Sunday, February 18, 2007

Miss Cellanea.


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Say "WOOT!!" for warmer weather

Just had to make note of the fact that, at 2:12 p.m., it is a balmy 47 degrees here in Lincolntown. Patches of concrete are actually becoming visible below the sheet of ice that has been my driveway for the past month.

Bikinis and frisbee in the park, anyone???

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Estoy aprendiendo espanol

If you want to find me Tuesday evenings beginning April 3, then you, too, must sign up for Beginning Spanish at SCC. (This means you, Mizzes K and J!)

Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to a new (to me) podcast on iTunes: “Coffee Break Spanish.” Weekly lessons, about 20 minutes long. So far mostly a refresher of what I already know. It’s a European podcast, teaching Castilian (rather than Latin American) Spanish, with Scottish accents no less. Still, it’s been jogging my memory, and that’s good. Got through three podcasts on the treadmill at the gym the other day before I even knew what had happened.

(I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, then feel guilty for never having the time to listen to them. Poor podcast babies, languishing away for lack of tlc from me ...)

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My latest iWant:

2007 Iowa Summer Writing Festival

Would I really get much out of it, or is it just the lure of the class titles:

-- Shaping the Truth: Fictional Structure for Memoir Writers
-- Cross-Dressing for Poetry: Poems for Prose Writers
-- Writing Out Loud: Crafting Essays for the Ear
-- Politics & Poetics: Writing Yourself Into/Onto the World
-- The Journey Within: Travel Writing and Transcendence

Finances-wise, it’s currently in line behind a new mountain bike and an iPod dock to replace my clunky, ancient stereo. A weekend workshop $25o plus housing; a full week, $500+.

Doesn’t hurt to think about it …

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A phone call, and a dream

Conversation with him the other day – the one who broke my heart so badly, more than two years ago now. Been slowly forging a “normal” friendship since last summer, when one last go-round proved we really never are going to get back together. Still a bit stilted (the discomfort of not being able to be that intimate with someone you once were so intimate with), but getting better with practice. He’s started to open up about the woman he’s been seeing.

“I have something I want to tell you,” he said, eventually.
“You’re pregnant,” I blurted out, trying to be funny.
Only I wasn’t far off. “They” aren’t pregnant yet – but trying.

The only thing that hurts is realizing it doesn’t hurt anymore – it finally, really doesn’t – and so how to define myself without all that angst and drama? I lived with it so long, I don’t know myself without it.

Now I feel compelled to share everything I’ve gone through in these past two years – really, he doesn’t know anything of my life since him – and I don’t really know why I want to tell him. My therapist would ask (again) why I want to remain “friends” with him anyway. But he’s a part of me; that past is what made me who I am now. Maybe it’s that past me I’m seeking verification/approval from? Permission to move on?

I woke the next morning from an intense dream in which Miz K and I were in an escapade with Scooby Doo and Shaggy. I am not kidding – and while I recognized, in my sleep, the comedic value of this, it was still a bit frightening. (We were our badass selves, btw – not those ridiculous Daphne/Velma stereotypes). And when Fred called from that psychedelic Mystery Machine, it was his voice. And he warned us (Miz K and I) that we’d better be using condoms. And later we realized it was because he’d been sleeping with both of us. This dream goes right to the top of the WTF file.

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Whose idea was this, anyway?

-- edited for content --

I’ve tried to hermit up this weekend to start writing my pieces. It is sloowww going. Right now it feels more like a book report for history class; no life to it. I’ve tried to start with my own gut impressions … but I think it’s time to venture into the seven notebooks I compiled over nine days. ...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOOT!

Krista said...

yeah...that dream is a WTF!! i've had lots of those over the past couple years myself. strange how our subconcious works, eh?

and...for the record...i am so NOT getting into a bikini, but i am so IN for frisbee.

besos...k

Lincoln Writer said...

Actually, I've never really figured out the whole frisbee -- sorry, copyright people, I mean plastic flying disc -- thing. Can't flick my wrist right or something. Just another way I've disappointed myself, like the way I can't roll my R's ... no flicking or rolling for me ...

Anonymous said...

Crazy dreams? I did yoga in the nude the other night in one of mine for all to see (but no cartoon characters or recognizable faces were present).

Hmm. The comments to be left about those menfolk is still being put together in my head. Bitterness. My thoughts on them are still clouded by bitterness.

But I'm so excited for you, that you've accomplished so much in the time you've currently had without him. Just think about how awesome that is. My hero!

Lincoln Writer said...

That's just it, Miz Nealy ... I no longer define it as my life "since him," my life "without him."

This is now, simply, my life -- others surely will come and go and ebb and flow within it, but it is defined solely by my own growth and goals.

I am living on no one else's timetable; I wait for no one.

Anonymous said...

Nice post...thanks for sharing all these...well also drop by my blog on Friendship Cards and enjoy all the resources i've posted there!!!

Anonymous said...

What a way to live. I decided to adopt that philosophy. Thanks, Miz B!!