Blue

is my new second favorite color.

My color preferences (in order) are as follows:
Orange (all shades)
Deep Blue
Cornflower Blue
Gold
Bronze
Kelly Green
Avocado Green
Peach
Silver
Black
Charcoal Grey
Baby Blue
Turquoise
Seafoam Green
Forest Green
Lime Green
Chartreuse
Mustard Yellow
Light Yellow
Dark Yellow
Burgundy
Dark Brown
Russet
Sienna (Sienna is more red than Russet, more sunsetish)
Fire Engine Red
Wine
Rose
Bright Pink
Pale Pink
Brick
Cream
Off-white
Winter White
Beige
All shades of purple

All colors are necessary. I would not eradicate any dear shade. I just think purple is kinda lame. And lavendar? Don't even get me started...

I can either take pictures of myself or read for legal history class...hmmm

Sometimes I Get So Antsy

Sometimes I feel like my body slows me down. Not in any need-to-get-in-better-shape way (although I do need to do that), but in a way that's hard to describe. I feel like my head, my heart, all this pudding and playdough inside me, everything is whirling around with so many great intentions and grand plans...but the reality of skin and the responsibilities of it hold me back. Or perhaps it's just the impact of time. As a child I'm sure I dreamed ridiculously big and planned for greater things than can be remembered (I told my Dad once I wanted to be a "missionary ballerina"), and now everything is boxed in and quartered and divided and parceled out into manila envelopes decorated (decorated?) with law firm addresses.

It isn't to say that I doubt my ability to be happy as a lawyer. I know that I can be content, maybe more. I know that I smile easily and that work is largely what you make of it, what you decide it means to you. But I can't help feeling that my life, my body, my age, are nothing more than an elaborate cage to keep me from doing what the 5 year-old me dreamed of. I always thought growing up would provide me with the skills and information I needed to pursue those goofy and gorgeous kid fantasies. Instead, it seems that age and the quest for independence only create new burdens, thicker burdens, burdens that feel impossible to escape.

I read an article today about regret. I get it.

Om and All that Jazz

I'm reacquainting myself with yoga. I'm inherently skeptical of practices that are too self-centered and yoga is certainly that. My father believes it to be a form of self-worship and therefore un-Christian but I think that would have to be a conscious choice. I think it's one thing to listen to your body and figure out what feels good, what feels awful, and it's quite another thing to worship yourself in some way that displaces or replaces God. And for someone like myself who has always had issues of self-worth wrapped up in her body, I think yoga is a balancing activity, one that allows me to see how strong my body can be and how precious a gift it is (one that I should maintain with more care than I presently allot), not unlike the temple God would like it to be, right?

All that being said, yoga is weird. I love the class I go to which has a mix of rest poses and super-intense poses that make my arms and legs and abs feel like jell-o afterwards. But good jell-O. We end the class with a set of three "om"s, exactly the type of thing I would crack up over if I were not actually in a yoga studio. Stephanie can't hack that, she sits to the side and listens to the "oms" but doesn't join in. I respect that. I always feel more than slightly foolish doing it and I think I grin sometimes. It's supposed to be a meditative practice but in my head I'm thinking, "this is such a hippie, treehugger thing to do...Rob would die if he saw me right now." Rob (aka Roberta...being my little brother I get to refer to him with childish, teasing nicknames for the rest of eternity) is my little Republican brother who enjoys pointing out my obvious leftist craziness (Peace Corps, environmental law, yoga...) and would probably never let me live it down if he knew I actually sat cross-legged on a mat with my hands on my knees listening to Enya and saying "om" three times with a dozen or so strangers.

It's odd, the things we do to feel comfortable in our own skin.

I want to be Modigliani's Muse

"Redhead in an Evening Dress" is one of my favorite paintings of all time. She's so coy and beautiful but she also seems tired of wherever she is, like she's at a party hosted by an acquaintance she isn't fond of. I love it. I've always imagined her in some great hall, having danced for an hour or two in the ballroom just around the corner. She's been bored by every suitor, of which she has not had many. And some friend approaches her, maybe it's a man, maybe it's a woman. Just a comrade, a friend who feels her ennui. Someone with a glass of red wine in their hand and a smirk on their face. Someone who says, "the food here sucks, want to get a burger?"

Poem of the Day

Famous
by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Apparently there was an earthquake today

About 260 miles off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico there was an earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale. Residents from Louisana to Florida called in reports on the mild shake.

I'm trying to think if I felt something this morning that could have been an earthquake...

I dropped my contact in the sink. I'm totally blaming that on seismic disturbances.

So THAT's why I don't have a boyfriend!

I was reading an article about feng shui the other day and I came to the conclusion that all of my problems stem from a lack of decor cohesiveness. Yup. My table is definitely blocking my chi. And it's too heavy to move. Actually, it's not that heavy. But two of the legs are kinda screwy and the table only remains upright because it is precariously balanced against the wall. This is what happens when you find furniture on the street corner, it totally doesn't jive with your chakra. Or whatever.