On the last day of second grade we had a make-your-own-ice-cream-sundae party. I, unsurprisingly, brought the sprinkles.
Halfway through second grade I transferred from a private school to a public one. One of the very first things that my new teacher did was point to a boy sitting separated from the rest of the class. "That's Billy, and he's a trouble maker." she told me, "You make sure to keep away from him." Billy of course became the first friend I made in public school--I had a habit of hanging out with the wrong sort of boy even then. He taught me how to swear and that I didn't need to sit with my hands folded anymore, stuck up for me when people picked on me, and got me out of whatever trouble he'd got me into.
Anyway, Billy was suspended for the last three days of school, and so he missed our ice cream party. And I remember being so sad for him, that he couldn't keep himself in line long enough to join in on the ice cream. That was the day I learned that ice cream tastes better if you're eating it with a friend.

We had a make-your-own-ice-cream-sundae party at my office today, to celebrate making it through the June and summer and the fourth of July. It felt a little like the last day of second grade, even though someone else brought the sprinkles. The last time I saw Billy was at Sarah's wedding last year, and before that it had been a good eight years. I used to wonder if he was sad to have missed the ice cream that day, if his missing it follows him the way it always has me. I never asked him about it, and I suppose the answer matters less than the question anyway.

Dear everyone,

Hello to the hundreds and hundreds of you that came to read about Lenin! If I had known there would be so many of you, I'd have spiced up the encounter a little bit. Added some space aliens or something. Maybe a song-and-dance number. (Thanks to Michael for the mention.)
I should be marveling over the fact that it's almost July already, but I'm still looking for April. Did we have an April? Or a May? I'm not sure that I'm getting my full year's worth of year.
I spent most of the morning stomping around the office demanding that summer show itself, already. I didn't want to be wearing a swingy summer skirt for nothing. I had on my three-inch tan Unlisteds, which are consummate stomping shoes, and sure enough the sun was out by the time I left work. If there was a better way to have spent the evening than by reading Proust on my porch in the sun while eating plums, I don't know it. And now the apartment smells like popcorn from the brown rice I'm cooking and I'm listening to Math & Physics Club and things are Just. Perfect.
Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.
I received a slightly grumpy email yesterday about my use of the word "you." Someone thinks I don't explain myself enough--and that's sort of the point. I am often talking to you and about you. Honestly, often enough I don't even know who I'm talking to. So there's that.
I feel as though I'm saying all the right things at all the wrong times, like I'm not handing you the puzzle pieces that you need, and that soon you'll be forced to get out your scissors and make these wrong pieces fit. I'm sick-to-death of myself. And while I've gotten ahold of the feeling that I'm disappearing, that I'm no longer filling out my own skin, I cannot stop the notion that my toes and my head are operating on different bad ideas.
Here's a mild confession for you: I'm thinking of giving myself a birthday party this year, but I'm afraid no one would come. It has happened before.
I hope that you are all going to come and see our photo show next Thursday. This is, somewhat pathetically, a huge act of bravery for me. While I may still not find any merit in the things that I make--making stuff, from words or paint or whatever, has always been a tortuous thing for me--I am for the first time admitting to folks that I might make them. I am very afraid of you.
I am afraid of everything, but I'm doing my best to stop.

love,
me

We all had to know that I was going to go home and talk about this.

Cat, Erin and I were waiting by Lenin tonight for Caroline to join us for gelato. A man was standing nearby mumbling about the statue and so Cat, who talks to strangers even more than I do, mentioned Lenin to him. He informed us that he and his family had driven all the way from Denver to visit Lenin, and so when Cat noticed the camera in his hand she asked if they had taken pictures of it. He shortly informed us that no, he hadn't, because of all the decorations on it.
Then he walked away to cheer on his sons as they tore the decorations off.
We were appalled, and followed to take pictures. The man and his family were very angry about Lenin's solstice costume, and when Erin sensibly mentioned to him that he was in the artist neighborhood of Seattle and that it was public art, he growled, "I think it's pretty artistic just the way it is."
It was at this point that we started to get angry. He had come all the way here, to our town, to tear down our public art because it wasn't what he was expecting? Because he didn't bother to find out anything at all about the statue or its environs? We made furious hand gestures and stomped our feet but stopped, mouths open, when he congratulated his son on his destruction with a, "You've done your social justice for the day. Tear off his hat and let's go."
I'd ask how it's an act of social justice to go to someone else's home and put your hands on their culture...but thinking about our current political environment, I've got a pretty good idea why he thinks such behavior is ok. And they never did managed to remove Lenin's hat.

