The year started in David’s arms in the French Quarter. Tonight the setting will be the less exotic city of Minneapolis, but i intend to be in his arms all over again.
I eagerly await 2007 and all it has to offer.
All my love to all of you who are part of my life. Thank you for your love, your support and your good humor. I could not have done it alone.
I totally went ice skating.
Matt was having a party at the Depot Skating Rink on Wednesday night. I haven’t gone ice skating since I was 18 or 19. I gave it the good old college try! Mostly I skated like a little old lady with my arms flung out and my legs all stiff. I looked like a total retard, but I didn’t fall down at all. It was totally cool.
Later we missed out on sushi, but we managed to get some amazingly expensive food at Azia in the middle of the night. Huzzah.
Also, let’s send good vibes to my sister, she had hip surgery today and is feeling like death.
At the end of the year I like to do one of those retrospective posts wherein I recap the previous year’s events. I talk about what I gained and lost, what I learned and what i fucked up.
These things usually take me a couple of weeks worth of pondering and then a couple days worth of actual research as I go through the website rereading things and then through other documents and notes and bits of writing that I have here and there.
One common theme that came up was that 2006 was a very hard year for me. My depression and anxiety got the better of me, I made some bad decisions, some things happened that I had no control over. I lost my Ghengis.
I have a list next to me, a whole sheet of paper covered in scribbled notes where I tried to make sense of the year and put it into a coherent bit of writing. In rereading my posts and going over my memories for the year, one moment stuck with me, a bright, shiny moment that I think umbrellas everything.
In July I flew down to meet David in New Orleans. He’d already been there for a few weeks and we missed each other terribly. On my last day there we took the ferry out to Ship Island and went swimming in the gulf. It was amazing for me, porpoises swimming within reach. Jellyfish, crabs and stripey fish hanging out with us. After we got in the water a lightning storm started to roll in. It was close enough to scare everyone else out of the water but not so close that we were in danger. David and I were alone in the gulf, swimming during a lightning storm.
As we were swimmming, David put his arms around me and floated me on my back as he swam around. I did not even notice at first, it was such a subtle move. I found myself completely relaxed in his arms, floating on the surface of the water, watching the lightning in the near distance. I had to put forth no effort to keep my head above the waves, I just floated there in the safety of his arms as we went here and there in the water. The whole time he talked to me, sang to me and made me smile.
And that was David this entire year. For no matter what happened, he quickly and quietly put his arms around me and held me above water. Not just to keep me safe from the waves, but to allow me the chance to relax. For all of the times that I have been upset or hurt, he was there to hold me. For all of the times I was celebrating, enjoying myself or experiencing sheer joy, he was there with me. When I was floundering or in need or lost, he was next to me. He boosted my confidence, he supported my decisions and he stood by me when I failed.
So many things happened in 2006, good, bad and ugly. For every thing that happened, David was there.
2006 is the year that David held me and I could not be more grateful.
“…that was a hard year but it passed on like all the rest.”
Grandma Moses – “My Life’s History”
The other day I was in the kitchen cooking and it occured to me that the dogs had been awfully quiet for some time now. As much as you might want the dogs to be quiet, a pair of quiet dogs is usually a pair of dogs that has teamed up and conspired against you.
I put down my rubber spatula and walked into the living room…
It seems like one of those quiet Rockwellesque moments, but there’s something far more sinister at work here.
Maddie isn’t really a chewer. She will sometimes chew a pig ear or some chicken jerky, but she’s really not all that interested in chewing. She can take hours and hours to chew a rawhide strip, the same strip that Chester or Ghengis would devour in 30 minutes or less. Maddie is not a chewer, but she can be mean.
That’s not her bone, it’s Chester’s bone. Chester DOES chew things but he does not chew rawhide bones. In some cryptic bit of wiring in his head, he cannot actually stop to chew those things he loves to chew the most, he must bury them. He will spend the better part of an afternoon ‘burying’ a bone behind the sofa or under some cushions or in a box of packing peanuts by the backdoor waiting to go down to the basement. After he has buried it, he will find a bone that he has previously buried and he will move that to a new location and bury it all over again. he will do this over and over and over, burying and moving and burying and moving. It’s not uncommon for me to stumble across in a bucket of rags or in with my yarn.
This bone that Maddie has in this photo was one of his favorites, he spent a lot of time and energy trying to keep that bone safe. Maddie found that bone and she took it to her bed, the one place where she is ‘safe’. She must have spent a good hour there intently gnawing on his bone, chewing it up and there was nothing he could do.
When I walked into the living room he just sighed dejectedly and watched her chew.
I only laughed. I laughed and laughed at them. I’m that kind of dog owner. Then I took photos and posted them on the internet.
She doesn’t chew. No, not unless it’s Chester’s bone and she is seeking revenge!
So, a few years ago I was wondering if I might like flannel sheets. On one hand it seemed like a nice, cozy idea for Minnesota winters, on the other hand, they might be too hot for this girl who occasionally turns into a little furnace at night.
Target had some flannel sheets on super clearance and it was decided that this was the best way to find out. I could get the warm, flannel sheets and if I did not liek them then I would not be out a lot of money. Turns out I did like having the flannel sheets in the winter, they were snuggly and warm and very comfortable. They unfortunate side, though, was that they really only put the sheets that no one likes on ultra clearance. If people liked them, then they would sell and would not need to go on ultra clearance. These sheets are ugly as hell. Bad pea soup green with ducks, duck hunters and hunting dogs splattered across in some incredibly ugly motif. These are the kind of sheets an autistic hunter would love.
They’re ugly as hell.
What does it mean that I saw those same exact sheets used on the set of internet porn? What is the world coming to when production values at porn houses fall to cheap clearance bedding that looks awful on camera. What does it say about me that I share this in common with them?