crankville.

You know it’s gotten bad when you have to leave sticky notes for roommates apologizing for your crankiness. Just call me cait-crabby-mc-crabster eh? Even my past entries on here have been a little..hmm..disgruntled? I consciously thought today while walking through the quad that I am due for a “sprinkles, puff paint, if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” type of post. But now that I am sitting here I realize that at this moment I don’t even have enough energy to bluff it.
Somehow, the dark cloud of midterms slowly rolled in without me even realizing it. Hey, where’d my sunshine go!? I am having one of those days when you keep telling yourself to breathe because, thank God you have enough self-awareness to at least try and calm down. But when you take a breathe it’s like you can’t quite push the oxygen down to that deep spot that is gasping for a little peace of mind. So I am sitting here bleary eyes on a bright screen, shallow breathes mixed with hits of caffeine. And let me tell you..quite the model pose.

I once heard that right after a woman gives birth, endorphins are released that induce a euphoria-like state. So much so, that the memory of oh, I don’t know…., maybe the MOST physically painful experience of her life, is somewhat blocked out and “Wha-la!” look who is ready to be preggie again. I don’t know if this is medically accurate or not but if so, thats a dirty sneaky trick Mother Earth! All that to say, I feel like something very mysteriously similar must happen with school. When I am out of school I float around talking about how much I LOVE school, how I want to be with it my whole life and how cait and school are sittin in a tree, k.i.s.s.i….wait no. But really, all these lovey, dreamy, feelings about school pump through my bloodstream . Ones that make me happy to just stand for hours in school supply aisles at the drug store and countdown the days till I get to go to office hours and open crisp new notebooks. I mean if thats not euphoria I don’t know what is? Yet, here I sit mid-school-contraction (ew sorry…bad visual) and all I can think is “I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.”

I’ll be ok though, I have just turned on some sexy sexy Al Green and sent up a “God do you see me down here stressin? a little help please?” prayer. I am due for another trip back to the coffee pot, and can at least thank God that he had the presence of mind to create that pretty little brown bean to carry me through these long nights. Nice one.

And I swear the sprinkles are coming soon.

some ground rules

There are some certain responsibilities that come with being the single girl studying in a coffee shop. I know this. And I happily welcome anyone to share my table, I certainly don’t need to take up the whole thing. So please come, sit, share my plug, introduce yourself, we should get along fine. In fact many of friends have been made this way.

However, everyone knows there are certain rules, or rather..social norms for sitting in extreme proximity with a stranger. I was under the impression that these were universally understood and explicitly written into the coffee shop constitution …. apparently not?

So for the record if you plan on sharing a table at a coffee shop with a stranger and I am that stranger please apply the following:
1. No singing aloud

2. No reading aloud

3. No clicking your pen incessantly to the beat of your ipod– when I can pick up a beat from your incubus song via clicking, you have crossed the line

4. NO STARING…we are sitting 2 feet apart, I know this is hard to believe, but I can see you

5. No matter how many times you say, “aw shit!”..I am not going to ask you whats wrong, so you can stop that now.

6. You can also stop saying “thats so funny” to yourself, I am not going to ask you what is so funny. So you can stop that now too.

7. Did I say no staring?

8. And the most important: Don’t whistle to that song from your ipod. In fact, please don’t whistle period because I am so close to you I can feel the air you are blowing on the side of my neck. But if you absolutely must whistle why don’t you whistle along to that nice James Taylor song that is playing in the background? Because is it just me or is whistled Incubus trying to harmonize with James Taylor just about the most stress inducing clamoring you can think of?

9. Really, if you don’t stop I WILL stick my finger in that little whistle hole

is this too much to ask?

thats all.

tap. tap.

Rained last night, only a few droplets of evidence remained on car windows this morning. Just as I was getting ready for bed last night I heard it falling. The only proper response of course, was to fling my cracked window as wide open as I could, pull an old hoodie over my head, nestle deep into my sheets and just listen as I fell asleep.

I awoke this morning to huge billowy white & gray clouds flying across a bright blue sky. Yes, thats what I said, B.L.U.E… not gray, not tan, beige, hazy, smoggy, orange, or brown..no it was blue, crisp freshly washed blue. Fall had announced her arrival overnight. I celebrated today by pulling out the so-nerdy-it’s-hot- sweater vest that I have had waiting patiently in the wings for, oh I don’t know,..a perfect day like today.

