É ingratidao falar mal do vinho
E a provar o que digo
Vamos, meu amigo, a mais um copinho
- Mariza, "Ouça Lá, Ó Senhor Vinho"

Dear whoever this concerns:

I haven't written much lately. I feel like I have poured too much sad and not enough happy, and things are feeling flat. I don't mean for most of my tales to be sad. Truly, I don't. It's just that I'm always told, "Write what you know". It is as simple and as difficult as that. Most of what I write is true, and most of what I write is real, and most of what I write is probably a bad idea.

I still have many stories to share and I don't know where to begin. It is like all these moments are surfacing for me and I want to express them but I already feel so damn exposed here. At the same time I wonder why not? Over time I have peeled myself down, layer by layer. It is all out there if you want it. This is something that has been both painful and cathartic. The knife ever so gracefully poised over my cadaver, waiting to sink into flesh and reveal all the viscera underneath. But I am no longer looking to see who is wielding the scalpel, instead I am itemizing these things, labeling them neatly, presenting my case and stepping back to allow for the words to speak for themselves.

What you don't see is what is happening between the lines. I am really good at playing the bumbling fool. However, the curious (but wholly expected) side effect of playing the fool is that I am never taken very seriously. This is my protective shell - do not allow myself to be seriously considered and then I won't get hurt. When I am cornered into telling it like it is, no fancy analogies or anything, I shuffle my feet abashed and wishing that the focus was on anything but me. People would not believe that I am terribly shy; that I rarely tell the people I love how I really feel about them; that I rarely smile; that I cry and cry until I am dry and then I won't cry for months; that these days I think that I am almost always afraid. I have spent literally decades of my life fooling people into thinking I am unapproachable, like some freaking special unicorn faerie or something. That if you touch me you will find that I disappear into the mists. I am fun but I will hold you at arms length.

I am really tired of pretending that I am ok. I pretend and I pretend and everyone else goes along with it. That is so much better for me than to see their worried glances and sometimes even see their questioning eyes. And I want to be honest here, life has been one long struggle and this past month or so has been more than I can bear at times. So now I am trying to just sort of live day by day, watch the seconds on the clock march in cadence and bring me closer to an answer.

I keep opening and closing my hands. I keep blinking my eyes. I keep feeling my pulse under the surface of my skin and I am grateful for every little beat that pumps through my heart.

Feeling pretty numb and lost. I think I've just about had it up to here with everything. Let's run away, hobo style. Little stick and scarf with precious things in it.

If you could pack a scarf, and you could only fit 4 things, what would they be?

I totally want to go to Bora Bora after looking at those photos. Who's with me?

My mom needs to have a bunch of external cysts removed. they just up and started growing out of nowhere. They are huge and very noticeable and she says they are also very painful. She measures the pain as a vouchsafe against the dreaded "C" word.

My heart aches and I am tired and I am worried about too many people, none of them being myself.

I need a vacation from life.

There's been all sorts of drama going on in this one circle of friends, that I am just so very tired of and I just want to rip everything to shreds over it. What I cannot abide by is malicious gossip, and there is one person who is poisoning everything for everyone else, and nobody is saying anything about it. At least, not to her.

The troublesome thing is there is really no escape from this person. I could elaborate but I really don't feel that I should, at least not on this forum. To say the very least - I'm tired of the bull. And the drama. And the bull drama.

On another note - guess who got voted back in for treasury for Parent Council?

Let's just not talk about it.

Time to go get ready for work, I guess.

I need a night out. Suggestions?

Thursday I went to a gathering that my friend was holding - it was nice, everyone contributed food, there was singing amusing songs and playing guitar, it was just... nice. I hadn't seen her in a long while and I missed her.

Went out Friday night with sisterinlaw - she called me wanting me to come over and talk. It was a good time and she needed to vent - apparently she had separated with her boyfriend the weekend previous. He was still at their apartment but sleeping on the couch. He was working late Friday so he wasn't there when I had arrived. We had a few drinks and she told me what had happened, and then her friends came over, and we went out to the pub because she needed to breathe (but also because her now-ex had arrived home). We split a pitcher or two and then went to the park, sat on some swings and I let her do her thing to get back into herself.

Walked her home eventually, then got home myself. Stayed up late watching re-runs of CSI. S woke up, came down, laughed at me "I see you managed to find your way home..." and then went off to watch more Naruto (long story).

Saturday I brought sisterinlaw breakfast at work; she was very pleased. Saturday night she asked if I could come over for a bit again. So I did, and she was kind of out of sorts - turns out that her now-ex boyfriend slipped away quietly while she was working, instead of sticking around so they could talk things out more. So where did he slip to? Her other ex's house. Yeah... I have no words for that.

She said she didn't blame him, and this whole breakup was entirely her doing, but she felt he deserved to know the truth (being that she didn't love him, probably never would) and there is more to that story but it isn't for me to tell.

I stayed for an hour, let her talk things out sort of, then went home and watched the entire first season of Dead Like Me that I had rented earlier when visiting sisterinlaw at work. Love that show - seriously, it's terrific.

So as a result of watching the show, I was up late again Saturday night. By Sunday morning I was ridiculously tired. The kids and I just hung out all day - didn't do much of anything important, just lazy Sunday things.

I did a crazy amount of screen-viewing this weekend, which is pretty unusual for me, but I think my brain just wanted to take a bit of a holiday, you know?

No idea where the title came from. My Noggin, I guess.

Spent the weekend at my cousin Lola's house, and we brought the Wii. I'm pretty sure her hubby is now enamored with the system. S and I are comtemplating just how long he'll go without one - I'm figuring one more visit with the system may push him over the edge.

There has been a lot of introspection going on with me of late. Perhaps its the season shifting that is causing the tectonic shift in my thought processes. I don't know.

This weekend is Easter weekend of course, and with it brings a whole new set of problems: how do you make egg trails when you own a cat that loves to bat things around?

C actually made hazardous mention of the idea that maybe Mr. Bunny and his mate S. Claus don't exist. Nobody at school has been saying anything - she just drew up the conclusion on her own. I asked her why. Then she mulled it over and recanted. She said there is probably for sure a Santa, because she was sure there wasn't but then he brought her exactly what she asked for at Christmas and there was no possible way that S & I would have got these obscure requests. So if Mr. Claus exists, maybe E. Bunny does too. We had a talk about faith - believing in what you can't see. We also had talks about Jesus - I think the religious aspect of these holidays is what is causing the counter-point of "why do these figments exist?"

This whole scandalous conversation thankfully went down without K in our presence. But it got me thinking - I mean, I can't really pinpoint the time that I stopped believing. I think it just happened slowly, in increments, until that last bastion of magic in my life crawled away when I wasn't looking. Sad really when you think on it. I figure if I'm lucky, if I'm very lucky, C will believe for one more year, and then she'll be done. That's just the way C is, but is it silly that I find that just a wee bit heartbreaking?