Good times

Today is a great day, even if it is Friday the 13th. I'm not superstitious though.

My dad came out of a triple bypass surgery yesterday with flying colors. He's already sitting up, eating, and telling the staff stories. Even jokes. This could not be better news! I am elated!

My job is one step closer to making meeting Justin Timberlake something I might get paid to do. I cannot complain.

In doing job-related research, I discovered his upcoming movie, Runner Runner, which looks great. I'm starting a list of movies to see, since it's getting too long to remember (and there is so much summer crap out in the theaters right now). Hoping my new library card will make it relatively easy/free to see most of these.

1) Runner Runner
2) Don Jon
3) Mud
4) Despicable Me 2
5) Before Midnight
6) Place Beyond the Pines
7) Moneyball
8) Tree of Life
9) No
10) Monsters U

snippets

Some randomness from dreams and real life...

-kitties sunning themselves, squinting, resting on the floor

-dream: that i woke up this morning to find the ground covered in snow (and our back door moved three feet to the left), and tried to do the math of how much the temperature would have had to fall last night for that to happen - 45 degrees!

-debating making a gluten free pie crust or making a crustless quiche

-daydreaming for being in a pool, lake, the ocean, whatever

-thinking about a family trip to the water park for my birthday in a couple of weeks. and quite happy to still be young at heart.

-discovered a great body-care special - $100 for 5 yoga classes and an hour massage.

-restlessness because it's been too rainy/muggy to go running. to be cured by this evening's yoga class

-frozen bananas in dark chocolate now being sold at the grocery store

-junior mints

-raspberries

-I'm finally reading a Barbara Kingsolver novel, her newest: Flight Behavior. I love it. I will definitely be reading more of her stuff.

-"Mother, these are my awards, from Arrrrmmmmyyyy"

-Why do cats get to take all the naps??

-we started using Mint.com, a decade after everyone else, and it's so useful! Love the budget feature! and not having to sign in to a million different sites to check our accounts

-someone recently tried to convince me that i don't want to use a teleporter. The risk of being disassembled and all. I say it's worth the chance of being unrecoverable if I can go see my friends and family at a moment's notice.

-our brains almost exploded watching Mythbusters featuring the Storm Chasers stars

-the Tour de France is on. secretly all i can think about is - how many of these guys are NOT doping??

-the dishwasher is a good good friend of mine :)

Unfinished

this is the first poem i've written in months, so even though it's in need of some revision, i'm putting it out there... because i think writing is meant to be shared.

The magic of

Tall, canyoned streets,

Sunset reflections at the lake front,

Sirens layered on symphonies

Of color and activity,

The sidestreet blues bar where smiley, surly Joe

Called up groups of white, Latino, and Asian musicians

To join the jam – they play

From the belly and light up the eyes of the watching weary,

The el train to DePaul on a Cosby street,

Or my beloved Mexico beckoning through a dark-eyed bartender,

Serving tropical, smoky-sweet and tangy-tongued tastes

To sultry samba sways.

Is it possibility, or triumph?

Full bellied, I clattered down your streets, enamored of

Traffic, of industry, of old bridges facing down steel-windowed facades.

I lusted for you without knowing, and

You sated my desire

Until I could only brim with the buzzing of excitement.

Yes,

I was born here, close by.

I came into the world and quickly walked away,

And in my absence you grew glorious.

Thirty years later you called out to me, and I found you,

Arriving at myself

This perfect blue-sky day.

Unbelieving in my good fortune, our fair match.

These days I am more easily captivated by a place,

Falling in love with cities is the new high,

Now that my ring finger is fixed on one man and sobriety simplifies.

Now I live to discover new homes for my heart

And the world beckons endlessly, the many-metropolised Medusa.

Explore, discover, enjoy, she whispers.

Some cities are certainly sexy.

Mutual attraction, or fated fantasy?

Is it in the forgetting of self

that accompanies adulthood,

making the senses ring when life's nectar drips into view?

Or have I earned this appreciation

through toiling hours and quiet questioning? 

What a world! What a life! I'll take you with me when I go,

Chicago.

Not mine

2 little whos
(he and she)
under are this
wonderful tree

smiling stand
(all realms of where
and when beyond)
now and here

(far from a grown-
up i&you-
ful world of known)
who and who

(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)