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I want this...

...to be my wedding dress. (via rock 'n roll bride)

Plum Island - Newburyport, MA

WTF Moment.

Patrick Swayze?! Is that you?!

Something is amiss in the home of the EH clan and it does not sit right with yours truly as the primary home alone person.  It started with a pair of black work pants belonging to the lady that suddenly disappeared.  Though it was a nuisance we thought none too intensely on the subject - much of her possessions are still in boxes and the general disarray of our collective household makes for ease of loss when items of the clothing variety are involved.  The next week it was a work shirt.  Ok - still annoying - but not weird.

Today it was my favorite pair of jeans.  Weird.  Not weird because it directly impacts me as opposed to the indirect impact when her clothes go missing - but weird because I wear those fucking pants everyday, just had them on not 24 hours ago, and my organizational methods are borderline maniacal.  I have looked everywhere and it appears that my pants have indeed gone missing.

Upon calling the lady and interrupting her work day, two theories now exist:

Hers: That someone is fucking with us.

Mine: We have a ghost.

I'm rather tempted to put out some bait shorts or a t-shirt and see how long it takes to go missing.  That said, if it produces anything like the following results, granite countertops be damned, I'm getting the funk outta here!

Harvard Square T Station.

Novel Fodder?

I woke up with the opening sentence in my brain the other day and decided to run with it...

The circumstances of my pregnancy are somewhat of a mystery, not only to me, but also to the scientific community at large.  Prior to my sudden conception the oldest woman to ever successfully carry to term was almost five years my junior and in a platonic life arrangement conducive to human reproduction.  The fact that I was not in such an arrangement (nor have I ever been), and that I was beyond my prime in the reproductive sense (and perhaps every other sense), made me an over night media sensation.  Most women would be thrilled by the sudden attention, especially those women who were accostumed to accompanying those more successful than them to various events involving flashing camera bulbs and caviar, but I decisively was not.  The sudden fetus, as I was wont to call it, was entirely accidental in nature, and while there were those people who went on to speculate that it was some sort of miracle, they were obviously of the variety who were not accustomed to waking with a sudden growth in their bellies, human or otherwise. 

Unpacking is a process on so many levels, not the least of which is the emotional one.  While digging through a large plastic bin liberated from the Mothership’s attic the other night, I came upon a drawing that I did in 8^th grade for a yearbook cover contest.  It’s a pretty good drawing, two hands (presumably modeled on my own) holding up the world.  The world is shrouded in elementary looking clouds with a Picasso like signature along the bottom edge that was my current emblem. 

Repression is a grand coping mechanism and up until this point in my 26^th year I had forgotten that I actually liked to draw and that I was kind of good at it.  It wasn’t about winning the contest or getting my drawing on the yearbook cover, but about getting the validation I so desperately needed at a time when I was often overlooked in the swirl of chaos and emotional disembowelment that nightly went on in my childhood home.  With the drawing I found a rather extensive book report, over fifteen pages on a collection of essays by Erma Bombeck, an ur-Sedaris if you will, heavily exclamation pointed and obsessed with telling the reader about my 8^th grade connection with the “sarcastic” and “dry-witted” author.  At the back of the book report there is a rainbow lettered biography of 8^th grade me where I talk about my horse and my bunnies and my parents’ divorce and my optimism.   The horse, bunnies, and my love for drawing are gone – the divorce and the optimism (albeit a more tempered version) remain.

At what point do we drop things because we do not see the success in them?  4^th grade me loved to draw and drew all kinds of crazy shit – she even kept sketch books around like a real artist.  She had tablets and ink pens and a Bob Ross easel.  4^th grade me wanted to be an artist and a veterinarian and a singer and a writer.  8^th grade me had pared the options down to artist and veterinarian, with artist falling by the wayside shortly thereafter and veterinarian being culled from the list after a particularly unsuccessful term of high school biology.  When does the practical supersede the magical?   When do we stop believing in ourselves?

I am up late trying to write a cover letter for a job that I’m not actually sure I’m particularly well suited for.  While I enjoy being a teacher it seems as if I should be doing something else – something BIGGER.  What could be bigger than leading the future leaders of America?  I had bright and wonderful students who would make great teachers telling me that they might teach someday, but that they weren’t ready to settle.  Sounds like something 10^th grade me would have said.  Now post-grad me is starting to think that it isn’t about settling, but about finding a balance.  In trying to lament my inability to write a cover letter to my beloved better half, I noted that teaching was a good job for me because “every skill I have is completely aligned to this work, both academic skill and personality.”  Or something to that affect.

Damn it’s late.  I need a snack.