Carrots

So, ... I like to eat. And to cook. And to eat.

So, but I'm not a like health nut, but I'm not a junk-food junkie.

ARG! This post is just so hard to start.

Okay, so certain foods remind me of certain ... girls.

So, like, for Julia, there's the potato pancakes, because her husband, Jeff, made them when I visited two Christmases ago. But there's also carrots, because Julia was a red head, a carrot top, just like (that Wild) Cate. So I like to juice carrots with an apple and then, from the separated, shredded, carrot leavings, I make carrot-nut-raisin bread:

Preheat oven to 350°F

In a bowl combine:

1½ cups flour
½ teas salt
1 teas cinnamon
1 teas baking powder

In another bowl, mix together

1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
½ cup sugar
¼ cup molasses
½ teas vanilla
1½ cup shredded carrots
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
(optional: ½ cup chocolate chips)

Stir in the flour mixture into the carrot one, pour contents into a bread pan, and bake for 1 hour.

This recipe has been a work in progress. The last time it was too salty, so this time I reduced the salt from 1 teas to ½ teas and that worked much better.

And I have yummy, (sorta) healthy, carrot-nut-bread dessert.

Kate also gave me radishes. She always had a fresh bag of radishes, and she would just take one out, wash it, and eat it, raw, just like that, at her apartment, when I was ... visiting her. So I have a bag of radishes with me, and whenever I eat one, I think of her.

She would have a cigarette after sex, too, and she just thought it was so funny when I took a drag from her fag and coughed and coughed. It tasted minty. She wouldn't let me smoke after that one drag.

Both Kate and Julia were shorter than me.

So, what's my type?

Red heads? Shorties?

I had a fifth grade teacher, and he would always proclaim: "I'd rather be dead, then red ... on the head!" He grew up during bomb-shelters and the Cold War. I just thought that was so mean to Julia, but Julia and I were just friends in 5th grade, so I never did nor said anything.

Or, I must have an infatuation with blondes, right? 'Cause of my Rosalie-fixation and that film noir post. I was just about to say I never had a blonde, you know, as a ... special friend, but then I remember Brenda.

Brenda was a blonde, in every sense of the word: leggy, curvaceous. Brenda introduced me to wine, and cooked me these lavish dinners, like grilled steak served with brussels sprouts. She would say, 'have another glass of wine, Melissa,' you know, in that pleading, possessive, hopeful voice of hers, which, reflecting on how she said that, she really meant, 'stay a bit longer.'

And now I know she meant, 'don't leave me.' That is: 'don't leave me to be alone.'

Brenda ... loved me. They all did. They all do. She loved me as a mother loves a child, and she taught me so many things in the bedroom. She would curl me around her and I would hold onto her for dear life and I would just lose my mind, and then she would turn around and hold me so tightly for a moment, and then turn me away and just hold me as I fell asleep in her arms.

I never really felt that until Brenda. I mean, she was a total femme, and she just wrapped me in her embrace, and I never felt so ... what is the word? protected? just cocooned in her arms like that. It was like I was her baby girl and her teenaged daughter and her lover all at the same time, and she just so needed that, after her husband died, I guess, she just so needed me.

And I did leave her. I did leave her to be alone.

So, it's white girls, then, that are my preference? No, because there was Melanie. And yes, nothing happened, but it very nearly did and it wasn't for the want of desire on either party's part, let me tell you.

So, then you don't go after the Asian chicks, then, eh?

Oh, my goodness. You would not believe the number of Asian girls in college that were ... exploring their sexuality, being away from home for the first time and all that. In fact, I was accused of being an asian-lover in school! They called me an 'egg'! You know: white on the outside, yellow on the inside. I mean, there was Grace, and Amy, and Sue, and ...

And ... *whew*! Um, excuse me a moment ...

Okay, I'm back now.

Um.

So, a type? Okay, so, now you've got me: I only go for the brainy ones.

Yeah, okay. There was this knock-out girl who instantly turned me off when she opened her mouth and out came all this racist stuff. Two girls, actually: Tanya and ... hm, forgot the other girl's name. So, brainy girls, right?

