Day One

I have been blogging since I moved three months ago, but I never posted them; they're just lists and lists of honest statements about my life which I meant to edit and share but didn't. Now there's a backlog and I've been feeling bad about not posting them - remember that episode of Gilligan's Island when Santa Claus finds them and goes back to the North Pole and then never comes to save them? And then, years later, when they're found, Santa is there. Gilligan asks, "Santa, you found us, but then you never came to save us." And Santa replies, "Sorry, son, I wish I had, it's just... well, I forgot, and then I was ashamed of myself, and then I figured it was too late."

Obviously, it is never too late to rescue people from a desert island, even if they have managed to concoct a paradise of mid nineteenth century Floridian comfort.

Well, I've been stuck in a similar cycle about starting/posting to this blog, and in the spirit of dismissing such irrational feelings, I'm not posting anything from before this Day One. I will simply list my honest statements here, in the hope of sharing my life with all you people I care about. As my grandmother said once about something entirely different, "Yeah, but that's yesterday. New Year's is a stupid holiday. Don't wait for an occasion or other people to start doing things or changing things. Every day starts a new year. Stop being so damned ashamed of yourself and just do it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it." Goodness me, but I love my Grandma.

So here I am, incidentally, three months to the day into My Life In Houston. It's beautiful here; the trees are like huge bonsais, the flowers outside my window never seem to stop blooming, and last night, tending my basil, there was the teensiest breath of a chill in the air, but I still felt enveloped in a warm cloud.

Purpose of this blog: I want to share my life with a lot of people, but I don't live near them, and I have discovered that it is better to let other people enter your life on their terms and in their time, so rather than directly email or call all you lovely persons with what's going on in this little city in my little brain, I'm leaving it here for you to participate in as you will, with no expectations. (Grandma, I have learned to witness my own life, or I wouldn't be able to say that, now would I? So maybe it's better that I didn't start blogging until I'd taken in that little lesson...)

It is incredibly hard to work straight through a nine hour workday without slouching, twisting my legs up like a pretzel, resting my elbows on the desk, glancing over at facebook, or getting the two-thirties... all afternoon. Today I will try going home at lunch to see if, perhaps, coming back to work from home makes the afternoon feel like the morning.

I've made a lot of resolutions since I got here, one of which is to work slowly on the things I need to change to be a better person. I'm in the "Read More Books I Like" and "Appreciate the Cool Things You Did" phase. Though I'm still working on thinking before I speak.

Funny how taking a breath before you start a sentence weeds out a lot of extraneous word vomit. Funny, too, how it changes conversation and thought patterns.

This morning, light filtered through my basil plants woke me up from oversleeping. The extra blankets I've put on my bed missed me, I think, missed the orderly way I make them lie on my bed, so they cuddled more than they needed to and kept me sleeping longer than I should have. I was sure to give them a big hug for that.

I bought basil plants when I moved here. I've harvested them once, and now they are so heavy with leaves again they can't hold themselves up. The first few months, they did not seem to grow at all -- but here they are with a second harvest on the way. There's a metaphor for transitions in there somewhere.

Addendums:
1. My crackpot theory about going home for lunch and tricking myself into thinking the afternoon is the morning totally worked, and I'm sitting up straight at my desk.
2. Though I THOUGHT I was being random about my First Day and not taking an occasion of any kind to begin something anew, it turns out today is Rosh Hashanah. Heh. There are layers of ironies here.