week-y

from the christmas card that never got sent. 50 of them are sitting right next to me as we speak.

i'm in one of those agoraphobic, anhedonistic moods:  don't want to get up, do work, talk to anyone, leave the house, etc. 

i try to resist getting too deep into this mode.

i already told you about s.o.l.e.

next week i need to focus on some really specific goals and getting back into the routine of the practices that keep my own personal black, panting dog at bay.

so here's the plan:

1) yoga on tuesday, thursday, & friday.

2) meeting with special collections librarian on thursday to work on my mapping salt lake city project.

3) work on two poetry commissions. finish one of them!  (it's already late.)

4) meet with committee chair.

5) submit poems to ten places.


what are your plans for the week?

how do you keep the black dog at bay?

the weakening eye of day

i found this poem that i used to adore over twenty years ago.  

it's still pretty good.  

enjoy.

The Darkling Thrush

By Thomas Hardy 

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.

last warm pair--a give away!

in celebration of making it through thirty-one days of posts on our new blog, girls in tight places are holding a tights give away.  make a comment in our comments section by midnight of january 30,  and we will randomly select a winner on january 31st of two thousand and twelve.

shortly thereafter, the lucky reader will receive in the mail the fabulous falke "sign" tight in "cosmic," made of  polyamide and elastane, pictured above.


lara says:

when i was at the end of my pregnancies, i always caved and bought a new outfit.  i had become more enormous than i could have possibly imagined at the beginning of the pregnancy, and i was sick to death of all the clothes i'd been wearing.  i figured it was worth the price of a new outfit that wouldn't be worn very much in order to preserve my mental health through the looooong final 5 weeks or so.


buying winter clothes in january is a little like buying maternity clothes in week 35.  logically, you know you should save your money for new spring dresses, and buying winter clothes just isn't that appealing at this point in the year.  so you don't buy.  then you get up one freezing morning in february cursing the same tired old choices you've been making all winter.  you really don't want to get dressed.  you really don't think you can stand your pilly old tights one more day.  but by then it's definitely too late to buy more winter clothes.

well, girls in tight places want to help you out with this.  we're giving away the last warm pair of tights you will need for the season just for leaving a comment in the comments section.  girls in tight places want their readers to:  1) have a drawerful of cute tights, 2) have something to look forward to, and 3) have pretty things to wear, do, read, and think about every day.

girls in tight places also want to celebrate our one month anniversary.

we hope to make you and your legs happy until you start to glimmer & spring.

julie says:


You can keep your tights in a drawer.  You can keep your tights in a cardboard box like I did in graduate school.  You can hand wash your tights and sling them over a shower rod like Marsha Mason in The Goodbye Girl (were those tights?).  In graduate school, I had a pair that looked like a Kandinsky painting on caffeine.  In San Francisco, I had a leopard skin print pair that looked like the manager of a local rock club's leg tattoo.  My black-and-white striped pair are like Proust's madeleine--I wore them to work through the latter half of a bleak winter under a pair of cut-off shorts and combat boots.  My co-workers, boys with Faith No More hair, called me "crazy legs," which I loved, but pretended to hate.  I've put my finger through a pair of spiderweb tights on first wearing.  It's time to create some new tights' memories--some tights memories you can share with us!  It's time to get yourself through a lot more frigid winter weeks.  It's time to win the best and last warm pair of tights we can offer.

Friday's Tights are Loving and Giving

I rarely wear these tights, but there they were--all ready to wear.

The tights propelled me forward through a challenging morning that got progressively, but seasonably colder.

I am plugging away.  Are you?

What I like about posting here:  Is it too corny to say that my days now have borders and definition?   Is it giving away too much to say I try to do something "blogworthy" everyday like wearing these tights?

Another thing I like about posting here every day:  Collaborating with Lara.  And now I've said enough.