Editing

So I'm a writer. It's generally acknowledged that I'm good at it, and I believe it, too.

But I think even above that, I'm an editor. It's so ingrained in my consciousness, I can't even read a novel but for seeking errors.

I have a two-page paper to write today. It's a pretty nothing sort of paper, something to be knocked out in about 15 minutes, honestly--if I had a handle on what I was going to write. But I'm sitting at the computer, and I can't think of an opening line.

So I went to the articles I would be discussing, and I picked a concept to talk about. I found a potential quote, typed it into my word document, and looked for the citation. Then, before even expounding on that quote, I created a new page and started my references. Just typing it up, making sure it was formatted in the proper editoral style, with all the necessary periods and placement of reference data, calmed me down.

I have a handle on my references. I can now begin to write.

Preparation

I think one of the great things about being married to Tim is that I have gained a handle on preparation.

I didn't own any snow boots until he came into the picture. Actually, not until now. Six years in Chicago awful winters, and I never wore snow boots.

Each day at the office, I'd get low blood sugar and start shaking, barely making it home before I collapsed, face-down into a pile of cheese and crackers. It wasn't until we explored the South Beach diet that I was able to control that, and arrive home each night not feeling like death.

Now I don't leave the house without an energy bar (homemade), a nail file, hand lotion, and enough layers to deal with whatever the weather throws at me.

I make granola a few times a month so we have breakfast (and snack food for when the low blood sugar sneaks up on us). Our cabinets are stuffed full of canned vegetables and falafel mix, so if we come home without an idea for dinner, we don't have to go out.

Preparation has bought me a great deal of calm, and I love it.

Revision

I got the results of a second cholesterol test, and it's 28 points lower than the first one (done one week previous). I don't know . . . well, anything really, about cholesterol, but that seems like a drastic dive in only seven days. But I'll take it. Still in the high-risk zone, but it seems much more manageable than the first score.

And I am taking extreme measures with my diet, so I have high hopes that a healthy score is within reach in a few months.

So I'm exercising, and understanding why people get addicted to the post-exercise exhaustion/happiness hormone rush, but it's still hard to get excited about actually doing it. I've been in a serious funk the past few days, though. It's hard to figure out whether it's PMS-induced, or cheese-withdrawal. I was actually so pissed off for some unknown reason a few days ago that I said, "fuck this cholesterol noise, I'm having cheese." And it wasn't just plain old cheese, it was Boursin. And I loved every single tiny (for even in my "I deserve some happiness!" indignation, I still couldn't put out of mind how I really shouldn't be eating it) bite of it. God it was delicious!

As much as I love being around my classmates again, this school business is getting on my nerves. I have little motivation to sit down and study, when really I should be vigilant so I make straight As again, thus hurtling myself to the top of the scholarship list. Being awarded big sums of money for doing my work well should be good motivation, but right now it's not getting me off my ass in front of the computer to sit down with a textbook.

Plus, I've gotten a few back-to-back freelance jobs (which I suppose should bolster confidence that I'm not actually losing my skill since leaving publishing), and in choosing between reading something that I'm getting paid for, or something that I'm paying for, it's hard to dedicate time to schoolwork.

Semester two

I started on Wednesday. I was a little anxious, because I hadn't seen most of my classmates in over a month, and you know how I get shy and stuff.

But it's so good to be back. It was like no time had passed, only better, since we all bonded at the end of last semester.

I have about five exercise partners now (though one I may have to fire, because she's 22 and built like a toothpick; and she took the elliptical next to my treadmill after class, and started chugging away on it like it was no big deal, and I just can't deal with the superfit when I feel like a saggy, out-of-shape old lady) and I have most of them convinced we'll be taking up racquetball, and a few want to swim laps, and we all want to start an intramural volleyball team. Hopefully each of us will want to impress the others with our dedication and stick-to-it-iveness so we'll continue, instead of the group devolving (as most groups I tend to be involved with) into a beer-drinking one. (I managed once to dismantle a book club with one fell stroke by saying, "It's easier for me to talk about this book if I have a beer," and that was really the last book we ever read together, but the first beer of many.)

The professor (the same one as last semester) simultaneously horrified and thrilled me by saying when we have our group projects for the class, she's not going to assign me to a group but instead will auction me off to the highest bidders. Reminded me of adolescents, when the girls reeeeally don't want the boys to know they're smart, and I used up my yearly supply of embarrassment with that comment. Of course I want people to think I'm smart. I just feel uncomfortable being singled out among my classmates. You're never too old to resent someone else for being teacher's pet, and I just want to be liked.

I have the exact same classmates but for one addition, and with the same professor, so we didn't have to do any introductions about what school we went to, what our field experience was, blah blah blah, but instead introduced ourselves to the new woman by telling new and unknown things. There were many jokes and laughter, and when one classmate revealed that it was another's birthday, we spontaneously broke into song, and it all just made me really happy.

I really didn't expect this from grad school. Not that I expected any social work program to be really cutthroat and competitive, but I've heard stories about general grad school experiences where people vie to put in their two-cents and try to be better than others. My class is so supportive of each other.

