Interesting

Some thoughts about how new romantic comedies are now about the girl changing to be good enough for the guy, and THEN they fall in love.

And for those who were wondering, I did text the guy, and we went out Thursday night, and had a great time. Possible lunch plans today. w00t!

Call Me

Argh. Am I a Rules girl? I hadn't thought so, but I went on a blind date last Wednesday and I like the guy and for pete's sake I wish he'd call me.

But for some reason I won't call him. But today I keep checking my phone to see if he's called or texted. The answer is to just text him and see if he wants to go out Thursday (my first free day this week). But then what if we go and I don't like him as much as I thought I did? And he's from the South and in my mind that means he won't like it if I ask him out. Hmph.

An Old Favorite

I'm finishing up my vacation week, and it was so, so good. I feel completely refreshed and relaxed and happy. In honor of that I'm posting the poem that most perfectly epitomizes contentment, in my view:

Osso Buco
by Billy Collins

I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and swallowed down
with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,
a citizen tilted back on his chair,
a creature with a full stomach--
something you don't hear much about in poetry,
that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
you know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,
small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment
has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,
and I can only close my eyes and listen
to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance
and the sound of my wife's laughter
on the telephone in the next room,
the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,
who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend
while I linger here at the table
with a hot, companionable cup of tea,
feeling like one of the friendly natives,
a reliable guide, maybe even the chief's favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,
the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,
the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.
Only now it plays on the blue plates,
the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know.

A Sense of Possibility

I've been doing my watch-a-DVD-into-the-ground thing lately, this time with "The Hours," the movie about Virginia Woof. Heh. See what I did there?

Anyway, I got to the line where Meryl Streep says "There was such a sense of possibility" that I remember from the commercials at the time, and I think it helps describe where I am right now.

I'm relaxed... an easy happy month of inpatient psychiatry at the best-run psych unit around did its job. I have a lot of fun things coming up. My brother Rog is here visiting, this weekend I'm going to the Poconos with a lot of good friends, I have fun plans already for my vacation week next week (which will be spent in Philly), and my best friends from college are visiting next weekend. And I went on a date last night, and am going on a date with someone else next week. And I'm on another easy rotation, and feel like I have some breathing room for the first time in 9 months. I'm ready for spring, and all the possibilities it might bring.