, the plethora of funerals and viewings they have attended this month, the death of a sister, my dog's strange sun-worshiping habits, coats. I got my oil changed at a shady garage in another town, for $20. While waiting, I walked Nyssa over to Petsmart to look at the puppies and cats up for adoption. We saw a boxer puppy the size of a neckpillow and were barked at by a neurotic scottie dog. Nyssa was hissed at by an overweight tabby surrendered by unwell owners, themselves surrendered to a nursing home. On the walk back to the shady garage, I bought cheap closeout bookshelves. We drove to the dog park and Nyssa sat in the sun watching the other dogs play instead of running around herself. We left, went by the grocery store for milk and a fly swatter. I remembered to buy brown sugar. At home, I organized the piles of books and papers and mail that had accumulated and turned the living room back into a livable space. I dusted. Peter and I went to pick up a free ice-cream cake from Dairy Queen. Then we went to Borders to look for an appropriate poem to be read at the wedding.

Yesterday was the first day in months that my stomach hasn't been tied up in knots, my blood pressure hasn't been pounding in my head, my body hasn't been tense with endless lists scrolling behind my eyes, that I havn't spent on the phone with my mother negotiating details and schedules, that I havn't had to dope myself up on caffine and comfort food to get through. It was a day like days are supposed to be. It was a day to get a glimpse of hope, before this last desperate sprint through chaos.

Today, I woke up and realized that in two weeks I will wake up married. In two weeks, I will start having more days like yesterday. In two weeks there will be nothing to plan, no reason to be on the phone 3 hours a day, no pages of lists and paranoia of things forgotten. The balance will tip towards sunlight, equinox will pass, summer will be on her merry way, Peter and I will begin on ours.