Update: Ok, ok, it was his Pride decorations that the kid ripped off. And you can read all about the Lenin statue here.

I stopped in the middle of my walk home from my French lesson tonight, remembering that I am out of milk. This is patently untrue, of course--I have milk, it's just gone sour from all of the days and weeks of not-being-home. I wasn't sure if it was worth it to walk back to the corner store; I had planned on making cookies but I was tired and tired and tired. It has been an awfully long couple of weeks.

You've got me all unsettled, you know? I never know what's coming next and what I want most is to stand on your toes and slow dance in the kitchen. I keep ignoring phone calls from people I don't want to talk to. I am being impolite and occasionally shrill.

While I stood on the sidewalk, dithering, a truck drove past and honked. I doubt that they were honking at me but I was startled by the noise and stumbled backwards and landed awkwardly against the hill behind me. I slid down the incline to rest on the sidewalk and recover my composure, and right next to my hand--centimeters from being squished--was a perfect bright white flower.

The thing is, you know, that I still believe in magic.

John came to pick me up at 5 am on Wednesday to go to the airport, chipper and humming along with the radio. I am profoundly not a morning person, and I grumbled as much from the passenger seat. He ignored me.

Our hotel was nicer than my apartment, and on our second flight, from Memphis to Indiana, Julie and I sat next to a women who regaled us with her whole medical history and tidbits about her recent trip to Alaska. We found both fascinating, like watching the rainbow colors in an oil spill.

On the second night, after some time in the pool, three margaritas, one shot of whiskey, and dinner, we discovered that Dana had never seen fireflies before. In trying to catch one for her, we may have accidentally squished a couple.

I didn't bring a bathing suit with me, which led to three of us at the Walmart next to the hotel in the middle of the night. This involved a lot of me opening the door of the dressing room slightly and hissing, "Dana! My breasts aren't big enough for this one, either! What kind of corn-fed Indiana girls do they have around here?"

I still do not know who sent me the naked plastic parachute man. Anyone? Wanna fess up?

Going through security on the way home, the man looked at me and said, "Samantha? The airline has chosen you for further screening." The girl who was to screen me informed me that she should do a more thorough inspection, but she liked my shoes and didn't think I was up to anything. They were my argyle flats, and I agree with her--anyone with shoes that fabulous would not be looking to muck them up in any way. She ran her wand around me and patted my back like she was burping me.

The two girls sitting next to me on the last flight were twins from Nebraska on their way to visit their father. They had a perfectly timed window rotation so that each got a turn. As we approached Seattle the one next to me pulled out something that was slightly smaller than my laptop. I was anticipating a portable DVD player, so you can imagine my surprise when she opened it to reveal more makeup than I have in my entire house.

By the time we got to the car, we were making up 'happy to be home' songs and dances. And I wasn't kidding about drag shows, dancing, or drinking. Drag shows are Friday and Saturday nights. Drinking and dancing are always. I am practically made of free time for the next couple of weeks. And hey, this is my first Fourth of July in Seattle that I'm not having a party--anyone got any good ideas?

