gypsyjolie

Hope you have a great birthday, valis2!! You're a wonderful, loving, funny, talented sister-in-law and I am so lucky to have you as mine... though I wish I could see you much more often! Have a lovely day, lady. *hugs* from me & Liam too.

What does it say about me that I am gorging myself on episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race, Big Love, and United States of Tara? Drag queens, Mormon polygamy, and multiple personality disorder, oh my! Bizarre.

Liam comes home NEXT FRIDAY. I cannot believe an entire year has passed. I wonder if he will think that I have changed at all while he was gone? I wonder if I will see ways that he has changed. I am a little nervous about how it will feel to have him here again, a witness to all the things I do or don't do, after a year led in solitude. I missed him terribly.

My Crusade to Defeat The Huge Piles Of Paper and Junk Mail is going surprisingly well tonight. How much do I love the shredder? Two bags full, that's how much. Plus, I found $20 in a birthday card from December and a donation receipt for taxes. Sweet.

I got a tattoo done this weekend. I have two beautiful lightly-blue barn swallows that fly between my shoulder blades. I chose them after I read about what swallow tattoos signified in Navy tattoo lore, about how since swallows migrate, they represent home and returning home. I think a lot about home. My husband is far away, deployed with the Army, and our home feels empty without him. I think of my Mom and sisters, too far away from where I sit now. My home here, with the new family of friends that grew up around me to help with the pain of being separated from the white farmhouse and parents that will always be "home" in my head, even after a decade away from those clotheslines. I think of a certain friend that became my big sister in those hard years of college, my home for several identity-making years, who always feels like home when I see her. Lifelines of friends that hold a little bit of you from other times and places that you used to call home, many of whom are far away and out of touch. Those swallows are all of them to me, and my throat is tight with missing them. Even the little ache of the new tattoo feels like homesickness. I will miss that reminder when it is healed over.

When you get a tattoo, you are supposed to wash it several times that first day with a mild, soothing bar soap, nothing antibacterial, no harsh washcloth, just your fingers tracing the lines over and over. I thought at first that I would not be able to take care of it, that I couldn't reach it. But as I pushed my muscles, one arm up over my shoulder and the other twisted backwards behind my back, my fingers can touch. I traced the entire length of my back with sudsy, soft fingers, light and soothing and it seemed important to me that I could do that. That I could do it myself. Like, You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours... but by myself. Meditatively, over and over, my fingers meeting and touching, circling and caring, a sort of circle in itself. A little zen love lesson, rubbing my own back like a mother does to a child that needs comfort. It seems important, somehow.

When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It

There has been almost no reading of books this week, after my obsession with reading many books a week lately. Dear Diary, I was distracted. Distracted in the form of escaping cats, that ever-present pesky work, travel plans, wedding gifts, a complete inability to do laundry despite an alarmingly empty underwear drawer. But over all this clutter, the King Of Distraction is Ewan MacGregor.

Perhaps you saw the BBC documentary called Long Way Round from a few years ago, in which the charming Ewan and his goofy bumbling best friend Charlie spend three months driving their motorcycles from the UK to New York "the long way 'round" - through Asia, China, Mongolia, Russia (not necessarily in that order). Bikes break, border crossing are treacherous, they eat dubious food with natives that do not speak a shared language. Man and best friend get fed up with each other and their stinky socks and have spats. Ewan has a doofy Everyman best friend - awwww. That was my kind of documentary!

I have just discovered that they did a second trip! Long Way Down is the second documentary, this time of their trip from the top of Scotland to the tip of South Africa, through Europe, over the Mediterranean, through Egypt, Libya, the desert, Ethiopia (surprisingly green), and several other African countries. They visit Unicef landmine-removal projects, Bikes For Health, a charity Ewan contributes to which provides dirtbikes to use in getting healthcare and vaccines to remote locations, and are in danger which requires armed guards to travel with them in Sudan. Bikes break, sandstorms wreak havoc, we get to see inside Roman ruins and pyramids, baboons frolic. It is all, as Ewan would say - Fantastic, in that cute Scottish accent.

There are six episodes, each an hour long. Last night I watched three of them while giving myself a home pedicure. What a way to spend an (entire) evening.

I am about to embark on another episode or two, while Oregon Trail downloads. Today was our friend Chad's wedding, and Liam was able to call my cell and speak to the happy couple from Cuba. I even had wedding cake. Perfection on the first day of summer. :)

Almost time to pack up and head back to Madison. This week, as all client installations, has flown by in spurts of great productivity and slogs of head-numbing grunt work. Salt Lake is a lovely city to be in. It is clean and beautiful and the Mormons care greatly about the community. It is a pride of place city, surrounded by mountains (some snowcapped, some green) that remind me of The Sound Of Music. I did take some time yesterday to wander with my camera, so pictures soon to follow on flickr.

Apparently, the Mormons know the secret antidote to the song that gets stuck in your head. It is to sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow, which ends in such a sweet lonely wistful ending that it is impervious to cycling through your head again, and thus finishes the spin of the other song in your head. I tried it, and though Laura claims it was the placebo effect, it worked. So now you are co-holders of powerful knowledge.

