YOU GOTTA REMEMBER WHO FUCKIN LOVES YOU, MAN.

[constance]

Well! After weeks of this debilitating panicky buzzing static overwhelming me whenever I tried to say something, anything, to anyone (it's taken me a while to realize that this phenomenon seems to be summer-related, which is it possible to have SAD in an inverse sort of style, and also, WAY TO GO SELF-AWARENESS), I woke up this morning, which was, probably not coincidentally, a nice cool morning, with the Urge to Spill. The words, they are fighting to get out, and so I am just going to let them and not make any promises and not question anything. Okay? Okay. Here goes.

• I turned 39 last week, and after years of being sanguine about my approaching Middle Years, suddenly it's much harder to deal. Sure, I'm aging pretty well. Sure, I am active and healthy and inquisitive and don't much resemble the specimen I had in my brain of 40-year-old women when I was, like, seventeen, but God, come on, I am kissing my thirties goodbye and I am so very reluctant to stop! (Despite the fact that some of my thirties were truly lousy, I've liked being in my thirties quite a lot.) Anyway, this goodbye kiss. I feel it should be a really long sloppy open-mouthed slutty one, you know, the kind that when you see them between strangers in the streets you're hard-pressed not to gape and snicker but really who kisses like that in public if they don't want to be seen, right? That kind of kiss. I'm not sure how to go about it, I'm just not that sort of person, but for once in my life I want to be. I am thinking about how I want this year to go down. I don't want to spend it the way I might otherwise be tempted to spend it: lazily napping and reading in



• my new hammock, which was a much-coveted birthday present this year. In spite of my nebulous wishes to do something spectacular (or maybe even more than one spectacular thing) in the next eleven months and twenty days, I've been spending a fair bit of time doing this very thing with the first few days of my fortieth year. But see, if I'm reading out on my porch, I can watch for falling limbs, which are still falling a month after the tornado, more damage in them there trees than anyone (and by anyone, I mean I) suspected, I guess; and also I can spy discreetly on my fascinating new neighbors, who are real-live rednecks, complete with indeterminate numbers of small diaper-clad children and lots of big loud trucks and terrible beer and that neo-redneck buzzcut which has long since replaced the mullet as the hairstyle of choice amongst the men of this demographic, and who last week during some sort of fight aired my new favorite Proclamation o'Love: YOU GOTTA REMEMBER WHO FUCKIN LOVES YOU, MAN. I am trotting this one out whenever I can, which is not, perhaps unsurprisingly, all that often. But I say it to you now. Because I can.
  
  The hammock, by the way, is configured in such a way that it makes my butt fall asleep if I linger too long. I love it anyway, though. I do love me an imperfect life, a lovely thing with just a stinging edge of discomfort to it.



• In other lazinesses (and as part of an ongoing effort to avoid the beginning of the end of BSG), I am slowly revisiting Deadwood and loving it even better the second time around. And oh, my. I'd remembered so many of the things I loved about it: everything about my father's spiritual twin Al Swearingen; the weaselly, prolix nastiness of EB; my future wastrellous, fabulous first wife Calamity Jane; so much, much more. But I'd sort of forgotten how incredibly, mind-bogglingly hot Seth Bullock was, or maybe I never felt it the first time around (actually, I liked Sol much more the first time around, now that I think about it), but now whenever he's onscreen, I have a hard time concentrating on the actual scene, I just want to watch him smoulder for a while, and the noteworthy thing is that it's not Timothy Olyphant who's making me squirm, since I'm not really an Olyphantgirl; it is all about Seth Bullock. MMmmmMMmMmm.



• Despite these sedentary non-adventurous activities, though, I am still losing weight. I've lost quite a lot now, in fact, enough that people have taken to boggling at the change, and while I know people mean to be flattering (and while obviously it is nice to have a waist and also to be able to wear all the nifty summer skirts that hung forlornly in my closet for years because I loved them too much to throw them out but couldn't actually get them buttoned or zipped or indeed over my hips), I find myself resenting this specific attention a little. I mean, yeah, thanks for telling me I'm looking good, healthy, fit, whatfuckingever, but no thanks for the implication that I was looking crappy before. I should probably deal with this resentment, right, before it gets the better of me, before some well-meaning guy tries to flirt mildly with me and instead of smiling and being nice and moving uncomfortably on I stick around long enough to haul off and punch him in the face. That'd be uncool, I know.



