is it irony if you totally saw it coming?

i am tired. not as tired as i was last night, at the end of my own personal french farce, but tired. you see, i'm supposed to be in texas right now, swilling coffee and having shallow conversations about the chinese economy with my family. but more on that later.

backing up a little, i have been, effectively, running the world at work for the last six weeks. with at least one of the two other team members out at any given time (one's two-week vacation abutting the other's four-week), i have been picking up the slack. which, at my company (where volume seems to be the watchword sometimes) translates without question to doing the work of two people. for the most part, i've been fine with this; certain developments outside of the office have kept my spirits up, and i really did rather enjoy proving just what kind of hardcore i can be capable of. but yesterday...yesterday i hit my absolute breaking point.

yesterday, you see, i found out that the other colleague on deck had been completely hobbled by the untimely death of his computer, which meant that not only was i picking up all of colleague A's work, would i mind finishing up colleague B's work as well? i know you're trying to leave by two so you can get everything done before you fly out this evening, but you can get it all finished and to the vendor today, right?

what this ultimately translates to: i have five major projects that need to be addressed before i leave the office today. Five. ordinarily, this would not be a problem. i am well-versed in the spectacular game of hurry up and wait that we get on a daily basis, and am usually able to budget my time accordingly; but, when staring down a truncated work day, few things are more chilling than getting your first round of edits just before noon.

but, that's the way the sticks fall sometimes. i somehow managed to tap into the speed force and get everything done (with time to go have lunch with stuart, wherein i did nothing but panic in his general direction), albeit by moving my departure time back by about two hours. however. eventually, the golden moment arrived, and i made my way to laguardia to venture out towards the wild wild west, arriving harried, disheveled and in a foul, exhausted temper.

only to find out that owing to inclement weather, my flight was canceled.

apparently, it's tornado season, and not only were there no flights out until morning, but nothing had landed in dallas since 11 that morning--dfw had been in some sort of lockdown.

after that revelation, there just seemed no point to giving this day a single other inch with which to gag me. i turned around, went home, and went straight to bed.

we try again today. at least i'm already packed.

good thing they come equipped with hydraulics.

as i went out in search of sustenance this afternoon, i happened across a city bus that had a rather impressive stash of porn magazines kept in with the maps.

all i could think was "well, that explains why cross-town bus rides are so bumpy."

and backtracking a little...

just a little update on the state of my Year Of Reading.

though i seem to have inadvertantly slipped into a furrow of nonfiction (which surprises no one so much as myself*), i am looking forward to dropping back in to fiction--i just obtained a copy of richard russo's "straight man" with which to amuse myself, a nice little confection to reward myself for surviving biography month.

yes, march was biography month, and there were a few moments there i didn't think i was going to make it. i'd initially planned to read "the last lion," a biography of winston churchill. however, i am a fickle and flighty creature, and upon discovering that i had the wrong volume of a three-part series (this one covering his life between school and WWII--i wanted to read about the war years), i put it down, abandoning good sir winston in favor of duke ellington's right hand man, billy strayhorn.

now, it's a shame that i found this book to be, for the most part, appallingly written, becuase billy strayhorn is a pretty fascinating guy--musical genius, sartorial prodigy, openly gay, brilliant and refined. someone i would have loved to know, quite frankly.

anyway. despite the depressing nature of the writing on this tome, i find it may have inspired me to read some more biographies. people are fascintating; who knew?

any suggestions?

