Sunday, April 27, 2008

measured my life in coffee spoons

I cleaned out my car today. Cleaned everything right out of it, and I mean everything. Garbage, clothes, books, shoes. Five scarves. Two toques. A pair of mittens. A set of coasters I bought at IKEA three months ago. The accumulation of all of the stressful aspects of my life.

I thought I'd feel better about my life if I did it; more in control. I don't. Instead I feel worry lines springing up on my forehead uninvited. I keep thinking about why my car overheats. Keep worrying about things like head gaskets and wondering if I'll ever have a completely worry-free day.

Eric is leaving for Europe tomorrow and I feel sad. We didn't celebrate my birthday before he left like we said we would. He didn't bring it up. In the midst of all of my hurt feelings, I asked him about it and he said he bought me a card but hasn't written in it yet, and that was all. Said something about how we'd celebrate it when he got home. It would have been nice to have been briefed of his plans -- or of his postponement, rather.

Tomorrow I'm going to begin the long stretch of full-time office-boredom, marked with short spurts of part-time greenhouse-coffee-shop-exhaustion. And the horse remains dreadfully unridden. The bills remain unpaid. Racked up.

Fourteen hundred and seventy dollars went towards the stupid moment of making a U-turn in deep snow.

I am feeling more like J. Alfred Prufrock than ever. Maybe I won't read the poem ever again until I'm forty-five, and then we'll see how I feel about it.

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