I wormed my way onto a set of earlier flights this afternoon and now I'm home, four hours earlier than expected. It's so nice to be home.
The conference went amazingly, less because of the conference itself--which was a lot of sitting in cold rooms watching PowerPoint presentations--and more because my coworkers are amazing. We spent the last few days drinking (way) too much tequila and staying up until 2 am and generally behaving unprofessionally. Indiana is likely still confused.
It's been interesting being back around my coworkers after having spent so much time with my family, because no matter how much I may doubt myself as an individual I am a career rockstar.
(As a totally unrelated aside, I have to go see The Fantastic Four sometime soon because my ex boyfriend worked on it and his name is in the credits. If anyone would like to join me let me know, and if you see it without me I encourage you to stay through the credits so that you can ponder the fact that I seriously considered moving to LA and marrying one of those names, right up until I came to my senses.)
I made lots of new friends and I'll tell you all about what I saw later, but right now I am craving sushi (something I've never said in my life before) and weighing the relative merits of hanging around on my couch in my underwear and calling my friends to see what sort of things might be going on tonight.
Man. If I could have sushi while hanging around on my couch in my underwear, I'd be the happiest girl on the planet. Where is a houseboy when I need one?

I'm still pretty wrecked from spending the last five days hearing all about how I suck, about how myself and all of the things that I'm interested in are stupid or boring or pretentious. My father has always been brilliant at destructing my self esteem and then retreating to his personal high ground claiming that he's not responsible for how people feel. He didn't have a single nice thing to say about anything the whole time he was here.

A voicemail from my mother this afternoon informed me that my Auntie Grace is in the hospital with congestive heart failure. She's my grandmother's sister, the woman who looks so much like the wicked witch of the west that she scares children. She's evidently not likely to come back out of the hospital, and this is going to devastate my grandma.

On the up side, I officially have tickets to China for the 11th-22nd of August (and to Beck at the Paramount next month), and someone sent me a naked anatomically correct plastic man with a parachute in the mail today. I'll just repeat that: a naked anatomically correct plastic man with a parachute. In the mail. Actually, I guess he's wearing boots and a helmet, so he's not entirely naked. Nevertheless, it's pretty darn entertaining. I don't know who sent it or why, but thanks!

I'm leaving town first thing in the morning for a conference, which will be good for me. I'll be back Sunday, and then I demand fun for the next month. Drinking, drag shows, and dancing will all be had.

The gorilla looked up at us and, it seemed, frowned. He held a stick tucked into the side of his neck, and while he might have been grumpy he might also really just look like that. And so I stood there looking at him, smiling dumbly while he reached up and launched his stick right at us.
A bunch of people came running over from where they had been standing at the other side of the observation deck. "Did anyone catch that stick?" they asked us, as though it had been a fly ball.
I'm just glad it was only a piece of wood in his hand.

My family gets on their airplane to go home tomorrow, and I am wrung out. I find myself getting defensive in response to everything my father says, justifying everything because I'm not ever sure what's a snarky comment and what isn't. I'm afraid of becoming that, afraid of losing every other tone to my voice that isn't sarcasm.
I have developed (this is too much information) a light rash that tells me I have pushed myself too far. Our bodies tend to express themselves at our weakest point, and I have spent the last few days trying desperately to share with these people the things that I love. The trouble is that families, as a rule, aren't interested in us as people. They want to see us as reflections of themselves, as expressions of their own genetic material, and since they don't care independently about the things that form my life they haven't much cared to refrain from trying to tear them down either. Unhappy people try their best to make everyone around them unhappy too. As a result I feel hollow and small and about twelve years old.
It's my own fault, I guess, for inviting them into this perfect space that I've made for myself. I don't know why I continue to believe that even though we share DNA we should have anything at all in common.
My new rule is as follows: friends are encouraged to visit. Please, visit early and often! But family, they have to wait for me to come to them.

I have spent too much time with my father the last few days to be able to muster a nice Father's Day tribute to him. I'm still just too rubbed raw by the fact that he doesn't ever have anything nice to say, by his unrelenting and tiresome sarcasm.
Happy Father's Day to him, nonetheless, but even more so to some of my favorite dads. You guys are all amazing.

The thing that my brothers are best for is reminding me that even the cutest of children will eventually turn into a teenager.
Having my family here is rough, and I find myself having to forcibly unclench every evening. It's nice to see them but I'm more than ready for them to go home.

