I didn't talk about Halloween once.

Boy howdy. There is jazz playing in the kitchen where coffee sits, cooling in a jug. Two hours ago I ate Greek yogurt with honey and French Vanilla granola crumbles. I love that consistency: dry and crunchy with the smooth, thick texture of yogurt. I am sitting on the back porch and there are three hammocks, but I am sitting on the old side-to-side rocker with blue pillows. My brain is overflowing with caffeine, but in the bad-dragging sort of way. I feel left out. Isn't that strange? I shut myself away, yet I feel like I have no friends. I do have a friend, but she is in Asheville making her own life. And I never thought that day would come. I always thought we'd be together, sharing beds like Victorian-era sisters.

The friends I did have, and sometimes still have, make lives of their own and I sit alone, stewing. I am complacent, however, in my stewing. It's a bad stew; where all the beans are too small and the vegetables cut into gargantuan hunks. I can't lie with words and say everything is "hunky dory". I still feel depressed, and I thought after all these years of medication, therapy, no medication, vitamins, exercise and good thoughts I would be rid of this disease on my mind. It is so horrific. The world is like plump, juicy fruits on a golden platter and I wave my hand in front of my nose and turn my back to it. I can see the beauty, I can see it. And I hate myself for not appreciating it. I am a first-world kind of girl. Yes, corporations are corrupt and banks are corrupt but god, I feel so damn lucky. I am able to love and I have a good-working body and an imagination. (And even though I want to protest and be apart of a community, I don't feel like the 99%). But this isn't a rant about Occupy Anything.

I'm not trying to "boo hoo" my situation, but imagine if things happened and you couldn't feel them. Imagine if a constant cloud shrouded your head, and events unfolded in slow motion. Your boyfriend or girlfriend argues with you, and you want to laugh. It's not funny. Here is this person who loves you and is frustrated with you and you want to laugh. You think it's cliche. Stormy music in the background would complete the D-list movie. It's terrible.

I don't make enough money, but wait, my schooling is free. Wait, I'm able to go to school. I have opportunity. I have a chance. This is turning into a rant, I don't want this to be a rant. I feel like Carlyle, who had no many points and not enough room to make them all so he repeats and repeats and repeats. He must have been so frustrated. I'm frustrated too, with no one but myself. Sometimes there is no solution. I can get existential: there are no solutions, all the time. Haha. But I don't know that.

Bob Dylan just sang his heart out in my kitchen and my lesson in German begins in less than an hour. I have not read the chapter. I am very aware that I have not read it. I gave myself a break last night (I had just taken my Feminist Poetry midterm) and drank a beer, then a glass of wine, then a beer and fell asleep to Star Trek: Next Generation. What will Captain Picard do next?

out here in the boonies

I thought having a blog would change my horrible habit of starting over new (every few months or so). It is like taking a self-portrait photograph and deleting it. You don't like what you see. The same with a hand-written journal. I see the person I used to be, and I don't like that person, but that must change. I should like all of me. So I hereby pledge to keep this blog, and try to write in it, and not delete what I write. I am not promising anything though.

I'm housesitting for a friend out in Monticello. Well, more like fifteen minutes outside of Monticello. The 45 minute drives don't seem so long anymore. Though I think since I've started housesitting (four days ago?), I have driven over 500 miles. That is like a trip to a place that is 500 miles away. That's a long way. The great thing about being out here is that I have limited internet. No more streaming videos. So I've been reading a lot, and thinking. And renting movies at Video 21.

Curtis is also here. He is the cute, plump dog. Peter (my boyfriend) calls him a "cow dog". We were standing outside this morning, after I moved around the sprinklers to water the gourds, when Curtis started rolling around in the grass. He got up and bounded toward us. I proceeded to try and push him over into the grass (which is so green and long and beautiful). I wanted to get him to play, but he is so large he cannot be pushed over. "It's like cow tipping," Peter said. "Curtis tipping!" ...except that he would not tip.

After that I drove Peter back into town. When we parted he sent me a text message saying that he would be able to attend classes after all (he was worried he would not get funding), because the department gave him a tuition waiver! I had just found out that the check I received for housesitting (part 1) didn't have my right last name. So I could not withdraw the money, which would have led me to renewing my license and registration, which is a month overdue, oh god...

I'm just driving really carefully. I decided, well I have no money, I'll go get a haircut. And I did, and it looks great.

So here I am, out past Monticello, waiting for Peter to get here. The windows are large and have no curtains, and being out in the boonies is like being in the ocean. I can't see beneath my feet. Are there things lurking around? Yes, most likely. But hopefully those "things" are raccoon's and snake's and huge ass skinks that make 'glup glup' noises (like the one I saw earlier, it made me go 'AH!'). Haha.