Stage One

Florida. Land of the crossing jaguar, of the humid airport, of the golf course pond with "is that an alligator?" on the other side. Christmas in a new land, for me, followed by Christmas again in a new land, for Ethan. A fair trade-off, I suppose. Tonight we have the dog-races and handfuls of m&ms (the candy jar is never empty), tomorrow the last siblings come in and we make tracks to the Olive Garden (such good soup/salad/breadsticks!) for a delightful evening of food. It will be a different Christmas - no escaping that - but we're bound now by in-law inconvenience for the holidays and there's some level of suffering. At least the people are friendly, the beds clean, and the grapes cold and crisp from the fridge. If we just got some fresh squeezed orange juice and a few plump grapefruit, I'd feel right at home.

The madhouse is mostly over

I have survived. First semester of graduate school, first semester of marriage, first semester of a new club team, a new habit (climbing), a new location, a new set of responsibilities. And I made it which is a good feeling. I suppose I shouldn't celebrate until my grades come in and my students leave me alone for good but it's hard not to. Today was a good change. Back in a real kitchen (it's been too long) with all kinds of kitchen-y toys begging to be played with - and we got to use the knives and the stand mixer and the food processor and the sifter and the scale and the cookie sheets and the silicon spatula and aside from all that we made ravioli for the first time (butternut squash, with a spinach-basil pesto) and pfeffernusse and then chili and cornbread for dinner. A good day of food, with lovely beer and sparkling pomegranate to top it all off. Ethan cringes at the domesticity of it sometimes but I really do love to spend a whole day surrounded by the making and eating of good food. To bring pfeffernusse to my Chicago life is a thrilling and terrifying step - one that says "I'm married" the way few other things have. Because in all truth, my life has changed very little. Ethan and I relate the same way - we do talk more, but we also are enabled to do so. Otherwise we concentrate on school and me on frisbee (nothing new there...) and we see each other when we can and go to Giordano's for some tasty pizza. So goes life. But pfeffernusse means Christmas to me more than anything else. It means a late night of grating nutmeg and then a long day or more in the kitchen with (at least) mom, rolling dough and flouring hands and washing them and starting over for countless hours. Thai food for dinner, since we can't bear to cook any more. Dad hides in the bedroom but will grate orange and lemon rinds as needed. My sister is, or isn't, around. We bake. Lots. Some years we count - I remember 1234 always since it was such a nice number. And then we go deliver, driving around the city to all corners, to old family friends and new family friends. This is Christmas, and this year I'm missing it. I'll be in Chicago and on an airplane during the backing, poolside in Florida during delivery. No fighting with my sister over gingerbread shapes or lemon press designs. No red yarn to tie into bows around the bags. I am losing Christmas in more ways than one so we took action today, drove halfway to Indiana for the citron, set the mixer on low and whirled a batch together. We used to talk about how the dough was perfect to make fake facial features for television - like the ridges on Bajoran noses - putty colored and stiff - but enticingly fragrant. I had the added challenge today of a strange oven temperature and no clear window to peek through without letting the heat out, but it seemed to work in the end. We got about 65 instead of the called-for 80 and I'm tempted to make another recipe of them later in the week, but Christmas arrived at 5704 today and I was quite pleased with the results. Maybe next year I'll tackle Ethan and we'll end up with some cedar or juniper even a tiny tree. Until then we still have the windowsill garden... maybe I could string up the asparagus fern with lights.

Not quite a wheel...

The itch sneaks up on me here and there when I least expect it. Crossing the street, trying not to slip on the slick crosswalk-paint, crunching iced snow underfoot, fighting with hordes of student emails, falling asleep under blue sky and sun and waking to thick obscurity, shaking feverishly, typing frantically. I miss writing here but I can never seem to find the time, especially these last few weeks. But the itch has moved into physical expression today, popping up unexpectedly in the back of my throat during my Homer final. Very annoying. The urge to cough, that little tickle, with no seeming cause or impetus just appeared, forced its sensation upon me. I suppose it's probably the start of a post-cold-post-nasal-drip (why can't sickness ever end?) which can only be cured through lots of honey and will-power. Funny that when the physical itch presents itself, the mental one gets scratched.

Warning: Finals are causing great pain. Then lots of trips=sketchy internet. Can I go on winter break too?

Flicked into gravity?

It pains me to confess that I've been experiencing stage fright's second cousin. For close to a year now I've seen this space really as some kind of void - the vacuum pulling the text from my screen and hiding it in some remote corner of the internet-universe - and to a certain extent that's true. Out of curiosity or boredom this week I googled oojamaflip and didn't find a result for myself on the first page (only three pages total) and even the second page, where I finally found something, was linked to a specific post from several months back. I did learn that there are several happy people out there on social networks with "my" name, although I'm more resentful of the blogger site spackle (my first choice) which was taken and seems to have one post on it only. See how I avoid the issue? My relationship to this editing window is a paradox - I sit in my room, alone, writing, staring out my window in the dark (generally) delighting in the constructs of my mind. There's a reason I don't write well or often with I'm back in Chicago - the simple presence of Ethan is so overwhelming that I lose my ability to feel alone as well as my inclination to sit and compose. Maybe if he read this, but that would likely also shoot us back to the beginning of this post. I revel in the anonymity of the page despite the fact that all my devoted readers know who I am, and now that suddenly I've opened that window to more people I wonder if I have lost my comforting obscurity and I hesitate. Will there be judgment or acceptance? Liking or contempt? For as much as I write for myself I always regain consciousness as some point and remember that I've failed for years to keep any sort of journal or diary or essay-book. I need the public audience as an affirmation for this writing, once it's been done. I anxiously check comments on previous posts to see if anyone's watching, listening, affected. Did you like my phraseology? The metaphor? Did you delight as I did? Feel the excitement? I think of myself as a character on a stage and always I'm terrified that my persona won't measure up.