Each apartment in our building has its own little cellar space, about a 10×10 space with an infinite capacity for cobweb storage, and possibly also mouse habitation. Friday night we cleaned out the cellar. Well, sort of we did. We started cleaning it and then Squire shut the door with the keys inside, and so then we spent some time breaking down the door, and then we cleaned it some more, and then I realized I was sweeping a dirt floor, so we stopped. It was a whole-building thing, all of us down there in our grubbiest clothes, some wearing babushka headscarves (ala Russia, not ala Kate Bush) and groaning at the smell and the dust and the only-blame-yourself human habit of saving things we don't love until they are moldy and horrid. It was quite an evening. Some other cellar owners had piled their stuff right outside our door, so we couldn't actually take most of our stuff out of our room; we just stacked it neatly inside the door. The truck came today to pick it all up, and it was a moment of liberating excitement for me – soon, all this crap will be gone! – but then the truck got full before the movers got as far as our cellar. So we have neatly stacked piles of mouldering cardboard boxes and stuff now, yay.

I look very enticing with cobwebs in my hair, I have to say. And I think Friar REALLY enjoyed tearing the old wardrobe apart with basically a hammer and his bare hands (all our larger tools are at the cotthut). It turns out it wasn't the worst way to spend a Friday night, destruction and clearing away rubbish. I am comfortably sore today, the way you are when you strain your muscles doing Something Useful, like helping a friend move or waxing a floor or anything like that. It would have been better if we had actually had the stuff taken away, of course, but that part almost wasn't surprising. I haven't gotten that optimistic about life in the last week or anything. And I did the parts that I could do, which is perfectly fine.

And so it is like this: 4:30 in the morning and I have shoved at insomnia
for an hour before admitting it won. Lying in the dark, trying not to
toss and turn, playing the trick my grandmother taught me of counting
all the body parts and how they were sleepy, unable to focus on a
single muscle without also cataloging every injury, every insult.

Your toes are sleepy, I tell myself. Toes, you are very sleepy! And
also he had no business telling me I was irresponsible for not
finishing the project; we were moving across the country the next week
and I think it was unreasonable to expect a seventh grader to make up
sentences for 20 vocabulary words when her family is nearly off its
hinges.

Insteps, you are sleepy; stay still and stop twitching. Think long
relaxing thoughts! And Dennis standing at the foot of the bed and he's
going to fucking kill me, rip me apart, and so again
I am sleeping on the couch in the office where I work.

Heels, to heel. And the place where I passed out on the floor of
the bathroom, cracking my head against the tiles, and they told me it
couldn't be a gas leak because gas smells bad.

I'm not up to
my knees, I'm not even at the fidgety parts yet, and why do I store so
much that makes me sad, and what is it that wakes me at three in the
morning and says let's think about all the bad places you've left instead of let's think of all the good places you went to.

Listen, I keep everything. I remember everything. On good days I am
able to say that I got to live with a beautiful woman who made paper by
hand and who had all of Leonard Cohen's recordings on reel-to-reel
tapes that were copies of copies and scratchy from being loved so much;
that my boss went out and got me McDonald's for breakfast and told me I
was radiant even with office couch creases on my cheeks; that
California turned out pretty well. But this month has been a month of
sleeplessness, and remembering all the bad places I've slept is not the
worst catalog I've got, but none of my catalogs are all roses either.
Be patient with me. I know good things and I'll tell you them soon.

I started off the morning crying, as one does when one works from home
and does not need to explain anything to anybody in a neighboring
cubicle. I also wear sweatpants! and a flannel cardigan with two
buttons missing, upon which I wiped my poor leaky eyes. Get this: last
night I was explaining to my friend over I think the eleventyth glass
of wine that one of my many superpowers is the ability to make my
friends cry. And then this morning I made mySELF cry! Truly we have
traveled down a road and back again.

Then I got a letter from the translator that I did the Castles book
with, back in the day, and he told me how I was awesome, and then my
day brightened considerably. Mood swing dancing: It is not for the
faint-hearted.

I
listened to 80s radio today while I did all the clever things that fill
my day. I don't usually listen to the radio because it is very
difficult to cut a dangling modifier free when one is pondering the depths of
Bronski Beat at top volume, but today I decided I deserved it. While I
don't want to crow "those were the days, back when lyrics meant
something" in the key of my dad, when I realize perfectly well that I
come from the decade that brought you "mama say mama sa mama koosa"
(though, to be fair, even that MEANT SOMETHING), I nevertheless feel
like my attempts to enjoy the music of Kids These Days are sort of
falling flat: I always go back to the Music of My Youth because I think
it's objectively better. Hey that was a long sentence. I'm just talking
about radio music, here, in case that's not obvious.

I finished Kavalier & Clay, much to the relief of everybody around
me. Man, I hated that book. I want somebody to explain to me how it got
such accolades, and I also want to never talk about it again.

Squire is back in school and it's going okay so far. He's also
restarting his Christian youth group and oh yeah that's another way I'm
awesome. I kind of want to talk about it but I feel like it's a whole
Parenting Philosophy thing and it just becomes exhausting to think
about. My day is considerably better than how it started, but I'm
nowhere near being ready to write something thoughtful. I've got a good thing on the burner, though.

Ducklings, I am sorry, I fully intend to write something marvelous every day but then I don't.

1. My grandmother could never keep pictures in frames. My parents have never in my memory had a front door that just opened. I've been trying to figure out what my perpetual house flaw is, since I am so nearly perfect in all ways. I have finally realized it, and it is tragic and obvious: I cannot get curtains that close all the way over the window. Think of the metaphorical implications I KNOW. Imagine the stress of trying to choose window dressings for the cotthut, nearing completion and currently draped in ripped bedclothes. Blinds? Curtains? What am I less likely to mess up? It was a feast of quandariness. I finally picked orange blinds. I will take pictures even if they don't fit.

