Poetry Tuesday and Weird Developments in my Ability to Be Calm.

Hi guys! What’s up? EVERYTHING IS AMAZINGLY GOOD DESPITE THE FACT THAT NOT EVERYTHING IS AMAZINGLY GOOD!

Seriously, I am starting to wonder if I have a form of Bipolar Disorder, because I am ridiculously happy right now, and my moods have been so bouncing between extremes of late.

I couldn’t get my money order for rent last night because my paycheck from the 15th STILL hadn’t posted to my account (it did this morning, yay!) so while I arranged to be late this morning so I could give it to the leasing office, I was later than intended because I had to run to 7-11 to use their ATM (7-11 has a deal with my bank that I don’t have to pay extra fees to use their ATMs even though they aren’t NFCU ATMs) and then to the money order place. They didn’t have any quarters this morning, either, which means I’ll have to see if the senate credit union can hook a sista up at lunch, because I am almost out of clean underwear. I didn’t do any exercising this week at all, which is totally lame and I hate it. (which is SO weird for me, btw.) Work continues to require me to do 8 hours of work in 4 hours at each job, but I’m enjoying it, even when the stupid network won’t let me print a directory of my folders for electronic records (stupid jerk computer permissions frakking things up!) But despite this, and the fact that COMPS ARE FRIDAY AND SATURDAY OH MY GOD I am in a euphoric state. After each little setback, I was all “meh. whatever. I’mma sing along with the radio now.”

Apparently my dad reads my blog, which is hilarious to me because I very carefully craft lies to protect him from the knowledge that I am sexually active (for the good of his mental health) but I talk about that stuff here all the time. At least my mom isn’t computer-savvy enough to read it, and Dad wouldn’t share it with her for all our sake’s. I’m pretty sure if I knew that last week, I’d have collapsed in a puddle of AUGH but instead: whatevs. I never made an effort to hide it from him, so *shrug*

I’m sure I’m going to be freaking out at everything on Thursday, but right now everything is absolutely do-able.

Gonna be skating at Crofton Sunday after the All-Stars bout, and Sm’Ak (Maiden Sm’Akron) is gonna let me try on her extra gaskets (knee protection is your friend!) and some wheels which are better than the radar wheels that come with the rookie package skates, which is good because the wheels are making it IMPOSSIBLE for me to t-stop. I either bend my ankle or they grind to a halt so fast my foot flies out from under me and I fall on my butt. But I don’t know wheels well enough to know what I need, and I need something I can use inside and out so I am not spending lots of money I don’t have.

One last thing before the poem: My friend Rachel Brody edited an anthology and my friend Eric Sipple wrote a story for it, and it’s available now in Kindle e-book format and will be available for other e-readers and in print later this week. Okay! Good thing I wrote two poems when things were sucky, because I haven’t had time to do any others. So this one is kinda sucky (which is why I used the other one last week) but it’s all I got for y’all.

I am building sandcastles on an ever-shifting foundation
entire cities laid out on a swampy foundation
so that I must keep layering upon the ruins of myself
new turrets

the pale collapsed long ago
and the moat is overgrown with duckweed and algae
there are ghosts at play in the battlements
while I struggle to rebuild the
curtain wall

I keep slipping
covered in green and daub
terrifying the minnows that
make the shallows their home
though they mostly dance and
laugh at my pitiful efforts

I’m tired of trying, of recreating this fort
but I have no other place to live
so I have to keep building
towns above the graves of those that
I built before