5 posts tagged “insanity”
I've just managed to force myself to sit down after twenty solid minutes of pacing around my apartment like an insane person. This wasn't aimless pacing per se -- I very much wanted to do one of the eight thousand things there are to do around here -- but picking a task and sticking to it proved impossible. My mind was like an agitated fly, settling on something for just a moment before taking off to haphazardly land on something else. I fear that nothing will be accomplished tonight.
My apartment looks like a wedding bomb exploded in it, followed shortly thereafter by a smaller travel bomb. The debris is substantial, to say the least: a backlog of mail, unused Hefty ziplock baggies, a heating pad, leftover wedding favors, a guest book, a mostly-empty shopping bag from Edward's Luggage, a half-unpacked suitcase, a crumpled dress shirt, a damp case of assorted booze, a stack of partially-opened gift boxes, a still-pristine (because Richard, not I, read it) copy of Shadow of the Hegemon, bits of ribbon, a souvenir DVD that our DVD player won't play, a list of owed thank-yous, a shell lei snaked around the handle of a 2007 Semantic Technology Conference bag ... and this is just what I can see from where I'm sitting at the kitchen table.
I feel softer than I have in a great long while (not using softer as a euphemism for fatter, though while we're on the topic I did eat like pig right up until the moment I couldn't keep any food in me). After leaving it behind for only a week, my life seems daunting and unnecessarily hard. I'm not sure how I go about doing the things I normally do, how I handle them all, or if I'm cut out for any of it. Granted, now is not the best time for such weighty considerations. It's my first hour apart from my new husband in over a week, and my first full day back from my honeymoon in the South Pacific. I've been away from the office for two weeks. The events I just spent the past four months planning are over, and everything I put off during that time is waiting at my front door. I suppose I should give myself the space to feel a bit spacey.
So I decided to sit down, eat a bowl of Simple Chicken soup from Zao Noodle Bar, and think about things. First, I thought about how the Simple Chicken dish seems to have gotten a bit more complicated. And by "a bit more complicated" I mean "with fatty and gristly weird chicken bits in it". Perhaps I'm hypersensitive given my tender tummy, but the eating was replaced with idle poking nonetheless.
In the past, I've spent a lot of time marveling at how resilient people are. We can take so much -- much more than we imagine we can take -- and we often emerge stronger and better for it. It's an easy observation lacking in any profundity, but I've always been stricken by it nonetheless. Today I noticed the somewhat the murkier counterpart instead: just how vulnerable we are, and how little it takes to shake us out of our comfortable, complacent spots in the world. All it took was a beautiful wedding, an idyllic vacation, a messy house, and a messier stomach bug to utterly incapacitate this once capable woman, and send her, cowering, to her little blog.
This time in a week, I won't even be able to imagine why it was so... and had I not decided to write about it, eventually I would have forgotten completely. I still might, in fact. I'm trying really hard not to put it all under a lens, because by the time I've looked at it closely enough, whatever I see won't matter... even to me.
Those of you who are around my age may remember Benji, the "lovable mutt who had an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time, usually helping a person overcome a problem." Ah, Joe Camp. You creative genius, you.
I've had a stuffed animal in the likeness of Benji almost as long as I can remember. In fact, the acquisition of the Benji doll is the first time I can recall being reasonable.
If I had to guess, I'd say I was about 3 or 4 years old. I was with my mom at the Jersey Shore. We were walking the boardwalk and playing games. My favorite was the big spinning wheel, where you would put a quarter on a square with a particular symbol or word on it and hope that the spinning wheel stopped on the corresponding slot.
I distinctly remember putting a quarter on the 'Pop' square (because I loved my grandfather pretty much more than anything in the world), and holding my mom's hand as we watched the wheel spin. The ladies working the booth let me stand on the counter because I was so small. When it stopped on 'Pop', I jumped up and down and clapped. The lady told me that I could get a Smurfette doll or a Benji doll. I had no clue who or what Benji was, but (*enter staggering little kid logic*) I figured that I already had a Smurfette doll at home... so why would I want two of the same thing?