* though i'm digging it, as i feel interesting for the first time in a really long time. well, okay. not exactly interesting yet. but getting there.

spring, spring, a marvelous thing.

my legs are bare today. they are also reflecting all the light in the universe, as i am the whitest of all white creatures that has ever crawled upon this planet. but, backing up to the important part of the paragraph, they are bare. exposed to the open air. no longer encased in tights, trousers or any variation thereof. hanging out in the wind. going, if you will, commando.

this development is a direct violation of one of the major tenets of an awful presentation we were subjected to the other week ("using your personal style to get ahead at the office"), but i confess i'm not terrifically interested in that, not least because that presentation left a terrible taste in my mouth. what i am interested in is the novelty of air against my exposed skin, and the blinding desire i have to go sit outside and recharge my batteries; the realization that soon it will be the season for Big Pink Ball (best. game. ever.), and picnics, and Celebrate Brooklyn, and free concerts, and drinking at the gate, and outdoor brunches and frizzy hair and pedicures and feeling human again. and happy. and, this year, getting to enjoy it.

last year at this time, my life was too busy starting its inexorable slide into chaos to be enjoyable. i was nervous, edgy; i wasn't sleeping, and it was growing ever more clear that something was horribly wrong. i was in such a state that even the healing powers of summer couldn't revive me; it was, without question, the most agonizing period of my life. an absolute waste of a season, and the source of most of the gray hairs i now find so difficult to cover up.

despite all the agony, however, it was a turning point: i grew a backbone, learned how to talk again (kind of), did a lot of soul-searching. figured a lot of things out. got a new job. started the long (and bumpy, judging from the number of times i've fallen on the way) road back to being myself, to being happy. or at least...no, happy. i'm aiming for happy.

and this year, in the dawn of spring, i think i might be getting there. because it's warm. it's spring. i'm keeping myself busy.

and my legs are bare.

**slap**

SHIVERY C. TIMBERS. it wasn't three weeks ago that you resolved to start thinking positively, and here you are already working yourself up into a completely undeserved and unsubstantiated snit.

stop it. now.

i MEAN it.

STOP IT. NOW. STOP.

for fuck's sake. it's the first day of spring, good things are happening. stop looking for reasons to be unhappy. stop sabotaging yourself. stop it. just stop it.

dammit.

chatterbox.

i am full to bursting with words. i have anecdotes and tales and things i am desperate to say (though i am more than a little afraid to dwell on them, for fear that speaking their name will cause them to shimmer away like a soap bubble). i am full of dreams, i am drunk on my own efficiency, i am okay in my own skin. i have...i have felt my breath catching in my throat lately in a way that is not connected to tears, and i'm so scared to stop and relish and soak it all in, because it might be gone tomorrow if i stop to look.

which is awful. because i want to freeze this feeling in amber and wear it over my heart. i want to be able to heat it with my skin in those dark moments when i need to remember how it feels to just feel...just feel okay about things. better than okay; good. exhausted, but good.

i need to remember how this feels when the inevitable crash hits; so i can hold onto it as i pull myself out of the chasm.

...i want to say it all out loud but i don't know if you're still watching. not that it should matter at this point, but you still haunt my dreams and nightmares; i'm watching the scars heal but they are still there, red and raw. marks on my heart that are still tender enough to make me flinch. not exactly a fear of disapproval (not anymore), but...of something. something i can't put my finger on.

i know you think i never listened to you, but i did. and what i learned, what i picked up, has informed the shape of my life ever since. i don't really trust anything anymore, not even my own heart, which has been beating wounded for longer than i care to recall. thank god it beats so loudly that sometimes i can't help but listen to it. that sometimes it overshadows the voices in my head.

today...

...is my birthday, and i am happy. which, after this year and the week i've had, is the best present ever.

long last love.

you know that feeling when you fall in love; the way your heart races and your stomach drops and your hands shake and you can't think of a single thing to say to describe how you're feeling? and you want to jump around and sing it from the rafters and the rooftops and any other elevated surface you can find?

i feel it today.

because i am in love. with this.

(had you going there for a minute, didn't i?)

over it.

things i am completely over:

the cold weather.
my never-ending litany of random ailments (this week: the bronchial death rattle of mystery)

something i am not over at all:
the scissor sisters. saw them play the theater at madison square garden on saturday, and blow me down if it wasn't one of the best shows i've ever been to: two hours of pure, dance-around-like-crazy fantastic fun. (and now i have the biggest crush ever on ms. ana matronic. oh woe, oh woe, oh woe.)

other than that, i got nothin'.