Well, okay, so how do you explain Brenda? She was matriculating, and her prof told her that all she could ever be was a B-student.

Good thing I never met her prof. I would have kicked his teeth in. Or hers. I was furious when Brenda told me that. Listen, if you're a prof, don't do that to a student, okay? And if you're a student, and a prof does that to you, take those words and say: 'okay, I'll show you!' And show him. Or her.

Brenda wasn't smart in that she claimed she wasn't smart. But she was kind. And motherly. And ... well, a survivor, and ... she took care of broken little me when I was so far down and made me feel special and wanted.

And, so, well, beautiful, then, `phfina?

Sure, looks can draw me in. I'll admit that.

But, funny thing. Beauty, ... well. So I went back home after college and I ran into Chris (no, not Chris) and I always looked at him (yes: him) as this big, dumb sports jock. And always in the hunt, cruising for chicks for an easy lay.

He never hit on me. I guess I wasn't an easy lay. For him.

Anyway, he met this kindergarden teacher at a bar, and next thing you know, when I met him again, he was just gushing, you know, and they got married and had a kid and he's now a proud papa.

Anyway, I said hi, and we talked and I mentioned something about Julia, and he say, 'Oh, yeah, you two were like ... you know? weren't you?'

I was like shocked. I mean, Julia was my world, but to other people they could care less and totally forgot about it.

And then he said the real shocker: 'She was kinda skanky.'

I was like, what?

And he was like, 'Yeah, that nasty, freckled, red-headed thing!'

And ... well, the conversation moved on, but that was the first time I ever saw Julia from somebody else's eyes. Somebody who didn't love her or care about her. Julia, to me, is beautiful, and that's all how I'll ever see her.

And maybe that's all how I ever see anything. I look and, yes, I have my prejudices, but when I see you, and I love you, and you love me, does it matter what type you are? how smart you are? how (ill-)tempered you are? I am me. You are you. And I love you for you being you, and I get so, so furious when you don't see me as me, or when you refuse to see you as you.

I'm going to go off now and have a salad with grilled salmon steak. Salmon: smart-people's food.

Little Wee One

My nose is cold.

That was the primary thought I had in Mass today, that, and my cheeks were burning with the cold and probably blushing bright pink since I'm in our poor little parish church that keeps the heat bill low, and did I have a jacket, yes, and were other people wearing theirs, yes, but was shy little me, so worried what other people would think about the little girl in the second pew putting on her jacket and the thought 'what would they think?' kept gnawing at me, so did I put it on or did I just suffer the cold?

Yeah, right.

When ... well, we had an exchange student from Belgium when I was in high school whose name was Jean-Paul which sounds a lot to American ears like 'bean pole,' and so I would get looks when people called out his name.

I am a wee one. One hundred twenty pounds with my clothes on (and shoes) ... on a good day, and oh, so sensitive, yes, in that way (and in other ways) to the cold, it's what? 40°F outside today, and when I was leaving that cold, cold church, I sprinted to my little red car as the 'cold' knifed into me.

Stop laughing at me, please.

And if the cold kills me, the heat is worse. Back in high school near the end of the school year it was one of those hot CT summers were it was 105°F and oh-so-humid, and I was standing in the back listening to the principal, and all the sudden everything spun and then I was looking up at the ceiling and everybody was so tall looking down at me and I was lying on the floor, and I was like, 'oh, God! no, not again!' but it was just pale little nothing me fainting from the heat, was all.

"Walk of shame"? That's me, being escorted to the nurse's office, trying to tell anybody who'd listen that I was fine now.

So, well, I'm nothing to look at, if you're sizing me up, then I'm the featherweight, the push-over, the picked-on nerdy kid with her hand raised every time the teacher asks a question, the 'I could beat her up, the queer,' because, yes, some people have actually thought that.

