I am headed to Seattle!  Yay!  A winter break, as in break from winter!  I am so excited, I have to go there to get my visa updated for my trip abroad in April!  I will be hanging with my peeps, I am going to be there for a week, it should be a lot of fun, I need a pick me up this time of year. 

That is the mostest on my brain, January flew by without me hardly noticing.  After New Years not much happened, we had two more UW students as guests in the home, I helped some new pals move on Saturday and the adviser move on Sunday (no one has a car here!).  Due to the good Karma bank, scored some fine furniture, barely had room for it all, but now the office has a whole wall of bookcases just waiting to be filled.  A huge chest of drawers and a smaller one to match, it is the same exact color of the other things around the house in wood, plus now I have a place to put all those clean clothes that were piling up on the bedroom floor!! 

My poor brother and dad survived an insane ice storm and haven't had power for a while now.

Otherwise A (the gal who trained me for this job) had her baby and all went well (he is freaking adorable, and has her expressions)!  Went to a wild Russian birthday party for some twin guys my age (one of them is who I helped move last Saturday), and everyone just wanted to know when I was gonna settle life down enough to have a baby. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *gasp cough wheeze*

Cheers!

We have a couple guests coming over for X-Mas dinner.  I am making Cornish hens, mashed potatoes and gravy, cinder with pineapples, cherries, and oranges, pecan pie and pumpkin pie... I think that it is. One of our guests is bringing an eggplant dish, cheese snacks, a Russian winter salad, Russian tuna salad, and Russian crab salad, oh and some wine and a cake. Yum! 

On Saturday we will all be going to the adviser’s house and I will be cooking Cornish hens, mashed potatoes and gravy, my mom’s TO DIE FOR stuffing, cranberry sauce, grilled carrot slivers, snap peas and cocktail onions, rolls, pecan and pumpkin pie, and I think that is everything. ;-) I am not sure if I am missing something, I don’t have my list in front of me, but it will be fun. I will try and eat responsibly but it is hard to think about that.

I need to focus my life, grad school will hopefully be starting soon and I need to get my study habits in order, I need to focus on working out, I need to practice my Russian, only a few months to our trip. I need to make a trip to Seattle sometime in the next couple months to get my Russian visa... yeah I am very twitchy. Sigh. I wish I weren’t alone here, I need someone NOT forgetful to do stuff with. Stupid Texas... so far away. :-(

Today I went home from work, and it is freaking cold here, and I forgot my snow boots, but I was too lazy to turn back from the bus stop when I realized my toes were freezing off.  I ride my bus all the way home and as I stand outside the door... I realize I left my keys on my desk in my office.  My cell phone was with them also.  Ok it doesn't help that this was the day the DRCB was in Kansas and couldn't let me in.  Alright, I thought, what are my options, it is cold, dark, I can drive back to work and get my keys, IF I had THOSE keys, which are on the same key ring as house keys.  Well crap.  So I have to wait for another bus, ride it all the way back to work, change my frozen feet into proper boots, get my keys and ride all the way home again. *bitch moan*

It’s been overcast for a week, I would blame being down on the weather if I had no other reason to be blue.  I have come to discover that you can’t rely on time to change the way you feel, cause time it often loses track of who its got to heal.  My mind is living in the shadow you left behind, everything is disjointed.  Then something delightful brings me back to the here and now like 8.  It is freaky, you’d have had to have been there.  Who would have thought?  I love my crazy sis spacebee so much, she always makes me laugh again.    ;-) 

Today was a long day at work.  I got so much crap done, it is amazing.  I submitted my first grant proposal!!!  I am so happy!  Woot, I am so excited, we will not know if it gets approved until February and it was only for $25,000, but I am still happy. 

I have to get snow tires and extra-cold resistant fluids for the car this coming week, and human gear for ourselves soon also.  My work shoes are NOT cut out for snow and slush.  So it is coats, proper windproof gloves, and boots for Christmas this year!

Oh and my next big project is to post a whole new stash of photos from the last while that I have just been allowing to sit there not being looked at.

Cheers, everyone!

"Welcome my dear please take my hand
 It's wonderful here it's really quite grand
 The moment still, await the hour
 The Masquerade for Time's dead flowers 

 Oh dancing and reeling
 We move beneath shadows
 We've hung from the ceiling
 All memory receding
 Take leave of all reason
 In step with the bleeding 

 Chapter & Verse the lyric takes flight
 Red is the day as red is the night
 The hours pass, the years expire
 The dance goes on, we spin on fire

 Shadows now descending
 To join in the Madness
 The song never-ending
 Wounds never mending
 Wretched in countenance
  The fear now transcending

 All laughing and screaming
 A wide-awake nightmare
 Diseased and believing
 In mourning-deceiving
 Ever in motion and ever in grieving"

...the door was not pale, it was black...

