Luckily, my bodyguards took me walking this weekend, took me out, and helped me out. I have to flank them, I can’t even have my friends behind me.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot drawing near
No monkeys on my back, either, with the new year I cleaned out everything but my blog feeds. Tomorrow. I’m still working on busting my stash, too, but I think I’ve found a sewing buddy!
I <3 you. Probably. I do.
My stepmom requests a quilted thermos case and provides the fabric. Somewhere, a star collapses.
I wish that love did not require so many calculations.
Since what happened last Saturday I have been unhappy to be catsitting, alone, in this neighborhood west of Broadway.
The cat’s footfalls are heavy enough to give me a scare every time she moves in another room. Even my mother’s imposition is slightly less unwelcome, given that she was, at least, another body in the house.
Yesterday we had a bad-sitcom moment. I walked in after work, carrying groceries, bags, etc., and nearly fell from slipping on kibble all over the floor, which I hadn’t even seen. I had forgotten to put the dry food canister back on a high shelf and the cat had knocked it off the washing machine, spilling food everywhere. And she was still after me to feed her.
Anyway, I’m not moving. I love my apartment.
What I meant to say was, thank you. Maybe one reason why I hate Christmas is that people are more mindful of being kind at this time of year, like you shouldn’t be that way year round. Easy to say, I know.
I should have said thank you to Donovan for being so kind to me. Once, many moons ago, we had some sort of tiff after which I wrote him off (!). And that’s what I do, but one day a lonely little email showed up in which he said he missed me.
That has happened again, with other people, and it makes me realize how unexpected forgiveness always is. And how I’m never the one to make that move. Hell, I’m hardly ever even the one to call people to go out, or invite people over. How do I expect friendships to even happen?
Best of luck with your Christmas, if you celebrate it. I will be having breakfast twice, a good portent, but with bad company. Wish me luck, too ; )
More camera cases! For Donovan. My stash keeps on growing, I keep making gifty things and yet there is still so much fabric left over.
Linna makes things happen. That’s her superpower. All this camera case can do, unfortunately, is keep super bad scratches from happening. Better than nothing? And in pink!
All the best to Linna and YOU this Christmas!
Ever since seeing Callie’s uber-cute new French boots paired with opaque tights and a little skirt, I’ve had a bee in my bonnet about getting a half slip so I can steal her style. I pulled out the rolled-hem foot to get this one going, but had regrettably cut the pieces halfway on the bias. Damn (and how do you even do that, that is a special sort of mistake!).
If you disregard how slovenly the hem is, and that the waist, with its double-fold elastic, is a little too loose, I have a quite serviceable half slip now. If only I could get Allie’s legs.
It’s not as cold as it has been, but sleeping on Tommy’s porch was cold enough. We stayed up all night since he got a case of Miller for the holidays and we smoked a bowl each. His cousin was over at his place, the one with the red streak in her hair, but I couldn’t get up the nerve to talk to her.
She has this dog, a big black and white dog, and so I’d go pat it and get close to her and she’d coo at it and look at me and I couldn’t say a thing. I smiled at her. She told Tommy once she liked my eyes cuz they’re blue and all, but I never asked her out. Like I said, I never even talked to her.
We were playing PlayStation for a while and then Tommy and his lady went to bed. His cousin left and I was just there, wondering why I didn’t make a move. I got tomorrow off so I played more PlayStation and had another beer. My hands started to freeze on the controller, so I went to the porch looking for that blanket they keep there.
When she left, Tommy’s cousin, she gave me this look through the screen door like she was trying to leave without waking a small kid, like she was looking at me to make sure I didn’t get up after her. She’s not big at all, but she didn’t even open the screen door much, she tried to make the opening as small as possible and keep it quiet and leave in small moves. I think she lives over by the bowling alley, I wonder if I should go to the lanes more. Hang out front. See if she ever walks by.
When I got up for that blanket I found a beer I had left on the porch. It was cold, so I wrapped my sleeve around my hand to hold the bottle and sat down on the big ol chair out there, it was covered in that dog’s hair and the blanket wasn’t what I remembered. It wasn’t much, that blanket, but my eyes started closing and next thing I knew I was awake in the fucking cold and it was light out.
My hat was in my pocket so I put it on. What they got out here for when the lights change are bird sounds in the light signals. I sat out there for a good long time, and every time the light changed another sound came out. A girl came by and she reminded me just like of Tricia in fourth grade. A real girl. She had on a big ol jacket but I could see her nalgas in her blue pants and she had hair, you know, like long hair, and the wind was blowing it and I saw that she was like really close to me, like walking right by with her hands in her pockets.
And I thought, how often does this happen, and I wanted to know where she was going. She was moving, she was singing something, and she kept walking. When I ran after her my keys started shaking, they were still in my pocket, and she heard me. She turned around and looked at me, she had black eyes, she was like what I had been dreaming and then I woke up and there was this girl, right there in front of me.
I was gonna say hi, I was gonna do it. I was gonna see where she was going. She turned the corner and I ran to catch up again and she stopped. She looked at me and said hi. I stopped running but not fast enough, I had passed her, so I turned back around. I started to ask her if she knew where something was, just to talk to her, then I moved close to ask her, to really ask her, you know? And it made her nervous and she pulled her keys out of her pocket to show me and told me she didn’t have any money.
Like I wanted her money! I felt all warm and I wanted to touch her face, it was gonna feel like suede, I got up right by her, and I told her But you’re just so beautiful! That’s it, I was telling her! But she stepped back, and I had to keep moving, to get near her face, and she tried to kick me. She was no longer pretty, she was yelling No at me, and I got nervous one of the neighbors was gonna hear her. I moved in, I was gonna tell her to keep it down, she was gonna wake people up, but she just kept it up.
I was thinking I should get closer, I still wanted to put my hand into her hair, but she had stopped trying to kick me and she was looking at me right in the eye. No. She looked like a bull, her head was lowered for the charge and her nostrils were like barrels. No No No. Her hands were all bunched up. Her face was pretty again.
I was tired, really tired. I wanted to get closer but she had moved back, was almost to the corner. If I went after her I’d be on 40th, people out there, she was running across the street now, still staring at me, and I went back to Tommy’s. Damn those keys, she could hear me coming. She looked me right in the eyes when she stopped, she was looking at me.
Sometimes Tommy’s cousin, she don’t look at me when she’s over there, it’s not even like I like that bitch that much. Thinks she’s too good to talk to me, not like I ever really tried talking to her, she’d rather talk to that dog of hers, that dog can’t even talk back. I had gotten really hot, like my hands were fucking irons and I took my hat off. And I still didn’t know where that girl was going.
************
And that is why I will never cross Broadway again. Stupid catsitting.
