DELVING BETWEEN THE TOES OF LIFE....I AM TOEJAM


2005-09-01 - 12:40 p.m.

Dear Mother,

Since you never answer your phone never ever ever ever�I�ve decided to write you a letter. And since I am still too scared to go to the post office (even though the post office women seem really nice)I have to write you this letter here. Oh, well, I could send you an e-mail but writing this letter here kills a lot of birds.

Everything is going well here. It�s still hot and I still get icky sweaty by the end of the day and I hate that. I�ve always hated heat. It�s usually a little bit cooler down at the sea and I would go there more often but right now it is tourist season and there are way too many people there and it�s hard to even walk on the sidewalks. I am really looking forward to October/Novemberish around here. I can�t wait until it is cool enough outside where I can walk to town without dripping sweat and when I can build a fire in the fireplace at night. I am really, really looking forward to that. I even saved my new John Irving novel until such time as I can be comfortable in sweat pants and blankets.

Speaking of November�a girl I used to work with (remember when I used to work?)is in Germany for four months doing her student teaching at an Army base. She and I had discussed, a long time ago, her coming here to visit and holy crap!! she really is!!! I can�t believe it. She was going to come here at the beginning of October but changed her mind and is going to come here for Thanksgiving instead. Because her break is longer and because it�s nice to spend Thanksgiving with people. So we are going to have a big Thanksgiving dinner here!! That�s exciting and so so sad because Thanksgiving is our families favorite holiday and this is the first one I will miss. I think that you should all, Z. and A. too, should get on a plane and be here for Thanksgiving. We are going to break open some really nice bottles of wine.

Kitties are doing really well. Squishy Cat is steadily putting needed weight back on and Bubba is steadily taking off his extra pounds. I think they are all very happy finally. Smudge is very very rambunctious these days, you would be amazed. And all of his hair is back and not falling out. I have not seen one flea here yet and in fact went two months without putting their Revolution on and he STILL grew his hair back. Bear sits on the wall all day with this goofy relaxed look on his face and when Eric comes home he bounds across the yard to him. It�s pathetic. Fishy is a princess cat to the max now. Her ritual is this�she sleeps all prim and proper next to me at night and when I wake up she follows slowly behind me, gets her breakfast, steps outside for a moment to stretch and then returns to bed for the rest of the day. Around five she finally emerges and goes outside to raise hell with the birds and of course, I have a hard time getting her back in for the night. Smitten is fat�and happy. He loves to sit in the tall grass around the pine tree and he still plays his game with me at night though he no longer sits on the edge of the bathtub anymore and that makes me sad. Sometimes he will come in but usually he has better things to be doing.

Eric is the best husband ever. I am still amazed every day that I am married to such a good person. He is very very easy to love and to live with�even when he is doing belly flops into the swimming pool. I don�t think he likes working here as much as he did in France�I KNOW he doesn�t and I KNOW he liked living in France better too�but he is so positive about everything and I appreciate that. I think he is also looking forward to the end of summer. I think he will be happy here this winter. While he doesn�t like heat that much�he can�t stand snow (which is just crazy to me). He is going to be in the States in October and he is going to help Taurean get his passport stuff going. Also�I will be giving you a list of things I need you to get and give to Eric to bring back with him. Like nutritional yeast, Fri-chic and cat nip. Part of me really wants to come home with him�but the thought of getting on an airplane makes me very very sick to my stomach. And I don�t have anyone to watch the cats yet. And I have that class. But May will be here before I know it!!

I think I�ve decided to not go back to those dreaded language classes because I really don�t feel that I learned very well that way. I took quite a few weeks of those classes and quite honestly I can�t speak or understand any better than I did when I arrived. And oh god how I hated going to those classes. So today I am going to test out Eric�s Rosetta Stone French language course and if I like it I will order the Spanish version. Then I can sit in this chair and learn and not be so annoyed all the time with the language that I never want to learn it. After I get some basics down I am going to HAVE to get out there and speak to people. I am aware that there is no way I am going to really learn unless I am exposed to the language in every day situations. So I am going to do this language thing my own way now�I�ll give it just as much time as I gave those dreaded classes and if I don�t learn more my way I will go back to the dreaded classes.

My writing class is going quite well. I fell into a pit of despair on Monday�I had a story due and I hadn�t been able to write it and I was just so DEPRESSED about it. Not because I couldn�t write the story but because way back when, before all this chaos started going on, at any given time I had like fifty story ideas floating through my head. Now I don�t have them anymore�I�ve forgotten how to keep stories going through my head. And stupid me�way back when I had stories going through my head all the time, I didn�t write them down, waiting for a time when I had lots of time to write them down correctly�and now I DO have that time and I can�t remember the stories! Note to self�write down story ideas. Anyway�after moping around all day, and I do mean ALL day�I just consigned myself to suckdom and pulled up a crappy crappy story I had written last year and I changed some things and added some things and turned it in on time. And I am actually getting good feedback! There were four of us that had to turn things in this week and so far mine is the only one that has gotten any feedback (except for the three feedbacks I left the other people�I am very timely about getting my work done in class) and I think that is a good sign because when I was reading the other stories the only person I easily made feedback for was the person that had written a decent story. The other two took me a while to put together feedback for. Anyway�I am happy about my class because it has gotten me back into the habit of writing. I am trying to decide whether to take a poetry class next or if I should get crazy and take a screenwriting class. Fiction and poetry are easy for me�screenwriting would be something totally new to me. I have never even read a screenplay. Part of me wants to take the poetry class because it would be nice to be doing something I know. I think I am realizing, especially after pouring through all my files of writing in the past days, that I am more a poet than I am a novelist or even short story writer. I guess I�ve always known that but fight it because poetry so truly annoys me for the most part. But then I realize that the poetry I love, I love more passionately than I love my favorite novels. So. Maybe I will give the poetry class a go. And then afterwards I will take the screenwriting class.

So that�s about it I guess. Nothing new going on. Still struggling to get used to this life. I get weird sometimes. I realize that anxiety had become such a part of my life that I had gotten used to it. Sometimes I start getting all anxious about stupid things and realize that I am doing it because I have a hard time knowing how to exist any longer without the anxiety level raised. I have to sit myself down and remind myself that I have nothing to be anxious about any longer. I�ll catch myself sometimes getting all stressed out about something totally unlikely like maybe the person who we are renting this house from will decide in September that he no longer wants to rent this house out and we will have to move. It�s quite unlikely because for one�this house has been a rental house for a while now and two�anyone that would NOT rent this house out (for the amount of money we are paying) would be a fucking idiot and since this guy is not an idiot I am sure he would rent this house to us for the rest of our lives. But I will stress about it anyway. Or I�ll start stressing about the trip home in May. Or about flying the cats back to the States in five years. Stupid stuff. It�s really ridiculous.

Oh. And I am still getting terrible sinus headaches all the time. That is starting to really, really annoy me. And it actually kind of scares me. I mean, I KNOW they are sinus headaches and that I don�t have a brain tumor or something�I am scared because I don�t think I can live like this for the next 3-5 years.

Well, I have to get outside now. I want to spend a little time reading by the pool today. I haven�t done that, believe it or not, in a long time.

You should come here!

Whisper


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