That's right, with tassels.

I once bought pasties from a burlesque dancer during a blizzard. My friend Patrick was visiting from New York and we walked the skyways across the entire city to the only bar we could get into without IDs. Pat left his at Bryant Lake Bowl, where we had breakfast, which may tell you something about the quality of bar.

We ended up at a burlesque show in the middle of the night—you have to understand that Patrick is the variety of friend with whom you think you’re going for a cup of coffee and the next thing you know you wake up in Tijuana with a splitting headache and someone else’s underwear on your head. We met the dancers back stage after. This is where I bought red pasties handmade by CC, and had a lesson on nipple size and how to make the tassels swing, though I gave the pasties to my friend for her wedding. So I didn't get to put my swinging-expertise to good use, but what a great wedding gift.

Two years later I started dating S.A., and somehow through conversation figured out that CC lives in the apartment upstairs from him with her partner, N. They’re lovely friendly neighbors. CC leaves fliers for her shows under the door, and she shares her gardening soil with S.A. and lends me her parking spot sometimes. Once, when she and N were having a spat, she came down for a pep talk. They’re nice folks.

Sunday was the Gay Pride parade, and CC’s burlesque group had a very classy float. CC is expecting now, but only has a tiny little bump you’d never notice, and her attire was fitting for the venue (there were many families and children at the event). So we hollered for her and cheered.

We’re looking forward to babysitting. The couple that live below S.A.’s apartment are also expecting. Come to think of it, we’re the only ones in his wing that aren’t pregnant or recently made parents. S.A. and I wonder what the hell’s in the water in his building. Yikes.

Leek soup. Leek hot dish. Leek a la mode.

This summer, S. and I signed up for one of the farm co-ops that give you fresh, seasonal stuff once a week, all pre-paid and with recipes (in the event that one load includes 6 leeks, and who the hell knows what to do with 6 leeks?). The first shipment arrived last week. It was lettuce, garlic and eggs. I made a Nicoise salad and lo, it was good. I’m excited about this. In part because the conversations S and I have about food tend to go something like this:

Me: Let’s make some veggie stir fry tonight!

Him: Yeah! That sounds good. Had a lot of Asian food lately though. What if we made fajitas with the veggies instead? Mexican, mmmm.

Me: Fajitas sound good.

Him: Actually, I’ve got some great enchilada sauce I need to use up. Why don’t you chill out and read and I’ll make us some enchiladas.

Me: You got a deal, mister.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the occasional bubbling dish of enchiladas (or a man who wants to cook for me—hi, awesome), but note the swiftness with which the healthy plan turns into deep-fried cheese curds is getting a little out of control.

I wish I were one of those ladies who woke up bright and early on Saturday mornings, put on my sun dress and adorable hat and bounced out the door to load a net bag with fresh stuff from the farmers market, but that only tends to happen about once or twice a year. And I don’t garden. Gardening is on my list of “things I wish I liked but I just don’t.” So this co-op thing, it should work well. Tonight: we go pick up peas. Mmmm, peas.

Oh, Hazel.

The other night, my friend’s poor dog got into her bag and ate a big thing of chocolate covered espresso beans. Hazel’s a wiener dog. Though medical assistance was procured, Hazel spent the night tearing around the apartment, barking, and being a total spazzoid freakball.

I feel for Hazel. Hazel is a metaphor for me.

I’m happy to report that I presented my prospectus on Monday, it was slightly nerve-wracking and intense but motivational and calming and good. My advisor: totally intense and brilliant. The woman wrote 2,000 poems for her first book and whittled that down to something like 48 poems for the final collection. She’s bionic. A machine. In my meeting, this woman told me I need to chill out a little, that maybe my first assignment should be to spend a whole day on my couch watching bad movies.

It was kind of a relief—it’s been hard to get out of overdrive. But now that prospectus is done and I handed her my paper, my plan, my application, and a stack of something like 100 poems (and thesis hasn’t started yet, but this is expected), I just get to write. I’m tired of writing about writing and making a plan that I know will change anyway. Now I just get to write it on my own time and read what I want to read. I feel better.

Oh, and the haircut? Apparently I now have the same hairdo as Posh Spice. I’m told this is a good thing. Maybe people should start calling me Spazziod Spice. We could be sisters.

for my old friend Herman, gone ten years now

At the end of the day

I roll the wheel barrows in
push in the mowers inside
from the sidewalk display,

wave to Mrs. Mason
ticking tires with chalk
at the five o’clock hour

and walk toward home.
When I was a kid
I said an Our Father

forgive us our tresspasses
as I cut through the lawn
of the Methodist Church.