I don’t know what it is that makes me absolutely smitten with this season. You’ll have to excuse the 700 more references to fall that I am likely to make over the next few months on here. Everyone is buzzing with new schedules, bundling up, and loosing their leaves that I am just beside myself. I love the way September & October return to the basics with high expectations and purpose. And I guess for a girl who can get lost in the clouds a little too often, being pulled close to the earth, back to reality, and back to the grindstone, finds me feeling surprisingly inspired, focused, and at home in my sweater covered skin.

cheers

and exhale…

Caitlin and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Fridays Original to-do list:

1. Sleep in

2.Make lunch for Jen and I

3. Go help out in Jens classroom

4. Study at the coffee bean

5. Go for Bike ride

6. catch up on emails & phone calls

7. Go to Nursery and get plants for front yard

8. Concert at Mosaic with the girls

 

Fridays Actual To do list:

1. woke up early from incessant barking dogs

2.made lunch

3. opened my car door to see my glove box open and all it’s contents strewn through my car

4. realized my backpack and every book, binder, note from the semester gone

5.1/2 a second later realized I had stuffed my wallet in my backpack while cleaning my car the night before

6. Told myself I “know better” than to be so careless

7. Cursed the Heavens

8. called bank

9. called credit card company

10. bank again

11. Dad

12 Mom

13. bank again

14. Western Union

15. credit fraud alert agencies

16. police

17. searched email for professors info because lost all that in my notebooks

18. call all professors

19. email professors

20. call bookstore- need books for tests on Monday

21. get reprimanded by angry bookstore lady

23. Realize that my spare set of keys for house and car, of course…were in my car

24. Curse the Heavens again

25. go to bookstore..with credit card #’s, signatures, copies of parents id’s and any other “jump through the hoop-prove that you are you” item that you could dream up

26. reprimanded by bookstore lady again

27 wait 45 minutes while they “see what they can do”

28. again.. a little mercy? I cry “Uncle!”… I am reprimanded

29. fallowed by uncontrollable crying breakdown in middle of bookstore

30. embarrassed

31. allowed to ONLY buy 1 book..because obviously crying girl is trying to pull a fast one on the school by making fake copies of about 1,000 forms of ID so we will allow her to make “one fraudulent” purchase..ya know just to be nice

32. calls are made inferring a call to school president

33. return to bookstore and am magically allowed to buy all new needed $500 of books

34. meanwhile locksmith is changing house locks

35. I get call from someone saying they have found all my credit cards and license in the street in front of their house

36. I beg them to let me kiss their feet, walk their dog and make them cookies for a a year

37. they also return my keys..about 15 minutes after locks on house have been changed

38. hallelujah?

39. Notice that my car key has been pulled off of keys prior to them being chucked

40. creeper

41. of course, gulp…receive terrible news from a friend on unrelated issue

42. thank god for at least having the decency to pour all the crap on me on the same day rather than stringing it over a few days

43. mope home

44. BUT… make it home in time for Girls night- concert, dive bar and a little of this…

And that is the story of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day..with a pretty dang good ending.

 

 

 

 

Joshua Tree

 Love this.

The world is full of people who will go their whole lives and not actually Live one day.

She did not intend on being one of them.

Strong

Two weeks ago Jen and I packed up my little car and headed over to San Luis for the day. A last ditch effort to savor the summer that was soon to slip from our grasp. It was one of those perfect days. Over-sized travel mugs filling every available cup holder, windows down, I drove and Jen d.j.’ed. Billboards, smog, and traffic faded slowly into roadside fruit stands and cows speckled on rolling green hills (my header was taken on this trip). A chance for me to visit some old favorite college romps and for Jen to visit some favorite childhood spots. We filled ourselves with fruit from the Avila valley barn, picked up sandwiches from my favorite deli, wine tasted, and picnicked on the sunniest, grassiest hill we could find. We sat munching and overlooking the whole valley talking about all the secrets we could possibly indulge ourselves in. It was a perfect day, and also a hard day. Its surprising sometimes the power the past has over you, old places, old friends, the way things have changed, and how you have managed to simultaneously be living the exact life and nothing like the life you thought you would be living by the age of 23. You wonder when you will have peace and assurance sitting in the palm of your hand. When does the time come when you get to reflect and only taste sweet nostalgia?

