I picked up a bad head cold in the last week--the kind where the altitude change going downhill can be felt somewhere behind my face--and between that and everything else I have been hazy, keeping busy and participating in things, but only with part of my brain. The rest of it feels like it is watching, categorizing, taking notes and trying to figure out how to reconcile all of the after I have left with the before.

Everyone heard about my grandma if they had more than a conversation or two with me, for as long as I can remember--she was such a constant presence in my life, and I admired her so much. In the obituary she's called "our hero" and it is true. There were a lot of close calls over the last couple of years, but none of the almost prepared me for the end of things.

It's the getting used to it that I like least of all.

We lost my grandma last night. She was a very great lady. If we were living in the future, they would have figured out how to make the best grandmas bionic, so that we would always have them.

We were lucky to have had her for as long as we did.

My first tattoo was almost 10 years ago. I had just moved away to college and just turned 18, and I had always wanted a tattoo, so why wait any longer? I was so happy to be on my own and somewhere new. Since I'd only been living in St. Augustine for a couple of weeks and had done almost no research into the subject, my roommate and I went to the only shop I knew about, because I had seen the bumper stickers for it around town. I handed the giant man behind the counter a tiny print out of a .gif I had found on the internet somewhere and left the rest to him. I wanted it farther up my side but the waist of my pants would have made it hard to heal right there, which is how I ended up with a tattoo of a fairy on my butt. The pain I remember most is the pain of my legs falling asleep, propped uncomfortably on a chair that didn't recline flat.

I loved it, then--and loved showing it off, since unbuttoning my pants in public to show off a new tattoo felt unbearably cool at 18--and am still fond of it now, although to be honest I mostly forget that it's there. It was more about having the freedom to do it than it was about what or where, and many of my former suitors are more familiar with it than I am, since it takes a lot of maneuvering for me to get a close look at it. This new one is almost the opposite of that, not a high five to all the possibilities of the future but a solid forever reminder about some of the best parts of the past. Ten years ago it would never have occurred to me that I would want to remember anything.

The past ten years have quieted the frantic screeching in my brain some. I want to set fewer things on fire now. Around here we are preparing for spring. I spent part of the weekend getting the containers ready for planting, mixing dolomite and fertilizer into pots and earthboxes, preparing the worm box for new bedding. I took a class about making borscht and finished sewing some blankets for a highly anticipated new baby. I still want to high five the future, but no longer as a way to spite the past. I'm learning, if slowly.

I believe in reminders, in keeping close parts of where we come from in order to forget neither how far we have come nor how many people have helped us get so far. We're all of us a collection of high points and low points and seconds where everything comes into focus.

I was always a watcher, naturally, waiting to see what people would do, what would happen next. Sometimes being small and quiet and easily fading into backgrounds is a benefit. I learned a lot about watching out back of my grandparents' house--even I couldn't spend all of my time reading, so I'd cross the grass to the water and see what would happen. If you sat long enough the little crabs would come back out of their holes and scuttle through the mangrove roots, the little fish would come out of their hiding spots under the shadows, and the shore birds would leave their perches in the branches and go back to fishing. There was always a hush down there, only cicadas and sometimes a jumping fish, the rustle of a heron stepping precisely through the mangroves. For most of my life, my grandparents lived right next to that water.

But everything changed, and my granddad died and my grandma had to move, and now that quiet belongs to someone else. I've been feeling a little unmoored since the day I went to say goodbye, a little sad about the notion that there was finally a cap put on the possibility of new memories there. I thought about it for a long while and finally decided that I should always have that place with me, that place where I was always happy and safe and loved, and where I learned my first lessons about the joy that can be found in looking.

At the eye doctor yesterday she levered open my pupils a teensy bit more and peered inside my eyes. I couldn't remember what exactly I was keeping back there. Had I cleaned up the boxes of last summer and glances from across rooms A - L, the leftover petals from a bundle of nasturtiums and the exact way the clouds look at 3:00 on Sunday afternoons? Was the cadillac polished, and all the little elves that run me wearing new uniforms and running on working treadmills? I could picture what it looked like in there, the doctor's light sweeping across the dim open rooms scattered with lumps that could be stacks of books but then again could be monsters or tiger traps or maps for buried treasure.

If she noticed she didn't say anything, merely giving me a piece of paper to trade for new spectacles downstairs and mildly chastising me for wearing my contacts too much and not letting enough air in for the elves. I left and bought myself some flowers, a perfect blue spike of delphinium and the deepest pink carnations, figuring that I might as well take advantage of the momentary extra space in my eyes. Walking, the glare was too much for my vulnerable pupils, so I stuck to the shady side of the street. I like it best there, anyway.

