Tell Me More (NPR) Twitter Poetry

I enjoy listening to NPR's Tell Me More with Michel Martin. They are doing a fun segment on tweet-sized poetry. You can send them your own poems by adding the hash tag #TMMPoetry

Here are a few I cranked out yesterday:

Perfect love in books, on screens.
Beautiful people, happy endings.
I crunch my ice. #TMMPoetry

My love, not a supermodel, is everything else.
I am also imperfect, unacceptably so to myself.
How amazing, what he overlooks! #tmmpoetry

Green light shines on childhood from through pines.
I relive the sounds, scents, the raucousness of play; watching from my car. #tmmpoetry

The novel ended, friends trapped within.
I miss your lives, thoughts, hearts. Author, don't leave me here. Write another! #TMMPoetry

Wordless Wednesday: Dryad Tree

Where have I been?!

Just a quick note to let you know that I'm OK. It's been a week and a half or so since I've posted. I decided after enjoying The Hunger Games trilogy so much, I decided that I was not above reading the Twilight series, which I'd been holding-out on out of sheer age-ist snobbery.

They were so much fun! I did little else but read them this week. (I've had a problem with reading to the exclusion of all else since I was a kid. I hadn't done that though since high school, until the past few weeks.)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the series and now am in mourning over having reached the end. I may need to read them again to see if I missed things while inhaling them this week.

Also, last week I started Saturday archery lessons, which will go on for 5 weeks. I like it, though I have a little trouble with tremor making my aim shaky (side effect of Cymbalta).

My last competing project is that I have agreed to illustrate a children's book, so expect some pieces on procrastination.

Thank you to those who were concerned about my disappearance. Hopefully I will get back to some kind of normal routine soon.

Weaning

So I've really slacked in the blogging department this week. It wasn't a bad week though. Nothing like the week before, that's for sure.

I'm still not completely sure why Friday's movie date with a new friend snapped me out of my malaise the way it did, but it lasted all week.

I'm sort of slowly getting my Hunger Games mania out of my system. This is not to say that I didn't just sing-up for archery lessons that start Saturday, or that I didn't spend $11 at Sephora for Cinna-reminiscent gold liquid eyeliner that I am just thrilled with.... But the feeling of urgency about the whole thing is really abating. This is good.

To snap myself out of it, I (gasp!) picked up a copy of Twilight. I KNOW. So we'll see what all the hype was about, now that I'm over the illusion that I'm somehow above being rabid about teen fiction. I've also become a big fan of the My Little Pony, The Magic of Friendship, TV show. It's streaming on Netflicks now and my daughter was watching it. It's apparently done by the makers of The Power Puff Girls animated TV show, if you're familiar with that. It's very cute and really very entertaining, even for adults. My daughter and I have really enjoyed watching it together this week. Lots of fun.

I have still found myself unreasonably cranky, especially with my daughter, and especially in the late afternoon, a few days this week. But I also know that this week I destroyed being caught up on sleep as I was by last Friday.

Wordless Wednesday: Body Art

http://pickledeel.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/body-art-face-painting.jpg#face%20art

Relief

After going to the movies with my neighbor last night I felt more well and just human, than I have felt in weeks. I felt like myself, and it was like having a sudden intrusive memory stirred by a scent from your past. I didn't remember how it felt until I felt it. Like waking from a dream, the past week felt less than real even though at the time I had been completely convinced that was my world.

I was over-caffeinated and between that, ill-sitting overly-buttered and salted movie popcorn, my son waking and crawling into my bed, a late and
Loudly singing mockingbird, and my snoring husband, it was 6AM or so before I fell asleep. Luckily there was no soccer game and I got to sleep in, so I don't feel too awful.

The clarity has lasted through today. I'll take it.

Julie Makes A Friend

I was listening to The Diane Rehm show last night where she interviewed the author of The Midday Demon--An Atlas of Depression. He did such an excellent job of describing what it feels like to be down in the pit. I remember him saying he would be faced with brushing his teeth and would feel like like how was he ever going to be able to brush all of his teeth, that it was just too much.

He also talked about the importance of having a support network, i.e. friends. I have the girls in my group who I only see twice a month, one who used to be my neighbor who I don't see too much, a fee other neighbors I see occasionally, and my old friends from other locations that I pretty much only see on Facebook. I have spent this entire week of spring break with both kids by myself, with the exception of one day a neighbor watched my daughter while I was at a doctor's appointment and which playdate ended up spanning the whole afternoon--which was very unusual actually.

Our new neighbor seems like a promising possible friend.

Parenting Fail

Google said from Etsy but Etsy said didn't exist.

