Today I am thankful for watering the garden in the morning fog. I am thankful for the rhythms of the fog--cool, lavender mornings, turning into a startling blue midday, the fog whistling back in at four, then closing with rosy ash colored evenings. I am thankful for picking strawberries with my son. I am thankful for toddler flip flops and fat kid feet. I am thankful for fresh coffee with cream and sugar and reading the newspaper. I am not thankful for some things today but I'm choosing to dwell on skipping stones and cracking creme brulee.
I just watched "500 days of summer" again and I am declaring my undying love for her apartment. Including (Steph will probably gasp at this) the wall paper. And especially the wrought iron bed. I love old iron beds. I think there is something quirky and charming and romantic about them. My aunt has one that is hung with jewelry and trout shaped Christmas lights. I think I could have one refinished with bright lacquer finish and it would make an awesome statement piece.
It seems to me that I am a pretty slow decision maker. I will spend months weighing the pros and cons infinitely and repetitively, circling around and around without ending at any one solution. It has been months now that I have stared down my future career, locked in a tug of war between what is practical and what is such a deeply centered desire. Being a teacher, a high school teacher, is a wonderful, giving career. It allows me to keep hold of my passion, literature, and perhaps even bring out a new understanding of it to others and they would bring a new understanding of it to me. I’m sure people get hooked on that shining moment when the beauty and the splendor of someone’s world opening and unfolding happens—though I am sure it is rare, I’m sure that it happens.
After all, it happened to me.
And that’s the whole problem. Spenser lingers like a ghost on my shoulders, whispering secrets and riddles and clues. Is it odd that the thing that I turn to when my life gets the most dark and twisted and cruel is a book? I had these moments when I felt like I was in a pit of my own making and the relief I took was mentally wandering back into the pages and puzzling at the beauty of it all. Before I spoke to actual people, I had to dwell in the possibility of something I loved. I’ve tried to abandon it, tried to talk it down as an incompatible passion that I can dabble in but not be consumed by, but it keeps coming back. I haven’t rewritten my thesis, something I have to do in order to get a decent letter of recommendation. Part of that, I am sure is shame that its original wasn’t all it could be. I start and I stop. I circle back to teaching high school—and I am not so cruel as to force kids to read Spenser. I think that going further with literature would cost time and energy that should be devoted to my son—and my son is always my first priority. I’m afraid that if I travel for school, it will mean that he will live with his father. I wish that I could write Spenser off and that be enough. This decision should have been made and yet I am still pondering it. My mind tells me one thing and my heart tells me another and I trust neither because I have proved to be a piss poor decision maker in the past.
I think it is ironic that I started this blog for wedding ideas and now the very sight of a wedding magazine turns my stomach over.
I first saw this on the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. Seriously now, I am in love with it. Its natural and abstract and floral but not frilly. Its a halter that isn't micro miny! I am not in love with the price but it is a Trina Turk design. A girl can want.