Anyway, I was tagged by Chas to tell you all five things that I miss about childhood. It's possible that I'll go back and add the linking game that goes with it later, but for now I'm tired and just going to talk. So:

I miss the idea that my family was where I belonged. I grew up with a big bunch of aunts and uncles who were all really close, and since my father was the oldest child I was the oldest niece. My family was always around and I felt included and important. They've since grown up and gotten distant and crazy, and I feel like a turtle without a shell. None of us know each other any more.

I miss truly believing that M&M's were better than money because you could eat them.

I miss believing that life can at any moment turn into a rock video. Perhaps it's because everyone I grew up around was so young, but every day always felt like an adventure. They were always doing things and making things and being so fabulous, and every minute felt charged with something special.

I miss feeling like I inhabit my whole body. Most days I feel a little too small for my skin, a little like bits and pieces are missing. When I was a kid, I felt so full of who I was that I thought I could burst.

I miss not being self conscious. Kids, man, they'll do anything and not worry about who might be watching. And that's funny because people are always watching what kids are doing. Now I find myself holding back on so many of my impulses because of who might be looking, even though no one ever is.

Tag! You're all it.

I ducked out early from the weblog meetup last night to head down to the airport to meet my family. While I waited at baggage claim, nursing the worst cup of hot chocolate I’ve ever had—hot chocolate wasn’t what I had ordered, which was the least of what was wrong with it—I watched a man select pieces out of a pile of luggage off to the side of the carousel. He hefted each suitcase up onto the stationary conveyor belt and turned it on. I watched, later, while the suitcases from the flight came out of the wall. No one picked up the luggage he had planted.
The older of my brothers wanted to stroll past me and see if I recognized him, but the younger ruined his plan by running up and sinking his teeth into my right arm. Ryan is taller than me now, and we have the exact same haircut. This annoys him to no end.
"Sissy, why do you have to have the same haircut as me?"
"Because it’s a girl haircut."
"No it isn’t."
"You’re right. Lots of the boy hipsters in town have a very similar haircut. It’s in."
"No it’s not. I’m a loser."
"Darling, you’re in Seattle now. Being a loser is cool."

We had to take the Myers-Briggs personality test today to prepare for an all-day meeting we have coming up in my office. I'm an INFJ, in case you were wondering, but the main result was a lot of wandering around this afternoon going, "Hey, I hear you never finish anything." "Yeah, that's kinda true. Are you really psychic?" We amuse ourselves more than we really should.

Oh, you guys. You guys, you guys, you guys. One of these days I'm going to tell you all of the things I'm not telling you right now. But not today.

There isn't anything I have to say today that sounds any different from what I've said before.

However, my family will be in town on Wednesday, so here is what you ought to know about my petit demi-freres:

Ryan:
13 1/2 years old. The 1/2 is very, very important.
Is afraid of dolls and "being jacked."
Only eats hamburgers, pizza, chicken fingers, and spicy teriyaki.
Can't wait to wear his Jimi Hendrix t-shirt in Seattle.
Once hit himself in the face with a golf club. Accidentally. I'm still not sure which laws of physics he broke for that one.
Always has a plastic snake or six somewhere on his person.
Used to run around the house naked yelling, "Heeeeeere comes nakee man!"
Also answers to Mustafa, Scooter, and Hey-you-the-tall-one.

Eric:
10 11 1/2/12. Seriously. He'll be 11 on the 29th.
Is afraid of cannibals.
Will eat anything not nailed to the floor except eggs, especially loves cheese (but only the kind individually wrapped in plastic).
Forgets the punchline to jokes, leaves the room, and comes back to tell them hours later when everyone has forgotten the beginning.
Once hit himself in the face with a golf club.
Also once bit a chunk out of the living room wall.
Would dance naked in front of the living room window after bathtime.
Also answers to: Elvis, Sugar, and Short Stack.

