in which she does a bunk, part II (which is also, curiously enough, post #666)
Thursday 24 January 2008 | 3 cookies in the jar
Dearest Mandarin,
I play hookey again today. Wear inside-out sweatpants, eat leftover flan straight out of the pan, wander around house, wring hands, pet fabric, pet cat, sigh. Look at cashmere yarn and understand why sweaters cost so much—but why can’t I knit? I could make my own sweaters and have all these lovely colors! Though to knit such tiny stitches would take an entire winter.
Am obsessed with color. Thinking about leaving school and working at fabric store. Would it be so wrong?! I would get BIG DISCOUNT! (”…and you know I gonna take Daddy there….“) Literally fell asleep under a big pile of coats, per Homer Simpson, around 7:30 am, or under a big pile of unfolded laundry anyway. The Brujo didn’t even know I was home; he woke me pep-talking to himself loudly in the shower. “Work! Okay…going to work. Okay. Right. Phew.”
I didn’t fall completely off the wagon but I did spent about 2 hours staring at cashmere sweaters online when I woke at 5 am, and even found an amazing coupon code for this one (I’d get bark and midnight). But I resisted. If I spend $155 on two sweaters then I can’t open a CD with my laboriously acquired $5K savings and then…um, and then…and then I won’t get a good interest rate, and then I’ll fall on the floor and die. 
But more than that, I can’t allow myself to buy any sweaters until Mandarin has passed on them. These are 2-ply, though, which is good. The cheapie GAP ones all sold out so I am saved on that front by my own indecision.
It is a very good thing that I see the new psychiatrist tomorrow (a motherly educated woman whom I already call in my head Aunt Freud—and about whom, more ensuite) even though there is suddenly a $500 deductible and a 50% copay (another reason for no cashmere just now….plus I live in Tartarus).
I should blog this. But it is too much work somehow. Instead I am going back to petting fabric. Please don’t let it scare you that I seem to be turning into your mom, because fortunately (and largely thanks to you) I have much better taste. As proof of this I attach images of my quilt fabrics. Sewing class is tonight and you would not believe me if I told you how much I am looking forward to it. The most fun I’ve had at the State School the last two recidivist weeks has been sticking up many many bits of artwork all over my cubicle walls with masking tape. My officemates are impressed and also a little alarmed by my admittedly obsessive interior decorating of this otherwise miserable space (metal desks, fluorescent lights, pigeon-stabbing window wire, etc.). Am I in a mixed state? Or do I just have late January all over me?
My classes are going so badly—the ones I teach, I mean. And I get so hung up over their failure, just as I feared would happen, that I struggle to remember what the Brujo tells me daily, patiently—that I’m here because I’m a poet. That I’m not a career comp instructor. That I’m here to write poems.
Okay. Right. Phew.
The quilt is three different 3-striped patches, thus the rust/blue/cream trilogies. The so-called “focus fabric” of koi will surround them as a wide border, with other bits of fabric as thin borders and “resting strips” and so forth. The pinstriped cotton is an unbelievably lush, soft, 
high-thread-count stuff over which I temporarily lost my mind to the tune of $10.99/yard, and that will be the backing. The whole thing will be about three feet square. I am rather sickeningly adoring of it all, though it be garish for a nice austere Zen faery such as yourself. Someday I’ll make you a lovely blacker-black-on-blackest-black quilt for your joyously solitary bed, I avow.
And actually, with the unhappily sinusoidal Brujo snoring gently even whilst lying on his side (he wakes me up chiding himself: “Shhh! SHHHH!”), this sounds not so bad.
Or maybe I can just sleep under a big pile of coats until March.
LOVE LOVE LOVE
LOVE LOVE LOVE
PS—in further consumery news, the bicycle is finally ordered! and will probably be here and built for me by Monday. I love its Shimano index shifters, Bontrager rims, and it still has blue flowers too. I spent nowhere near the Gorgon’s entire subsidy, though; the rest will now be invested (in Canadian currency?). Anyone with such a bike should be happy and—
Well, and, so; here I am, how I am.
3 cookies in the jar
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I feel awkward leaving a comment on a blog entry started “Dear Mandarin” like I am eavesdropping on a conversation I am not part of at all and can expect only the shared glance and the pitying smile, and I KNOW you’re not like that but there it is.
And I should shut up but I want to say “Blame it on January. Blame it on being a poet leading a comp instructor’s life. There is no comfort like lying under a pile of laundry just pulled out of the dryer, though, is there? Please hang in there.”
And has scrabulous finally shuffled off the facebook coil or are those error messages just me?
I cannot write somehow on my own blog because I feel neither like being truthful nor capable of being so witty as to distract from the absence of truthfulness, and so I leave too-long comments on yours. And if it’s a distraction, it’s a distraction, and sometimes survival lies in distractions.
I should blog this. But it is too much work somehow.
Oh, man, if you knew how much blog-backlog I currently have….! When did it turn into work? I can’t tell.
and I would add that the most luxurious experience in life is when we cancel our appointments.