Out from under the rock

Hi there, folks!  Do I have any Readers left?  Perhaps not!  It feels like ages since I've written a post.  I feel very out of practice, like I don't know how to write a blog post anymore.  And mostly, because I've been so busy, I haven't really had any time to think through a blog post, or even come up with a blog topic.  Like, hey, there was an election!  And a rally which I decided not to go to!  All sorts of things happened!  And: I got no reaction for you.  After working like 80 hours a week for a couple weeks, I was so focused, there was just no energy left to pore over anything else.

So, like, there are things I would like to say, and there are emotions flowing beneath my skin that I would love to release, but  . . . I don't quite know how to do that yet.  Or write this blog post, SORRY.  So this is just going to be a random collection of thoughts or feelings or things, to try to get back into the swing of this blogging thing.

1. I got horribly lonely this morning.  It just hit me, like upside the head, out of nowhere.  Didn't see it coming.  I think it's the result of being in Work Mode, and then all of sudden: not.  And then I am wondering where all the people are in my life.  You know, the people that I have not had time to deal with and who I've pushed to the margins, because I was in Work Mode.  Also, I am probably affection-starved.  And while Azrou keeps pawing at me from the desk because he thinks it is full body cuddle time, which it is NOT, because I am TYPING, this is not the same as being able to curl up into someone.
2. The person I most want to curl up into is very far away.
3. I am really frustrated by my lack of peers.  Like, yeah, ok, there are people around-ish my age, but not really: most folks are younger.  My closest friends have always, for the most part, been older - a decade older, often.  Of course, people who can challenge you (and not just challenge you in the poke-you-with-a-stick way, but the go-with-you-together way, where we both emerge into the light at the end), it isn't really about age.  But there are very few people who are close with whom I can speak fluently (and intelligently and informedly)(not a word, you know what I mean) about politics, literature, feminist and race theory, art, travel, music, and also about nothing - shooting the shit is an ART, and it is only done well, that shallowness, when there is real depth underneath.   I am finding myself too often cast in the role of teacher, or mentor.  Here's the thing: I don't want to raise a bunch of fucking 20-somethings.  I used to teach, and I loved that, but I also got a SALARY and HEALTH BENEFITS with that.  I don't want to be the sage person in the room.  That's boring.  I am bored.
4. Guess what was at Whole Foods today?  WINTER ROOT VEGETABLES!  Yes.  There are some good things about it getting chillier.  Dinner was onion and lots of garlic and chili peppers and sweet potato and and celery root and parsnips and carrots and tofu and dino kale and kidney beans.  Soon there will be Jerusalem artichokes.  This makes me very happy.
5. I have been trying to learn the words to Sufjan Stevens' "I Walked" today.  The whole album is really beautiful and stirring.  This isn't exactly helping me to feel less lonely, though.
6. Feminist blogs (not this one!) have horrid comment spaces now.  Have you noticed this?  I won't even bother to go into them.  I remember a time when comment spaces didn't suck.  If the comments here ever start to suck on a similarly consistent level, I am just turning the comments off, because fuck that.  The level of ownership people think they have over blogs as readers is truly stunning.  Like they are entitled to the blog.  Also, there is a lot of epic flouncing.  In the I! AM NEVER! READING HERE! AGAIN!  In one of my all-time favorite epic flounces, a lady flounced off of Feministe because she would NEVER! BE SAFE THERE! AGAIN! but then the next week had a comment with all the blog posts she had written for the Shameless Self-Promotion thread that Feministe has every Sunday, so she could get some readers.  Which: yeah.  I know computers can be dehumanizing, but jesus, people.
7. Why is running gear so expensive?  I need a windproof jacket - I am getting SLAMMED by icy cold gusts running by the river in the morning.  I hate being cold.  I maintain that after an especially hot  Delhi summer with heat waves that made highs top out at 140 F, my blood has thinned.  I don't know if that's actually true.  Anyway, I am shopping about right now.  If anyone has any suggestions for good running gear, let me know.
8. Speaking of running gear, I would like to know why Azrou has felt the need to wrestle my thermal vest off the shelf and is now attacking it on the floor as I type this.  The vest didn't do anything to him.
9. People can argue about Twitter being revolutionary or useful or inane or whatever, but I can tell you: as soon as I got busy, Twitter was the first thing I cut out.  Twitter is still pretty cut out right now - instead, I started a book!  Like a real one!  Not a legal text!  It is called The City & The City, and it makes you work, but it is super enjoyable so far.  The author really likes the word "grosstopically," though - he used it twice in like 4 pages.  We'll see if he whips it out again.  It's kinda a cool word, in the fact that he made it up and that's nice, but other than that, it's a pretty shitty word, because all I see is "gross" in it and I get distracted from whatever it is supposed to mean.  Essentially, I think the definition is, "geographically close." 
10. I don't really have a tenth one, ten is just a nice round number to end on.  I am going to go learn the word to "Vesuvius" now.  I'd sing you to sleep tonight, if I could.  That would definitely make me less sad right now.