Home again now
after years I take care
while you die.

I keep to the sidewalk.
I pray all the time.
Your flannel hangs from the chair.

The rosary your wife made
is tangled in a dish.
Her eyes were good enough once

to thread bead after bead,
bend wire into loops,
with tools from your store.

I work hard
to keep it afloat
but we can’t compete

with big box stores.
I know soon
we’ll have to stop fighting.

Three Lessons of Haircuts

I’m chopping off my hair tonight. Actually, I’m paying a talented and lovely lady named Lindsay to chop my hair off for me.

My hair-cycle goes like so—I chop it. I grow it. I start putting it up constantly because its longness bugs me. I get hair-envy for other women’s short-n-sassy hairdos. I chop it. Repeat.

When I was a kid, it was long and blonde and wavy like the little Dutch-ish girl I was. It started turning brown and in high school I got sick of the long-with-bangs thing that had been going on forever. Remember the early 90’s? Somewhere during the grunge phase people were shaving the underside of their hair just a little bit around the neck line. Remember this? Maybe it was just my high school—after all, we were isolated from all forms of culture by a ten-mile-wide radius of cornfields. Anyway, for some God, God awful reason, I shaved off all the hair just around my neckline, leaving the rest long I’m pretty sure it is around this time that my parents laid awake in bed at night whispering to one another “Well, at least she’s not on crack.”

I soon realized what a foolish fit of blinded-by-teenage-idioticness this was, and decided to solve the problem by chopping the rest of it off. Lesson 1 about hair: Chopping it off is never the solution to a bad haircut.

I grew it out, and it was all pretty and good again. That is the good thing about hair: it grows, just not fast enough. And by late high school and college it was lovely and flowing. It was the kind of hair people walking into a salon look at and say “Make my hair do that.” Then I broke up with my boyfriend.

Lord almighty, I was insane with grief. I could not be trusted with such matters as who to date or how to dress myself—my heart had been crushed for the first time—and it is the job of a girl’s friends to monitor the idiotic urges of such a fragile teenager.

One day, roiling in my post-break-up pit-o-despair, Becky left me alone a little too long with our friend Erika, who was the least stable of the clique. Erika had been known to drink Zima and belt out country tunes while careening down the highway in her little 1991 red Ford Escort. Erika took me to get a haircut because she thought a new look would make me feel better. Lesson 2 about haircuts: Never get a haircut right after a break-up.

I took in a photo and asked the stylist for a short-ish bob, like the girl in the picture. I came out looking like my grandmother. In my small Indiana town, the hairdresser spent most of her time on little old ladies, so she cut my hair just like an old lady—a super-duper-beyond-repair short that looked absolutely nothing like the photo.

Naturally, I went home, threw myself on my bedroom floor and bawled. My life was over—I looked awful, my boyfriend broke up with me, it was never going to get better, he was going to see me like this, I’m never going to get over him, etc. etc. etc. Becky came over and sat there with me and suggested things like hats and bandanas and all the stuff that doesn’t help even though you wish it did.

Yeah. I remember that. That was awesome.

I grew it back out, then I chopped it off again. However, this time I utilized Lesson 3 about haircuts: Never, ever, ever get a drastic cut unless the stylist has cut your hair very well no less than a million times. Never. Amen. Hallelujah. Never.

My cousin Julia became a stylist, and she’s awesome. I’d trust her to cut my hair blindfolded. I had it short through the rest of college (but not THAT short) and it was very cute. I was told I could pull off short hair well. I had a pixie cut right after college. It was alright, but I wouldn’t do it again.

Then: Short, long, short, long.

Now it’s long and dried out and the color isn’t right and its driving me crazy. The plan tonight is to go have many inches cut off, but I’ve been known to walk into a salon and come out with something totally different than I had in mind when I went in, so we’ll see what happens. As long as I don’t come out looking like Great Aunt Margaret, I think I’ll survive.

Ohmmmmmm.

My good friend Kate and I were on a walk the other day and I mentioned that maybe I’m tired because I’m working a full-time job, rowing 6-8 hours a week and putting together a prospectus and residency applications and writing a book. Last night after work, a 2-hour row and shower and laundry, I revised 40 pages of poetry. I did not want to get out of bed today.

Kate asked me what she can do to help, and I said very nicely that I kind of want everyone to go away. Just for a few days. Actually, I want me to go away for a few days, but that’s difficult due to finances and logistics (I need access to humongous stacks of notebooks and books).

