Give and Take

    Wretched weekend. How could it be anything else, when the majority of it was spent hunched over my desk like a drone, capitulating to the insanity of removing completely necessary punctuation from my genius product alternately with adding completely unnecessary punctuation to it? All the while desperately needing a haircut, so every two minutes I either blew my bangs out of my eyes or shoved them back distractedly. I drank more tea (i.e. injested more caffeine) than any human needs.
    That being said, there were several bright spots--the ones that actually make up for wretched weekends. The things that will make even the most cynical person think that it doesn't all have to suck all of the time.
* Email messages with friends. Yes, I've whined lately about certain people (Robert? Hello?) who don't respond to their email in a timely fashion. But who am I to complain, really, when I'm not all that good about it most of the time? However, I've had a couple of particularly pleasant, satisfying, comfortable, happy exchanges with a couple of particularly good friends over the last few days. Public acknowledgement is in order but it wouldn't be appropriate, so I'll be sneaky instead--"tweaker of roundies," thank you. And "cutie even at that age," thanks. You knew what I needed and you did it, and there's no greater measure of friendship.
* Good books. There are only a couple of people who might possibly read this who might possibly care, but I'm reading the best book right now. I'll review it soon, but not on this page. (That should tell you something of what it's about.)
* Old friends, and lunch therewith. Sometimes you'll connect with someone and then circumstances will arise that cause that connection to strain, and it can even seem like it's broken. But, as happened to me yesterday, sometimes you realize that it's just been stretched a little but if anything it's even tighter than before. Because you reveal more about yourself each time you're together. About what's really important, and what's at stake. I have only one more thing to say on that subject: Buy the damned camera! Life is too short to wait for the perfect camera at the perfect price!
* The right box at the right time. I was sitting at the computer, poring over the Bibliography line by line (and in some cases letter by letter). I had Turabian's A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations and The Chicago Manual of Style propped open in front of me. Numerous scraps of paper with barely-understandable notes scrawled on them, such as this:
search by ):_ and replace with ),_ if BOOK cite!
search by ),_ and replace with ):_ if JOURNAL cite, idiot!    Better Than Ezra Deluxe on repeat on the CD player, although it was too mellow to really do it for me. Tea, iced, in my Brother's beer mug (free from a bar in my hometown, filled with beer on your birthday. I got mine when I was 24? Maybe?). I was working hard, cranky, about 2 hours beyond the point at which I'd had quite enough, when I heard the unmistakable sound of the mail being delivered. The mailbox is attached to the railing on the front steps but the carriers always make it sound like they're punching a hole in the wall when they fill the box so it startles me and sends the cats into a frenzy. Once we calmed down I was a little disappointed because someone's been writing about sending a box...for a while...and I could see no box on the railing. Sigh. So I went back to work. Grrr.
    Finally went out to get the mail after I'd finished another page of scouring the bleeping source list for errors, when my eyes were about to bleed from reading so closely. Bliss! A box, on the welcome mat, in familiar script! I picked it up and it made a strange jangling noise--a note, hand-written in ink on the address label: "Rattle OK." Hmmm.
    I took it in the house (screw the rest of the mail! Goodies for me!!), grabbed a knife, and wrenched it open. Woohoo!!! Shotglasses for my collection, from Montréal and [NY]. More CDs than I could listen to in a week, which is ok since some of them aren't for me. The top one definitely was, though--"Amy Mix 6/2004." Warm and fuzzy from 831 miles away.
    Beaded necklaces, which I immediately put on, rendering my look somewhat 8-year-old-ish but imminently happier than I'd been 2 minutes before. A letter. A card. Subtext.
    I listened to the Amy Mix while I was doing the last look-through on the thesis, checking to make sure that I'd made all of the required corrections or explained why I didn't. Damn! The first time through, I felt more than a little, er, disconnected. I had no clue what more than half of the songs were or who was singing them. But the second time through I was past that, listening more closely to the lyrics and--damn. You knew. I love it, and I have the feeling that this is going to end up being rather a disc of anthems before everything's said and done. (How prophetic is that?!)
* I'm distracted now from whatever else I was going to write because I'm thinking about how unbelievably good I felt when I saw and opened that box. It lasted through this morning when I dressed in my I Want to Move to the Caribbean style. White linen shirt, loose linen shorts (tan), suede sandals, To Dive For Pink nails (OPI), new pearl and green beaded necklace, silver on black cord anklet. I'll Do It When I Get To It attitude. Closer on the CD player for now, but the Amy Mix coming soon.

I'll take the wretched if I can have the sweet that comes with it. Thanks to those who helped make it that way.