Spring Morning

The sun is shining, there are at least thirty fluffy birds chirping away in the bare branches of a tree, it's 3 degrees above 0, and 4 inches of fresh snow fell in the night. The resorts are all crowing about "mid-winter ski conditions!" April is 3 days away.

I miss . . .

inexpensive fresh flowers. It would be really nice to be able to pick up a $5 bunch of daffodils or tulips at the grocery store. A little something to counteract the black/white/gray gloom outside.

A great friend I'd made here moved to Texas at the beginning of March and is back in town for a few days to finish packing up her house. I spent a long time with her yesterday, and as unideal as her current Texas living situation is, she couldn't stop mentioning how much she didn't miss the snow. And it just fed into my current dissatisfaction with the mountains. Everyone hates this time of year here. I'm not alone. But I need to find a way to enjoy it anyway. Either that, or get a job so I can not feel guilty about spending some of my last nickels to fly someplace warm for a week.

The things we do to ourselves

Two weeks ago I started on a series of microdermabrasion treatments designed to make my skin as dewy soft and glowy as it's possible for it to look. I didn't get a chance to go last week, so today was only my second appointment. And my aesthetician is just so generally horrified by the state of my skin and eager to see results that she didn't confine herself to the sandblast machine. She decided to whip out the fucking laser and BURN OFF a layer of skin on my chin. I mean, she asked first, this wasn't a non consensual attack. After all, what kind of fool would say "no" to a free laser treatment? That shit is expensive! But . . . oh my god. The smell. Of burning flesh. And though this was a super light laser treatment on a small area of skin . . . I can still smell it. An hour later.

Not Blonde But . . .

Everyone remember the movie Legally Blonde? While the movie didn't exactly mirror my law school experience, I do remember having a little moment of character identification. The first case they talked about in her first law school class was also the first case we talked about in my first law school class.

Well, this morning I had another, very different, Legally Blonde character convergance moment when I realized the following: Holy hell, I'm working in a salon/spa and I think I might just have a crush on a cute UPS delivery guy.

Whoah. I'm not so sure my life is going in the right direction . . .

Happy First Day of Spring

It's not even 2:00 and already I've seen: cloudless sunny skies, black thunderclouds spitting rain, and currently the wind is howling and big flat snowflakes are blizzarding.

Oh Loathesome March

Monday I decided it was time to get out of the mountains again. I mean, it had been a WHOLE WEEK since I'd gone anywhere . . . antsyness, thy name is Corina. So I drove down to the Valley and did all those little things I can't do here. Like go to Anthropologie, browse used book and antique stores, see a movie in the middle of the day, find cross stitch fabric, eat Vietnamese food, and walk on snow/ice/slush-free sidewalks. The weather in Boise wasn't the spring-time idyll I was hoping for, but for March it wasn't bad. And when I got home yesterday it was RAINING. The temperature hovered in the mid 30's, and it was raining and the air was damp and cold and the wind was creaking in the eves. This is a horrid time of year. I tried going for a walk last week, and between the squelchy mud and slick ice and bitter wind, I lasted 20 minutes and then returned home with dirty hems and a headache.

And . . . I'm sounding awfully negative. I've just always hated the long tease that is the end of winter. And I have to go into the resort spa this aftenoon for more training. And work makes me cranky, because I don't wanna! I want to sit by the fire and find the perfect font for the fist cross stitch project I've done since I was 8 instead of showing people to the steam room and asking if I can get them another glass of water and "your therapist will be with you in just a minute" and "would you like to put a gratuity on the card?" But this afternoon will pay for the new jeans I bought at Anthropologie (they were on sale). And that's good.

Depressed or DST?

I've been having a hell of a time getting out of bed this last week. It makes me nervous. This lingering drag when the alarm goes off, the desire to fall back into dreams and darkness, is usually the first sign of a bout with depression. But this time I really think that it's just the switch to DST last weekend. Am I the only person who loathes DST not because it steals an hour of my life (which it does, and yes, I hate it for that reason too) but because it steals an hour of daylight from my already dark mornings? Evening sunshine is fine, I don't object to it, if given a choice I would choose more of it . . . but not in exchange for going backwards. I would not choose to undo the earlier and earlier sunrises that were telling my body, naturally, that spring is on its way. Because that is a message my body desperately needs this year. It's been such a long dark winter. There will be snow on the ground for months more. DAMN YOU FOR MAKING MY MORNINGS DARKER!

I Can't Believe It's Been This Long

How does a year go by so quickly? I'm having trouble, as I sit in my cabin reading golden age mysteries and watching snow melt, believing that just a little over a year ago I was in Cambodia. Melting in the heat. Climbing crumbling temples to watch the sun set over a country that seemed to be made in equal parts of dust, smoke, and beautifully carved rock. When Lara and I left Cambodia, we agreed that neither of us really felt the need to go back. I still don't, even with the smoothing effects of time on memory. But I'm so glad I went.

