Back in the saddle

I knew that all it would take to get me riding properly again would be to just ride.
It has been really hard to get up in the mornings though, with this darkness.

I rode in 16 miles today with a friend.
It was awesome.

What happens on the bus

Monday through Friday, I take a bus in to Providence and home again. There are about thirty "regulars" who take the bus with me, and over the past year, I have gradually come to know some of them. There is mostly only polite conversation. I mostly read. But here and there, there are some brilliant little mica-shiny moments when everyone just seems to click.

They are killing some of the buses. This has caused an artificial sense of community; petitions were formed and signed, meetings were attended, new friendships were made in the common cause of keeping our bus line. I had nothing to do wtih this but watched like a wallflower from behind my book as heated conversation was exchanged over the fate of our bus. I thought it was cool that people were talking. You just don't get that in a car commute. I did, along with my daughter, sign a petition, but felt only on the edge of something that was really happening.

I think life has been like that for me lately. I have been only peripherally toe-dipping. I am heavily distracted by television and books and just not getting out there. Part of this has to do with my relationship with Tom. He is so happy to be in a quiet place, reading, and I am so anxious to be with and spend time with him that often it is time spent doing nothing, really. I really value my time with him. Nothing compares. I feel like I am not missing much of "out there." There is, of course, a side of me that feels guilty for blowing off friends and being anti-social. I would like, for example, to think of myself as a giving person, and would like to volunteer and feel good about myself for doing it, but often don't pursue opportunities because of laziness and because I know Tom wouldn't do it. Although he did go out and protest the war with me once on a streetcorner with Moveon.org, so, maybe I should just make him go outside once in awhile.

He said, last night, "I always have something I have to do. I wish I didn't always have something to do."

I can't do this for him, but I can model it, I suppose.

My smart daughter allocates her time to her art and her passions in such an indulgent way that I envy her.

On the bus, I read these thick books to pass the time. Passing the time as opposed to wasting the time. But perhaps taking the time, using the time, for either connecting with other people or writing, would be a good thing.

I want to sit here and write down all of these character descriptions of the folks on the bus. But I'm too lazy. Maybe more will come to me the more I keep this blog.

The llama in the bathtub

Llama in the Bathtub is an example of a non-sequiter I gave to my young author/artist teenaged daughter the other night on the bus. We were talking about writing, and audience, and characters, and especially, kooky characters. I told her that I thought (as a reader and sometimes writer of short fiction) that sometimes it was better to have a character be outwardly dull and inwardly kooky. That rather than have your characters running around spewing non-sequiter nonsense (i.e., "there's a llama in the bathtub!") perhaps the more interesting character seems normal to some extent, until some part of the story's action impels him or her to out the inner kook.

This all comes right back at me. I am the queen of non-sequiter nonsense, and I love building kooky characters. I also haven't written in a long time. I can't seem to keep my focus. Plus, my life has become outwardly dull since quitting drinking and settling down four years ago. No longer do I run about with great crowds of chatty, cheerfull barhoppers, and no longer do I slip off my chair at parties. Nor do I have tolerance for much kookiness anymore. I get grouchier the older I get, and I'm young. What's worse is I work at a design school, and I love my job, and I think the kooky art stuff is cool, but I am also highly suspicious of it all. I've just become an old bore. I don't have a lot of friends in 3-D although I suppose if I put some effort in, I would. My best friends are my mother, my husband, and my kid. I don't want to spend time with other people. It's kind of like a hierarchy chart: After those three, there's connected people I would spend time with (just less time, and I couldn't guarantee not getting impatient and fidgety) including my Dad, all my brothers and sisters and their related peeps; my nieces and nephews, my husbands mother, sister and nephew, and next, the alpaca people. The alpaca people are people who share one thing in common with my husband and me: we own and breed alpacas. I see them once a year at shows and I enjoy hanging out with them and wish they all lived closer. They get me. I get them. I guess anyone who is willing to own animals that are expensive, that spit, that you have to feed and clean up after are kind of special people. But I wouldn't want to hang out with them all of the time.

But I am open to new friendships, now. Now that Obama has won, I think my new goal is to make some friends. I bicycle, I have a year-old job in a pretty cool place, so I have some chances here to make some connections and, I don't know, be nice and stuff. Like, remember birthdays. Go out to lunch. Listen to stories about botched surgery and the neighbor's fence. I can do this. I really can. But the friends I always go for are the elusive ones - the crazy ones. Not always. I have to say I have acquaintances who are not crazy and elusive. But it's almost as if I seek out the very woman as friend who might turn around and dump me the next day. The Queens. The Divas. The bitches who know what they want, and get it. Dangerous women.

So, with this blog, I hope to start digging a little, unearth that llama in the bathtub. I think it's okay to be a little dull sometimes, but I'm ready for the next phase of life.