Journal_030

Every-time before I sit down to spill out my thoughts I stretch. It feels nice, and physical, and something that is outside my mind and my fingers before I let it ll go go go.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, which has been making me feel more like the version of ‘myself’ that I want to be. Curled under the covers early, reading 10 pages here 5 pages there, 200 pages there. Adding more and more hot coffee to my cup (should I switch to an herbal tea? most likely) .. getting little bits and pieces of refreshment from the 5 different books I am currently invested in .. like many other people I speak to .. #badhabit … I finished a Tom Robbins book today that I had been reading for entirely too long.. It got ridiculous and I bunkered down and finished it and am walking away saying that ALL I NEED TO KNOW IN LIFE I LEARNED FROM TOM ROBBINS. I mean yes and no obviously, but that book gave me so many epiphanies and chuckles and a fresh bout of comedic relief.

Sylvi just visited and she was a reading a new book.

She read it in the morning, before dinner, and while laying down to watch Joseph sleep, on mine and Joe’s bed, while I ran an errand. It felt so good to drive by myself.

I love that woman in my life, who I met when I was just a girl. Her fascinating beautiful troubled intelligent and bright spirit.

Her quick mind and artistic touch and love for adventure.

Its rare, as we grow older, to find people that we feel comfortable around enough to let the walls down and be yourself. Sylvi has always been one of those people for me, and for that I really feel confident. Thanks girl, I am getting all mushy again.

We treated ourselves to massages and martinis on her last day in jersey, and as we walked out I heard the church bells playing a song. I have always loved church bells. hearing them. every hour especially. (I need to get a proper clock in my home) –

So we hopped in the car to freshen up. Our clean hair now laden with grease, but ‘good grease’ as Sylvi called it, which I do agree with, but right now my bangs are so out of control that once those little funky hairs get greasy they cannot be tamed). When we got out, the bells were still going, “Let’s walk over there”, I said, closing the car door and beginning a slow trot toward Bridge Ave. Sylvi kept up, and we crossed the street, heading in the direction of the church. I’ve semi regularly walked into churches in the middle of the day to say a prayer or pay my respect or just to check out the statues or stained glass or pews. Church for me isn’t just for Sundays. This church in particular is one that I drive by every few days, going both ways, and have been stopped at the light beside an uncountable amount of times. It’s at the corner of one of our main routes off this string bean island we live on.

I have to mention the grass.

The most properly fresh landscaped lawn of grass. Sod, naturally. Meticulous edging. Super cushy.

As we were approaching, a flock of black birds were doing a floaty dance around the wires, in the trees, and on the sidewalk in front of us. I put my hand out to Sylvi’s chest, like one would do when stopping short with a lover in the passenger seat. *

I just have to note how distracted I just was, had to hang some laundry on the line, it got really nice right before I started writing (Here Comes the Sun), so I started a load of line dry only stuff, and then it finishes and its murky and damp. There is a cool dry breeze so I still hung the stuff, I’ll move it to the indoor rack before we leave for Lily’s birthday dinner. She is six today. So I come in and remember I stashed a bottle of Pellegrino in the freezer, “hopefully it hasn’t frozen!” I thought, swinging the door open. NOPE, but perfectly chilled the bottle burns my hand a little. I just took a sip, every bottle of pelli, every bottle of white wine should always be so crisp. This is why I need a wine fridge. Note to self: once I am in the place to buy frivolous appliances, or, is this an appliance of self wellness? Okay, file under: Things that would be more beneficial to me than paying assloads for health insurance every week that I can’t afford to even go to a doctor really and get anything treated, maybe if something life threatening happens I might be kind of covered, but fucked either way, because well, LIFE, but yeah you know what I mean, right? Or if you don’t please just let this go and don’t judge me on my political rants because we all have them and they are all ebbing and flowing.

SO ANYWAY, the birds. me, stopping Sylvi.

Tears in my eyes.

“This.”

I had a moment of understanding. of beauty, of myself, of the human bean walking beside me.

“These are the things I have no trouble understanding. It’s everything else that makes no sense.”

She looked at me sincerely, albeit a little freaked out, the tears were now rolling down my cheeks. I didn’t feel stupid, though. She smiled.

I thanked her for being my friend, told her I loved her, gained my composure, put my arm around her, and walked forward to the church.

The song ended as we pulled up to the walkway, I walked up anyway, I wanted to see if the doors were open. As I ascended the stone steps, there was a brief moment of fear, ‘maybe someone is having an intense spiritual service inside and i am intruding..’ — the momentum had already grabbed me, I went to (slowly)grab the knob, but it was locked. The second door was locked as well. There were bunches of eucalyptus tied with white satin ribbon on the porch. The doors were old, so were the knobs, it was wild to think I had never stood in this place before, but gazed upon it so many times from the car.

So, we turned around and walked back. I’ve always wanted to see the inside of that church, and I will, soon.