My headache has been going since Friday, and I'm pretty sure that at this point I'm so over-medicated that my teeth are buzzing. Or anyway, my teeth are buzzing, and I'm blaming it on the eight-to-ten headache stoppers I've been taking every day. The latest applicant for my houseboy position (snicker, snicker) is only available for a few days in July, and so tonight I think I'll try to dull the pain with a series of gin-and-tonics. If that doesn't work, I'm afraid I'll be out in the night snatching pain-free brains from unsuspecting passers-by.

It was raining while I waited for the bus tonight, and the breeze occasionally blew a spray of drops into the shelter I huddled under. It was cold, and I had my headphones in and everything in the world on my mind, so I didn't notice the two guys that walked up until they stood in front of me and waved. They asked the time and I gave it to them, then went back to listening to tonight's soundtrack. I watched while one of them, for some reason, lifted the other onto his shoulders and paraded up and down the sidewalk. The bus pulled up and stopped, and just then two girls ran across the street in front of it, in formal dresses and fancy hair, shrieking. I realized just then that I wanted out of this Twin Peaks episode.

Inside my apartment are walls and mounds of thoughts from the two nights this week that I spent whispering for hours into the telephone. I simply cannot deal with what's in those piles and so I'm tiptoeing around my house, trying not to stub my toe on anything that I should not be feeling.

Evidently, what I needed to make me rather less grumpy was an evening of the campest karaoke I've ever seen. (And that, man, that's saying something.) Caroline invited me along last night to watch a friend of hers perform in a karaoke contest, and I haven't laughed that hard since I hung out with Dave the weekend before last.
I am now firmly convinced that you have not lived until you've seen at least half of the things I saw last night. None of which I'm going to tell you about. Because I'm not back out of the grumpy forest entirely yet.

I'm starting to get over-excited about my trip to China, only a little prematurely because while I don't have airplane tickets yet, the travel agent at my office is working on it. And that's close enough. I've always wanted to go places but have only now found myself in a position where travel is a possibility--so now I'm impatient to go somewhere, already. And so I've been spending an awful lot of time the last few days fondling maps of China, mumbling things like, "Well, Beijing isn't that far from Mongolia, and I've always wanted to go to Mongolia..." (That, by the way, is true, and not just one of those things I tend to say when I get excited, which is just about everything.) I encourage you all to move to far-flung sections of the world so that I can visit you and never settle down anywhere. Ever.
Honestly, I'm just so tired of everything that my teeth hurt. A vacation will do me good, but in the meantime I plan to be insufferable for the next two months. Don't say I didn't warn you.

My family will be in town next weekend and then as soon as they leave I'm gone for a business trip, but until then I've found myself with an abundance of free time for once. Come over! We'll go down the street and drink three pitchers of beer and rejoice in the fact that for the time being we've managed to escape ourselves while the cigar store Indian scowls at us from the corner. I'll let you win at pool and we'll seriously discuss going to get matching tattoos, and then we'll go down to the water and pretend that there are lightning bugs for catching. We'll give each other nicknames.

I've been writing letters to you in my head for years, leaving notes on sugar packets and straw wrappers and paper placemats sown broadcast across the country. I've been dialing your number for so long that I'd probably forget who you were if you picked up the other end.

There were two times that I made a pact with myself to put you firmly out of my head. The first was a chilly night in late 2000, cleaning up blood that was pouring from the head of a boy I'd only met a few hours before. Once we'd packed him off to the hospital and cleaned up whatever there was left of Chase that could be soaked up with a towel I took a slow walk and informed an alligator that I couldn't think about you anymore because you pressed at the back of my eyeballs. The alligator didn't understand, pointing out that you'd never met Chase and had in fact neither been seen or heard from in months. I told it that was the point. I didn't want to ever be a party hat again.

I've been to the moon a million and fifteen times without you. A million and fifteen, precisely.

But you reappeared, didn't you, a few years later? Just when things were crumbling to dust? I left town and decided firmly at a diner in lower Indiana that I was moving cross-country to read books and not think of you. Again.

