Knowing Bliss

It’s easy for me to be stupid about money – pretending I have more than I do, mostly. Through a combination of not paying attention and some unfortunate dental health, I had sufficient debt at the end of grad school to make it impossible for me to be as flexible as I wantedl – you can’t defer credit card debt to run away and do good work like you can with student loans, it seems. So I’ve been hacking away at it for two years – Thanks to dog-sitting and TAing to earn money above and beyond my salary, and especially thanks to a loan from my sister that let me pay her back at a reasonable interest rate rather than haggling, I’m finally done. It felt good to put the last check in the mail yesterday, and maybe maybe I’ve finally learned my lesson about shifting the cost of today into tomorrow.

At long last. How in God’s name I lived in Boston for nearly four years without ever making it up to Maine is beyond me, but better late than never. Thankfully, roommate Kirsten was up for a trip. We left Boston on Sunday afternoon and got to Kennibunkport in time to spend an hour or two on the beach, observing the rocky coastline and the fishermen in their rubber suits wading out into the water. We read and enjoyed the breezes and dipped our toes in the frigid Atlantic before moving on to have dinner with a former coworker who was visiting family in town. It stretched long into the night in that slow sweet summer way, such that we found ourselves heading back somewhere around 3:30 AM (after my friend obligingly made me a cup of coffee for the road). We made it safely home, thanks to some WAKE UP jumping jacks at the MA border, and crawled into our beds in Boston just as the sky was turning blue with morning. A short but lovely excursion that left me sad that I won’t have another chance to go back. I will note, however, that Maine mosquitos are every bit as bad as Mom told me they were.

So, some catching up to do on my list, plus hopefully some new accomplishments.

I DID spend Halloween in DC; well, technically in Virginia, but we’ll give me credit for the broad metro area. I spent the weekend with Emily and Tim in their new apartment, along with their lovely puppy and snuggly cat. We watched a scary movie together (‘watched’ in my case = buried my face in a pillow and whimpered for two hours) and then we made Tim stay up with us while we watched The Proposal to clear our mental palette. And then we stayed up talking on her porch until the wee hours while Tim dozed inside. Truly lovely.

We went out with some friends to Alexandria the following night. There’s something sort of freeing about grown-ups in costume – like we can’t take ourselves too seriously – which I appreciate.

I think I’ve done this over and over, at this point. I had Quakers here twice, and I cherish the memories of stir frying with Rebecca, making veggies only with Evin, and cooking shrimp for the first time with Josh (to say nothing of the countless times we’ve ordered pizza in the living room – I’m not sure that counts). I threw a party for my 10,000th day on earth (Jan 3, 2010) that included some serious cookies using a recipe Dad and I discovered together and wearing the apron Dory got me for Christmas (please observe, below, me looking very domestic while heating chocolate/cherry sauce).

But, the first dinner party we hosted, we threw for ourselves (we being myself and my fabulous roommates). I made signature lentil soup, Erinn baked fresh rolls, Kirsten prepared a beautiful green salad, and Nikkii supplied the wine.

It was one of many sweet sweet evenings I’ve spent with the women I live with. I wrote this goal with the idea that hosting people would make this house feel like home, and although hosting makes me feel competent and satisfies my need to care for others, but nothing feels whole quite like this small family that we’ve built – this home we found in each other.

A really beautiful, sad book, that captures the hollow melancholy I would imagine follows after the devastation of war. An interesting exploration of the community that forms among survivors who have arrived in one place through different paths – and a dissolution of that community that startled me and offers an interesting lens for viewing the close of the second world war.

This happened forever ago, i.e., September, while in Oregon. I should note that my sister, ever supportive, threatened to withhold him from me just so I would not meet this goal. But, maybe because of my willingness to change diapers, she went all soft and let me hold him. And hold him. And sing to him (although she draws the line at “Shoop”, even though Micah clearly likes it, being an astute baby). And bounce him on the yoga ball (child care = core-strengthening activity). And make funny faces at him. And discuss world politics in cheerful baby voices.

In sum, nephews are so damn cool.

Having finished my other reading material on the trip down, I picked this one up used in Rainbow Books during a nostalgic visit to the University of Delaware last week. That nostalgia is the most moving part of this reading experience.

I have a near compulsive need to find out what happens to characters once I know a little of them, so I was interested enough as I was reading, but felt no stirrings upon putting the book down. It’s really two stories: one about the quasi-erotic friendship of two young men in Great Britain between the two World Wars; and the other about the relationship that later develops between one of the young men and the sister of the friend he used to be in love with. I liked the first book – the downward spiral of Sebastian was fascinating to me, as was the way homosexuality played out in the main characters and secondary characters during a time when it wasn’t so openly discussed/practiced as it has been in my lifetime. The second half appealed much less to me, maybe because it was more similar to other things I’ve read, and maybe because I was way more interested in Sebastian than in the narrator, so once Sebastian more or less exited the story, I lost interest.

The fact that reading this book actually generated feelings of unease and disorder within me puts me in awe of the author but would make me hesitant to recommend it to friends. Maybe a better read for summer when I could put it down and go enjoy the fresh air, than for the week of daylights savings, when Boston realizes it’s almost winter and everyone forgets how to drive. The chapters aren’t strictly chronological, which made me want to sit down and chart the various happenings, just to see if they do actually line up with each other or if it’s as disjointed as it feels. But that would mean rereading the book, which might have to wait until spring.