M.J. for one. He was the school bully, and they were always having to air-brush out his raised middle fingers, in every single class photo. I mean, he was just mean, and mad, his yearbook motto was that he hated 'fags, queers, and teachers.' And I didn't think I was on the radar, his radar, his hate-gaydar, because I wasn't out, you know, at school, but one night ...

I didn't live far from school, so Julia drove over to our house one night, and she and I walked to school, past M.J.'s house with the ravenous, rabid guard dog (skirt, skirt, skirt) and went to a play or a dance or something, don't remember it, don't remember what Julia and I did, 'cause we walked back, in the moonlit night, and we were walking along, Julia and I, laughing and talking, and all the sudden Julia screamed and I felt a 'thud!' on the back of my head and saw three dark blobs. I screamed at Julia to run, and I swung my mag-light and it connected and a thug went down onto the ground.

And stayed there for a few seconds. The other two guys helped the third up, and I backed up in a crouch, and I asked something like, 'who's next?' and one of them said something to me but they kept their distance and I backed away from them and ran home to find Julia in my mom's arms in hysterics, worried that I was dead or hurt or something.

I was like so high from adrenaline I didn't feel a thing, not even the bump on the back of my head, and I drove Julia home that night in her car, and well, she was really, really wound up, you know? And all scared for me and all 'my hero!' (*ahem*: 'heroine'), actually looking up to me with big, big eyes, and she couldn't get to sleep at all and I told her mom that I would look after her tonight, and I called my mom and said I was sleeping over to take care of Julia and ...

... And, well, you do know I 'started early,' right? Julia and I were 'good friends,' you know, up to that point, and I didn't, you know, do anything, because I didn't know her, you know, preference and, well ...

'My hero[ine]' sex is right up there, you know?

That's not the point ... I think (but it was very, very sweet, remembering that night and what it meant).

The point — if there is one — was that M.J. saw me in a certain way, and, looking at scrawny little nothing me, people say to themselves, 'aw, cute.'

Well, 'aw, cute' works out every day (DDR), takes Aikido, has gone to her local police station and has taken 'self-defense for women,' and I'm looking into Escrima, after I saw a demo where this one guy put in six bone-breaking moves on his partner before I could swallow at the impact of seeing the first one.

When I say 'noone will touch me without a lot of pain coming their way,' I'm not joking around. I've read the papers since I was a little girl, and I know what happens to labeled people, we get isolated, then persecuted, then executed. And there are hate crimes happening tonight in this very city.

Somebody wanting to take something out on me or on mine has got something coming at them that's much bigger than what I look like I can deliver. Touch me without my consent? I will fvck you up.

Why do I say all this? Because you think, 'aw' when you see cute little me, don't you? 'How cute! `phfina's acting all panthery, does she need a hug?'

But not everybody thinks that.

And one of those people is my mom.

I just want to say, right here, so I will, I have never hit someone I love ... but there was this one day when everything changed. Again.

I was in the living room, reading, and my mom asked me to do something, you know? Just a nothing something, like put away the dishes or take out the trash, and I ...

And I saw red. I threw my book aside and I ran right at her, screaming at the top of my lungs, and I was right in her face. Actually, for the first time in my life, I noticed I was looking a little bit down at my mother.

And I was looking down at a face that was scared, and a little voice inside me said, 'You are scaring your mother' as I screamed and shouted incoherently at her. And she was completely pale, and looking toward the phone, and I wondered if she was going to call Dad or call 911 and have me put back in the hospital or ...

But she asked me what was wrong, so softly, so patiently, so scared.

And I had no answer for her, just this rage and anger and hate.

I hated my own mom for asking me to do a chore, taking me away from my escape in my book to help her run the house now that Dad was gone, and what was I doing to help?

We never talked about that moment. It happened, and mom tamed the beast with her soft, caring words, and then I did the chore and life went on.

And after church today, a lady in the pew behind me, older than Brenda, I guess, tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'you sing so beautifully!' and I said, 'thank you,' and smiled at her, but then, after a second, I said, 'it was nice of you to say that to me,' and warmed my smile, and she said, 'oh, no: it was so nice to hear you sing!' and then she left with her husband, and I went home with the words John the Baptist: 'I must decrease' ringing in my ears and ...