At this point, of course, I give up. You've made it perfectly clear that you won't be un-thought. But I'm not going to let you win, because thought of or not I'll still be making it to and from the moon a million more times without you.

Caroline introduced me to the wonder that is shrinky-dinks last night. How have you let me go all of this time without them, people? This means that I can make accessories out of illustrations in Shel Silverstein books! The world is bright once again.

Down at the waterfront today, a homeless man offers to thumb wrestle me for a dollar. I'm a sucker for a good thumb wrestle, so I agree. His palm is hard and his fingers are more than three times as thick as mine. He makes a good show of pretending to let me win, even though we both knew from the start that in a fair fight I'd lose, and lose quickly.
Just afterwards a couple all dressed up asks me to take a picture of them. They look like members of a wedding party, but I prefer to believe for the time being that they're just wandering the waterfront in formal clothes. As I hand them back their camera and start to walk away, the guy asks me if that homeless man always asks people to thumb wrestle. I don't honestly know, but since I hope that he does I tell the boy yes.

At one point last night, I was blushing down to my toenails. I'm blushing again just thinking about how red I must have been.

I was on the phone with Toby this afternoon. He's been trying for weeks to break up with his girlfriend but she keeps telling him no. I had no useful advice. He asked about my trip in the same way everyone has, tacking on a question at the end about Nick as though that situation was not the whole reason they were asking. I gave him a rundown of the last few weeks, and he chuckled. "Mouse," he said to me, "you are like a full contact sport. You ought to hand out helmets to the people you meet." He sounded proud, like he'd just cooked a particularly tasty dessert.
It might be an accurate statement.

At the bookstore this afternoon, I'm looking at books about China while the man standing above me is reading about Copenhagen. His wife comes to stand next to him, asking about the books that he's found. She dismisses most of them, calling them too expensive or without satisfactory maps. "This is no good," she tells him firmly, "I want to see where Hamlet lived."

That Fellow was supposed to be at my house at 8:30 last night, so when the doorbell rang a little after 9:00 I stomped through my apartment to open the door, prepared to be passive-aggressively pissed off. I am no good with people being late, especially when they don't call to inform me of their lateness. But he wasn't on the other side of the door. Instead, I found standing on my doormat Steph and Ryan, who grinned and said, "Hey! We heard you're grumpy. Want to go to Dragonfish for dinner?"
I invited them in and thought quickly. I did want to go to Dragonfish, and I did not want to be home and stood up by a boy I don't even like all that much. And so I surprised myself by putting on my shoes, taping a note to the door, and actually leaving.
I always say that I'm not the sort of girl who waits around, but that's never been true. I am exactly the sort of girl that waits around. So it was with an exhilarating new feeling of, I don't know, self respect I guess, that I informed him when he eventually called that of course I wasn't going to wait. And no, I didn't know that he wouldn't stand me up--that he wouldn't even be the first one this year to disappear to the island of lost boys. (This is true: it's been an interesting few months.) I have better things to do with my time than wait around. I have fantastic friends to spend my time with.

Because the thing is, I'm supposed to be avoiding letting myself be used up by people who are just out to use me up. I am fragile and in love with many things that don't even exist, and I simply cannot keep doing this to myself. And so with the help of my friends, I finally did right by myself for once.

(Further wedding pictures are here and here.)

My passport came back today with a Chinese Visa pasted inside--exactly a week after it arrived in San Francisco. This means that as long as nothing goes too wrong I'll be in China in August. China, says e e cummings, is where a poet is a painter.

I've been in that old samantha funk the last few days, spending evenings lying on the floor singing songs to the ceiling. It's as though I got out of bed two minutes too early or too late yesterday, and I haven't been able to get back on time since. I am grumpy, and not really relishing spending the evening with a fellow who, after all these weeks, has yet to even ask my last name. But I get myself into these situations and it's no one's fault but my own that I can't work up the energy to get out of them. I am listless and bored with thinking all of the things I've already thought.