I did not function today.  Well, hardly.  I seemed to sleep OK.  I took only 1 Ativan to ensure sleep the night before, but like yesterday, after waking when my husband left and the kids were awake, they went down to the basement to watch TV (just for a while, I thought to myself) and I fell back asleep.  Then it was noon.  It was so quiet and peaceful in my room.  My daughter is old enough to get them cereal or granola bars or drinks if they want them.  My son is old enough to go potty by himself.  I have hit the light at the end of the tunnel, some would think.  I treasured the peace around me too dearly to drag myself from there to sibling rivalry, whining, and all the untouched tasks of the day.  Then it was some time later.  I checked on the kids, who were fine.  We watched a Strawberry Shortcake together and then I went upstairs and made them both a good healthy lunch.

Wordless Wednessday: Poplar

Too Much Dreaming

Yes, he showed up this morning at my parents' old house with an assistant, both bearing sheaves of roses with sword-length stems. I think he looks like the guy who played Seneca Crane in The Hunger Games, only without the funky beard. My mom was home too. That's all I remember.

I took 2 Ativan to be sure to sleep last night. In the morning the kids went downstairs to watch TV. I fell back asleep without really rousing until after noon. Not OK. They were fine, just watched too much tv and ate some cookies, but definitely not OK. We all got dressed, grabbed lunch at Chic-fil-A and drove out to Robinson Nature Center in Howard County, MD. It was a beautiful afternoon. My husband met us there and we walked the trails and climbed the rocks down next to the stream. The kids loved it and it was good for me too. I kept looking for climbable trees and wondering how or if Katniss could've claimed these trees. They were all inner forest trees, long and limbless and around 50' high. I could never get up there without some equipment. Maybe if I were18 and emaciated, but I'm not sure even then.

Real Life is Over-rated

Bored Border Collie.  Watch out!

My three-year-old son is always making-up games to play with found objects. I don't know why we even buy him toys. He's explaining "skip-the-rock" to me right now, which involves tossing water bottle caps and the larger rocks from gravel near the playground.

He is so beautiful. So far the beauty of my children has been my greatest contribution to humanity and the one over which I've had the least control. He's still explaining, and so serious.

Saw my shrink today.  Told her about the fiction obsession, crush, and suicidal shower experience.  "More exercise, more sleep, and more real life," she prescribed, and a blood test to check my TSH. She thinks I'm bored and that, like a border collie locked in a small apartment, my mind is just getting into all sorts of trouble. She's probably right. 

An April Fool Over The Boy With The Bread

The Hunger Games Promo Photo

This thing that has been bothering me since I saw The Hunger Games came to a head this afternoon.  It is real but also petty and stupid and embarrassing.  Backstory:  It's no secret that my husband has never been "my type" in terms of looks.  He and I have always known that.  If I were to ogle, targets would be tallish, not overly-hairy guys with straight hair, either very fit or thin and bookish.  Neck distinct from head.  Freckles would be ideal, I love freckles.  And, up until now, always brunette.  So here's the thing, I have never had a crush on a movie star or musician, not even when I was a teen.  I'd actually always been a bit proud of this and my practicality.  Then I saw the trailer for The Hunger Games which made me want to read the books and I was so moved by the character of Peeta in the books.  Then I saw movie and thought Josh Hutcherson was amazingly well cast in it.  He looked almost exactly as I imagined Peeta to look.  In the story his character is this ideal person who would never really exist.  Even the heroine is told she could live a hundred lifetimes and never deserve him.  I was just struck by how beautiful this guy is in this role.  His face is a strange combination of  a very pronounced jawline with still very boyish features.  Yeah, so huge crush.  Very embarrassing for a married girl.

If I Could Climb

I want to climb a tree and find myself swaying in the uppermost branches, light and lean and sinewy.  My sick stomach and my unworthiness, fear, and shame circle and lay in wait for my descent.  Thankfully, the twisting, fluttering, baby new flags of leaves are a curtain, a cloak, a hiding place.

The character I imitate is fiction.  Her life, her world, her love, her fate.  I am not.  My heavy, draping form is nothing like her starved skeletal frame, yet I too know how to be hungry.   I have had "hollow days."  I too "am not really even that pretty."  I could be her ancestor, in theory.

No.  Why do I have to be real?  She is someone else's thought-up creation.  If I had complete license to render I would have written me so much better.  I know the birds and their songs, the plants and their names.  What good does it do me?  There is no application save knowing.  I have taken warm, pulsing life with my bare hands because it needed to be done.  I could survive without this modern world if it weren't for the venom in my head.

We sway in the new spring breeze, the trees and I, high over a quilted blanket of leaves.  Oh, if only the real flesh of my thick body could be in such a place and bend and dance with the wind.  Then the sun would shine and my tears would sparkle as they plunge down through the branches.