Into the restaurant, two seats at the bar, two martinis, two oyster shooters, a burger (me), chicken sandwich (she). I added another burger to go for Joe, we had two more martinis. We came home, I took a nap, Sylvi read a bit, and watched Joseph, Joe had work. I asked if I could lay down for 10 minutes, she said OF COURSE, and I dozed for an hour. It was amazing. We walked up to the beach to watch the sunset, the moon was round and yellow, the sky was pink, the water turquoise. Mandy arrived shortly after, Joseph had his dinner and got changed in jammies, Joe was bringing him for a sleep over at his parents (Sylvi’s flight was 10:30 am out of JFK the next morning! We had to depart at 6am) – Us gals stopped first at the store, so I could show them around, and then we drove to wawa a to grab sandwiches and snacks galore.

We had some girl time before Joe got back and we picked up a board game. The three of us had been playing cards every-night but with a 4th person we could form teams. Hooray.

The sky is really something else today (November 6 2017) – In the words of Tom Robbins, ‘The sky was tattered as gypsy’s pajamas.” — The sun just came blazing out from the clouds again. Cosmos are still blooming, budding, and coming out of nowhere, so are the zinnias and the monarch butterflies are floating everywhere. Note to self: read article mom gave you on lady in nj trying to repopulate/save the monarchs. Then befriend said lady and join forces. We were watching CBS Sunday Morning and a feel good story came on about a young man who lost his father in the war when he was just 9 months old, he cherishes everything that he has that belonged to his dad. His mom had to sell his car, and she made a FB post looking for the car, someone states away found the car and dedicated themselves to raise money to purchase it and fix it all the way up. They surprised the boy, I looked over at Joe, we both cried. When they interviewed the man getting the car together, a butterfly came and landed on his shirt, They broke from the point to tell us that the butterfly stayed on his shirt for 30 MINUTES. AMAZING. I love butterflies. That night I had a dream about Taylor Hanson and my butterfly tattoo. I just remembered. God I am fucking weird.

Anyway, I want to wrap this up and get something else done. It felt good to write. I have so much work to do that letting loose, listening to music, gets me geared up for the hard part. Joe is out today with Joseph, running errands. Today is our ‘Sunday’ for the next few weeks, until our schedule takes another turn for the fam, which will be more work, but hopefully more time for me to do creative things like write, deal with my photos, on and on. I am still batting around how I really want to exist online, if at all, the constant battle. Joe has my phone, the screen is getting repaired, and it has been insanely liberating to be unreachable. Before he left I looked at him and said “OK so you know I won’t have a phone right?” — We stay in touch so much (too much if you ask me) – and this is admittedly a huge fault of mine his and everyone else’s in this country. So not having a phone right now is so liberating. I have thought about texting calling checking in on or looking up so many things since he has left but NOPE I can’t. It used to be this same way when I first moevd into a new apartment and didn’t have internet, or at my moms, when she didn’t have internet, and the accomplishment of more concrete meaningful and focus driven tasks happens.

I just did such a funky monkey dance to some Jeffrey Lewis. Going through old Spotify playlists. Feeling myself.

OH MY GOD I can’t give up yet because I have ONE MORE THING to talk about.

There was this suitcase found in Joe’s Granny’s third bedroom closet. Something that when we moved out of NY and back to NJ before our trip and our move into this house, we stashed there and totally forgot about. Joe’s mom mentioned it to me and I was filled with dread.

“What the hell could be in that suitcase?” I thought.

Well, Joe brought it home a few days ago (along with his NES, Sega, and N64…) — and yesterday I gained the courage to unzip it and go through it. Filled with my clothes. jeans, shorts, pants, skirts, tanks, long sleeve tees, short sleeved tees, memories galore, of course. I love my dude because he had so many interesting comments on whether or not I should get rtid of this or that. I plowed through about half to stay half to go, I am so psyched about finding a bunch of it, I knew a part of my tee shirt collection was MIA but thought it was in the attic, wondered what happened (we also never found our cutlery!!!) — but now I have it, and warm stuff for me to wear this fall and winter, that fits me again, now that I am no longer preg or a recovering preg, although having a child is sort of like being in recovery from your pregnancy forever and ever .. sob/maniacal laugh/just kidding/or am i.

OH but the clothes, because we also took a detour into Brooklyn last Friday. We had a meeting, got some work done, and ran an errand (to IKEA!) – we parked and had lunch in our old hood, strolling through the familiar yet changed blocks was bonkers. It just felt different.

I sit here and romanticize being there, because I loved it there so much always have and love it here always have, but one of our favorite restaurants is gone, to a new ones, that weren’t open until 5:30pm (for the record we tried 2 different solid spots that now don’t open until later wtf is that) – we ended up at Steinhof, and then grabbed something from Slope Cellars, met with a familiar face.

Actually speaking of cosmic, we walked in, looking for a bottle of Fernet, per a serious recommendation from ms. roy, so we walked into the store and I was glancing around as the counter person asked if they could help, and Joe replied, “yeah actually, we are looking for Fernet, did I just hear you say it?” we turned around and walked over, she had spiraly auburn hair, the other guy who has helped us so many times ( I want to call him Jeff, maybe that is his name I can’t remember), so she laughed he laughed and yes it’s true they were just talking about how they need a new tag for the Fernet 750 mL bottle (exactly the one we needed). We skipped back to the car, really missing living there, again, hating to leave, anxious to get home, and hit the road. I fell asleep as soon as we pulled into traffic on the BQE, my head flopping around what felt like the entire ride home.

(OH MY GOD HOW ANNOYING ARE SPOTIFY COMMERCIALS!)

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