mud like burning

I bought this fancy Hungarian herbal mud masque, which is supposedly all organic and stuff. It also contains cayenne pepper, which made my face feel like burning. However, I love it - my skin feels all smooth afterwards, probably because the top layer of skin was burned off. Yay!

In other news, I finally broke down and took a 12-minute nap at work today; I was completely exhausted, to the point that I couldn't think clearly, and so I shut my door, placed my hand on my mouse (to look like I was working), set my phone's alarm, and closed my eyes. I wasn't fully asleep, but it was one of those awesome trance-like naps where 12 minutes feels like 12 hours. I returned to the living feeling much, much better, and was able to stay in the office until 7:30, come home, and work until now. That may not sound like a good thing, but given that I got through 300+ unread emails that I now won't have to respond to over the weekend, it was actually a win for me. If I get truly bold someday, I'll take a nap on the comfy couch in my office, but I'm not quite that desperate yet.

So work continues to be brutal, but I love it. I'm also trying to do fun things this weekend, in addition to working - I'll probably hang out with Claude tomorrow night, read the last Harry Potter book on Saturday, and have brunch w/Heather and Salim on Sunday. Doesn't that all sound lovely? Now, though, I should really go to bed.

I'm going to leave you with a poem that I had forgotten I liked; the other night, I reread one of my journals from several years ago. It's amazing the realizations that I had come to and then promptly forgotten - I could be so wise if I would just listen to myself occasionally!

'La Figlia Che Piange
O quam te memorem Virgo.'

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair -
Lean on a garden urn -
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair -
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise -
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.

-T.S. Eliot