sleeping

I have slept all week. I've not slept great but I have slept and I am so thankful for it. Of course, I did not write but you can't have it all!

I especially thankful for the sleep because my work has been increasingly demanding since I'm leaving the department for another. Add to that my child's recent expectant behavior (it is her birthday - that's her reasoning) and a test on Thursday and I had to give in to sleep.

So by 10 or 11 I've been the good girl and gone to bed.

I felt better this week, not just because of sleep but because I was able to tell a number of people what it was I really wanted in my life, what kind of people and how I couldn't feel less than totally free and so I couldn't conform to others ideas or expectations.

bright idea

The city decided to install a light on one of the telephone polls behind my ghetto townhome so now I feel like I'm living in some horribly written (and quite boring) noir novel. I like my bedroom to be light. I'm not one of those who needs it so dark I couldn't see if someone was right in front of me. I think I like it with more light because my eyesight is so bad.

Anyhow, now even with the shades drawn, I get these lines of light in the most unique oily-orange yellow shade I've ever seen. I don't know if it's the light's intensity that's disturbing me or that I like the color so much. It makes streaks across the hardwood floors. This with the insomnia (going on 2 months of hard core now) and the cats outside having sex (yes, really), and I could write a B-rated movie in no time. I just need a suspicious character and a cheating spouse (there's a bad joke in there).

I got to touch minerals yesterday in my geology class, which is going much better. The sleepiness hits me at 8:15 and I'm dying through the last 45 minutes. The professor, pretty cool and nerdy, reminds me of someone so I look at him too intently - it's the goatee and bald head. I forget my look can be pretty powerful when I'm actually thinking something.

My mind's not on school yet though - so, while I'm learning I still do the giggles when he talks about the cleavage of a mineral, whether a mineral has "distinct cleavage" or "underdeveloped cleavage". And then there are all the descriptive words for the minerals - greasy, soapy, silky, earthy, resinous. I start drifting - wonder how to describe my own cleavage or someone else's. Reminds me this poetry journal I picked up that ended up with almost a dozen poems with pelvic references (i.e. bowl, bell, box, chalice, door, etc).

We talk about streak - when a mineral is rubbed across unglazed porcelain - how some will leave a line of powder which defines them. Shoot, I know a couple of people who've left their powdery mark on me. God bless them!

So, as you can tell, I'm not concentrating. I'm getting off not just on the suggestive language (all disciplines should start this way as a means to facilitate learning) but to the language itself. No, not writing much... when?

I have the art piece to complete for the Esperanza's Que Queer exhibit that I have to turn in tomorrow and Delhi's birthday hijinks tomorrow. My god, a van full of 6 girls. The giggle vibrations alone could cure carpal tunnel as a form of alternative medicine.

Why do I always get so hot in the summer? It must be my Caribbeanness and all this sun. I must be giving something off too because yesterday some 20 year old asked me to join him for lunch. I was telling Vandi, my gay man husband, and he told me he was jealous of the potential. It's about time. I've been jealous of him for years - able to go to a bath house that doesn't have signs on it that say "Tea Time at 12 and 3 p.m." or "No sex allowed". Mama's hot I guess...

I am nice!

sometimes...


Earlier in the week, there was this woman looking at me at the CineMujer at Esperanza. I knew she looked familiar but I didn't remember how/when/etc. She was at the barbeque I went to this Sunday and she (her name is Terry) reminded me how we'd met - at some woman's dance years before, where I got her to dance with me. I didn't remember at first. It was nice to hear that she thought I was nice for that. I was more surprised that I did that at all - I always thought I was more shy when I was a young dykey girl.

Also earlier in the week, this one woman on the bus (really pretty, with long straight black hair) came up to me as we walked toward the buildings at work, and told me I always dressed so nice. She asked me where I got my clothes and I told her the number of places. Hey, as a big girl, it means you have to shop around a little. I do try to look decent at work and I'm loving color lately. I can't wear all black like I'd been doing. It doesn't hit the same.

I'm almost finished making a pillow for Carol and starting another one for Lilia. It's been fun to make them. Carol's is a dream pillow, for sleeping and waking dreams, with this deep turquoise silk and embroidered red flowers and this red, fuzzy overlap and green accents. And Lilia's is a recreation of the ideas behind La Virgen's clothing. It's all said to symbolize something.

I need coffee. I went to bed after 2 a.m. and awoke at 6:30. I can't even muster a bad mood - I'm too tired. That's just not right.