Dead Letter Department #56

weather report

There’s nothing like showing someone I love the place I live, even if it’s only for a couple days, to make me get obsessed with it again. E came, a bright Vermont comet that was only here for three days, so we had to prioritize: Semiahmoo beach early in the morning, a walk in the old graveyard, the view up over the lake off of Electric Avenue & down Alabama, for the whole scope of the thing, Chuckanut Drive, with its dramatic cliffs & devouring rain forest. We also spent a lot of time at the dog bar (yes, exactly what it sounds like).

In the meantime, spring came too: none of this fussing about at the door, teasing us with her presence—she has flung herself out over the landscape, green and fresh. The first flower to bloom in my backyard was, delightfully, a dandelion, but now the crocuses under the mailbox are hurrying after it, and the daffodills will come next. Trees are in bloom all over the city, and the brief hour of forsythia around every corner has already begun. It’s even been sunny the past couple days, & I keep looking at the budded-out branches & thinking about how excited I am to see leaves again. I had a picnic lunch from Cafe Rhumba yesterday—we took it to Marine Park & sat on a bench & watched the water while we ate butiffara royals & little salads, & I felt so lucky to be able to just roll out of my apartment in the midde of the day & go do that, be somewhere beautiful with one of my favorite people, and an enormous sandwich, before I went back to work.

I took time off to run around with E, so I’ve been trying to catch up this week, not terribly successfully. My writing brain is just not having it, plain refusing to concentrate, or even show evidence that it’s still there inside my skull. It’s felt unproductive to force it, so I’ve been spending a lot more time on my side gigs, & doing various admin tasks: the yearly slog of taxes, for example—always a depressing proposition—which means I’ve been checking things off the various lists & simultaneously feeling wildly unproductive.

I am one of those people who has to clean the house before I go on vacation. It’s annoying while it’s happening, but so pleasant to come back to a cleared out fridge & clean sheets. I’m about to be off work for a little while, & it’s causing a certain amount of pre-time off insanity that feels related to that urge—what if I whipped through this draft to get it to my agent, and submitted four short stories, & also painted the bathroom? And planted that Japanese maple I’ve been thinking about in the front? It’s the urge to have everything be orderly, & also to somehow have enough momentum going that I’ll be able to step back into things without having actually lost any time or productivity, which is, of course, impossible.

That doesn’t stop my late night anxiety brain from being pretty sure it could hack it, figure out someway to make time off not time off, if I’d just do exactly what it’s telling me to. Probably if I went through all my files & cleared out that last stubborn pile of paper with notes in it from ten years ago, & also emailed the people I’ve fallen out of touch with the perfect explanation for why that happened & how I still love them, I’d feel a lot better taking the time, and then I’d better reorganize the garage, so that’s not hanging over me.

The thing is, even if I did manage to complete all of those tasks in time, my anxiety would just spit another ridiculous & thoroughly annotated list of must-dos, and then another. I’m mostly managing to resist the urge & concentrate on what actually has to get done (cleaning, but not the insane kind; packing, but for the length of time I’ll be gone, not a month).

I really might go get a little Japanese maple, though. It seems like a good time to plant.

one good thing

It was my niece’s birthday a couple weeks ago, so off I took myself to the bookstore & selected a dragon encyclopedia & stuffed animal so adorable I kind of wanted to buy one for everyone I know, & also picked up the omnibus Dykes to Watch Out For.

“These are for my niece,” I explained to the checkout clerk, who was super hyped about all of my selections in that way that truly excellent customer service people sometimes are. “Well, except Dykes to Watch Out For, she’s a little young for that. It’s apparently all about dragons this year. I just love that about kids. They decide that this year is about dragons, it’s dragons all the time, & that’s the theme for everything. I don’t think we get enough themes as adults, or themed parties.”

“Well, I had a Rapunzel theme for my last birthday party, & I’m nineteen!” she said, & I was immediately overwhelmed by the delightfulness of a nineteen year old’s fairy tale Rapunzel birthday. “And I’m going to add dragons to my list of future themes, that’s a really good one.”

“It is a good one, and so is Rapunzel. Maybe I should have more themes,” I said, and she agreed so heartily that I keep thinking about it—not themed parties, because I’m not so much a party guy, but just themes for myself that aren’t about anything other than what I enjoy, what I’ve decided to get super into this month. I’ll report back on what I decide.

housekeeping

The Dead Letter Department is going on hiatus until, tentatively, sometime in April. There will probably be a Secret Dead Letter or two in the meantime, so consider subscribing over there, where I’m writing my way through transition. You can email me anytime at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com. I’m looking forward to being back here with you again soon, & in the meantime, may you get at least one enormous sandwich to eat in the company of someone you adore.