Well, Fr. P. was angry with me. I mean, he didn't say that, but this was the first time he also didn't say 'good confession.'

I told him that it was hard for me to see God's gifts to me, like he had asked me to do, when all I've been doing this week is getting into fights with people, spoiling for fights, maybe, even. And Fr. said, "As you get older ..." — yeah, look at little baby me — "you begin to appreciate the hardest prayer was Jesus on the cross saying 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'" And he told me to appreciate God's gifts in other people. He didn't ask 'can you do that?' this time.

And, well, I went to supper with my friend Greg from group. He's an excited little puppy dog, and he and his wife are having their first baby, and all supper it was about that, but also about, you know, life, and work and stuff, and he thanked me for being a friend, and listening and also not letting him get away with the bvllsh!t, you know? the lies he tells himself about himself.

And I could have told him that I wasn't drinking anymore, but he wanted and ordered a blue moon, and then he rhapsodied about single-malt Scotch and ordered the 12-year Glen Livet and ... well ...

God, I love Scotch.

Starting over — again: day one.

And "I must decrease" is burning my (cold) ears right now, and I remember the time when that actually did happen.

But that's another entry for another time addressing the question as to 'why I believe in God?'

Goodnight, my loves

Saga and my "I'm sorry"s

Some of you may have noticed something about me over time.

I apologize. Often.

I've also downcased my name before, calling myself 'melissa,' not 'Melissa.' And I get very particular about how you spell and capitalize my pen name: it's "'phfina" spelled: '-p-h-f-i-n-a. Not '-P-h-f-i-n-a nor P-h-i-n-a nor anything else I've seen.

It's "'phfina."

We'll get to the name in a bit.

So we'll tackle the "I'm sorry" part first.

Why do I say "I'm sorry" so often sometimes?

Well, obviously, I'm not the most politic and genteel girl out there. In fact, I'm rather pleased to be a direct person ... sometimes. And my directness can get me into trouble with you, can't it? Like when I'm being direct with you about what you just said to me?

And so I apologize. But what's that? Am I sorry for what I said? Am I sorry for what I meant?

No. I said what I said and I meant what I meant. Why? I think you are much bigger than you think you are. And I refuse to listen to your smallness toward yourself, toward others or toward me.

So I'm not sorry about that.

But can't I say what I say, and mean what I mean much more compassionately? And still see you in your greatness?

Yeah. I think I can.

You have to remember, I'm just a little girl. Just little 'phfina me, and I'm human, and I make mistakes, ...

AND I still stand by you in all your greatness. AND I still refuse to listen to smallness coming from you.

BUT-but-but.

But there's a lot of smallness and meanness in me, isn't there? Scaredness and shyness and bitterness.

What's up with that?

Well, um, I've turned a new leaf?

(Do you believe me?)

... and ...

And I'm a mistake.

When everything was happy and mom and dad were together, I said something to mom once, and she said, ...

... and God! I remember this like it's happening right now ...

she said, "Well, you know you were unexpected."

And I was like, huh?

You see, a lot of you think you're old enough to be my mom. A lot of you think you are my mom. And I do relate to older people better, I've noticed.

But you're not my mom. In fact, you're probably all younger than my sisters. My mom had skinny little bean-pole me in her forties, and I was a mistake, you see, because she had had her tubes tied years before, so, you know, it was okay for mom and dad to ... you know, and there wouldn't be any consequences from that, you see.

There wouldn't be any me, you see.

And in that moment, when mom told that little girl that ... that ... you know ... that I was unexpected, everything just ...

I felt everything shift, and now there was that whole big dangerous world out there that didn't want me and there was that little nothing girl that was me that shouldn't be there, that was taking up too much space on this already overpopulated planet and ...

... and that.

It must have been years later, when I learned what 'abortion' is and that it exists, I suddenly got another concern. So here I am, in high school, and I go up to mom, struggling to make it now that dad has left, and I asked here why she didn't decide to have an abortion with me, you know?