I’ve arranged to have most of this weekend to myself. My sweetheart, my favorite distraction, is going camping with himself. I am going to stay inside my house and click away.

I’m dreaming of a writing retreat, and all the places I can take them in the future. Over the winter I went to the North Shore for three days all alone and I stayed in a little cabin overlooking Lake Superior. It was awesome.

I love my work, but the time consumption is a pain in the ass. Then there is the part where I get paid. I may not have summers off or get to leave every day at 3 or get to sleep in and leisurely make my way to French Meadow to eat a croissant while I edit last night’s notebook entry. But I do get paid time off and enough dough, if I’m careful, to rent the occasional cabin at the lake or fly my ass to Sydney if I want to.

Now, I wonder what else is out there for writer retreats. I’d love to do some kind of yoga/nature/spa/writing kind of thing. Actually, I’d love to teach at a yoga/nature/spa/writing kind of thing. I don’t know where to begin looking for them.

Where do you go to take a break or do your pleasure-work? Escape your life? Focus?

The Grand Gathering: 109

I am in the process of collecting all the poems I’ve written in graduate school. My advisor will read them and we’ll cut a bunch and revise a bunch and I’ll write a bunch more. My goal is to have 150 poems to give to her. So far I have 109.

One-hundred-nine poems, friends. Keep in mind that until just this past November, I was focusing on fiction, not poetry, so that’s quite the shitload for someone who wasn’t supposed to be focusing on poetry at all.

My thesis—I’m stressin’. I suppose most of us are. I want it to be brilliant and perfect and I want to complete it in a year. Tall order, I realize. And at first I was going to do a collection of science-themed poems. Now, I want to take a bunch of the fiction I have and turn them into narrative poems. And I want to do another collection of poems that are just ones I like that don’t necessarily have a theme.

(Hold on! I just found another one. Make that 110. Yeah!)

Is it just me, or does that sound like three books? Yeah, I’m not writing 3 books in a year. Or maybe I can somehow combine these—do 1 book with three sections. But… doesn’t that sound random? Like, “Hey, this part is about physics and astronomy, and this part is about my mom! And over here there are a couple poems about birds.” (Oh yeah, the bird poems. Revised total: 113.)

Really.

My point is, I don’t know how my vision of my thesis looks. It keeps changing, and I’m going to have to steer my craft toward some sort of vision of a project, but I also need to honor whatever I feel compelled to write, right? Or is that just a bunch of crap?

I hope this is the part where my advisor comes in. Like, she’ll look at my stuff and say something like “Clearly, you’re doing a lot of work that is X. So let’s make that into a book. Here’s step 1.”

I do not know. What I do know is that I’m totally overwhelmed, and how it’s all going to come together: a mystery. And this mystery, I want to hide from it right now. I want to go watch TV and shop for tank tops instead of think about how much I’ll have to do to figure this out.

Should the theme/vision/narrative of my thesis project somehow seem obvious to any of YOU, please, do enlighten me.

Put the jack-hammer away, doctor.

Some of you may know that my day job is to write surgical technique manuals for spine surgery. All the nerve roots to your whole body connect through a space between moving, hard bone, right? If you screw up the bone or the discs between the bones, they can cause a world of pain. Your limbs may go numb. The muscles will tense up to compensate for misalignment of the bones. Nerves will get crushed.

Apparently one of the vertebral processes in my lower cervical spine is skewed. By this, I mean that when I went to the chiropractor complaining of muscle tension in my upper back, he took and x-ray and it looked something like this:

Spine problems that aren’t caused by trauma are usually degenerative, meaning, before I’m even an old lady I could be in the kind of pain that will make implanting something like this:

using something like this:

sound appealing. So, even though my only symptom is annoying muscle tension and a wonky knob in my back, I need to take care of it now or I’m screwed (literally—a very common surgery is implantation of a pedicle screw system that looks something like this):

So I’m going to the chiropractor, getting massages and today I had doctor who specializes in physiology do an ergonomic assessment of my workspace. So far, it's apparently working.

I’ll end with this disclaimer: The truth is (and I’ve seen in a million times) for sufferers of severe back problems that can’t be resolved through physical therapy, surgery can be an amazingly good solution. It changes people’s lives for the better. Surgeons can do amazing things for people these days, and by the time I’m an old lady they’ll be able to work even bigger miracles. I don't actually have disc herniation or anything super-dramatic at this point. Still, let’s stick with the preventative measures, shall we?