We're planning things for spring, my favorite hobby, planning parties and adventures and bad ideas, planning dresses and tights and leather jackets, planning sewing and working and napping. I love planning. There are trapeze classes to take and spa time to schedule and baby blankets to make. Anticipating fun is almost as much fun as having it.

There are certain things that I am trying to change, but they are resisting. I am planning on stomping around and being impatient until they give in. This never works, but it's always my approach anyway.

It snowed yesterday, for a few minutes, the ground too warm to agree with what was in the air. The internet lit up with the news, with jokes about igloos and snowplows, but by the time we could get outside it had already stopped. No way to tell that it had been snowing and not just raining.

This morning everything was frosted, sparkling in the cold sun, the daffodils bowing a little under the extra weight, the heavy pink flowers in the trees a little wrinkled. I have been running around in all the usual ways, lately, in bars and at musicals and dance parties, still waiting, focusing like a puppy presented with a slice of bacon. If I stare any harder at what I want to be happening, it might all burst into flames.

In the 4th grade we had an intern that sent all of the girls into a flutter--almost certainly, we all thought that he looked just like Marky Mark or JTT. (Actually, since we all spoke almost exclusively in Baby-Sitter's Club slang, we probably thought that he was totally "cushee". Lord.) Everyone did their best to be the one to get the intern's attention, mostly by gathering in groups and giggling and then running away which, it should be noted, is still my primary tactic when confronted with a cute boy. Some girls brought him presents or gave him their lunch cookies or wore the dresses that, at any other time, they would fight their mom to not have to wear. We weren't sure what to do, but we felt in our bones that we should be doing something.

This was the same year that one of the girls stole a Playgirl from her mom, and we would all huddle around it whenever we could, intrigued and repulsed. None of us were sure what we were supposed to do with all of that information, but if it was something moms were hiding then we definitely wanted to know. A bunch of us got caught with it one day and it was confiscated, but by then we pretty much had it memorized. (Also, the year that I was mayor of Enterprise Village. It was a big year.)

Anyway, everyone had a plan to get the attention of the intern. My plan was genius. I would write the intern a story. And then he could keep it forever, and always remember me. So I did--I wrote the intern a story about a group of kids who get lost in the woods and come across a cave inhabited by some number of people on PCP. History doesn't record either the outcome of the story or the intern's reaction or, for that matter, just how I knew about PCP in the 4th grade.

Still, it just goes to show that I have always been like this.

This schedule gets to me sometimes, working full time and being in grad school full time, drinking and dance parties, watching nature documentaries on the couch, cooking and laundry and, every once in a while, cleaning. The only way to have breathing room is to make breathing room, and so I am holding life to the time between deep breaths. I'm dawdling on the walk home to peer into the friendly faces of the daffodils along the sidewalk and buying shoes for other seasons, looking up from typing typing typing about efficient markets in time to catch the fading moments of the sunset and the Space Needle twinkling through the deepening gloom.

A little breathing is all I need, until everything shrinks back down to manageable proportions. It always does eventually.

Oh, Spring. I have been ignoring you, smashing into someone else's turn with all of this bluster and flash, all of these cold windy nights. I don't feel like I got a whole winter's worth of winter, and I am worried that you have torn open all of these flowers too early, that you will take a little break before you are here for good and that in the meantime all of those flowers will die. I'm just having a hard time trusting you.

I'd rather not have to step over a sidewalk pasted with the thick purple petals of the flowers that line my walk, you see. I like those petals to stay where they are until they turn brown, I prefer them not hurled to the ground before their time. I'm sure you understand.

But yesterday on the bus Hemingway told me, "When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest." And, fine. He's sort of right. So I give in, Spring. Nice to see you again.

There is one thing that I want very badly right now, and as is usually the case it is taking up my whole brain--I am frequently a whole lot like a golden retriever or a three year old. I sometimes think that this is why I tend toward impatience, because the rest of my brain is knocking the focusing part around with its elbows, suggesting that we try and feel more than one thing at a time, but that one section is busy staring hard at a fixed point. Lions get distracted by the four points of a chair because they can't focus on more than one thing at once, and I am very often the same.

All of this nervous energy keeps me more awake than caffeine, but the crash is always so much worse.