In fact, last semester, I was amazed sometimes at how open people could be. There were a few people who shared experiences that, if they happened to me, I would never in a million years verbalize to a class of 30. One girl had a sister who was travelling in South America with her boyfriend, and they were mugged and the sister was raped. She told us all about it one day, as explanation for why she had missed a few days of class. I think everyone was shocked that she opened up, but she must have felt an outpouring of support because this week, she gave us an update on how her family is doing. I think it's pretty amazing to foster that kind of trust in such a large group.

Edited to add: Now, a few days after class, I've started getting e-mails on the class listserv about people who feel like they didn't share enough in class. Someone's self-proclaimed "generic" revelation about how she likes to travel was put aside to say that she's had a difficult past six months, and being in our supportive class has helped her get through it. I'm so grateful to be a part of this group.

Franziaaa . . . the wine in the box

For what seemed like every single day in Physics class senior year of high school, David Rowe sat behind me and sang this jingle. I remembered it the other day when I was thinking about how I needed to start drinking red wine on a regular basis, but how it probably defeated the health purposes to drink a whole bottle in one sitting because I don't want it to go bad. So really the perfect item for me would boxed wine that wouldn't turn to vinegar if I only had one glass a night.

Oh, if only it was good wine!

I thought about the red wine because I need to start eating heart-healthy. Because I just found out my cholesterol level is currently on red alert, danger zone.

Though it could primarily be from genetics, I do eat what could technically be defined as an ass-ton of cheese. It is, after all, my number one favorite food. And as much as it kills me to cut down on the cheese, and despite the genetic predisposition, I just can't wrap my head around going on medication when I'm only 30.

Like I blogged about earlier, my resolution is to maintain calm in the face of stress, so my first thought was, "(damn it) I'm going to have to start an exercise program (damn it)." And so I did.

And then I decided to get rid of all the unhealthy food in the apartment--by eating it. (Don't want to be wasteful--and Tim sure isn't going to polish off that half-pound of sandwich ham!)

And I announced to my classmates my newly discovered condition, and that I was starting an exercise program, and several of them said they'd join me, so now I have to stick with it.

But the thing about remaining calm is that it doesn't always work inside. My head knows all the logical things, but I guess I didn't give myelf time to acknowledge what a potentially huge thing it is to have proof that there is something terribly unhealthy and dangerous in my life. Dad says, "well, it's not like you're going to drop dead from a heart attack tomorrow . . ." but doesn't that happen to 30-year-olds sometimes? I mean, it's not outside of the realm of possibility or anything.

And I do eat a lot of cheese!

So I'm upset and depressed, and scared, and I'm worried I'm going to develop an eating disorder. I came home with low blood sugar tonight and needed to stuff some food in my face just so I wouldn't pass out. Normally, that would be cheese and crackers. But instead I looked for something healthier. I found a Trader Joe's frozen bag of chicken fried rice (and all the ingredients were good) and made that. And then ate it worrying that I used too much of the spray olive oil in the pan to fry it, and what about the fatty bits on the chicken, and is white rice merely not the greatest thing to eat or is it in fact raising my cholesterol by fractions of a point as it heads down my gullet?

It's pretty ridiculous, I know. I know what's healthy, and that we do eat very healthily. (I guess I did marry someone who is beyond anal when it comes to the food he puts in his body.) But I suddenly feel paralyzed and in the dark, like I forgot all of that, and as though I was just deluding myself into thinking we were healthy when actually we subsist on McDonald's supervalue meals.

I guess that year of mozarella sticks and hot wings, aka 2002, is catching up with me.

"My senses exist to witness your beauty"

I have a box of letters under the bed. One of my secret desires of old was to be someone who inspired love letters, and it's very satisfying to have fulfilled that. The oldest is from 1994, and the latest are ones from Tim, our anniversary letters to each other.

I went in it last night to see what it contained for the purpose of writing this post. Otherwise I hadn't looked at it in a while. Usually the box existed for post-breakup self-confidence boosting. If ever I was down about someone rejecting me, or wondering if anyone would ever be interested again, reading through the old letters was good for that.

At home over Christmas, organizing my old things, I came across two enormous boxes filled with all the letters I'd ever received from childhood up through college. I was a prolific writer back then, and so were my correspondents. (I think the box filled with three summers of letters to me at camp was the same amount as the rest of my childhood combined.) Since college was included in that collection, I found a few from a guy I had wanted to date but never did.

Reminiscing is only good if you have no regrets. Though I'd like to have none, David was one.

I met him early in the first semester of my senior year of college. LeAnn and I lived across the street from a laundromat, and we went together to wash our clothes. It was manned by a short, muscular guy in hippie attire with long hair and thick sideburns. Too bad David was so short, for he was exactly my type. Nonetheless, I found ways to flirt with him as LeAnn hissed at me to ignore him. The next time I did laundry, it was early afternoon and the place was dead but for him. We sat in front of the TV, watching a soccer game on the Spanish station, and he wove me a hemp necklace with a melted copper squiggle of a pendant. In the midst of it all, I started dating someone else. We hadn't had The Talk yet, so when David asked if I wanted to go to a poetry reading with him, I accepted. I wasn't sure how to handle things (hadn't yet developed skill enough to date multiple people), so I had a talk with the other guy, and we determined that we were exclusive. So the date ended up being a nondate, and I told him about my boyfriend when we went for drinks after the poetry.

