Why don't guys wear their collars out and proud like that anymore? I love those wings! Trivia: the one in the middle is Kate Hudson's DAD!
Okay, this put a little oxygen into the day and I can go back to work now.
I fell a little bit in love at the beginning of the summer, had my heart kinda ripped out and eaten in front of my dying eyes. I decided that the best thing for me was to follow a wise man's advice and put that love on my heart, so when it broke, the love could fall in and fill it. Nourish it.
Mambo stayed around just long enough to prop me up through all that, until I no longer needed his stout and sturdy heart to carry me anymore, and I had to say goodbye to him after nearly 20 years.
My mother died last night. She went to sleep in her own bed, in her own house, and died as quietly as she had lived. I suppose you couldn't ask for more than that, could you?
But still, my mommy died.
And in the middle of it, there is something really, really beautiful happening. I'm feeling superstitious about it, so I won't say any more, just that at this moment, in the midst of the shock of trying to absorb the fact that, holy shit, I'm an orphan -- in the middle of these waves of grief and nausea, there's this one completely clean and good thing. And though it's new, and just-born, it doesn't feel scary or weird. Like the good smell of clean laundry, or your hands after you peel an orange. Know what I'm saying?
Her name was Aiko. I am named after her.
It means "love."
I'm not known for being a bundle of weekend get-up-and-go. When I hear about the lists of plans that people have for their weekends I'm always in awe. "First, we're doing this, then we're doing that. Next we'll go to this, and then we'll do that.". It makes me tired just to hear their lists. I can't imagine going into a weekend with a to-do list as long as my arm after a week at work. I think this may be one of the reasons I'm not cut out for marriage. Married people just seem to have so many things to do.
Rare is the married couple who says, "No, we want to lay around in bed until noon on Sunday, reading the New York Times and drinking coffee. Then we're going to watch football all day, order Chinese for dinner, and go to bed without having showered all day."
I hate to say it, but I blame that on wives, sorry. Guys who were perfectly okay before marriage (and their to-be-wives were okay with them) doing exactly that, awaken one day, married, with a Puritan Work Ethic-wielding harridan standing over them. "Come ON, it's 8 o'clock and we have to go to Lowe's so we can re-sod the entire yard before sundown, then you have to clean the pool and get ready because we're having forty of our closest friends over for a barbecue tonight. Don't forget to take the car for a tire rotation and oil change while you're at it and we are supposed to have lunch with my parents then pop in to see your sister this afternoon."
Do any men wake up halfway through their marriages and wonder what happened to the girls who loved them just the way they were? Do they say, wow, who is this drill sergeant and what has she done with my wife?
I'm much more comfortable going into a weekend with no plans at all except maybe, "I have to do laundry." I love waking up with an unplanned expanse of hours in front of me and thinking, "What do I want to do today? Go to the beach? Hang out in Barnes & Noble? Walk around the East Village looking at things? Go to the movies?" I love getting a phone call from a friend who says, "Hey, I'm going to be in your neighborhood in a couple of hours, do you want to grab a bite?" and just throwing on some clothes and spending a couple hours gossiping and eating. I'm sort of the go-to girl for people who are at a loose end, and that's just fine.
Plus, I love to take naps. I take naps on the weekend like a senior citizen.
This has been a totally pointless and lazy post about being lazy.
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I'm so totally out of it today I posted something meant for this blog onto the public blog. Stupid thing about a word, but still. Need to corral that blog back into its little zen space.
I blame it on the bacon I ate for lunch.