“If there was nothing that I could say

 Turned your back and you just fade away

 It leaves me numb inside to think of you

 Together is all I knew...

 Life moves so fast, and I saw no signs,

 I wish I could turn back hands of Time

 Then look to you for a reason – Why?

 How could the love we had let you die?

And as the sun would set, you would rise

 Fall from this world into Paradise...

 Is there no life in your heart to be?

 You’ve closed your eyes, you no longer see

 There were no lies between me and you

 Yet you said nothing of what you’d do

 There was still something in your eyes

 Left me helpless and paralyzed...

 I could give a million reasons

 I could try to change the world, change the time

 But it would not give me the secrets

 Of your heart and of your mind

 In the darkness that surrounds me now

 There is no peace of mind

Your careless act undoes me now

Leaves all hope I had behind”

(Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit...)

“Why have you forsaken me?
  In your eyes,
  Forsaken me,
  In your thoughts,
  Forsaken me,
  In your heart,
  FORSAKEN
  ME!”

Why?
Why have you forsaken me?

I have so many new tasks at work now, I realized I need to organize my “flow.”  I decided to get a date book that I can easily spread out on a surface and see it with lots of space to write my daily task list to check off.  I went to Barns and Noble on my lunch break and they had one stand left with super discounted calendars and date books.  They had a variety of horrid things that no one in their right mind would want to look at daily, I finally found a slightly less offensive smiley face one that you could lay flat and thusly the cover image didn’t matter anymore.  As I was walking away from the stand, a book store lackey informed me there where a few nicer 18mo date books over by the cards, but that they where equally picked over.

They where.  But they had a stack of nice black ones, they had leather covers, as I thumbed through them to find one that was not scratched I found the gem of the lot. 

It was the last one like it: purple.  Texture printed soft leather... I opened it.  It was perfect.  Inside, lots of lines under each day, it was one of those delicious old fashioned ones with sections and lists of holidays, zodiac signs, time zones, world maps, hotel lists, birthday logs, common measurement conversion charts, and so on in the back and through out.

It was just for you, just the kind you would take and fondle in your hand.  I could see you there, and I touched it just as I remembered seeing you do it so many times to so many books.  Running your hand across the spine, then flipping it to lay flat in your palm, fingering page after page with love and delight. 

I saw you smiling and just telling me, whispering in my ear that you just loved it, that you needed one just like it and were looking for one, but hadn’t found it until now.  Reassuring me that you liked the frog one I gave you at Christmas, of course, but that THIS one had so much character.  And it was purple, just your shade, it was academic, distinguished and cultured. 

I saw you in my mind touching it, holding it, smiling.  I bought it and brought it home so no one else could have it, it was the last one, and like my last chance, it too is now gone. 

I stared at it all evening, wondering... if I could have given it to you, what would you have written in it?

"Yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death..."

No, it was grey, today the sky was grey, dark and sad.  What was I thinking?  It cried, it wept all day.  It all looks so different now, everything, life... or the lack there of.

The sky, the heavens wept for an angel.  They know.  No one else does, but they know.  Grey, every day.

The sun is just a distant memory, a dream from some time ago that I can’t quite make real, Dark City... do YOU remember the sun, do you remember when you saw it last?

To rain in the desert is to rejoice, to burst fourth with life and scents.  One can almost hear the plants and earth exuberantly praising the sky for the gift.  I always loved the rain, always.  It washes free one’s very soul. 

Today, yesterday, Monday, last week... it didn't rain, rather the sky wept, long, gentle, grey tears.  It weeps endlessly now, the flowers are hushed and the leaves are still.  It is almost as if the whole of Nature hangs her head to weep with us.  

I see you everywhere I go.  I see you, and my heart stops, my mind races and I frantically dash to meet you, to hold you... only to find you’ve disappeared.  I’ve tried so hard to accept that you’re gone, that I am alone.

"I thought I knew the girl so well,
 If she was sad, I couldn't tell,
 I missed the point, I missed the signs,
 So if she's gone, the fault is mine...
 I know a whole lot of little things,
 But even though I could list them one by one,
 She would still be gone."

Your voice and smiling eyes are in front of my mind at all times, no matter how I press them back.  Anger, frustration, blame, grief, and betrayal.  None are weapons nor shields strong enough to keep you at bay.  I see you everywhere, I feel your hand gently on my head, petting me the way you always used to.  I can see you beyond the blur of my tears, concern on your silent face as you pet me gently and as I weep in the darkened room.  So do the heavens, they weep for us all, for our loss, but mostly they cry for you, just as I do.

I cry out for you in the night, sweat soaked and trembling.  (Has no one told you she’s not breathing anymore?)  It must be a bad dream, I will wake.  (Don’t cry, I'll keep you safe here in my mind.)  The realization hits me, over and over and over and over, like cold steel trough my heart.  I’m not sleeping, I am awake.

I cry out for you again.  Hear me.  Please...