Hands

                                                    Subway Seat Colored Nail Polish?

It's a quiet Thursday for me and actually a quiet week after the thrill-a-minute adventures with Lit Crawl NYC over the last handful of months and while it feels nice, it also feels slightly hollow (but not to worry, as we're kicking back into gear next week to begin planning for Manhattan's Crawl in September!) I opted for a week off socially (er, except for tomorrow when I meet my new very beautiful friend Dacel for Happy Hour to kick off Memorial Day Weekend - hurray!)

First, I thought I'd begin with an email exchange I had with the recently aforementioned boy earlier today that gave me much needed smiling through the later parts of the afternoon after a strenuous day oh wait, why don't I just be honest, a strenuous week no, month (the word "life" is too broad a stroke to insert although it wouldn't be far off from the truth.)


I was responding to a longer email that he sent me, but much of what he wrote in that is personal so I'll just begin with the final paragraph of his email to which I was replying (note: much of this exchange deals in the fact that he's not an explosive email-respondent the way that I happen to be or the way many of my friends who also can brag desk jobs happen to be...)


boy: 
How are you, Kristin? How has your week been going so far? (aside from the Lit Crawl "join the cult!" email, which, yes, I saw. :)  )

me: 

[taking a much needed break from work to respond and say hi...]

Hi. :)

Your Sunday sounds fantastic and I'm glad you made it to attend. They made a recording of it? Interesting...also, intense? Feel free to expand...do you have any other types of sessions/courses/activity lined up soon also? I wish I could find more time for experiences like that. After the Arena opens, surely I'll be under less pressure...? Are there very many question marks in this paragraph?

 

Yeah, so I did ask you and Daniel to join the cult guided by the fearless Goddess Suzanne. Listen! We need male informants! You two specifically seemed to - to borrow Suz's word - fit "organically" with us. I think things happen for a reason sometimes...not in every instance, so maybe I'm only a half believer of it? But somehow this Lit Crawl experience over the course of 6 or so months has distracted me nicely from rotten other events. She has had me perform odds and ends post-mortem items throughout the week but it isn't the same as the frenetic activity leading up to the event and so in its place, I've been working 11+ hour days this week. It's exhausting. Basically my point is that Lit Crawl this year seems to have happened to me for a reason, yielding positive results, on many levels. Plus, being a part of an organization which manifests an end result of sorts feels, well? Like community? Sure, go with that.

 

[in re-reading the Lit Crawl paragraph I realize I'm not stating myself very clearly with regard to what I'm trying to express in terms of really finding footing with Lit Crawl but my head is so foggy from work this week that I can't state it any better so that's what you get and you will have to live with it. :) ha] [as well as with any run-on thoughts that might have recently elapsed or may yet in the remainder of this email which I promise, won't be too much longer - it just feels nice not to be shouting at a subcontractor for a few moments or shuffling tiresome paperwork, so there's that.]

 

My week is alright. The hours are painful. The problem is that meetings and phone calls obstruct my ability to complete paperwork that is to accompany the meetings and phone calls. And then visits to the jobsite can quickly gouge out several hours of the day (I waited an hour and a half out there for a subcontractor who was running stupidly late) and why not go ahead and shower this whole mess with veritable monsoon weather which floods parts of our building that are not completely enclosed...eek. It's a lot. But I'm fairly certain I'm not the only human on the planet with heavy work happening in her hands so really, I can't complain too much.

 

I had an idea Monday morning and I've managed to make it work this week: take pleasure in simple. Morning coffee. Early bedtimes. That sort of thing. It has helped. :)

boy: 
Yikes! I just want to respond back to say that I've responded within 8 minutes, even though I haven't had time to read your email yet! Will read and respond with something more... responsive, in due time... :)

But... 8 MINUTES!!!!

me: 
Ha ha...gold star for you!


boy: 
1 MINUTE!!!!!!!


boy: 
It's basically IM at this point!


me:
Quick Back and Forth Gmail: the new IM.


boy:
Nice weather, huh?


boy:
3:29 is a nice time. I'm really looking forward to see what 3:30 brings.


(ok, clearly we're mocking IM'ing at this point, right? Right?)


me:
It's been like 4 minutes and you did not "brb" me.


boy, a while later:
Okay, I dropped the ball! Got dragged into work conversation about glasses and going to the Federal Reserve tomorrow (which we're doing; don't ask; or do ask; asking is totally optional). Now I'm eating carrots.


me:

"Glasses and going to the Federal Reserve."

This is me asking. And drinking pink Gatorade.


And...it went on for a few more. He sent me an image from Googling "glasses and going to the Federal Reserve." Etc. Now that I read back over this, I realize that this exchange is completely meaningless to anyone not in this thing, whatever this thing is, that may or may not be going on, but documenting it makes me smile anyway, because if something happens and this remains merely a friendship or evolves into something else or thrives, lives, dies, suffocates, I can look back on these moments wherein I have felt slightly...charmed, I guess. Moved, I'm sure. Relocated to a new position in my brain where there is this olive branch being extended to me from the Universe after so many kicks in the abdomen by it.

I haven't seen him all week and frankly, I'm not sure when I will see him next. But the place we left things last weekend was basically wide open and with options. Communication with him satisfies me just swell for the moment. Like I said, I needed a quiet week and took it. My desire for me time (and his knowledge and acceptance that I desire it) is of utmost significance to me at this time.

Still. Photographs were posted somewhere of Lit Crawl and there was another one of him that I saw and it brought the smallest butterflies flapping their pretty wings...small, I mean just hatched ones...no more than a 1/2" wingspan :)

We'll see. I'm not overly alarmed about forward motion with him right now. Days must be taken one at a time for me, right now. I'm dealing with too many spinning plates (shattered ones, pieces flying all askew everywhere and taking with them shards of shattered me and scattering them in corners of rooms) so timing of this might be right or might be wrong. I need some long lead time on the Good Me, the Fulfilled Me, the Epic Me, to be delivered. I require time to adhere together these shattered pieces of me back together. Or maybe I leave those pieces in corners and find new pieces to replace the split open ones.

Still. Having so much that I want to say to him and to hear him say is a really nice feeling.

Life things from this past week:
So. much. rain.
Johnny - he's the best roommate, ever.
Slicing mushrooms for pasta the other night.
Finding out that "Somebody That I Used to Know" is not only a Gotye song but is also an Elliott Smith song long before Gotye's time (annoying, slightly) (don't steal an idea from ES, you Australian songwriter, unless crediting my boy Elliott.)
Dirty Dancing is soothing no matter what scene, no matter what hour you watch it, no matter who is with or not with you when you watch it...nobody puts Baby in a corner!
Morning coffee,
Early bedtimes...as communicated to the boy: these are important.

I must keep pushing through. :)