• And finally, I have a delicate question for you that only you, gentle reader, can answer. I've been catching up, in the last couple of days, finding out what you've been up to in the last month (and realizing in the process how few of the journals I've got friended are still actually active), wanting to comment sometimes but feeling weird about commenting enthusiastically on a post made three weeks ago, because even if I am just coming to you, you have moved far past that moment, and so this is my question to you: what exactly is your statute of limitations for comments on past posts? Do you even have one?



• There's one more thing, too. :* It's really, really good to see you again. Good to be hanging around. Good to be talking.

Comments

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

OMG, belated birthday wishes galore! Maybe you can flip-flop between Making This Last Year of the 30's As Memorable As Possible and the napping/reading/hammocking stuff. As a friend's brother once said, "Carpe diem is good in theory, but it's pretty tiring to apply to real life. I can only really seize every third day."

Congratulations on the weight loss. There's nothing that compares to having joyous reunions with old friends from one's wardrobe. It IS hard to deal with those sort of congratulatory comments, but I always try my best to imagine that they aren't meaning, "Gosh, you really used to cast a mighty shadow!" when they're complimenting my (currently elusive) svelteness.

Just like everyone else who's commented, I can't imagine any sort of statute of limitations on comments. I'm greedy that way.

It's so nice to see you again! I've missed you tons.

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

This:

I can only really seize every third day.

made me laugh out loud. I might have to adopt that as my slogan.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

I liked it when I heard it, too, and it's so true- for me, especially during vacations. I'm an enthusiastic planner and dig up all manner of fun things to do, and then by the end of the second day or so, it's like, damn, could I just wake up tomorrow and maybe do a little vacuuming instead of Living Life to its Fullest with another round of beautiful scenery and exhilarating recreational pursuits?

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm the same way now - I used to want to do OMG EVERYTHING, but now I'm learning that there's a lot of vacation to be had just sitting under a tree, reading a book. Or that cleaning the kitchen really IS a good use for time off, even though the weather is nice, because if I don't clean the kitchen I won't be happy when I get back from enjoying the nice weather.

tl;dr: the psychology of vacations is hard.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

"Carpe diem is good in theory, but it's pretty tiring to apply to real life. I can only really seize every third day."

Wow, your friend's brother is a wise man. I know from experience (years ago, a couple of friends and I made a game out of taking a risk a day, and IT NEARLY KILLED ME) that I'm that sort as well, so I am taking your advice seriously. :D

Oh, Laurel, I've missed you tons also! If I weren't afraid of messing up your splendid hair, I'd totally tackle you with a gigantic bear hug.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

OMG, I'd love to hear more about that taking-a-risk-a-day exercise! A friend and I talked about doing that once, although ours mostly centered around checking out scary little places of business- the dusty Religious Gift Shop we passed on the way to school, for instance, or the North African grocery store manned by the forbidding guy with the huge mustache, and so on. What kind of risks did you guys take? And how long did you keep it up? {/eager nosiness}

It's 5:42am and my splendid hair (tm) is in total "Heat Miser" mode, so I'll stand on the porch and hope that you'll be by soon to give me my tackle and hug.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Well, mostly we just had to do stuff outside our normal comfort zones. For me, this meant doing things a lot like what you describe, going new places, approaching people I wouldn't normally approach, doing things... well, you get the picture. My single one-night stand took place during this period, for example. And I confessed a crush on someone who didn't crush back on me AND THE WORLD DID NOT END, but mostly it was just little stuff, and even the little stuff made me break out in hives. Except when it comes to food, taking risks really doesn't sit well with me. I was not sorry when that little social experiment ended!

And: 5:42 am! Good lord, woman, don't you know it's unhealthy to get out of bed that early?