50 Things That Make Me Happy

December, January, and February are very terrible months. I thought that writing this list might help.

50 Things That Make Me Happy

1. Throwing a baseball with my sons, the afternoon sun blinding me for a moment
2. Shoveling snow, pushing the planes of whiteness ahead of me like surf
3. Finding a hidden pane of winter ice in a wheelbarrow and pressing it with my hand until it cracks and the cold water floods out onto the surface
4. Snipping scallions
5. The accidental tangle of my five-year-old's hand in my hair and his gentle efforts to pull it free
6. Writing a paragraph that I never saw coming
7. Writing an entire book that I never saw coming, either
8. Birds wheeling in symphony over the buildings
9. Early crocuses, confused by temperature changes but startled up alive nonetheless
10. I have recently noted that my Christmas lights, still hung, look rather like droopy breasts

11. The scent of lavender
12. Thinking of packing for summer camp. Which happens in July.
13. My child threw a gobbet of bubbles at me from his bath and it stuck in my eyebrow.
14. That same child needed help with his undies because his skin was "sticky."
15. He also said he had to "port-a-potty" his troops ("fortify") during a game of Risk.
16. There is a small leaf-shaped birthmark on my right calf; it is something constant and unchanging. How many times have I changed over, like water, and still that birthmark remains?
17. Green olives with pimentos inside them
18. The same olives inside a chilled martini
19. The taste of a grapefruit, cut into slices

20. Kneesocks that don't fall down
21. The softest blanket in the world ( I OWN it!)
22. A fresh shipment of The Hundred to my doorstep, to be sold and given as gifts
23. The cashiers at the Larchmont Trader Joe's, ever cheerful
24. Capture the Flag with my boys, the territories Upstairs and Downstairs in the house. Front and back stairs neutral ground. High stakes!
25. Very, very small turtles—especially peevish ones!

26. Uni, especially at Hajime in Harrison, NY
27. The Hundred: Book Two (Working title: The Vision and the Clock). Every word I write is a surprise to me.
28. Playing "Karma Police" on the antique Chickering Baby Grand piano. And then playing "Gavotte." And then maybe "Minuet in G" followed by "Jet Plane."
29. Extreme weather events. Provided no one gets hurt.
30. Hot showers in my 54-degree FREEZING FUCKING COLD SIEVE of a house
31. This. Note the date, people. JANUARY.
32. I'm having a hard time getting to 50 things on my list. Did I mention that it was January, and people generally just keel over and die with despair during this most awful of months? Okay...thinking hard...how about lemons? They are fine. And they are yellow. They smell nice. Fuckeroo. I am getting desperate.
33. This morning's poo was well-formed and attractive. (It was not my poo, it was my son's. But I was pleased to find it floating in the toilet exhibiting gleaming evidence of good health on its pelt.)
34. I only hyperventilate in certain places. I totally stop hyperventilating as soon as I go to the Caribbean.
35. When I went to make my tea this morning the teabag stayed intact.
36. Cheese is nice.

37. Somewhere in this world, a child may be having a birthday party right now. With ponies! And atop the ponies are clowns. But I dislike clowns. Now I am having a panic attack. This 50 Things list sucks.
38. I have two kneecaps.
39. I have never been to Abu Ghraib.
40. My middle name is not "Marmaduke," "Ton-o-Lovin'," or "Pol Pot."
41. I don't own anything that poos on the ground. Mwa-ha, poo scoopers!
42. The mosquitos are all absent. But there are crickets in my basement during the winter! Bad bad bad.
43. I didn't accidentally hammer any nails into my duodenum today.
44. Butter atop a slab of lobster
45. I did not name any of my children "Oofhy," "Unmentionable," or "Tudleriffic." Including middle names.
46. Tiny....turtles? No, I already mentioned them, the lil' fuckers. How about tiny OWLS! No bigger than a thumbprint. Or tiny cattle? Bonsai cattle? Or tiny goats!

47. I have not started any fires nor burnt myself on an errant grilled cheese sandwich today.
48. Beans cause gas.
49. Little shirts and suits for tiny turtles. Sewn by arctic maidens wearing lovely wool sweaters and playing zithers.
50. I am still alive. I am waiting for the thaw, and I will never, ever give up.

Document 12

I’m calling this Document 12.

Document 12 is being written in a Word document, because my Internet connection is poor and creaky. It’s the 12^th document I appear to have opened within a certain period of time. It named itself, kind of like it has its own soul. I merely accepted. I said: “Yes, you may take the name of Document 12.”

Can a document have a soul? And what happens when I copy paste it into the InterWebs? Does a little of its soul leach away? Is it a clone, an ember, a scrap of white glare that says writeonmewriteonme you poor wretched wannabe something or other that you are not…yet.

See, the winter isn’t doing me so well. I think I’m going mad. I really do. I try to be funny because it’s the only way I can keep going, I think. It’s February 1, 2011. I will make it to March. I always have.

