Shrieking ovaries and other adult situations

i think i'm finally in a place where i can start updating again.

all thanks to a little girl in a siberian tiger jacket with some pink leggings, the sudden, violent rebirth of my ovaries, and one too many mushy movies.

the saddest news of the day is the fact that my beloved boots are made of fail. my doc marten's which i love far too much are the cause of endless pain and horror. i simply can't walk in them in the snow. last year makes too much sense now. the sliding, slipping. the horror and panic attacks, while real, they were unknowingly self-inflicted. those boots are kind of the devil. today i finally made the executive decision to switch to my slip on sketchers after almost dying of a heart attack on the early walk to work. my triumphant return to work later this same day happened on the much sturdier footing of my weather inappropriate dress shoes. i had the prowess and confidence of an old mountain goat or a small kazakh child swaddled in enough protective clothing to survive a nuclear bomb. it was refreshing.

now let me say that the panic and deep hole of last winter has in no way taken hold this year. i have been greatful for this but i attributed it to the wrong factor. we had snow once, maybe twice and while it stuck around in shadows and corners like a shamed intruder skulking but to stupid to exit gracefully, it has been blessedly ice free the whole winter. now i realize that the ice has been more or less here, but the lack of ankle deep snow means i have been free to wear my regular shoes. one day recently i wore these shoes despite the inches of snow and paid for it with damp pants but no slipping. two days ago i made the switch and had a brief revival of the trauma of last winter. well, that's done. i have gone as insane as actually speaking to a stranger in russian to find out the cost of repairing my beloved shoes so that i don't have to worry about them leaking on me.

ok. sorry. pitiful shoe/snow rant. forgive me my sins, especially anyone who doesn't have green grass on the ground right now (i'm still a bit in shock about having that here myself to be honest) but it has been consuming me.

so on to the next bit. i have had a strange amalgamation of feelings with regard to the small children of this country. mostly, no i should say completely, i love them all. even the gross ones with snot bubbles. i mean, how could anyone not love them with such fervor? regardless (though for emily i will forever think 'irregardless' and hear her snarl in my head at the unwordness of it), i have had a new stab of emotions that displeases me and also makes me laugh at myself. these new emotions run the gambit of bitterness to envy. a particularly stirring and exemplary example happened today.

i was walking home, nimble as a cat with all nine lives and not a care, when i see this darling child RUNNING in the snow. now i'm bit chilly in my moderately inappropriate wear and feel a sting of jealously that she can be simply so round and carefree. basically round here means warm because it means you are wearing more clothes than can be put into words and sound believable. side note: once my counterpart told me that it was fine if she fell because she was wearing a fur coat and wouldn't be hurt because of said coat. while i laughed at the time i realized how true that is. the padding does make the fall much better, which is why i was always so hurt when i fell, not be wrapped in enough down for two beds and the accompanying thirty pillows. 

back to the story, she's running and i have the thought that i could probably run to. that was new. but her ability to fall and not care and her lack of fear of falling (these really are two different ideas. i promise. well, at least i think so anyway,) made me even more jealous. not in a serious way. this is how it always goes. i go from jealous of their careless freedom to wishing i was a little bit younger to enjoy those feelings again. and i end with that whole elderly nostalgia of youth. on a good day i laugh at the first mental white hairs of age (and hopefully wisdom) sprouting and rush home to check the advance of the lines on my face, which move as faithfully as an invading army. the problem is the bad days. envy rears its ugly head and i can only think of how wasteful all of that joy is. equal parts anger for wasting my own youth and annoyance that i can't smack the painful experience of about twenty years into them to make them see, well that never makes me very nice.

still. i feel like this is all very much fun and interesting. i'm at the point in my life where i CAN say nothing nice if i have nothing nice to say. except when i fail in my vows and drink to much, but no one's perfect. i can do things i don't want to. and i can imagine doing one thing (unspecified) for the rest of my life. its strange to grow up. and be both satisfied and horrified. i told Alan recently that i want tri-normal when i get back home. normal looks, normal past, normal life together. i'm so past the point of waiting and wishing for the love of my life to be this perfect...thing. i just want someone i can be happy with and he had the nerve to tell me i sound like an over forty divorcee giving in to time and culture. so rude. but maybe true. though later i thought about it and realized that someone so normal and not screwed up or horrible would be more strange and magical than a minotaur flying in on a unicorn to fly me back to america. so i suppose i've traded one impossible dream for another. but this one feels strangely more feasible.

let's see. what else. oh yes. also the fact that my mind no longer works makes me feel older. i've traded a faulty memory for a very attractive notebook filled with incomprehensible notes and doodles. 

ANYWAY. this little girl. she goes running around and stops in front of this snowman that looks like he's in prison behind a fence. she stands there for a minute when this strange man, looking drunk and homeless might i add, carrying a carton of kefir (think sour yogurt) is walking toward her. now this man could very easily be her father despite him looking about 70 and expired and her being a spry 4.5 year old. anyway, this scene brought about the first stirrings of my retired ovaries. BUT! this man in a car, 'driving' on snow, has the nerve to not stop upon seeing the girl and simply lays on his horn. well. standing in snow getting wetter and wetter my ovaries bursted into existence and screamed with a rage i haven't felt in a while. who was this terrible man and how dare he might even chance harming a single fiber of her protective tiger pelt? the child could have been hit at 70 mph and simply bounced away thanks to the protective prowess of winter clothing, but the...audacity of considering it. i was standing in shock and ready to go running though the snow drifts myself to save the darling in no need of saving. and this lil angel. she simply scurried out of the way and did something so cute and adult that is burned into my skull. completely unphased she simply grab her comically large knit hat and resettled it atop her head revealing her eyes which were covered in her hasty retreat. there's something so normal in this act that it took on the luster of a carefully crafted movie scene meant to fill a watcher with the pain of real life and its precious commonplace.

if you can't tell this is one of the good days. seeing the carefree kid made me happy for the kid and myself. i get to remember those feelings but i also can walk to the store and spend the money in my pocket on any candy i want without having anyone yell at me. there are benefits to everything, even getting older.

so in the end i came home, made some horrid roast beef and gravy from a can and washed it down with a sandwich made of cheese? green peas, eggs, strange sausage and KETCHUP! delicious. and then i watched eat, pray, love. thus my transformation into middle-aged cat lady divorcee became complete. and what do we crazy old people do when faced with stories about starting life after all seems lost? we digress and nostalge. yes, i made it a verb. i'm a teacher. i can do that.