The Hanging Man
By Sylvia Plath
By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid :
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.
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We got almost four inches of snow overnight with freezing rain on top that made it crust over, so even though it was mostly cleared off the roads by 10 a.m., the kids had no school. We had a quiet morning --
We had dinner with my parents. It being almost my birthday but my diet being restricted, my mother asked me what I wanted and I told her chicken slop (i.e. boiled and shredded chicken in cream mixed with chicken soup) in flaky pastry shells and nubian chocolate roll. So I had comfort food instead of exotic food, but that was perfectly fine with me. I had told parents not to get me gifts as I really wanted was money for a camera, so I got mostly little stuff -- Bath & Body Works lotion, a silver necklace and a check. *g* They are babysitting younger son tomorrow night while older son is at the Hebrew school sleepover he is now protesting with all his might, claiming that he will be so bored he won't be able to sleep and it will mess up his body and his grades will go down and he might not be able to stay in the magnet program. Apparently there is no particular thing he is avoiding -- it's not that kids are being mean or anything -- he just doesn't want to spend lots of hours working on community service projects and playing Hebrew games when he could be, you know, playing video games or something.
We watched Cinderella Man tonight and while I admit I am biased where Russell Crowe is concerned, I thoroughly loved it once again even though it's a boxing movie and really thought the whole cast was superb; the screenplay still has its weaknesses and it still has all of Ron Howard's typical cliches, but these do not particularly detract from my enjoyment. Older son sat and watched and paid attention (as opposed to reading and playing Pirates of the Spanish Main and fidgeting and all those things he often does while watching movies on TV), and younger son would have if he had not had to go to bed partway through, which is neat because they both already saw the movie in the theater and they won't always watch a movie twice unless it's a SpongeBob special or something. Am trying to decide whether I want to see Syriana tomorrow or whether that is likely to depress or agitate me so perhaps I should go buy Mr. & Mrs. Smith or something shallow instead for entertainment!
1. What's on your feet?
My new slippers that my husband got me while he was ordering himself shirts from JCPenney. (He was going to get the yellow cats that look like Rosie, but they were sold out!)
2. Turn to your right -- what do you see? Two bottles of perfume, hand lotion, my printer, a coaster, mints, a Snape action figure with ejecting snake action, lots of pens, two little stuffed cats, a drawing of Jack Aubrey by someone I miss but not enough to try to compete with Jesus telling her that I'm bad for her. A little past that I can see my entire living room so I better stop there.
3. What is the last thing you ate? A pumpernickel pretzel.
4. What can you smell right now? A Yankee Candle Home for the Holidays housewarmer jar candle.
5. Do you wear hats? Not very often -- mostly when it's very cold or very sunny.
1. What did you want to be when you grew up? A playwright.
2. Did you follow through? If not, what happened? My follow-through was unfortunately really half-assed. I won a playwriting contest in college, but it's really hard to write plays without being involved with theatre, and the last time I was in a cast or crew was grad school. DC has a fairly fertile theatrical community but I haven't been at all involved with it -- kids make it really difficult, since so much amateur and semi-pro theater requires nighttime rehearsals and meetings and those are hard hours for me to be out of the house. I wish the kids would be more involved in drama so I'd have an excuse, but although they love to perform and are quite good at it, they completely resist classes at the local theaters and the like!
3. Is your life turning out the way you thought it would when you were a kid? If not, is it better or worse? I don't think I had a very specific way I thought my life would turn out. I imagined being very wealthy and living in New York City but I don't think I ever considered this a realistic goal. *g* I am pretty happy with my life despite twelve million daily frustrations; I thought career would be more important to me than family until I had a family but I am not in the least sorry to discover that I no longer feel that way. I know very few people who are made happiest by the work they do to pay the bills; most of the people I know are happiest about their hobbies, volunteer work or private time, so while I am sorry not to be making more money, I am not sorry that I did not become a high-octane lawyer or the like. (And incidentally, that icon at
4. Paradoxes aside, if you could time-travel back to when you were 10 years old, what would you tell your 10-year-old self? I would be afraid of messing up my present by telling my 10-year-old self anything! That's what always happens on Star Trek: you tell yourself something in the past and the butterfly effect ruins the future!
5. Do you think the child you were, would like the adult you've become? I talk to children the way I always wanted adults to talk to me, so I hope so, but my ten-year-old self wanted to be sophisticated, beautiful and reasonably tall as well as intelligent, creative and well-traveled, so I am not sure. *g*
And because I am a loser Barbie collector, a quiz I just had to save for posterity:
Shazam! You are Ken & Barbie as Merlin and Morgan
le Fay. What an eccentric yet exciting pair.
Which Ken & Barbie Couple Do You Belong To?
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