But still. There was something there. A few months later, he went to Egypt to study field mice for a year (he was a bio grad student), and he wrote to me frequently. Once he even called me to hear my sexy, throaty, cold-induced voice. I took over his place at the laundromat, and eventually started working with his best friend Doug.

Doug and I become good friends, and eventually he strong-armed me into dating him. (I say that because I had utterly no intention of dating him. I was still hung up on his best friend.) David visited one week, and I found out later that Doug had given him strict (if paranoid) instructions to stay away from me. That was the nail in the coffin--for both me and Doug, and for anything with David.

As the years passed, I'd occasionally Google him, and once I discovered him living in an apartment not three blocks away from where I had just moved! Or so I thought. After leaving a message on his machine, I wondered if that was really his voice, and then a few weeks later, a guy returned my call and it wasn't him.

Oh how I wished things had gone differently. Being with him instead of Doug (who turned out to be controlling and insecure, a real bother), or having a second chance. I daydreamed about randomly running into him at a bar in Chicago, for I knew he visited often. Finally, after way too long, he faded from my thoughts, and I only Googled him if the subject came up of old flames.

So I didn't like reading the ancient letters I found from him. They reminded me of things I didn't want to think about, because there was nothing to be done about them. I think regrets are stupid, and I don't want to think about having any.

But Googling is a good thing. I finally tracked down a photo of him online, and it completely erased any lingering thoughts I'd had of him. Whew. Aging is sometimes unkind.

Magic

There are things I believe. Things I don't. And a lot of things I don't have the energy to determine whether or not I believe them.

I don't feel comfortable enough to articulate that I don't believe in God. I definitely don't have any certainty that I don't.

Tim's old boss, Witch Doctor Bob (a naturopath, actually) does things that can never be explained. A lot of his remedies don't work on me, because I don't believe in them.

Being so skeptical, though, doesn't account for me believing in Tim's magic. I can't explain it. I just do. To put it into words sounds ridiculous. Like how our bedroom had an off-putting vibe--I never wanted to spend time there--so I asked him to do some magic in there. Now I am drawn to spend time there.

He says a lot of what is called magic has to do with energy. At my old job in Alabama, I encountered a client who threw more venom at me than I'd ever experienced in my entire life. Just the sight of her would put me in major crisis mode, and every interaction with her would sap me of my strength. I put a lot of effort into deciding how I needed to handle her, and things I could say to attempt to take a stand against her taking such supreme advantage of me. Tim told me of a spell to try.

I was, of course, skeptical, but since I didn't have anything to lose by that point, I tried it. He told me to envision a shield in front of me, to spend time fully fleshing out what I imagined it to look like. Then when I went to work, think about holding it. The next day, I was ambushed in my office by this client. I didn't know she would be showing up at that particular time, so I didn't have a chance to think again about my shield.

But this time things were different. Instead of glaring across the desk at me, waves of hatred emanating from her body, she behaved more reasonably. Not like I was her favorite person in the world, but like she could finally tolerate my presence and perhaps respect that I could help her.

Of course, logically I thought something had happened on her end. Maybe she finally decided it took too much effort being so hateful. But I decided not to discount what I had done. My own magic. I think if I acknowledge it and believe in it, then it must have some power.

Break

I have been relaxing and cooking like I used to--really taking advantage of my break. Not feeling guilty about my excessive laying around watching TV or reading. And I thought, "I could really get used to this. Damn us not being independently wealthy!" How I'd love to be a lady of leisure, rising late, being able to spend time making my home beautiful and lived in, gourmet cooking when the mood strikes. My non-existent stress level has made things utterly lovely for Tim and I. Our weekends are lazy and filled with happiness and cuddles.

And then, when I started to freak out that I had just a week and a half left until that whole world would be turned on its head, and school would start, my internship, my second part-time job, I also started to get a little restless. So now I'm ready. Good timing, that.

Only I found out today, third-hand, that three of the supervisors at my internship (my direct boss one of them) all quit and their last day will be Friday, before I even return. Talk about a world being turned on its head. I don't know what my future will hold there, now. I reeeeally like my boss, and she is/was the only LCSW on staff--a certification needed to sign off on intern's hours. There are five of us students in total, so I hope we get taken into consideration when planning how to proceed with new hires. I love the placement, so I don't want to get shuffled off to a new one.

And I also hate the timing, for I wanted my boss's job when I graduate--in 1.5 years. But I know there's some hospital fuckness, the extent of which I'm not even sure, so I'm sure she and the others have a good reason for leaving. (But despite the horror stories I've heard, I still harbored the desire to at least get my foot in the door, to get some experience there.)

I'm trying to spin it positively (because I haven't yet heard any details) and think that maybe this is a good opportunity for me to take on more responsibility. Or maybe she's going to a cool new place and will take me with her. I don't know. I'm trying to chill out and not worry about it.

My New Year's resolution is to remain calm and relaxed when things get stressful.