And she just ...

Well, she doesn't like to be a, you know, MOM so she just smiled her tight-lipped smile and shrugged.

You see, that's how our family talks. And you say I don't share myself. Ha.

And my mom and I are like, really close, you know? We're like best friends, but ...

But I don't want my mom to be my best friend, I want my mom to be my mom, you know? I want my mom to be my mom, and if I was a mistake then how can I even ask that of her when my very existence is just in the way and I'm taking up space and money that could, you know, make my mom's life better or easier or something, that I'm just taking up space and air and water on the planet that has at least one too many people on it already, you know?

You know what I say when I say I'm sorry. I just see me, hurting you, failing, at life, again. And I'm sorry for living.

I'm sorry for living.

What the fuck am I doing here?

Do you know what my prayer is, every night to God? It's Sappho's prayer to Aphrodite.

"Please. Take me. Tonight."

And you know what I just realized? You know why my prayer hasn't been answered and never will be?

Because God doesn't even want me. God doesn't make any mistakes, except one. Me.

"'phfina, when God made you, He broke the mold." I've been told admiringly and sarcastically by my all-Mensa family telling queer (meaning strange to them, but also meaning queer, you know? queer as in fucking dyke) little me.

And you know why? For good reason. That's why.

And my name. Now you know why I downcase it. You know.

Because I'm sh1t.

No. That's not right. I'm not even that. My dad had horses and that was used for fertilizer and composting. I don't even rate that.

I'm nothing.

I mean: a les who can't have or keep a gf, and Dad left me when I was a kid, and I'm a nut case who wound up in the hospital, now writing fan-fiction and serving coffee off her college degree in ancient Greek Lit?

I'm not nothing. I'm less than nothing.

Right? You know all this.

And then.

And then I apologized four times in one PM to Saga before we were 'anything' and she so called me out on that. She was furious with me. Furious. And then she called me out on signing my PMs 'melissa,' and asked me why.

And then I told her.

Do you think she was happy with my answer? She chided me there, much more gently, but then she got me to start signing my PMs with 'Melissa,' even though that's (still) hard for me to do.

And then I wrote the update soon post, knowing that Saga wasn't out to her own mom, even though the post wasn't aimed at her (specifically) at all. And the 'Let me be very direct with you' PM I got from her ...

Do you know what came out of that?

What came out of that, is that, after that all blew over, she told me she loves me.

And I got that PM, and I was like.

Oh, no. Oh, God, no, not Saga. Please, why do I have to hurt another nice, smart sweet girl.

And then I sighed in defeat, and I told her I love her.

Because I do.

And do you know what came out of that?

I can now tell you I love you. And I can now tell you that, and I can now love you, too. Freely. Openly. Lovingly.

I can love you. All this withholding I've been doing, has it made me happy? Has it made you happy? No.

And when I tell you I love you, doesn't that ... well, doesn't that do something for you?

It does for me. It tells me I am something that can love, and be loved in return.

That I can give love and receive it, ... that I don't have to resist it or fight it or withdraw from it or withhold it.

That I can simply love and be loved.

Some of you don't like Saga, for whatever reason you choose, but you know how I always call you on your shit? Saga has done that to me and for me, and has done that in such a way as for me to look at myself as a better person than I see myself AND has allowed me to love, not just her, but you.

And you've helped me, too, you know? You are not Saga, but you are. When you stand for the person I can be, that affects me and that affects you. When you do something amazing, like tell a girl you love her, just tell her, or you take on taking on yourself, daring to look in the mirror and see what you did, the bad stuff and the good stuff, and take on cleaning up your messes and celebrating your successes, and you PM me to let me know about the new leaf, the new page in your book ...?

Don't you see how everything you say and everything you don't say so deeply affects me? I hear your silences so loudly, it's deafening. Just as mine are, and, heh, I'm sorry. And I hear your smallness that it drowns out anything else you are trying to say. And then your victories? You can barely write them, you are so excited, right? But I feel them through your PM as if I'm right there with you.

