One. Quarter.

Darling, at 25 you are being the wee-est tad bit impatient, wanting life to be all spelled out for you, trying hard to force a merger between intellectual interests and personal passions, that perfect meeting place between heart and the two halves of your brain [Left, meet Right]. You are creating false dichotomies all over the place, believing for many instances in the world that Haaaaaaaaahvahd claims as the way things are handled in this world. There is life beyond the ivory tower and the glass walls that prop up the battlement you now claim as your temporary home.

Meanwhile, there is daily life. And daily life, darling girl, has been given short shrift these past few months. As The Shrink said Thursday, you've placed yourself into a sort of Existentialist Limbo, suspended in time, place and disbelief until you can figure out The Life Direction, forgetting all the while that Life exists in the details, not merely in the Grand Vision.

I have been dreaming of spring. Although I cannot for the life of me fathom the change in the seasons and that warm breezes could possible curl around bare legs ever again, it is coming, surely it is, as surely as a few minutes are added to each passing day, slipped in ever so quietly so as not to attract attention. So for now I've Put Aside the Button Skirt that was Driving Me Nuts [I think I finally need to take some of my friend's up on their offer to help me duct tape myself into a dress form, and live like a wildly laughing child again, one who doesn't have to think about finding space for the dress form once the friends and laughter leave the apartment for the night], and turned instead to springtime skirts. Cotton skirts. Linen skirts. No more corduroy or wool for me, I want lightweight, I want beautiful prints, I want long summer nights and green on the trees once again.


I made bread for the second time ever last night, using Farmgirl Susan's whitebread recipe and adding in some whole wheat flour, just to pretend to myself that even if I did go and eat nearly an entire cup of flour in one sitting [hypothetically, of course], at least it was moderately healthy for me. Fiber, right? And I know they're terribly out of season, but I couldn't resist the thought of some grape tomatoes to go with the bread and mozzarella and fresh basil, plucked straight from the tiny plant sitting on my kitchen sill, so fragrant when I bend over it to add a little bit of water to the pot.


And me being me, I wind up inhaling great bit sputtering mouthfuls of this stuff, mostly because I tend to bite off more than I can chew in life, and in this instance I can't quite for the life of me fit all of the yummy flavors into a smaller package. My greatest fear, it seems, is that the tomato will burst its juices and seeds in all the wrong directions if I bite into it instead of popping it wholesale into my mouth [because using a knife for that? Inconceivable. I don't like my life that simply and tidy]. A little inelegant, just like my life.

So darling, take your impatience and set it to the wind. Let it float into some far, as-of-yet undiscovered territory at the ends of the earth where it belongs. A quarter of a century is far too soon to get things Just Right. Perfection is not a fairy that dances on rainbows in Tomorrowland. Let that go. Let her go.