all about love. kinda.

today, while dropping off a library book to the downtown library's automated drop box, I was approached by an older woman pulling an over stuffed tote. 'I don't normally do this...' was her lead for her request for money. she had bus tickets, wanted cash to buy food. I had 2 bucks. I had been thinking about taking the bus anyways. sure, I said, reaching for my money. I peeled two bills off my more then 2 dollars wad of money and pocketed the bus pass. an amicable exchange followed; she turned to leave, I turned to place my over due by one day book in the box (bell hook's 'all about love.' I loved it! I love you! read it! don't read it! I love you anyways!). also in my bag, I noticed while closing the latch, food items I did not get to at lunch today. specifically half a granola bar and one hard boiled egg. I put the egg in my pocket and walked after the lady. she hadn't gone far (stopping to offer up a barter with people as she walked slowed her down). I caught up and offered her my egg, leaving the opened granola bar to crumb around in my bag. as I handed it over, several unconcurrent thoughts ran thru my head. one - it feels good to give. I have 2 more hard boiled eggs at home. and two - the soy yogurt tupperware that housed said ova was one of my favorite tupperware pieces! it is a one of a kind and I just gave it away to a total stranger who might just throw it away and not reuse/recycle it!
this is my brain.
this is my brain trying to wrestle with the idea of attachment.
sigh, my perfect lightweight egg transporter, gone
there are enough reused soy yogurt containers for everyone. release the soy yogurt container into the universe. the universe shall provide all the soy yogurt containers you shall ever need. amen.

hair

I share a bathroom. This is not news. I live in a large house turned many little (well, mine at least) apartments. on my floor, there are three units and 2 banos down the hall for sharing purposes. (background info: the way the banos are situated, 3 units use 1, the apartment on the south side of the building uses the other one almost exclusively). there are many benefits to this: not having to clean the bathroom. ok, so that is the only one i can think of right now. but that counts for like 3 benefits. the down side, is that I have to share it. that in and of it self is not an issue as two bathrooms means rarely, if ever, having to wait for a vacancy. but it does destroy my illusion of living alone. and by destroy i mean obliterate. but only on occasion, like a land mine or a natural disaster. like the time my green wash cloth went missing. MISSING! I would leave it hanging in the bathroom for my personal use and one day it was gone. there are no other towels in there save for the drab dark green washcloth that has been there since hand towels inception, looks like. i left a kind, non passive aggressive note – more difficult than it seems! - and my washcloth was returned within 24hours. but with no explanation. no, 'oops, sorry I thought it was communal' or 'i dropped it so thought i'd wash it before returning it.' (to which i would have replied, 'oops, i thought your stomach was a target for my pointy, fast moving fist, you boundary-less freeloading user of shared bathroom!' or 'thank you, that's very sweet. can you turn your music down?' respectively.) needless to say, I was shaken by the unauthorized abduction and the subsequent return of my little green hand towel; my trust, it has been tarnished.

But the experience did nothing to prepare me for the epic hair saga that was to follow. Allow me to explain. on occasion, I would enter the bathroom at some undisclosed time after a certain someone had cut their hair. I am not opposed to haircutting, unless you are slovenly about it: short, coarse hairs clung to the now greasy with finger prints mirror, the empty towel rack resembled some kind of cyborg caterpillar, and the floor, oh the floor! it's like I walked into the beauty parlor set of some community theater mounting of steel magnolias! hair everywhere! tho, for realism sake, due to the drab color of the rug and the hardwood floors, the left behind follicles were only really noticeable tho upon closer inspection, sad to say, which is partially why it went over looked in the first place. still, not good enough excuse for whichever of the two out of three neighbors I had it narrowed down to as being the culprit.

speaking of culprits, the suspects really confounded me. I couldn't figure out who it was. one minute I was convinced it was inherently messy due to dude gene man next door or squirrelly hard to pin down but real nice when you do woman in the other next door to me. both had the same color hair. both were equally unapproachable for differing reasons, both were not me who has always been diligent with post hair cut clean up. and who in their right mind cuts their hair so much? almost as disturbing as the evidence of a sheering, was noting the frequency of it. last I had seen, both possible offenders still had a head of hair. there were no severe hair cuts or bald spots to account for it. I was baffled. and then I put the ordeal behind me and ran for more sacred ground. ie I started using the other bathroom exclusively.

days passed.

possibly weeks.

the problem persisted, to a lesser degree (partially due to my posting of a non passive aggressive note about cleaning up after hair cuts. or shaving as it turned out to be – I ran into man neighbor at On the Boards and he fessed up, generously appreciative of my self appointed neighborhood grime watch duties) (yes, I said grime watch) (but the longer hairs on the floor continued), as I noticed on my occasional 'hard to break a habit' trip to the multi multi use bathroom. and it was on one of these occasions that I had a sudden realization. mystery neighbor wasn't cutting their hair on an almost daily basis, they were losing it. dude neighbor is in his early 30's by my rough estimate. he didn't turn our bathroom into barbershop. he was balding. suddenly, the world made a little more sense. and this dense weave of a bathroom drama suddenly fell away in the face of simple biology. still, thought the neat freak as she wiped her feet after visiting the restroom she had all but given hope on, he could at least age responsibly.

what have I been up to?

1. not writing haikus.

I have been working on a 17 part collage self portrait-ish using photos my gramma took at christmas this past year. my room has been transformed into some kind of cut out paper scrap recycling factory. I showed up to yoga yesterday with bits of scrap paper stuck to the bottom of each of my feet.

2. dressing up like a blurry penguin and running thru the woods. see photo.

who knew that trail running could be so freaking awesome? I ran 5 miles the other weekend on a whim and (brag in 3...2...1...) came in 4th of the women in my age group. (I'm 31, for the record.) I got another one this weekend somewheres in issaqua. might have to bust out the little red shorts for that one.

3. learning to ask for what I want.

I have been going to acupuncture at this one particular place since september. she is good at what she does. she has a black belt in some martial arts and while it has no apparent relevance or influence on her knowledge and practice of oriental medicine, it sometimes feels like she's trying to karate chop my spine with her post puncture massagey rubdown. I had come to kind of dread that portion of my rehabilitation and daydreamed the day when my back and insurance declared me free and clear, relieving me of this now once every three weeks torture. today I was feeling a little more tired/sensitive than usual, my practitioner, a little more peppy than usual. at some point, whilst enduring muscular manipulation, the point in my glute a few inches below my hip bone to be exact, I kinda wanted to cry. my feeble moans provoked a friendly, 'lemme know if you want me to ease up' from my tormentor to which I quickly replied 'yes, could you ease up?' a wash of relief passed over me. 'yeah I'm a little heavy handed,' she laughingly confessed. 'I've been meaning to ask you that for months,' went my unsaid reply. it's like because it's good for me I didn't want to say anything, thinking that my chi wouldn't be activated without the 150 psi handy work. sigh. so as it stands, I have, lying prostrate, grined and beared 11 months minus half a session of unnecessary healing brutality. and to show for it? a lesson to last me a lifetime. or at the very least, the rest of my acupuncture sessions.