Energy

I've been feeling so energetic and cheerful ever since the bar ended. That doesn't mean I haven't spent plenty of the time sitting on my ass, but, I've been spending significantly less time in that position. This morning, for example, I'm cleaning my living room, which had more or less turned into a trash heap during those long dark pre-bar months. My mom managed to fix the "broken" vacuum cleaner by figuring out in about 5 seconds that "the hose is clogged dumbass!" [The "dumbass" was implied.] But before I can apply the vaccuum to that hideous victorian green carpet (which was not made less hideous by a month's accretion of . . . stuff that would ordinarily be removed by a vaccuum) I wanted to make the non-floor portions of my living room more pleasing to the eye. Progress is slowly being made, but, to give you an idea of just how bad it had gotten, this one room might take me all day.

Part of my new-found energy is the sudden release from the downward pressure the dreaded bar was exerting.. But another source of cheer and energy is definitely the lift I got from my trip to Oregon. The beauty of Zach's luncheon table setting, the happiness of being around my mom, the sight of ground uncovered by snow, the cheerful bumptiousness of two friendly slobbering dogs . . . all make me want to not waste this uptick in my spirits. I want to make my own life a little more lovely. I've already taken steps to make myself more comely, which always helps everything else, a new haircut, tamed brows, and this afternoon microdermabrasion and a facial. But this morning it's about my surroundings. Starting with the living room.

Back in the Cold

My trip to Oregon was lovely lovely lovely! I really wish I'd stayed an extra day. It was sunny, and beautiful, and I had a fabulous time with my mom. She taught me how to knit! (We couldn't find any cross-stitch fabric in Newport. In response to the anon commenter on my last post, I want to do both cross-stitch and embroidery, but I have a cross-stitch project in mind first.) I promptly ruined all the work I'd done on my "scarf" as soon as I got home, and after a couple of frantic calls to my mother where I tried to articulate what I was doing, and she tried to explain what I was doing wrong, I finally got the appeal of webcams. Because with visual aids we might have been able to figure it out. As it was, I finally worked it out for myself using a simple knitting guide she'd sent me home with. I'm really enjoying the knitting, but . . . I'm having a hard time imagining myself ever being good enough to make anything I'd want to keep.

Oh, and did I mention that while in Newport Zach made a three course luncheon? (It wasn't lunch. When it's three courses, served on an insane mix of colorful antique pottery and wildly patterned china with silver demitasse spoons from Mexico and complete with both jam tarts and lemon cake for dessert? It's luncheon.) Photos of the crazy quilt luncheon later.

Things I'm Preoccupied By Before Dawn Today

(1) It rained last night. It's still dark so I can't yet see what the rain has wrought. Yesterday was warm, in the upper 40's, and I came home to a largish pond in the low spot in my driveway. I think spring is going to be harder than winter. The snow is getting black and rotten, and I can already see glimpses of the sour sucking mud to come. I told my mother about the pond, and about the feel of my tires ripping up the road as I drove through it . . . and she told me to go dig a tunnel into the snow bank on the side of the driveway to give it a chance to seep away. I looked blankly at the phone and started wishing myself . . . somewhere else. I'm too lazy for this. I might just have to start parking in the cemetery and avoid the worst of the driveway until either everything freezes and I can drive on lovely solid ice (Seriously, other than bare pavement, and fresh packed snow, ice is the best possible surface for driving right now. Can you believe it?) or . . . June and nice sold dirt returns. In the meantime, I think I might actually need a pair of galoshes.

(2) I'm worried about Sugar. She has a nasty spot on one of her back legs. She was at the vet recently being treated for a UTI, and they wanted me to bring her back when she was through with her antibiotics to take a closer look. I'd thought it was just some wound, possibly inflicted by Freckles, that was taking a while to heal. They thought it was a growth. Which could be cancerous. And last night I noticed that she was limping. She's finished the antibiotics, but I won't be able to get her into the vet for another week. And, this is horrible, but my savings is really running low, and I can't afford cancer.

(3) Speaking of not being able to afford cancer. I need to be able to afford cancer. It's time for me to stop living in lalalalalaiamgoingtowinthelotteryanydaynow land and find a way to take care of myself and my kitties. The last few days? I've felt really tired of being poor. Which is RIDICULOUS and slightly embarassing because I have not exactly lived the life of a poor person this past year. I've traveled a lot, I've eaten fancy cheeses, I bought a brand new car for heaven's sake! But still . . . I wandered into Anthropologie a few times this week between sessions of the bar exam, and I coveted things. Cute spring jackets and absurd camel-shaped creamers and over-priced kicky little flats. New things. Things. And my covetousnous was visceral and made me feel ashamed. But it's not this urge for new things that is causing me to worry about my bank balance. I can make-do without new things. I have lots of pretty, cool old things. But . . . as my savings shrink, so do my options. I need money for necessities. I need money to pay for Sugar's biopsy, and if she has cancer I need to be able to pay for whatever treatments the vet recommends. I need to stop fantasizing about living this life of luxury and ease forever. I need to pull out that old excel spreadsheet and figure out just what income level will make me feel safe, and I need to find a way to earn it. In the meantime, I've agreed to work another day a week. This third work day will be at the owners' other spa, the one at the fancy new ski resort across the valley.

(4) Should I take up embroidery like I kind of feel like I want to?

(5) Sugar and Freckles might just kill each other tonight. Tomorrow I'm driving over to the Oregon coast and I'm taking both cats with me. Tonight, all three of us will be spending the night in a bedroom at my grandparents' house in Caldwell. I will be drugging them with kitty valium, but still. I'm not expecting much sleep.