Discipline


I lie in bed at 3am
trying to write a poem.
My light is on
and I try not to disturb the crickets.
Their hearts have reached a resting state
and they are saving their songs for tomorrow.
They have discipline.
The loudest thing this morning
is my pen
The most impetuous thing this morning
is my mind
conspiring against the pen
haphazard on the page
scrawling into illegibility
which isn’t like me.

I am also about to watch another episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Sometimes I’m weird.

On Wednesday, I had a work bowling party. Nine of us came to the BYU Games Center, and I only knew one other person. We divided ourselves into two lanes, and I ended up going third out of the five people on the right lane.

So, at first, whenever it wasn’t my turn, I talked to the one person I knew, but as the game progressed, I loosened up a little and started at least commenting on other people’s games.

Also, I’m really good at being excited for people. I will cheer for you and cheer for you, and I will feel bad for you if I know that you really wanted that strike, or if the gutter was particularly merciless.

Anyway, all that outwardness didn’t stop me from winning. By 50 points over the 2nd-place person. Of course I wasn’t boasty (of course?), and I especially don’t like attention from people I don’t know, so I made sure to deflect attention and accept compliments and the quickly shoot compliments back. The outwardness didn’t help the awkwardness.

It’s sometimes really hard for me to accept compliments, but I do practice at saying “thank you” and actually feeling grateful.

Then later on in the week I admitted to someone that I can be anal retentive.

I spent most of this morning packing up my room before going on a bike ride with some friends. When we got back, I popped some popcorn and we relaxed a bit before moving my stuff to my new place. We laughed a lot about some things, and I laughed until I cried about a thing that I can’t talk about here just in case somebody’s somebody happens to come upon this blog. It’s just hilarious to me.

So, we packed up my friends’ van and moved a lot of things over to the new place.

Then we returned to the old place and saw that I left my NYC subway map on the wall. I removed the pushpins and took down the map and began folding it while my friends were telling a story or texting their family or something. When they finished, I asked them, “Do you know what makes me so happy?” And, they let me answer: “When I can fold a map, and it isn’t wonky and it can lie perfectly smooth when it’s nicely folded.” And they were like, “Uh, sure.”

Then we went out for sushi, because my friends are the best for helping me move, plus one of my friends received a text coupon for a buy-one-roll-get-one-free deal, so we had to take advantage of it. The food was great, and I might have eaten too much, because the rice in my stomach is staging a coup. Too crowded. Overpopulated. Not equal benefits for everyone.

After dinner, we stopped by the new place again to drop off a few other things. We looked at my bed, which was on cinder blocks so that I could store things beneath it. The bed isn’t pushed up against the wall, but a few inches from it, and I expressed a small fear that the bed might not be stable enough. I shook the bed, and the cinder blocks rocked a little. A friend asked if I was going to rock the bed like that, and I said that I wasn’t going to tell her. Personal stuff, you know?

Anyway, I ended up saying that I didn’t want to push the bed against the wall yet because I needed to make the bed, that I really like making beds, that once I make the bed and get all the hospital corners right then I’ll push the bed against the wall and it will be safer. I said that I make my bed every day, that sometimes I’ll completely strip my bed just so that I can make the whole thing over. I said that it is soothing and that it helps me clear my mind.

The same thing goes for most housework.

I can’t believe I’ve dedicated 700 words to how weird I am. Maybe I should scratch that and include the last eight years of blogging. Which is even harder to believe. Maybe not as hard if you’re not me, but maybe you should be grateful that isn’t the case.

Whatever. It’s time for Buffy.

So. French 321. The first quiz. We’ll see if we can keep this up. What I described as happening is actually what happened: 2 half-points off, but I got the bonus correct. J’ai fait des fautes bêtes.

Did I mention I’m in this class with returned missionaries and other people who speak fluently? I hope the osmosis is extra effective, because I sound like an idiot when I speak. We’re supposed to be beyond the sentence level and working up to the paragraph level, moving smoothly between imparfait and passé compose, using the present tense only intermittently. Anyway, if I listen enough and practice enough, … I don’t know. Being a wiz on paper is great, but I need to improve communication in other ways, be in touch with the real world.

***

In other news, the forum this morning with Condoleezza Rice was incredible. I hope to come across a copy of the transcript. What an admirable, inspiring woman. She was a captivating, charming, lively speaker. She made us laugh, and we applauded every time she said something amazing, like it was the State of the Union address, but this was much, much better.

I’m still processing a lot of what’s been going on the past couple of weeks, and right now I feel I can’t do any of it justice. I don’t know if I’ll be able to catch any sort of a break. I would love just to sit back and talk or hang out sometime.

Last night I got to sleep sometime after 12:30. I set the alarm for 4:30 this morning. What time did I wake up? 4:27. That’s just not cool. So I lay there until the alarm actually went off. Then I stayed lying down until the snooze alarm went off once, then I got up.

I have an outline for class today. I have handouts. I’ve been trying to visualize how I’d set up the classroom and how I’d greet the class. These are a new bunch of kids to me. I’ve gotten off to a rather rocky start, but I want today to go smoothly.

Wish me luck.

Tonight, I’ll be attending Cringe. I’m not sure what time I’ll be getting home tonight, and I don’t think I’m coming home after work because I’d like to get a little more work done and the singer-songwriter series is over at Bryant Park and I hear the Cringe venue fills up quickly so I thought I’d get there early and keep ordering rounds and rounds of refreshing ginger ale (or Coke or Sprite or juice) until my friends get there.  SO, I figured I’d post a little something this morning.

Maybe I have some new manifestations of anxiety going on in my life. I’m pretty sure I grind my teeth in my sleep. Lots of people do that. How about chewing on their lips, or even their tongues? The whole bottom front section of my mouth is sore. I try relaxing my tongue, but it keeps pressing up against the back of my teeth, and my bottom eye teeth keep rubbing against the sores in my bottom lip, making them worse and it just feels like fire and I apply that numbing lip stuff and that lasts only for so long, plus it’s hard to eat when my masticating mechanism is numb. And, the pain is causing me to salivate constantly. People, beware of drooling. I’d say maybe I have rabies, but I’m not acting erratically – just a smidge anxiously - and my throat isn’t swollen to a hydrophobic degree. Poor Ol’ Yeller. It’s just my bottom lip and the tip of my tongue. My mouf is on fire. The kind wif white flames. Owwie.

What could I be anxious about, you ask? I’m anxious about when the pain in my mouth will go away. That’s probably a vicious cycle. What else? Well, I’m about to meet a famous person; that’s probably part of it. I have two church classes to plan for and another class I’m taking and wanting an A so bad in. (I WANT AN A! GIVE ME AN A!) I’m preparing to be a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. I’m trying to crank out a few hundred words or so of something original and/or somewhat interesting every day because I want to be a writer when I finally grow up. Oh yeah, then there’s the business of planning Austin. What makes it worse is that it’s the possibility of Austin. And then there’s this timeline which finds me clenching my jaw that happens to apply major pressure to my tongue and bottom lip when I sleep. And I wonder why I’m waking up tired. And owwie.

Also? This seems to accompany the three weeks I’m not on my period. It’s happened that way for the past couple of months now. Oh, well. I’ll go have some breakfast, then I’ll numb my mouth and sling my drool at people.

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