somehow during the holiday merry-making, i didn't notice that i met and passed the 150-entry mark. spent the day at the mall today again; it's a miserable place to be after the holidays. or any time, really. but i got two new pairs of jeans, a black sweater (yes i know you're all shocked that i found something black), and the softest baby blue sweater (now you actually are shocked. baby blue?). at least i have some articles of clothing that'll stand up to working with kids, which was the original idea. i just got a little sidetracked into the pleather and sequins department yesterday.

so i think this is going to be the entry where i think about the year that's just passed...it's always a daunting task, but now that it's up for public consumption it's even more intimidating. it's been such a strange year, i don't quite know where to begin. this time last year, i was living on my own in salisbury, working at the YMCA and the call center and barely making rent, since the gas prices were through the roof. but i was independent, and it felt good.

my grandmother passed away in january, and it hit me really hard. besides being my last living grandparent, she was my closest. i spent my summers at her house, and i can't remember a time i didn't feel surrounded by her love. i miss her more than i can say; it's hard for me to remember that she's really gone...i dream about her often.

shortly after the funeral, my illustrious career as a telemarketer ended. the original reason was that i had "forged a doctor's note," what i had done was change the end date of the note, which the secretary had mistakenly written as the day before i saw the doctor. which i did with full permission of my immediate supervisor. i was put on suspension while they investigated my story, and after it checked out they fired me because i "had received a zero on a monitored call." i had a 97 out of 100 average on monitor forms, so that reason didn't wash with me either. so then they fired me for being late too many times. that may be true. my personal theory is that they needed to cut staff numbers after the christmas rush, and i was eligible for benefits in a few weeks.

with only my part time job at the YMCA for income, i couldn't afford my apartment anymore. i couldn't, to be honest, afford much of anything. my phone was in constant danger of being cut off, as were my gas, my electricity, etc. by march it was apparent that there was no way i could keep going the way i'd been going. so i moved home. one of the hardest things i've had to do; right up there with leaving home in the first place. in a way it was leaving home, the place i made my home through college and even after leaving college. i refinished the "master bedroom" of my parents' house, and have been ensconced there since april. better than starving in the streets, not as good as living alone with my cats in a one-bedroom apartment.

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a musical interlude in my paper diary from march 17, 2001:

"Two people pulled over on the same night
to look up at the same stars,
and they both found their wheels
were spinning in the soft shoulder when they both got back into their cars.
And they missed Fate's appointed rendesvous
and then a whole lot of time went by,
and then one day they were done worshipping the landscape
and they just put down their hands and moved into the sky.
They had barely said hello
and it was time to say goodbye." -ani difranco

(yes, there was someone i was thinking about. no, i'm not telling you who it was.)

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and then i started this diary...in some ways i feel like i've done so much since last christmas, and in others i feel like i've just been drifting. out of the past eight months, the highlights have been:
*starting this diary
*having time to read and learn new things and work on my aesthetic, if not actually writing a body of work.
*Falcon Ridge Folk Festival
*coming up with the young women's group
*the poetry festival

and then the whole world got turned on its head, and we're still there. and there's still no words for what happened on september 11th. none that i can come up with, anyway, though i've hear lucille clifton was writing a poem a day for the first week. maybe someday i'll know what to think, how to say it.

so it's been a weird weird year. changes and then no changes for a long time, and then it all changed, but sometimes it feels like the only thing that's different is the way i see things. that's quite a lot of waffling for one diary entry isn't it? but in all honesty, i haven't figured out what to make of all this. i'll let you know when i do. of course if you figure it out before i do, please tell me!

all i know is that i don't know, -beatpoetgrrl

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