where does it all go?

This is what has been keeping me from myself and everything lately:

• Martha Wainwright
• work
• the noise in my head and the enemy that is my lack of imagination and my over driving restlessness
• making endless plans
• eating cake
  

With men it seems that if you take away the possibility of sex you can take away the possibility of everything. They can disappear pretty quickly.

I am not sure if I have made a mistake. And I am not sure if that's ok, because part of the beauty of being here is nothing ever has to be the final thing. And the fact that I can even draw a Bridges of Madison county comparison to my life makes me cringe (but for the record I only saw the movie). And now that other woman and my children.

If it was Saturday night there is no doubt I would be out having cocktails and dancing away the loneliness.

Something to remember at a time like this, when the night is closing in and strangling my heart, that yesterday at the outdoor skating rink the afternoon was nothing but laughing children, lovely cold cheeks, the scrape of blades on the ice, the slap of the puck, the promise of hot chocolate, the lowering of the sun and the slight sparkle on the snow (more subdued than the enormous glitter of the summer sun on the lake, but sometimes we need to look more closely to see the beauty that is still so plainly there) and the people I have always known.

2008

You have arrived. Here are a few things I have read today, the first day of you:

• "... the essence of friendship is that you always let the other person off the hook." ( L Cohen) I believe this to be true.
• "Sometimes when we think we are keeping a secret that secret is actually keeping us." (F Warren) This must be true as well.
• "Mind the gap." This one just kept playing in my mind for obvious reasons.

And apparently the mustache is back. Who let this happen?

The most wonderful time of the year

Thank god it is over. Hallelujah. Amen.

25 x 365 Feist

Your music rocked my 2007. I love your Bee Gee's cover. I cried to I'm sorry because it was how I felt once driving up a north-bound highway in Quebec, and then I left my laptop in a parking lot. We dance to 1-2-3-4 in my house - all of us, but especially my daughter. You do a wicked version of Secret Heart. And now we are Facebook Friends.

What I heard

A nice thing that someone said to me this week, actually not even just someone, but the woman who has mentored me professionally for the past eight years: "you are an inspiration." She meant this compliment in a you-got-yourself-divorced-and-picked-yourself-up-and-now-you-are-
better-and-stronger-than-before kind of way, and I gladly accept.

Also, I am watching (re-watching) Erin Brokovitch this week and this is what she said to George just before she sleeps with him: "Are you going to be something else I have to survive?" I felt a slight ping of recognition.

New Year's Resolution

It is short this year:

• boys, boys, boys

(It has been brought to my attention that I might want to refine this to "men, men, men." Good suggestion.)

24 x 365 Peter

All my memories of you since the sixth grade are warm, warm, warm. You wrote a lovely play about saving the world, you wrote me a beautiful letter when my dad died, we spent hours and hours playing cribbage in my room. OK, there is one nasty bit, but it was years ago and you were young so I am going to leave it out.