One of my favorite parts of traveling is the chance to realize one more time how friendly and helpful most people are. (People are friendly and helpful in Seattle, too, but since I live here I am not as often in need of their assistance.) Looking even moderately confused will almost always cause people to pause in whatever they're doing to make sure you're not lost or in trouble, and if you are, to help you find your way again. The old man on the bus made sure that we knew we would end up on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, the scowling teenager helped us confirm that we were heading in the direction we wanted to be in, the bartender at the Tonga Room offered to take our picture as many times as it took to get it right.

Part of why I don't mind traveling alone is that every time I go anywhere, people are almost always friendly. Sometimes others are not quite so nice--sometimes they try to give you 100 Euro for a blowjob--but almost everyone makes an effort to be kind. Traveling is a good reminder to be helpful to people I meet that are visiting my city--to not always rush past someone holding a map upside down or not quite finding the Space Needle through the fog. To offer to keep taking pictures until the perfect one happens.

I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, friends, and it was terrifying. So terrifying that I had to have two fruity cocktails at the Tonga Room later. San Francisco loved us--the weather was beautiful and the food was delicious and everyone was so friendly. New cities are the best.

I'm heading to San Francisco tonight, to spend the long weekend exploring a new city and eating many delicious things with a couple of my favorite adventure partners. I love new cities, and how quickly the landscape becomes my place, even if only for a couple of days. Fun and adventure always happens with these people--hot tubs full of Swedish boys, Mexican tranny bars, makeout puppy piles--and I could really use a couple of days out of town, so this is going to be terrific.

We knew all about phantom limbs long before World War II came along and gave us enough victims to make a scientific fact out of it. Ahab felt it, growling about his wooden leg on the deck of the Pequod. We always knew that what was missing sometimes still felt like it was there, that all of our body is part of our brain. That all of our body is part of the past.

I wonder about our brains full of boxes, memories unfiled and nibbled through by mice, found again only when we pass by chance a tree that smells familiar or a jukebox playing the wrong song. About how the cracks between our fingers get larger when we're not looking and let the smaller parts fall through, leaving behind us a breadcrumb trail of raised eyebrows and impatiently tapping feet and the most secret of smiles.

I can't say for sure how we got from there to here, but I bet that with a lamp and a little bit of time we could follow our own trails back and remember everything, piece by piece. I think that in the end, we'd find ourselves somewhere new.

Just because I don't talk really about love and those things, you know, here, doesn't mean I won't elsewhere--today I am over at The Giant Typo talking about collecting love stories, being a big goofy sap, and not giving up on being hopeful.

Like clockwork, the end of January comes around and I find myself rolled under by a case of the smash-everythings, wanting to kick everyone who talks about the weather, ever, and then leave town and change my name. Learn to whittle, and start a jug band, maybe. Something other than this routine, all of these same old things. January and I are always wanting to move in opposite directions.

Sleeping, I dream lately of angry miniature crocodiles, thrashing in pools of water in rooms full of people, leaping at throats and biting off fingers. In these dreams no one else seems to notice their missing digits, or how the water all turns red at their feet.

I wonder about the fighting, and when it stops--when we can let go and realize that good enough really is pretty good. How long it will take me to stop fighting against and start going with, how to smooth these fists out of my hands.

I startle myself with my own shadow often enough to call it all the time, continually confused by the different directions my shadow can come from depending on where the light around me is. I walk to and from most places, and Seattle is so dark, and everywhere I go I can feel someone behind me...except when I turn around, heart in my throat, it's just me sneaking up on myself again.

On Friday night I walked with my umbrella in a drizzle, jumping at each shift in the bushes. About to cross the street, I turned to look for cars, and discovered two joggers only a couple of feet behind me. Most of the time, my imagination weighs heavier than whatever is actually around.

They say that one of the Mars rovers is stuck in the sand now, two wheels broken, digging itself in deeper each time it tries to heave itself out. From down here on Earth the people in charge are going to try to rock the poor stationary thing into a better position for getting sun into its solar panels, and then it will hibernate. If they can wake it back up again come summer it might tell us whether Mars is filled with iron or puppies or if it sloshes while it orbits, but until then it will sit there stranded and motionless on what sounds like a relatively hostile patch of sand. In the meantime its twin will continue to trundle across the land on the other side of the planet.

Late one of these nights, lit only by streetlights or the glow in a dim bar or the brief flashes of passing cars, I might tell you the story about how the stranded Mars rover met the spacebat, how the bat rested its tired leather hands on the sleeping metal shell and how, come summer, they both found a friend.

