happy

I could hear his heartbeat, with my head on his chest, watching Veronica Mars. The gentle scents of fresh paint and reheated stewed okra mingled in the air. . . . Whose life is this? So far away from where I was a year ago. Everything is different from two years ago. But this is how we spent our Sunday-- one year and 363 days after the Sunday we first met-- after we painted our new bookcase.

For all my falling apart lately, some days our life feels like a movie montage or a commercial for a home improvement store. How do I look playing one half of a Young and Happy Couple? I've been experimenting with new ways to braid my hair.

~b

two people in a studio is kinda nice, now that i think about it

Ted’s out of town all weekend, and I have the house to myself for two nights and three days.

I can do whatever I want.

I can eat baguette with tomato and hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise for dinner. . . again. . . without worrying that someone else will be tired of that. And I can eat almost an entire bag of chocolate cookies and watch that movie about childbirth that everyone else has seen. . . but not at the same time because Ricki Lake, naked in a bathtub, isn’t exactly appetizing. I can get up whenever I want and watch So You Think You Can Dance in fastforward and Father of the Bride and In Her Shoes (again) and drink coffee and call my mom from bed. I can braid my hair and unbraid my hair and braid my hair. . . until my arms are tired. I could even give in to my compulsion to cut hair. . . and I still might. I can Google diamonds and what kind of house we could buy if we moved where my parents live. I can leave magazines and bobby pins and chip clips and the remote in bed. I can take as long as I want to get dressed; I don’t have to get dressed until 5:30 if that’s what I want to do.

I guess there are trade-offs.

No one will turn off the lights when I fall asleep reading, and I’ll wake up at 4:38 with the lamp on. And no one will have park breakfast with me by the Peter Pan statue, and if I went alone, no one would protect me from the persistent squirrels. And I won’t have a dance party partner except for my reflection in the television. And I might even have to take the trash out myself.

~beatrix

p.s. i cut my hair. um, kind of a lot. i had my scissor privileges revoked regularly when i was a child.

sap

I wonder if there will ever be a time when he will be so busy [planning a vacation, reading a bedtime story, writing the novella that is going to finance our apartment purchase] and I will be so busy [finalizing a dinner party menu, walking the dog, starting a non-profit arts program for girls in youth detention centers] that a moment will pass and I will forget how lucky I am and I won’t feel the need to tell him every ten minutes that I love him.

I wonder if there will ever come a time when I am so accustomed to this having someone [laughing at my jokes, thinking I’m pretty, indulging my fear of copyshops and champagne bottles, letting me warm my feet on his tummy, using my own reasoning to talk me out of bangs. . . again] that I will take all this for granted.

~beatrix

let's get together (yeah yeah yeah)

Sam was giggling when he pulled me aside and stage whispered, “Jonah likes Sara!”

And of course he does; it all suddenly made sense. Our curmudgeony co-worker Jonah had practically been pulling our intern Sara’s pigtails on the playground for weeks. And he’s been sharing snacks with her.

Even though we’d never mention it to either of them, Sam and I both support it. Sara’s internship is over soon, so it wouldn’t effect work. And the last time Jonah hooked up, he was so happy he bought us donuts, so that’s a bonus for everyone.

It seems such a good idea to everyone but them, and we have yet to think of a good way to nudge them toward each other. We thought about locking them on the roof together and alone, but that seems a little drastic. And I had an idea that I should cut my hair exactly like Sam’s so that people couldn’t tells us apart, Parent Trap-style, but, well, that didn’t make any sense.

Matchmaking is hard.

~beatrix

probably more than five seconds of crazy

I hadn’t seen Ted in. . . days. So as soon as I got home and showered and changed (many, many apologies to anyone who was in smelling distance of my hair on the trip home), I headed his way. And after a few minutes of making-out hellos, we were able to talk a little.

“I’m going to be a crazy girl for five seconds, ok?” I warned him, then took a deep breath so I could get it all out at once, “I was thinking maybe we should go to New Orleans in October because it’s my five-year reunion and the weather will be nice and I need to go back already.”

October is a long way from now, in terms of we.

~beatrix