when it rains

Dear friends,

(Or, you know, strangers who googled "naked girls and me" or whatever.)

It's been more than a month since I wrote anything on here. That really sucks. But can you believe me when I say that lately I don't seem to have more than the bare minimum of words available to me, that anything beyond that seems like an absolutely overwhelming? It's been a long and exhausting month since Berlin. It was a long and exhausting month before Berlin. Exhausting is perhaps my most-often used word lately. And that also sucks.

I remember writing last year about how I'd survived a bicycle accident relatively unscathed, how lucky I felt. Well, lately I feel profoundly unlucky. It's incredibly frustrating, because I feel like I should be on top of the world: I have two loving and amazing partners and countless wonderful friends, I just spent a month in Europe, my ensemble won an international performance prize and return invitation to perform again in two years, and my cats are adorable if irritating. My jobs are generally fulfilling, even. But good god, all the smallest things seem to be against me lately.

First there was the trip to Europe. I think I mentioned this before, but I'll reiterate: lost (and quickly regained, thank god) luggage, lost wallet, missed flight (not my fault! I swear), giant rebooking fee, nearly spending the night on a stoop that I wasn't even sure was mine in Germany. Also, back at home my bike was stolen, because seriously, what the fuck? Travel travel travel--including running out of money in scary ways several times that were complicated by my lost wallet--and then home to an apartment where my kitchen sink and bathtub immediately and irretrievably clogged themselves. A week later, the unclogged bathtub began leaking through the floorboards, flooding the bathroom; when that was fixed, the bathroom sink didn't work for several days. There have been massive scheduling conflicts between my two jobs, attempts to decide what to do about my future housing situation, and one of the cats won't stop shredding the goddamn toilet paper.

I hate to bitch, but goddamn. It hasn't all been bad, of course--I spent a few lovely days in Paris, and there are still amazing people all around me, and there are plenty of small good moments--but all of these things added together, plus others that don't bear mentioning, are wearing me out. I feel like I haven't been this tired in years. And so, the lack of words. Hopefully things will get at least a little better soon and I'll be visiting here more often, but for now I'm going to focus on staying afloat. Wish me luck.

And hey, you know what? My wallet was returned to me by a nice British man who mailed it to my parent's house with a kind note about how sorry he was that I'd had to go through the anxiety of losing it. Nothing was missing. So maybe that's a harbinger of better things to come. I certainly hope so.