Because I am. I'm right here, with you.

Do you know what my "I'm sorry"s are? They are my reasons not to exist. I don't deserve existence, and apparently I'm not good enough for death.

I'm just not good enough.

Do you know what I've found by writing my silly little fan-fiction stories? I've found you.

And in finding you, I'm starting to find myself, again, for the first time in my life.

Do you know what the opposite of "I'm sorry" is? I just realized this now, too, as I write.

The opposite of "I'm sorry" is "thank you."

Thank you.

Oh, no! It's a P.S. to "The (Two) List(s)"

Uh-oh! That's what I always think whenever anybody sends me a P.S. PM, because, well, because my P.S.'s are something I didn't think about, because why? Because well, it might be scary what I don't want to think about, or hurtful.  You know: the 'oh, by the way,' the, as I say, 'à propos de rein' (which a cute little French girl just scolded me about my usage). And if I've studied psychology (and I have studied psychology), then I know there's a reason for forgetting something, and there's a reason for sending the P.S.  It's like the P.S. is really the message, and the message I had sent was just the cover to soften you up.

And it makes all the work, all that effort, I had put into the original PM for nought, and I die a little death when I send a P.S. or when I receive a P.S. Because, oh, noes, here it comes. And I grit my teeth, and I brace myself.

Oftentimes for "P.S. hugs" and I'm like ... aw~w~w~w~w~w~w! and sniffle a little sniffle.

So: "P.S." and "How could I forget?"

1. ('X.' because I've lost count) I've made more than one girl have to do the laundry, including me.
   
   'phfina, every girl living on her own has to do the laundry.
   
   No, I'm talking extra loads, and because of ... something happening ... with her ... when she reads my stories.
   
   AND these girls have invariably reported a new-found relationship with their washing machines ... and you know what I'm talking about ('spin cycle,' anyone?)


2. Because of you, I've learned words in languages I never knew (both the words and the languages).


3. And, 'oh, by the way' ... I've written stories. I've dared, I've been sick, I've been scared, and ... my heart has been touched by my stories. I hope my stories touch your heart, too. I wrote them for me, and I wrote them for you.

kisses, 'phfina

p.p.s. Okay, what's so frigging hard about writing a list that goes 'X., Y., Z.' in HTML? Do you know how many hours of my life I just wasted studying 'OL' and 'LI' and style-sheets and 'CSS' (whatever the hell! that is!)? And all this studying for what result? NOT to have it work on blogspot? What the Hell! I just wanna have an 'X., Y., Z.' list! What does a girl have to do to get that around here, for goodness sake!

Oh! Um. Yeah. This was supposed to be an appreciative entry, not a diatribe ... *sigh*

*blush* (mutter-mutter 'HTML is so-o-o-o-o easy!' *rolls eyes* mutter-mutter)

"The List"

Rosalie has two lists. Rosalie is a light-weight. Two lists? I'd like to get mine down to two lists. Maybe I could have two lists of my lists, but that's just me shooting for stars and breaking my chin when I hit the stone-hewn floor.

So, here's one of my lists, and you could read it like I'm blowing my own horn, because, well, I am. But I ask you to read this in a different way. I ask you to read this like it's your list.

Or, I ask you to make your own list that is, really, your own list and put it up on your profile.

OR, I ask you to read you in this list. AND if you don't read you in this list, I ask you to PM me.

"Hey, 'phfina, you little dummy, remember that time I ... and you ... and I ...? So put that on your flimmin'-flammin' list, already! Don't make me come over there, because I will so order a latte when I do!"

AND if you want your name on this list, go ahead, PM me. I'm leaving names off here out of respect to your privacy. If "respect" for you means that you are recognized by name, I'll be happy to put your (profile) name and a link to your profile, for I am grateful to you.

So, yeah, here's my list.

1. A girl wrote in her review that one of my stories saved her life.


2. A girl sent me a proposal of marriage in her PM. She was joking. But she wasn't. And that made Saga SO JEALOUS! and I don't know what I like more, the sweetness (and carefreeness) of the proposal, or the ... "reaction" from Saga.


