some sugar

I decided that I've had quite enough of feeling upset, out of sorts, weird, tired, angry, etc. I thought I should do something calming and useful. Something perhaps like what Cate would do.

For a couple years I've held several tiny glass bottles with scented oils she made. Lavender, cinnamon clove, orange. They all smell so good. Tonight I crack a cork out of the cinnamon clove bottle and made a sugar scrub to use in the shower. I got the idea from Althea. On my counter I have the exact same little jar shown in her picture, so it seemed like a really good plan.

I filled it up with a heaping cup of sugar, and saturated it with olive oil. Then I poured in the scented oil and stirred it up. I like it. It's on my desk at the moment, since Alan's in the shower trying to clear his head cold. But I'll use it soon.

in sickness and health

It is very grey, as every Ash Wednesday has been these last few years.

I worked out this morning and scrubbed myself down with my sugar mixture. I feel very soft now, and smell faintly of spices. This is nice.

For the past couple months I have noticed that while I write more on Livejournal, I have become much more selctive about what I do write. There was a time when every scrap of it was open and exposed. Now I am more reticent about the things I consider private, I am more conscious of the fact that this is read by so many people.

I've decided that some things in my life are just off limits to everyone. It's part of that selfish, arrogant streak in me. Maybe I just fear being told how banal and ordinary it all really is in the end. Maybe it's being married and being so conscious of having a different life than I did before.

How funny that of all the Metro crowd, the two people who seemed least ideologically suited to marriage and families have done exactly that.

Alan is sick, and I feel utterly helpless to do anything about it. Sinuses, allergies, a head cold. There's not much you can do but lock yourself in the bathroom and hope the steam clears your lungs enough to breathe, or that the medicine helps dry it out. I'm lucky, I suppose, that I don't get ill often. I can count my major illnesses on one hand, and while the cedars and pollens sometimes make my nose drip it's never serious. At least he's been sleeping for some time now.

It's a strange thing to love someone so much that you wake up in the night to check their breathing.

no one ever knows what's going on

Bored, bored, bored. I chant that under my breath while I pull maps off the cheap shelves behind my chair. The latest office snit is over "excessive" internet surfing, I hear. Every two months it is something different. Excessive use of expensive resources, excessive phone time, excessive breaks, smoking in the wrong place, parking your car in the wrong spot, coming in to the office too early, not taking long lunches, taking short lunches, leaving too early, leaving threatening notes for the day shift, not working eight hours a day to the second... and all of it is really bullshit when you get right down to it.

It's the obsession with perfect 8 hour days that drives me up the wall. Especially now that I have to use two entirely different time clock systems and make them match up for every hour of my week. It's petty, it's an excuse to have something to dangle over your head and threaten your job security.

The wind has been blowing all day. I nearly lost control of the car on the highway. That's such an unpleasant feeling, a ton of metal and glass sliding away beneath you because you had the impudence to shift gears just when the wind gusted. I want more cigarettes, or maybe dinner, but the thought of driving again makes my head hurt. Outside everything is swaying.

I would like it to be summer, and time for the Olympics. I love to watch them, everything from swimming to gymnastics to pole vaulting to javelin throwing. Sports I would never express interest in suddenly become fascinating because these people have put their lives into training for this moment. It's strange, and special. I remember watching my first Olympics in 1984, sitting on the floor in the living room of the house in Lubbock. I was four years old, and utterly crushed that it would be years before I could see it again. Back then I could do backwards somersaults on a balance beam. I wonder what happened to all that grace.

In 1988 I watched them on the same television in Austin, and had a leotard with Mary Lou Retton's name stitched on it. I saw Greg Louganis strike his head and go on to win two gold medals. I wrote about it during one of weekly essay exercises in third grade. That was the year I had a teacher who actually encouraged me to read, and I started the Talented and Gifted program. Thank you Ms Jordan, for encouraging me to use the word wept instead in cried and how I shouldn't be afraid to use words other people don't know.

In TAG, I wrote a play about three princes and three princesses and a troll. Somewhere in a box I have a bunch of medals from competitions, from elementary to high school. The ILPC ones are the ones I cherish most, because I fought so hard to get them in the end. Strange, I suppose, to be so shy and so quiet but oh so viciously competitive in some things. To compromise, I cultivate an attitude of uncaring.

Full of random memory tonight. It's the cold. I don't enjoy it, but I think better in it. I've been writing for thirty minutes and comped three certs in that time.