reindeer poop

This definitely won't be the highlight of my month of haikus, but it's done and that's what counts. A brief rendition of Christmas:

Ring around the moon
Belly full of gluten and
We all fall asleep

picture: the moon, the Laurentian mountains, Canada, July 2010, cross-processed slide film, Canon Tlb 

holiday sneer

This about sums up today so far (yes, I've moved to a computer that has a functional letter "u"): 

humid sluggish run,

apple squares in the oven,

wrapping presents sucks

picture: giant ornament sculpture near Radio City Music Hall, December 2010, film, Agfa Optima

tricky

Well, we made it. I am attempting to write this on a laptop that does not have a working letter-after-T key (or apostrophe or colon!) so this will be interesting. The drive was incredibly soggy and foggy yet faster than expected for this time of year. In the interest of tending to the family whirlwind, I am going to keep things short over the next several days. Less preamble for the short form...

tis the season for
long drives and ping pong matches
no snow for the sleds

image is from Montaña de Oros state park before the fog cleared for the morning, CA, June 2014, film, Canon Tlb

wide open spaces

A quick snippet from today's commute because we are in packing mania for our trip down to VA/MD. Sometimes I get tired of being crammed into the sardine can that is the 6pm train, so I imagine an empty subway car filled with bright sunlight. I can feel myself immediately begin to breathe a little deeper and slower. Sometimes I slowly repopulate the car in my imagination before I come back to reality because it can be overwhelming to reach that calm space only to open my eyes to people standing inches from my face. Now for short form:

doors open, people
pile in and disappear
as i close my eyes

picture: Duisburg Hauptbahnhof (central station), western Germany, September 2010, film, Canon Tlb 

decisions

After spending the majority of the day taking care of pre-holiday tasks, I readied myself for work and left with what I thought was more than enough time to get to my 5pm client. Anyone who has ridden the NYC subway system knows where this story is headed. Flash forward 25 minutes, and I'm still standing on the same damn train platform where exactly 1 train had stopped. A train which I decided not to take because it would have involved two switches, thus making it too much of a hassle (famous last thoughts). I decided to wait for the correct train, but it was a gamble I knew I'd lost when I heard the announcement that service into Manhattan had been temporarily suspended. Good times. Or rather, no time because I used up my entire buffer reading my book and listening to the rumble of trains headed to other stations in the distance. It's so hard to decide when to ditch a particular train. It's like waiting for the damn bus: you never know when it might show up, so you keep waiting because you've already invested such and such amount of time and how much would it suck if it came right after you gave up?? As I ran (literally) to the 2/3 station up the avenue, I imagined the B train arriving down below. These are not helpful thoughts. Thankfully, they didn't stick around very long because at a certain point you just have to choose your choice. So I hauled ass to the other station and settled in for another wait, happy to have brought a book good enough to distract me from my watch ("Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave"). The trains cooperated for the rest of the trip and after a leisurely jog (yes, I'm that dummy running down the sidewalk in work clothes with a book in their hand), I managed to beat my client to the session by about 3 minutes (his usual amount of lateness). And now in short form:

feet pounding the street
dodging strollers and pigeons
hurry up and wait

//

went from the sedate
state of baking cookies to
rushing and cursing

(there's something here with a sugar rush and rushing to the train but I don't have the brain power to put it together)

picture: out of service delivery truck on the side of the road, near Hartland, VT, June 2014, film, Canon Tlb

socially dehydrated

The hangover continues. You think I mean alcohol, but I'm actually referring to the sugar and lack of sleep situation that feels remarkably similar to having cozied up to one too many drinks. The physical toll combined with too much social time for this introvert has resulted in some serious crabbiness. Granted, we did get to spend the afternoon/evening with one of my favorite people (pictured above). Here's a 17 syllable description of him that only scrapes the surface of his greatness:

quick to laugh, slow to
leave, generous with hugs and
he washes dishes

picture: Chris standing outside ample hills ice cream giving me the "i'm not happy with this picture taking, but I'm too nice to frown at you" face, August 2015, film, Canon Tlb 

running on empty

And the answer is no, I cannot stay up too late drinking a whopping 2 beers (one which was 10% abv) and then wake up 7 hours later to run 10.5 miles after taking the dog to the park for nearly 2 hours and still consider myself a functioning human being after 4pm. The sun is down, my contacts are like little patches of concrete, and my head feels foggy. But we have fun on our to do list (cookie decorating party, so I have to get this haiku out the door and figure out how to prop my eyelids open long enough for more social encounters.

cotton in my head,
ice cream in my belly, and
too far from my bed

sophisticated business, isn't it? let's try again...

blustery time spent
running on empty with dreams
of warm grassy naps.

picture: a friend's parents' dog (whose name escapes me), Hartland, VT, June 2014, film, Canon Tlb 
additional fun fact: there's a worn spot in the wood from the dog's head resting there for years