I feel strangely detached. I am not overly worried about my fledgling client - I think they have a good handle on the new software and we made a lot of efficent improvements to the way they had been doing things, so I do not leave in a fit of mother hen worries like I usually do. I am lonely for my Liam, but he is not home waiting for me at the end of my rainbow, so that cold ache will continue to sit in my chest for a while. I finished the good books that I brought with me, and am reduced to reading the third book that I picked up at the Denver USO, and it is not really worth reading. Perhaps there is nothing quite as sad as reading a book that holds no joy in the reading. It's akin to your best friend not calling you back when you are lonely. Also, I am out of Diet Coke, alas, alack.

So back to a few more things to do for the client, then to bed and up for the morning red-eye flight. I hope all of you get to sleep in tomorrow morning, lovies.

I miss fandom. Gone are those lovely days in which I was embroiled in the tidal wave of obsession with pretty boys and devastating women, when I could sink my geek into the Lord Of the Rings movies and fiction. That make me start my LJ and it made it fun to browse my Friends page in every moment I could spare. I had online friends and inside jokes and was creatively writing and daydreaming.

Almost three years later, my life is drier. Yes, I am happily married and own a home, love my family, am owned by two cats. I dream less, desire less, plant and clean more. If I am obsessed with anything, it's my job... which grows increasingly corporate and unsatisfying. Okay, maybe quilting - though that is not a hobby that inspired people to sit up and take notice. Katie (the endlessly moving, relentlessly witty, constantly thinking trickle of long-legged sunshine that she is) just spent a week with me. We talked and played and created things and were social. Her stories of college made me nostalgic for my college days, when new people sprung into my life and I was happily puzzling out who they were, who I was, and how we tasted mixed together.

I know, everyone settles down eventually.. Even Angelina Jolie put away her knives, erased a few tattoos, and is hunkering down behind a wall of children. I'm just not sure that I like this turn of events. I think that I shall make a concerted effort to start wearing makeup everyday, like I have someone to impress. I will find new music online, dance more around the house, buy clothing in something other than charcoal grey and chocolate brown. Maybe my new short hairdo, that red sweater from Goodwill that Sharon likes, and the tattoo I got in New Orleans can be the start of my comeback. I am tumbling down the hill to 35 but maybe I can salvage some youth still. I really don't know how to do the 30-something thing yet. I'd like to figure it out so that I can become that funny, creative, artsy lady writer with the long braid of salt-n-pepper hair that I've been imagining for my future since I was seventeen. But how to polish my sparkle in a way that is not as tedious as counting points in Weight Watchers or paying $30,000 to go back to college and get a Master's degree?

I want to glow. Now, where's the magic outlet to plug into?


All day
Staring at the ceiling
Making friends with shadows on my wall
All night
Hearing voices telling me
That I should get some sleep
Because tomorrow might be good for something
Hold on
I'm feeling like I'm headed for a
Breakdown
I don't know why
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
I know, right now you can't tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see
A different side of me
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired
I know, right now you don't care
But soon enough you're gonna think of me
And how I used to be
Me

Liam just called from Cuba! From his soon-to-be-office. He says it is 95 degrees or hotter, sweaty, with lizards running around. He doesn't have phone or internet yet, but will hopefully in a week or so.

I just can't stop smiling.

I am obsessed. Obsessed with quilting. I don't know why exactly, that this craft is my sole expression of creativity right now. Perhaps it is the sentimentality of doing what I think of as Mom and Grandma's specialty. Perhaps I feel so out of control with Liam off on deployment and out of phone reach that I am offsetting that feeling of helplessness with the uber control of cutting apart fabric into little pieces and then lining them up and sewing them back in patterns. Perhaps it is just the eye candy inspiration of the quilting books I've taken out from the library lately (I highly recommend this one, this one, this one, and this one in particular).

I am at work, busy with work, and all I want to do is go home and quilt. Even if my corners don't always line up and i know I'll have to re-square all my pinwheel blocks, I still want to go home and joyously, imperfectly, create a quilt. Or, um, three. Which would be the number of quilts I am concurrently working on.

I don't have pictures of the works in progress yet, but here is a photo of the little stuffed dolly and her doll quilt that I made for Grace for Easter:

Liam left this morning for his deployment to Cuba. I stayed with him at the hotel until his 4am call, but chose not to trail him to the airport. One tearful goodbye is bad enough without another one in front of his superior officers, we figured. I came home and fell into bed again but the cats only let me sleep for two hours before making insistent noises that I get up. I dreamed that I lived in a house with acoustical tile ceilings and that Chloe (my tortoiseshell cat) had learned to leap up and "walk" across the ceiling by digging her claws into the soft tile. It was a big relief when I became conscious enough to realize it was only a dream! I am buying a water pistol today though so I can get them to leave me alone. I'm not sure if it spring or if it is just lighter earlier or what, but they are being unbearable in the mornings.

Liam and I have had a wonderful couple of weeks - in fact, a wonderful eight months since he got back from Basic/AIT in July last year. Mary's visit over Easter was good, and out impromptu trip to Myrtle Beach was silly fun. I cannot complain but it makes the house this morning even colder and emptier.

New photos are up on flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/gypsyjolie/
The last shots of Liam before he left, crafts, my new glasses

Off to make a shopping list for some retail therapy as well as to replace a few things that Liam took with him. I'm hoping it'll help chase the blues away.