Jan 8, 2001 8:35 PM from ***
Dude. 2 week retainer, all bills to be paid weekly, $150/hour if you feel like
doing charity work, and a brand new laptop with all the necessary software on
it.
And a chocolate shake, to go.
[Cube Farm New Job 2001> msg #3995

Jan 8, 2001 8:37 PM from
And a pony.
[Cube Farm New Job 2001> msg #3996

Jan 8, 2001 8:40 PM from ***
Oh shit, I can't believe I forgot the pony.
You always gotta get the pony.
[Cube Farm New Job 2001> msg #3997

Jan 8, 2001 8:41 PM from * *
Fuck the pony. Go for the purebred Arabian.
[Cube Farm New Job 2001> msg #3998

Tonight's routine:

Come home. Eat. (I'd been basically chained to my desk all day today, and this hadn't eaten *anything*. I was famished.) Do a preliminary cleanup of the kitchen, make tea, sort mail, go back and dry and put away the dishes.

Somewhere in there I concieved of a craving for something sweet and starchy, so I whipped up a batch of shortcakes, and had one with peach preserves on top and some more tea. I cleaned the dishes from that up, stuck the leftover shortcakes in a container, made lunch for tomorrow, and, yes, had some more tea.

And now I'm upstairs, writing away, waiting for Cindy to arrive and reclaim her van key and occasionally tossing Lilith off my lap. I'm listening to the roar of a plane going overhead and thinking about the moon, which was rising fat and full tonight as I came home, silvering the clouds that blew in front of it.

Chris and I did a process I call life triage on Sunday morning over the breakfast table. I'm not sure if he even realized that's what we were doing. Life triage is taking an honest look at your life, figuring out where you are and where you want to be, actually getting down some goals, and figuring out several tangible steps towards each of those goals. Life triage is all about figuring out what's worth working on, what's already dead, and what you can't do anything for at the moment.

I don't know how much it helped...but I'm doing everything I can to shove him onto his own two feet.

I'm doing the best I can, trying to help without being drained. I still spent most of Sunday off-balance and spinning idly in place. I'm recovered now, and happy because wonderful things are happening in my life (weddings! crushes! people very possibly moving here! bossman is happy with my work!) and I'm happy that I seem to be helping, at least a little.

Tough love is hard on everyone. I feel sort of like a parent who is shoving a kid out into the world for the first time. I can't imagine being so unprepared for the "real world", such as it may be. When I was home, I couldn't wait to leave. I studied the mannerisms and the trappings of adult life. I listened to my parents and their friends talk about their jobs. Hell, I read books about ettiquite. I know by heart the order in which dishes are served at a formal meal and what's different about California. (They eat salad first instead of last.)

And then I found out that all of that stuff doesn't matter when you're first out in the world.

I jumped into the world and chomped down onto the first bit of independence I was offered and held on fiercely. I wanted to be on my own so badly, but I bided my time until I fled from my abbreviated Iowan delayed adolescence and to Seattle.

I did okay, for the most part. A few missteps here and there. But I am fiercely independent and there was no way I was going to give up. (okay, 'fiercly independent' is not the way most people put it. 'Idiotically bloody-mindedly stubborn' is more like it.) I changed my mind, frequently. But that was all right.

One memorable day, I stood and watched a van pull away from my house and felt my life start again like a heart zapped with difillibrators.

And it goes.

Tough love. It isn't him I'm being tough on. It's me.

I am told I wake at three a.m.

I am told I have nightmares.
I don't remember them.
I catch my breath and shiver
in a sleep-thickened voice.

at three a.m. I rise to the surface of sleep.

I am told I talk in my sleep.
Sometimes, I try to sell people things.
They never buy.

at three a.m. I rise to the surface of sleep
and put my lips to the line created
by the tension between dream and the waking air.

Sleeping Beauty in reverse.
It is I who kiss wakefulness,
let nightmare rise up and out,
and then float back down in my dark fluid,
the hiss of blood in my ears,
the surface unmarred as a mirror.

1/8/01

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