3. A girl wrote in her review that my PM to her ... well, her BFF is now her GF and it's because a snoopy (boy) friend was reading what I was writing to her about being honest with BFF and not getting all stalker-crazy-fantasy.


4. A girl came out to her mom and her friends. And she had smilies when she told me ... that's good, right?


5. A girl admitted she started writing because of my stories. One girl I'm sure she said this, two other girls I'm not sure but ... maybe I had something to do with them starting writing.


6. A girl got a kiss from a girl, because I emboldened her to ask for it.


7. A girl told me she loves me? Yes, a girl told me she loves me.


8. A girl did her homework, for the first time, at my ... erhm, encouragement.


9. A girl blushed with glee at my review of her story. Strike that, more than one girl has done that. My reviews can make writers happy.


10. I wrote a chapter for another girl's story. I've done that twice so far. One ... wasn't received so well by the readers. One was. Both inspired the writers to continue to write. Oh, yeah. A girl dared to publish a story because I dared to demand that she do just that, and she picked up my thrown gauntlet.


11. More than several girls dared to review my works in their native and first languages which happen to be other than English. Would they have ever dared that? To express themselves sincerely and in their own language? I allowed this by asking for it ... very insistently.


12. A girl cried and cried when I told her that it was okay to be herself, whoever that self she found herself to be and that self whom she loved. And then she gave her mom a hug.


13. A girl told me I've marked her face with a permanent smirk. Yes, I do write (intentionally) humorous pieces, too, even if the humor is a bit "rye" ... but it wouldn't be Rosalie without the snide little side commentary, now would it, right?


14. A girl screamed when she saw I updated my story.


15. More than one girl couldn't wait to read my stories, so they read them in class ... both got caught red-handed. Explain this kind of "literature" to teacher, eh?
    
    [I TOLD you NOT to read my stuff in class!] [But who listens to 'phfina, hm?]

Oh, and here's another list. Gratitude, right? Well, yes!

1. A boy gave me his broad shoulders to cry on.


2. Same boy said only a handful of authors get Rosalie right ... and I'm one of them.


3. A girl ... helped me when I suddenly realized that everything had shifted and I didn't know how to go on, because I didn't know who or what I was anymore ... you know, when ... *blush* ... anyway, and she, in her wisdom, guided me from not being able to breathe to 'it's okay, lots of people experience this and it's perfectly fine.' You know you saved my life just then, sweetheart. You know that, don't you?


4. A girl said she trying reading a Rosalie fic and liked it, because I kept her character, true and her (black) heart, pure ... and loving ... and caring ... and sardonic.


5. A girl told me I really shine in my Alice-Rosalie interactions. Another girl told me my Jasper was rock star ... in fact ... "girl"? No: "girls." One girl hugged her computer when reading my story. Aw!


6. A girl called my writing astounding. Another girl said I am a writer. Another girl said I should be published in print. So did another one, and then set up a website to showcase my work, starting with my only story, my first story: Sappho's Muse.


7. A girl dedicated a story to me. Same girl wrote me into her story.


8. A girl put into my head the seed of my "hug game" in a PM to me when I was feeling blue.


9. And your reviews? GOD! your reviews. I mean, Rosalie and Me? Your reviews saved that piece from deletion. BUT THEN you got what ch 8 was up to in Our First Time ... a nothing little chapter, just like my nothing little one-shot Fireworks. Just a kiss under a tree; just a shared moment at an sbux. That's all. That is: nothing at all, except for your reviews. Thank you, thank you and thank you.


10. A girl PMed me and asked me how I was doing. Asked me if I was okay. Hm, a boy did that, too. Hm. A lot of people do that a lot of the time.

People care about me. People care about me.

