getting a few things right

There are things that I should do this weekend and then there are the things that I am doing. Namely, I am spending time at Peter's house and with my sister and lounging a lot.

The things that I should be doing include calling my 4th graders' parents to let them know what they need to improve for their standardized test. Mostly all of them need help proofreading. Mostly what each of them needs is a full-time tutor for a few months at least. They are smart and capable and neglected and underfunded, that's all.

What I find most amazing right now, in this moment, on this weekend, is how you can go through an experience once and it can be absolutely terrifying and terrible and then, under different circumstances, it can be decidedly all right. It can even feel remedied, made right, in some ways.

There is Judy Garland on PBS dancing in her pantyhose and she was never really cute, you know? Outside the rain pounds down and soon I will crawl into bed, early, on this night. It's been a weekend of doing and moving and cleaning and mostly of meditation, of thinking of things and how they may be made right, of place in the world.

I will not get all mushy on anyone right now but I'll just say that in so many ways already Peter has made things right. He has remedied so many things, and for the past few nights he has done that and then some.

We were walking the dog this morning and Peter said that he was excited for his mom to come next weekend because so often he is the sad single guy for his mom, and now he isn't, and would I help him to pick out flowers to put in the guest bedroom?

He has all of these crocuses and daffodils coming up right now outside his house. I stuck some in with the flowers he gave me the other evening. The thing that I can't believe is that Peter was ever the sad single guy. He's such an amazing person, and so good with me, for me, to me. I think about how bad I was in a relationship with Dan, and how really, I wasn't ever a bad girlfriend, it's just that Dan and I were never supposed to be good together no how.

It's so amazing to be with someone and have it work. To say things and not worry about misinterpretation, to feel accepted with him and happy and at ease. "The rain's coming now," he said the other night at 3 a.m., in his sleep, waking me up. Thirty seconds later the rain started.

I haven't had a cigarette since Sunday. I started smoking again in Norway, staring blearily and lazily and stupidly at the fjord and cursing the niisa their indifference to the swelling numbers of cruise ships and thinking that my future was getting lamer by the second.

Peter and I now have 1 trip per month through June, two of which are music festivals. New Orleans Jazz Fest in April and Bonnaroo in June. I think we might have to take July and August off for good measure. September has us in Wisconsin for family times and wedding bells. Maybe we'll just go backpacking together in July and August.

Thanks to Tomas for all of the amazing edits on my Ugliest Man in the World piece. They really helped. When i read it on Sunday I got a lot of laughs, and many people came up to me to say how much they liked it. That's encouragement, for sure.

I guess that I feel as if I'm getting a few things right right now. The writing for one, the editing at work for another, the in-a-good-relationship-and-in-love thing, too. And it's nice to revisit the pains and mistakes of the past, to set those things right, to take something terrible and make it into something good. It makes living through them the first time worth it.