Rock Me Like a Hurricane, Day 2/2

So that was it. After tossing fitfully for hours last night I finally drifted off to sleep right as Irene rolled into town. I heard a few whistling whines, a howling wind or two, and when I woke at noon she was all but gone.

Spent the day inside watching footage of news anchors up to their ankles in water somewhere in Long Island, baked cookies, and did not watch the Friday Night Lights I promised yesterday because sometimes your heart just isn't ready. Don't push it.

After the worst of the winds died down, I pulled on my jeans (WHICH-- sidebar: either I am wasting away or said jeans have gotten significantly larger, because... well, I literally had to hold them up to keep them on. Like, two steps hands-free and they were threatening to hit the concrete) and grabbed my camera before darting outside to get some pictures of the last of this hurricane sky. The light was fading, so I had to move quickly, but I managed to take over a hundred photos in about half an hour. It was liberating to be outside with the wind still blowing ferociously, scattered little rain drops sprinkling my face tilted toward the pink and purple sky beneath my camera. Pretty wonderful.

This doesn't have anything to do with Irene, but I discovered it while I was out and thought it was pretty cool.

Hello Hurricane, Day 1/2

Well. Today couldn't have gone any better unless I'd spent it making out. ...Oops.

(Goal for day 2...)

My activities for the day included, but were not limited to, the following:

**Packaging up and mailing back a gold sequined evening gown (!) that was perfect, but for the 2-3" gap between the bottom of said dress and the floor. Le sigh. #tallgirlproblems

**Hand washing all my sheets and pillowcases in the bathtub. This is not for the faint of heart. I felt like a pioneer woman, wiping sweat from my brow with the back of my wrist as I churned that king-size fitted sheet and the pillowcases for my unnamed number of pillows in the sudsy, near-scalding water. Then I let them soak for a few hours before running downstairs to plop them in the rickety old washing machine for a final spin. (This was where my visions of wooden washboards and damp tendrils ended, in case you were wondering.) BUT! I cannot begin to describe to you how gloriously sparkling clean my sheets are, rendering my big bed on par with an oversized, plush hospital gurney. With a satin and feather throw pillow. Natch.

**Coming up with witty/ vaguely inappropriate tweets and status updates, of which I used one on Facebook and more than I'd like to admit on Twitter. (There's a reason the latter is protected.)

...Aaaaaaand, that's it! Some cleaning, some cooking, some puttering around on Pinterest and the like... On deck for tomorrow is cookie baking and probably more Friday Night Lights than one person should watch in one sitting. But, you know, SOMEBODY'S got to make sure Riggins gets into college...

See you tomorrow.

Psalm 45

Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear:
Forget your people and your father’s house;
Then the King will desire your beauty.
Because He is your Lord, bow down to Him.
The daughter of Tyre will come with a gift;
The rich among the people will seek your favor.

The King’s daughter is all glorious within;
Her clothing is interwoven with gold.
She will be led to the King in embroidered work;
The virgins, her companions who follow her,
Will be brought to You.
They will be led forth with gladness and rejoicing;
They will enter into the King’s palace.

In place of your fathers will be your sons;
You shall make them princes in all the earth.

I will cause Your name to be remembered in all generations;
Therefore the peoples will give You thanks forever and ever.

The Hearth

"Resettled farm child. From Taos Junction to Bosque Farms project, New Mexico."

Dorothea Lange, December 1935

I saw this photo of a little girl in the Depression today. Delicate slouched socks, hunched back, crumbling fireplace facade all bathed in shafts of sunshine glow. And my quiet heart said, "How nice it would be to have your outsides match your insides."

Jealous. Something in me was softly, sweetly jealous of this little girl.

In no way do I mean to negate the pain of her circumstance, or somehow elevate my own agony above her own, but in an odd way I thought it must be nice to have everything around you, all physical representations, in line with how your heart is feeling. Instead I sleep in a big bed, put on mascara and fill in my eyebrows and touch up my lip gloss, pull on my jeans, walk to work and sit at a desk in a well-lit office with a nice view, chat with friends, banter, laugh, eat ice cream, go back to my big bed... And all the while I feel like that lost, forlorn little girl. I have no ragged bench to huddle on, no cold coals to stare into with impunity. Instead I stare into the soft glow of my computer screen and feel my heart still slowly breaking, broken, broke.

"How nice it would be to have your outsides match your insides." Have some obvious, out-in-front, red flag-raising reason for feeling the way you do. Something that sends people with soft hands and kind words and warm hearts rushing to your aide. But my lip gloss/banter/ice cream combo brings no aide.

So I sit, in my heart, by the crumbled hearth and dream of what life was and how awful that it isn't here any more. And think that maybe someday, whether here or somewhere else, this hearth will have new life.