I haven’t been using my new SAD lightbox properly, even though bug-eyed bunnies with garlands of daisies fairly leapt out of it the first time I tried it. I don’t have time to sit in front of it. I’m supposed to sit there for half an hour, with a book or whatever, while it glares its shiny happy light of wonder at my stricken face, and heals me.

Could it heal me?

What about a vitamin, or a special pill that rattles in my purse like manna, knowing it will pull myself in tight, like a cloak? My legs and arms will be safe by my sides. The world will not devour me, at least not whole.

I sometimes walk along the street and think: I am going to fall, and no one will catch me. I don’t mean a clumsy-footed fall on the ice, while pedestrians laugh and throw eggs and offal at me. I mean, perhaps, that I will stay below, and the world will rise above like a balloon growing distant, with all its warm laughter and colors. So my falling will be more like being left behind.

Or maybe I will forget how to find myself, and where I am, and when I take my glasses off I will not see. Nothing belongs to me; my rings and necklaces are borrowed from the living. Someone might decide to turn off the lights. Someone else might simply close Document 12, and be done with it. Document 12 wants to live, though. It has a beating heart around its edges. Its borders are like the lake I once swam, where I thought I might drown when I had eaten too light a lunch and exercised too fiercely. Keep to the edges, and you will be safe.

I said to myself that day: “You must not panic here. You must put your head down into the water, and make it to the other side.” I put my head down, and I did. I was alone. I kept going.

I feel the flickerings of this sort of fear in the winter. The walls seem too far away, or too close. The ceiling seems lower than it usually does. Did it always meet the edge of the wall, just like that? One misstep and I could knock into a wall, or miss the doorframe. I never do. I never do, and I am strong. But I am also dizzy and weary and confused. I want to know what is wrong with me. Maybe what is wrong with me is also what is right with me. I have been dizzy since the age of three. I can no longer drive on the highway. I will win over this; I will not die.

Everything recedes away. I was talking to a friend the other day at the gym and the world lurched away from me until the edge of the weight machine seemed leagues distant and I felt faint, and I looked at his kind face, and I said: “I think I don’t feel so well.” So he walked me carefully over to the machine that dispenses the Powerade and other drinks, and I bought a Powerade with quarters and drank it.

“How will I get home?” I thought, sitting in a chair with my soft mittens pressed on my forehead. “I might as well be on the Moon.” I couldn’t see how my legs would move to get me there. I couldn’t see it at all. I could place a call, and ask for a ride. How weak would that seem!

But finally I got up, and walked, roughly, over the slurred ice and past the hulking snowdrifts and I don’t how I got there. I don’t know how, but I got home. Keep going.

I Was Deeply Depressed Until I Found This Magical Light

I get really depressed in the winter. The lack of light makes me freaked out and breathless, and I start forgetting things like where my feet are and how they are attached to my body. If I had to find and grab them for any reason, would I be able to? If I take my glasses off, will my eyeballs fall clean out of my head? What if I open my mouth and my teeth fall out? These weird things could happen.

I might have to go into a corner and lie down and curl up into a tiny, little ball. I really don't feel very happy at all. Maybe you should go away and stop looking at me like that. I want your approval and it is not forthcoming.

I was driving on the highway yesterday and had an awful panic attack. I saw a sign that read "Exit 19: 1 1/2 miles," except what I thought it said was "Ragnarok (aka Gotterdammerung): 1 1/2 miles." I had to put on the hazard lights and move into the breakdown lane. Weird spots of light were dancing in front of my eyes. I went into a cold sweat, and had to gnaw on the steering wheel through sheer anxiety.

At the gym I was instructed to hoist some 10-pound weights in the air. I did so listlessly, and then I imagined that the weights were really the icy-cold femurs of a deceased demigod that was going to haunt me by rising up from my bathtub. Except that I don't take baths, especially in the winter. It's far too scary, because all sorts of things might be floating beneath the surface: eyeballs, sentient sweet potatoes, snapping turtles.

What if I were walking along the street and my kneecaps fell off? It could happen. There's nothing really keeping them attached to my legs. Good God, the world is filled with terrors. I could fall into a hole inhabited by spiders.

Crickets live in my basement in the winter months and they could bite me.

The NatureBright SunTouch Plus Light and Ion Therapy Lamp.
Bunnies will leap from it and embrace you with their warm and carefree fuzziness.

Because of all the awful things that might happen, like my teeth falling out unexpectedly into my soup, I have purchased one of those lights that sad, depressed people use in the wintertime. I turned it on today and it was like I was out on a warm, sunny summer day! The NatureBright SunTouch Plus Light and Ion Therapy Lamp has changed my life in just one hour! The ions were refreshing and reminded me that life could once again be joyous and carefree. 

Now, instead of seeing drooling, headless corpses lurching toward me through a miasma of gloom and self-criticism, I see bunnies wearing jerkins in festive Lilly Pulitzer patterns, such as "Green monkeys holding champagne glasses with shrimps poking out of the top" and "Pink alligators holding cocktail shakers in their jaws while being ridden to the circus by adorable kittens." 

There are daisies raining out of the sky! Thank you, NatureBright SunTouch Plus Light and Ion Therapy Lamp!