I know this, I know that it doesn’t work that way. That all those mishaps, and great big craters of ignorance I drove into, all those ugly parts of my life, they are mine and I own them. Just as I own the moments when I seemed to be sailing through the world on my own little personal set of wings. I understand that it is the blend of the two that makes the past digestible, that lets it somehow become nourishing, the mere contrast of the two accounts for the real beauty.

We went for a long hard run across the East West ranch in Cambria, miles of hills and trails that sit above jagged ocean cliffs. The perfect aesthetic buzz to ease the pain of pushing our tired calves uphill. A fresh morning, we re-hashed the previous days events. Funny how running does that, physically, emotionally, it all just comes rushing out as you gasp for air. One big fat cleanse, yes!As we pushed up our last hill Jen said,

“ya know, we are strong women Cait. Not just running like this, but living, surviving. Being on our own.”

I think I would like to believe that. It didn’t feel that way last night. Sitting on the couch on the verge of tears, feeling like my 23 year old “steady” self had just been hijacked by my 18 year old “flailing” self. Strength? Where God? Sometimes it seems like old self is about half a decision away from creeping back and taking complete control. Thankfully there was no meltdown, it was more just a reminder that the the path of redemption isn’t all lollipops and dandelions, well, at least not every day. Strength is now less about brute force, and valiant independence. Those can and have been easily mastered. These days strength is all about holding onto something much deeper and rawer. Holding on for dear life to a place where there is a bit more awareness and compassion, and maybe even a little more reality. And a lot of the time it is just knowing when to take a breathe and remind myself that I am ok.

A great woman sent this to me a few years ago, Feels appropriate for today.

a strong woman is a woman who is straining.

 

a strong woman is a woman standing

 

on tiptoe and lifting a barbell

 

while trying to sing boris godunov.

 

a strong woman is a woman at work

 

cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,

 

and while she shovels, she talks about

 

how she doesn’t mind crying, it opens

 

the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up

 

develops the stomach muscles, and

 

she goes on shoveling with tears

 

in her nose.

 

 

a strong woman is a woman in whose head

 

a voice is repeating, i told you so,

 

ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,

 

ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,

 

why aren’t you feminine, why aren’t

 

you soft, why aren’t you quiet, why

 

aren’t you dead?

 

 

 

a strong woman is a woman determined

 

to do something others are determined

 

not to be done. she is pushing up on the bottom

 

of a lead coffin lid. she is trying to raise

 

a manhole cover with her head, she is trying

 

to butt her way through a steel wall.

 

her head hurts. people waiting for the hole

 

to be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.

 

 

 

a strong woman is a woman bleeding

 

inside. a strong woman is a woman making

 

herself strong every morning while her teeth

 

loosen and her back throbs. every baby,

 

a tooth, midwives used to say, and now

 

every battle a scar. a strong woman

 

is a mass of scar tissue that aches

 

when it rains and wounds that bleed

 

when you bump them and memories that get up

 

in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

 

 

 

a strong woman is a woman who craves love

 

like oxygen or she turns blue choking.

 

a strong woman is a woman who loves

 

strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly

 

terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong

 

in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;

 

she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf

 

suckling her young. strength is not in her, but she

 

enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

 

 

 

what comforts her is others loving

 

her equally for the strength and for the weakness

 

from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.

 

lightening stuns. in rain, the clouds disperse.

 

only water of connection remains,

 

flowing through us. strong is what we make

 

each other. until we are all strong together,

 

a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

 

:::marge piercy:::

blogdom,bloggies,all blogged-out..

Dearest Blog,

It’s been awhile. And truth be told you’ve missed a lot. I know, I know. You’ve sat here patiently waiting arms held out to me with the the whole world wide web at your fingertips. Promised updates and updates never came.  And for whatever it’s worth, I really meant to tell you all about all the fun I had, all the places I went, the people I met and the ways that I was changed.  But sometimes there is just too much. And sometimes trying to cough it out in words seems to be a disservice to the moment itself.  I knew you would understand. But it is fall, my favorite, school is in session, leaves are turning, change and magic are on Septembers breathe…

So in honor of all that, and well maybe also a blogging assignment for journalism class, I will be stopping by to chat a little more often.

love always,

Caitlin