yellow ledbetter would be my status update, were my status update a song.

they say life happens while you're not looking. they say this and other ridiculous things. truth is, while no one is looking at hannah, she's busy chirping along and hanging stars and bells from her four-poster bed. she's doing that and watching boats leave from the channel just below her balcony. she is, probably, also wearing a smoking jacket and line-editing an early copy of a marilynne robinson book. and growing her own hyacinths and fig trees, right there in her little apartment. and playing a game of scrabble with her significant other, a game of scrabble where words like archdruid and, i don't know, el sol poniente baila come out of nowhere famously. sentences count. kennings count. "whale-road!" she's exclaiming to herself.

see. we're like some constellation no one's found yet, the twins who can only occupy totally opposing spaces. i hate working in binaries, but...

meanwhile, i'm eating plates of meat i can't name. and then, after that, plates of ham. then, excusing myself to go look at the meat room. my old self would not know what to do with this self. it's as if i've never seen forrest gump before. i'm screaming "jenny!" at the television and sobbing like it's the mid-nineties. just this afternoon, i heard livingston taylor's "get out of bed," which is a song my father used to wake my mother up with, back when they had speakers for end tables...and began wailing. you might recall, hannah warned of this. these "emotions" returning after years of neglect. plus, i'm really cold. wherever i go. i'm like the mess of a woman in those degas paintings with all that red hair, just waiting to be bathed.

and then, the only thing that can hold my attention: susan lucci's malibu pilates chair. i've watched the infomercial six times. it's the only thing i believe will help. so much cardio, so much defining of the legs. right there in your living room.

so, this is the state of things, and it's not pretty. if you've naively wished we'd blog, i hope to have shoved that wish squarely off the side of a bridge. or into the highway. or under a dune buggy.