tammytoes

Today was digging out day: spent the afternoon with the shovel, clearing knee-deep drifts around my car and the street in anticipation that I’ll be able to drive at some point this weekend. Plans have changed. My customary trip to Kansas City has turned into a holiday at home. Important deadlines at work have passed, rendering their importance null and void. (Why did we care so much in the first place?) The cosmos delivered up a heap of delight in the form of blizzard.

It’s the chance to feel like a pioneer at the corner store, the impossible sight of cross-country skiers in the middle of the street, the fun of schlepping a 12-pack of beer through the snow after an epic journey to find an open liquor store – the stuff of snow days.

I didn’t take any photos. I was having too much fun.

This has probably already been said by someone more eloquent than me and, in any case, it’s a cliche, but still: friends are the family we choose. Our “real” family, the ones with whom we share legal ties, sometimes biological ties, and generally holidays: that family may love us without reservations, but they rarely accept us without judgment. Lucky to have found a family of friends with few reservations and fewer judgments. Home is an elusive concept at best, but my home as of late is truly the place where I connect with my family of friends.

The Clayton Manor holiday festivities have begun, silver tree and Margi and Garrett as our very own Mary and Joseph.

Cold rice is the key to making delicious fried rice.

Few things are truly dry clean only.

Homemade gifts are the best.

Adrenaline is a powerful drug.

Al Gore would be very disappointed with how much I’ve been enjoying the warm winter.

Cookies can be love.

Thursday, 10:35 pm:
As I order a shot of Irish whiskey and a third can of Schlitz, I remember that I have to do a presention to the owner, president and store managers of an upscale retail chain at 8 am the next morning – and I haven’t prepared anything. I do the shot anyway.

Friday, 6:35 am:
Rifle through underwear drawer. Remember that the washing machine is still broken and there’s no clean underwear left. Decide to go commando for third day in a row at work. It’s more fun that way anyway.

Friday, 6:38 am:
Rip a massive hole through a pair of clean black tights. Swear profusely. Search around sock drawer for another pair without holes. Try on two more pairs – they both have holes. Try on a third pair with a giant tear in the ass, but no holes in the legs. It’s the winner.

Friday, 6:40 am:
Pull black shirt out of the giant laundry pile, apply smell test. It barely passes, goes on under suit jacket.

Friday, 6:50 am:
Breakfast: glass of water with Emergen-C.

Friday, 7:15 am:
Get in car and think about objective of presentation. Get sidetracked immediately by thinking about what to wear to a show later that night. Turn up Lagwagon to mindnumbing volume and almost take wrong highway exit.

Friday, 7:30 am:
Arrive in parking lot early for meeting. Think about writing down some key points for presentation. Decide to read comic book instead.

Friday, 8:00 am:
Extemporize presentation. Commando. It goes way too well.

Self-Portrait as Seismograph
- Cecily Parks

Dear Magnitude, I leave the how much
to you. Bereft of equation,

I’d rather logarithms lodged elsewhere—
there is no sensitivity in numbers,

only in effects. In the calm, let us speak
in effects: a ball drops

dragon’s mouth-to-frog’s mouth,
a pendulum swings on its knife-edge

pivot. I’d say the measurable
captivates more than the measurement

in any accident, but I am merely a mass
suspended. Set my pen

to drum, set my drum recording—
I am the instrument of your intensity

and you my more. If there
be foundation, I have found it

to be oscillating. If there be water,
it is something falling.

Be peak to my trough, be hand
fastened to my throat. Shake me

something fierce and I will be the figure
of what you did.