you care about everyone

Okay, I have been waxed and polished and dyed and cut and blown out, so I am ready to roll with this trip. Sadly, I still have to wait a week, and a week which may contain a blizzard for that matter. As long as it's over and it's clear flying weather by Saturday (and maybe if we get a snow day), I will be pleased.

The hair cut only took two hours (almost exactly! I sat in the chair at 12:44 and I walked out of the salon at 2:45), which is good (and also because I didn't get highlights so no double process adding an hour to my time in the chair), and then from 3 - 4 was pedicure and brow waxing time. I know it's odd, but I really do find getting my eyebrows waxed kind of soothing, for all that it's got a sting to it. *hands*

Now I need to eat something, because my god am I hungry.

*

Okay, I think I have my clothing situation for the cruise sorted. If I can fit more in the suitcase, maybe I'll bring the khakis and the extra pair of jeans, but for now, I don't think they're necessary. I'm expecting my period (I burst into tears tonight when the line, "I can't be late / I got a date" came on. STEVE. PEGGY. *sobs*) next week, but I hope it comes early so I don't have to deal with it on the ship. Ugh. Why am I not done with it? I've been having it for 33 years! Surely it should be done by now!

Anyway, have a poem:

Pilgrims
by Erin Elizabeth Smith

I.

I wanted to come home,
it just took too long to find the right plane.
Two years of eating grapes meant for wine,
wondering where the skin goes
when the flesh is juiced and fermented.

Maybe I would have thought of us
less if France had been more than cheese
and yardstick bread, more than yellow countryside
like Illinois when the corn is tall.

II.

I forgot how days pass in New York –
stubborn mist shaking its mane on the highway,
snow that siestas in the sky for days.
His green towel, folded and hung
on the bathroom door, smelling so much like him.

III.

First it was Vezélay. Clutching the skirt
of Mary Magdalene, who told me of her years
of desert shelter – the crows, the sand,
the sucking cactus. There were no angels
that delivered her to Christ's oyster bar.
Just a jackrabbit she tore open with her hands,
blood she drank religiously.

Then Santiago de Compostela, where the hermit
found James under a transept of star,
his marrow drained, hair cleaned from skull. He waits
in stone sombrero, a staff cocked
in his left hand, a closed text in his right.
They think it's the Bible, he winks,
and that these are my bones.

Finally, Ravenna, blackcaps warbling
on the telephone poles. Just south
of the pinewoods strangled by heather,
dog-rose, I ordered wedding soup.
I was finished with leaving,
with Europe
with the thousand stone churches
that starved their towns.

IV.

Somehow this would make more sense
if there were myrrh or bdellium involved.
Because then he would laugh, open
his palms that clench and unclench at his thigh,
smile at the plastic snow globe
I bought in the Turin airport.

I look at him, but he's watching the planes
lift like storks from the sandbar willows.
Didn't you hear, he says when I ask
how Michigan has been. Christ came back
as a bamboo shark last week.
And the Devils brought home the Cup.

***

I think I'm going to watch CATWS now and maybe cry more about Steve and Peggy and Bucky. #i don't know what to do with all these steve and bucky feels

***

Elementary
selenak has a great write up here, that I agree with (also, she's far more familiar with ACD/Holmes canon than I). ( spoiler )

Anyway! Otherwise, I enjoyed the episode. Gerritsen Beach! My uncle lives there! My dad used to not let us swim in the water there because he was convinced it was filthy because of boats. (The rest of that side of the family thought he was nuts. Which was not unusual.)

***

So someone is writing or has written the Alias/MCU crossover where Irina Derevko is one of Natasha's mentors, yes? *eyes selenak and vaznetti specifically*

***

I dropped my laundry off this morning, for pick up tonight after work, so tomorrow during the snowstorm we're supposed to have, I am going to figure out what I'm packing for this trip (I CAN'T BELIEVE I LEAVE IN A WEEK). I maybe kind of drew up a spreadsheet? *cough* Generally, I am a midnight-the-night-before-I-leave packer, but I haven't gone away for such an extended amount of time (12 days!) in about 15 years, so there's a lot more stuff involved (e.g., dressing for dinner, making sure I have a sweatshirt if it gets chilly etc.) than usual. I mean, I'm almost certain that as soon as I start sorting through the pile of stuff I've made of "things I'm taking" the spreadsheet will go out the window, but I want to at least make sure almost everything can be worn with almost everything else, so as to minimize the number of things I'm bringing. I also bought a few new dresses, because summer dresses are the best and they require packing only one item rather than two. I found some excellent after-Christmas sales, so it wasn't crazy expensive to do so. (Plus I reclaimed a couple of dressier little black dresses from my brother's garage, where they were living after we cleared out my parents' house, so dressing up is a go for me.)

I also have to make a list for a drugstore run, though the plan is to go to Target when we arrive in Florida, so I'm less worried about forgetting something important in that area. I plan to get my hair cut and eyebrows waxed on Sunday, and maybe a pedicure too, which will hopefully last through a week of boot-wearing (as much as I love the idea of being pampered with a pedicure on the boat, I am also not keen on their prices; I want to do something in the spa, but I was thinking hot stone massage instead. *hands* But if I do it this Sunday and it's chipped and gross by next Saturday, then I will splurge, because nobody wants to cruise with a damaged pedicure.)

I'm excited, can you tell? *g*

***