2. By "nearing completion" I mean most of the walls are done. Not the electricity or the exterior or the painting or anything like that. Just: After 3 years, we have a roof and three walls. Woot. Come visit.

3. I have an odd affection that I only realized last year for putting pictures of things next to things that are related. To wit: I have a picture of a man smoking beside the door leading to the balcony where we smoke; I have a picture of water next to the plants (remember to water them, get it?), I actually have a picture of a door next to a door. So I really wanted to get a great picture to put beside the bed, because, well. When I saw these pictures I couldn't even narrow it down, because I loved them all and they were all perfect (the unlikely friendship between the winged whale and the octopus was particularly appealing) but then… skeletons! It was too good. And then about 3 nights after we hung it up I was Tired Beyond Reason and Inexplicably Sad as befits my advancing age and Friar leaned over me and brushed my hair back and talked and talked and talked to me, telling me stories intricate, and I fell asleep to the sound of his velvet radio voice and a centipede curled around my neck and I thought: good choice.

4. Also, I cut my thumb. I took a picture of it some 4 days after, so it is not THAT dramatic but I still get to invoke Sylvia Plath if I want to. So there.

I took some pictures of our recent trip stateside. If anybody wants stories, I will tell them. I am currently wondering why people tell stories in general, and am too obsessed with that train of thought to launch into one of my own, unprompted. Anyway. It was a good trip. I hope our suitcases show up soon.

I was explaining the suffix -er and how it's a comparative, and then thought it best to mention how the suffix can also mean "one who" since a teacher is obviously not "more teach". Then I thought about the suffix -est and the suffix -ist and started on a riff about how when -ist means "the one who" it is a one who maybe does a superlative job or makes superlative money. A typist is obviously more professional than a typer. A chemist makes more than… uh. And then I was in a chemistry lab and I hadn't done the prep work for the experiment. And then I woke up.

Dear brain, how can you entertain me with such varied things on a Saturday morning and yet forget for a full half-hour that I drank beet juice Sunday night before bed? I do not like my Monday morning to feature panic. That is okay brain I like you anyway.

Yes thank you I am perfectly aware that one is supposed to separate the act from the person and say "that thing that you did is disgusting" and not "you are disgusting" but you know what? YOU pull a handful of weeks-old bread crumbs and mealworms from your twelve-year-old's backpack and you tell me owning your words is at the top of your list.

I found awesome waterproof mascara that becomes waterproof upon contact with skin. This means that I can weep it off with the same amazing speed that I weep off all other make-up, and then I get these puddles under my eyes that will not come off without elbow grease, special pads, under-eye make-up remover, and scrubbing.

I spent nearly an hour re-reading old love letters today. I was looking for a specific one but I fell down a hole in which I had shouted "I love you" over and over again and 20 years later it was still echoing around. Very weird, that young woman who was very much me, with the same humor and the same way of unfolding thoughts, and also so… naked with her feelings.

The cat snores. That's unusual, right?

1. One thing I'm not writing about because I've said all I can say.
2. One thing I'm not writing about because I feel like it makes me angrier to talk about it.
3. One thing I'm not writing about because I don't know what I think, and I tend to not discuss feelings until I've made up my mind.

The result of this being that every time I sit down to write, these things are uppermost in my head. Yay.

Squire left for "school in nature" this morning; Friar and I fought last night over who got to make his sandwich for the bus because we totally aren't going to miss him at all.

It is raining and cold again today. The petunias are falling apart.

I do
not suggest reading about Harry Harlow's experiments on rhesus monkeys
as it opens a very unpleasant door in the brain and continues opening
more, and yet you do not learn much that you didn't already know.I suggest that you skip ahead in the thought and just hug some people that you like. I  would hug you right now, if I could.

We had company.

ONE
It's a white room, I think it's white, and I think that either all the edges are perfectly squared off or maybe they're all slightly rounded since the devil hides in corners. There is nothing in the room but a bed, and the bed is very comfortable and the sheets are cool and crisp at first and then soft around your body. The pillow is perfect. The room is room temperature. There are no pictures, no furniture besides the bed. There is a window in the ceiling so you can see the sky and get natural light if you want, and there are perfect shutters if you decide you don't want natural light. There are no windows in the walls so there is nothing to see when you look straight ahead but the walls that are perfectly square or maybe rounded. There's a door with a slot and through that door come three bland but nutritious meals a day, and they come and you eat them or don't sometime before the next meal comes. I haven't worked out the bathroom yet because this is imaginary but on the fly I'm going to say there's a small room off to the side and there is a shower that runs hot water as long as you want, but no bath because baths are ultimately unsatisfying. There is soap that doesn't smell like anything really. There is absolutely nothing to do but sleep, shower, and eat. The most important part of this room is that outside the room, time has come to a perfect standstill; you are missing absolutely nothing. You can stay in the room as long as you want. Sometimes it is all I can think about.

TWO
Sometimes I think any story I tell is basically like this video, which is amazing and disturbing. The story starts off all "here's this thing" and then about three minutes in I am so moved by my own emotion that I start crying.

THREE
Weeping through the story that I told only because I thought there was nobody listening is another thing I have in common with Prufrock. That and the growing old. Eliot was only 27 when he wrote Prufrock; if he'd stayed in America he would have had to kill himself like a proper rock star. I had a baby which is how I got out of choking on my own vomit or a shotgun muzzle or whatever else does you in at 27. I think my masterwork is pretty awesome.