Thus began the longest friendship of my life. I slept with Benji that night, and nearly every night thereafter for 24 years. When I decided to run away from home at age 6, Benji and my Golden Books were the only things I packed. When I decided that it was time to be a grown-up at age 12, I threw away all of my stuffed animals but him. When I moved to California in 2000, Benji was tucked away in my carry-on. It wasn't until I met Richard that I was able to permanently station Benji in the hall closet. He gleefully peers out from a canvas shoulder bag, greeting me every time I grab a jacket.
Suffice it to say, the love mileage really shows. His body is limp, his fake fur is matted, and his beady little eyes are permanently obscured by a saggy brow. The fluff on his neck has completely worn away to reveal the stuffing underneath. All the print has faded off his tag, save the 'LAINA'S BENJI' that my mom wrote in permanent red ink when I took him to show-and-tell at age 5. At worst, I've lived in the fear that his head would pop clean off. At best, I've been saddened every time I look at his tattered body.
Enter my friend Adrienne, knitting goddess with a weakness for movies based on Jane Austen novels. When she hostessed a knitting-or-crinaline-required tea party, I had to come up with a project... and fast. What to do, what to do? I was a very jaded nascent knitter. The idea of another scarf depressed me, but I didn't feel ready to tackle something big and complicated. Moreover, I didn't want to knit something pointless that would sit on a shelf and collect dust.
But recall that Benji has an "uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time, usually helping a person overcome a problem." And how! Check out my dapper little dog in his silly little sweater:
Just when you think I can't become any more of a loser, I go and pull something like this. Can't help it. Love my little guy... and see how smart he looks in his sweater?
I have been... absent. And with good reason. My wedding is imminent, the office is chaotic, and the stuff of life like laundry and grocery shopping is needy and unrelenting.
You know what they say about the busy bee, though. Or maybe you don't. "They" is Blake, and he says that the busy bee has no time for sorrow. Turns out the busy bee also doesn't have time for Vox.
*bzz bzz bzzz*
I miss you all. The little sneak peeks into your lives has become an integral part of mine, so I feel quite disconnected without them. I hope to be back on my normal schedule soon, so try not to forget about me in the meantime.
This time in two weeks, it'll all be over. The event that took months to plan (and months to fund) will be a fast-fading memory. Unless, of course, I end up with a wicked hangover. *calculates white sangria and mango mojito factor... hangover=probable* Perhaps the memory of the day will linger into Monday. ;0)
This time in two weeks, I'll be someone's wife. Freaky. With a bit of luck, I'll be packed for the honeymoon and sound asleep by this hour.
So... since I've been gone (and in no particular order):
- I became a Microsoft employee
- I fired a handgun
- I finished reading another book
- I researched all there is to know about Bora Bora
- I decided that I hate my wedding dress
- I bought and sold stock
- I found out that I will have a chocolate rum wedding cake with a so-hideous-it's-great plastic bride and groom on top
- I spent 8 hours looking for photos of made-up people
- I got a sunburn on the back of my knees
- I did a pull-up
- I knit most of a turtleneck sweater for my stuffed dog
- I watched several movies, both good and bad
- I figured out a way to un-hate my wedding dress
- I dug through the trash for glue sticks
- I made two lolcats
- I went to Phoenix
- I got a zit on my eyelid
- I nursed two drunks at once
- I played one of the best games of indoor of my life
- I stopped using Splenda
- I baked even more sweet cuppin' cakes
Very busy girl, no? Up next... my last soccer game for two whole weeks, meeting my future husband's identical twin for the first time (freaky X2), and sitting through a day-long Microsoft orientation.
It's baby season at my office, and procreation is catching like the common cold. As such, we're having a baby shower for two parents-to-be on my team this afternoon. Recognizing a great opportunity, I stayed up all hours of the night making cute little baby shower cupcakes.
Move over Sibby, cause here comes Elaina! (*)
= percentage of the total number of items on our wedding gift registry that my mother and grandmother have single-handedly (double-handedly?) purchased for us.
How many trees have a I killed in the past two weeks? How many more will I kill before I am wed?