Lunch

Today for lunch I had a bottle of Ethos water and a turkey sandwich with muenster cheese and a ginger spread on whole wheat bread. Do you see that little girl wearing all black and a green apron sitting alone at the sbux, pouring over a very professional looking notebook? Do you see her looking out a the clientele sometimes between pages and between bites of a sandwich that her daddy used to make her when she was a little girl? Do you ever wonder what she's thinking? Or feeling? Is she sad? Is she lonely? Or is she just enjoying the zing of the ginger spread in the sandwich?

Gnocchi and ... nothing

My favorite dish is gnocchi, but I can never make it like my Nana made it.

'Made it.' She died of cancer two years ago, and it feels like yesterday that I was holding her nothing hand as her body was eaten away by the cancer in the hospice. But every time I do take out the left-over mashed potatoes and the bag of flour, I make them as I watched her making them, and smile, remembering how she guided my tiny hands in her powerful ones as we made gnocchi together.

That was my Nana, my Italian grandmother.

I don't have one memory of my Irish grandmother. My understanding is that she ... drank, and she died when I was only a little girl. So I don't have any experience of being Irish, really, just some stories and my looks and that's it, because my mom's, you know, American.

I don't know where I'm going with this, because I am an American girl, and, as you may have read, I'm proud of that, too, but I'd also like to have a connectedness to my history, also, I guess. I mean, America has history, but not like history as in history, like the Italians or the Irish or the Greeks where they can go back more than a thousand years without breaking a sweat, and they can show you the places and buildings that older than that.

People who know their cultural heritage have a rootedness to them that I ... don't.

And I want that. I want to know that by making this cup of coffee I'm repeating the action that my ancestors have been doing for a thousand years, and I do feel that sense of peace when I make gnocchi and feel Nana's hands guiding mine, even today. But I don't feel that in much else of my life: turmoil is more like it. Restlessness. Rootlessness.

So if you do have a connection to your history, your culture, your past ... please treasure it and pass it on, because here's one little lost girl who so wants that grounding in her life.

kisses, 'phfina

'Happy'? Memorial Day!

Hi. I'm a little shy writing this, because I have no right to write it.

I'm an American girl, living in the Washington, D.C. area, and it's cool these days to be patriotic (so, of course, my natural tendency to is smirk, knowingly, at that) and it's also cool in this area to be patriotic but also to be sardonic about it, too, behind closed doors, and just ... I don't know, poke fun at our country and our countrymen and women.

But you know what isn't cool?

In our apartment complex I pass two cars every day in the wee early morning hours and I see a bumper sticker and I see a stenciling and they both say this: "To W_, beloved husband and father, 1989 - 2009." "To J_, we miss you, 1988 - 2007."

"Beloved husband and father" ascribed to a boy born after me and died before me. And you can say: 'oh, he got married too early,' but I won't say that.

It may be 'cool' or not for me to be patriotic but here, right where I live, are two people, cool or not who died, so I could be cool or not.

Today, I'm gonna do something different. I'm taking the day, and going to the parade, and burning up in the heat, and gonna get terribly sunburned (God, I hope not!), and stand up every time the flag passes and take off my sun hat (and really get sunburned, curse my pale-pale self!) and smile at the vets and guys (and girls, too!) in the parade on motorcycles or not, and wave back when they wave.

And then I'm going to come back home and reread my Vera story and finally watch that movie Grace Is Gone (trailer) and probably cry as I cry now, watching the trailer, and probably eat a whole thing of Cherry Garcia (bad girl!) and ...

And remember our vets, some of whom I know coming in for their daily cup-o-joe, some of whom I knew. And sincerely thank God for them, today, and try to remember that, and remember them, everyday.

Happy Memorial Day.

kisses, 'phfina

Mermaids

Sometimes, when I was a little girl, and I was swimming, I imagined myself a mermaid and I would swim with my mermaid friends and we would be so carefree and gay ... you know, just being so joyful. And we would comb each others' hair and kiss and have that mean nothing if it meant nothing and have it mean something if it meant something and then laugh again and sing and swim and play.

And sometimes when I cross the Potomac river now and I look out at the Chesapeake and I look for my mermaid friends and wonder what they are doing now, and smile a very private smile for my mermaid friends and myself.

kisses, 'phfina