Open Letter to Myself Next February

Dear Self, February 2009 – How’s February treating you? Is that thing where you cannot put your finger on exactly anything that’s wrong, but nothing exactly feels right either, the days are too short to get anything really done and you’re having a hard time remembering exactly what the point is in all you’re supposed to be getting done? I come to you as somebody who has recently survived February begging you to just hang on a little. It’s over soon! And even though this year I wouldn’t have blamed the sort of apathy I was feeling on the weather, especially since February was surprisingly gentle and mild and full of nice days that surprised most native Portlanders, standing now on the verge of the spring equinox, the week...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Mar 18, 2008 | 1 comment

Lapsed

I’m not going to poll my friends to confirm this, but I suspect if they were all in a room together they would start grumbling about how bad I am at keeping up my end of the telephone relationship. It starts with a bad week when small people and their various activities demand all of my attention from the time they wake until the time they go to sleep. And at 10 at night in Oregon when they’re all settled in, the kitchen’s cleaned, the laundry’s sorted, and I’ve caught my breath and I am thinking “A minute to myself? What should I do?” I am not fool enough to try calling Texas, where it is midnight. But that’s not a good enough explanation because I will happily drop almost anything I am doing to answer the...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Mar 13, 2008 | 2 comments