Unsurprisingly, I talked myself into making a list. Here are a whole mess of things that I want to do, off the top of my head. Let's get to work on some of these. Because you know? I do some pretty fun things, but it feels like bragging to talk about it. Not bragging if it's part of the list, though.

1. Tango in Argentia | 2. Eat brains | 3. Feed a baby giraffe | 4. Buy a dresser that doesn't require assembly | 5. Take a trapeze lesson | 6. Swim with bioluminescent plankton in Puerto Rico | 7. See the Galapagos | 8. Have a bulldog | 9. Spend a month in Tuscany | 10. Learn how to make small talk | 11. Know enough French to have a conversation in France | 12. See hot lava | 13. Visit the Zeus Cave on Crete | 14. See the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic | 15. Visit all 50 states (31/50, so far) | 16. Go to Mexico | 17. Dig clams on a coast | 18. Learn to whistle | 19. Get married | 20. Have a family | 21. Own a lake house or someplace in the country for vacations | 22. Have a portrait taken | 23. Get another apple tree so Herbie will be able to produce fruit | 24. Go zip lining | 25. Make baby blankets for pregnant friends | 26. Have a date for New Years Eve | 27. Eat lobster from Maine in Maine | 28. Perfect a signature dish for dinner parties | 29. Finish the last four books of "In Search of Lost Time" | 30. Switch my lightbulbs to CFLs | 31. Clean out the filing cabinet | 32. Stick packets of flower seeds in the pockets of clothes in stores | 33. Learn to take compliments gracefully | 34. Visit Spain | 35. Find a job that lets me travel and help people | 36. Look at space through a very big telescope | 37. Skinny dip near a waterfall | 38. Throw another surprise party | 39. Have a picnic at Point No Point | 40. Go fishing | 41. Learn to drive a stick shift | 42. Visit City Lights bookstore | 43. Ride a hot air balloon | 44. See a moose not in a zoo | 45. Make more of my wardrobe than I buy | 46. Ride a camel not in a zoo | 47. Get a drink from a swim up bar | 48. Have a fancy day at a spa | 49. Ride a donkey at the Grand Canyon | 50. Finish grad school | 51. Find a pair of jeans that fit perfectly, and then buy several of them | 52. Visit the Smithsonian | 53. See the noble rhinoceros not in a zoo | 54. Visit Yosemite | 55. Compliment more people sincerely and specifically | 56. Stop biting my nails | 57. Have a whole room just for books | 58. Learn to make my own stationary | 59. Send someone to college who otherwise wouldn't be able to go | 60. Drink champagne in France | 61. Go to Lake Vanda in Antarctica | 62. Get my worm box back in working order | 63. Eat at Tilth | 64. Learn how to alter clothes | 65. Learn to play the pedal steel | 66. Visit Thailand | 67. Sit in a hot spring | 68. Start volunteering again | 69. Go in a cave | 70. Get up the first time my alarm goes off consistently | 71. Be able to do at least one pull up | 72. Write love notes | 73. Ride the Orient Express | 74. Visit Mongolia | 75. Play tambourine in a band | 76. Make cheese | 77. Grow enough tomatoes to be able to can some | 78. Pay off student loans | 79. See a reindeer in Iceland | 80. Create a recipe box or binder | 81. Discover a song that I can actually karaoke well | 82. Ride the Trans-Siberian express | 83. Learn to re-wire a lamp | 84. Have a romantic weekend at Treehouse Point | 85. Become a better public speaker | 86. Hold a pygmy marmoset | 87. Eat fresh crab on the Dungeness Spit | 88. Grow more edible flowers | 89. Make all my own cleaning products | 90. Saber off the top of a champagne bottle | 91. Learn to juggle | 92. Visit the Hermitage | 93. Sleep in a castle | 94. Go to the ballet at least once a year | 95. Not feel guilty spending bits of my savings on adventures | 96. Pick up a Sleepy Lizard in Australia | 97. Meet a pangolin. Tell it that its name is Nicodemus | 98. Be able to lift my carry-on over my head (aka, No More Sad Noodle Arms) | 99. High five some manner of non-human primate | 100. Go on an archaeological dig | 101. Learn to fold a fitted sheet | 102. Make a ship in a bottle without a kit | 103. Have one of granddad's old fishing maps framed. | 104. Visit the Wieliczka Salt Mine | 105. Live in Paris