The problem is that I miss all of the people I've just seen, and what's worse is that I miss the one I'm not supposed to be thinking about. I'm back to being infected by thoughts I thought I'd cured myself of years ago.

Tomorrow night will be full of nice girls and wine and crafts, and I promise that by the weekend I'll try to be back to jumping in puddles and renaming my toes.

Damn you, Steph.

Total Volume Of Music Files On My Computer: 2.5 GB. I've got hundreds of CD's but only an Ipod mini, and no speakers on my computer. (I still use that old fashioned thing called a stereo.) So I haven't been in any hurry to stuff music into Owen. Also, I'm lazy.

The Last CD I Bought Was: "Weekends Away" by Math and Physics Club. I (heart) local bands. Remember the Trash Can Sinatras? This is kinda like what would happen if you gave them tambourines.

Favorite song from the album (er, CD)? Sixteen and Pretty.

Song Playing Right Now: "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan.

Five Songs That I Listen To A Lot (Or That Mean A Lot To Me):

We do realize that this changes practically weekly, right? And that this week I'm a little depressed? Ok, glad we're on the same page.

1. "When Sunny Gets Blue" by Nat King Cole. This is my favorite song in the history of songs. Playing this for me is the easist way to get me to propose. Or cry, depending on what's going on.

2. "Scared" by The Tragically Hip. Something about this song makes my fingers all tingly.

3. "Unsingable Name" by Mike Doughty is tied with "Music When the Lights Go Out" by the Libertines. (See how I cheated there?) Maybe I'm a little grumpy. But Mike's opening line? "I want to be your absolute ultimate"? Pricks at the nape of my neck.

4. "The Only Living Boy in New York" by Simon and Garfunkel. I do get all the news I need from the weather report.

5. "Go It Alone" by Beck. Guarenteed to break me out of a funk.

Tagged: Chris (who has already been there), Brandon (who will kill it), and Dylan.

Dear everyone,

Somehow another month has gone by, and I find that I'm resigning myself to the fact that days will never be as long as they were when I was six. It's a sad joke that the more we appreciate the days that we have, the less time feels like it's moving at normal speeds. It was just yesterday that I was six.
I will be interested to see how different traveling is when the destination is one that I'm looking forward to. I haven't gone on a trip that I haven't dreaded since my final visit to Seattle before I moved, but then I hadn't ventured many places that I didn't want to go. I've been overwhelmingly homesick on my last few trips, to Florida and North Carolina, the sort of homesick you're only supposed to be when you're ten and at summer camp.
It isn't as though my journey to Florida was all bad. There's a certain quality I've only found in the friends I made in college, a sense that although we're all so different we're expected to be unabashedly ourselves. As a result, I find that all the knots in my shoulders melt, that my brain feels rested, that all of my laughing muscles hurt. I leave these people feeling as though I could accomplish anything because of the simple fact that they believe, unreservedly, that I can. It's a sense of support that I've found nowhere else, and the few hours I spent with them are worth whatever other troubles I suffered on the way there.
Steph and Ryan picked me up at the airport yesterday (twice), while my kneecaps dissolved in complete relief at being home. My walk to work this morning was not so much walking as it was prancing, a gleeful little going-to-the-office dance. And now I am at my desk. The sun is sometimes out of and sometimes behind the clouds and the base of my spine is on fire. I'm eating a honeydew melon and drinking beer, and my hands are covered with fruit juice because with tasty juicy fruits I turn into a four year old or a terrier and can barely keep my face out of them. I am avoiding calling certain people to let them know I'm back in town because there are certain self-destructive behaviors I'm not overly keen to dive back in to.
I appreciate that my friends keep getting married and reminding me what an adventure being in love is supposed to be. They're very brave. There are more things than I can even begin to express that choke me up about weddings, and I encourage you all to keep pairing up and giving my sentimental little heart real life reasons to go all a-flutter.
Somehow we're halfway through the year, and I haven't even really begun in earnest to put my plans from months ago into motion. I need to sit every single one of you down and find out your hopes and plans and secrets. I need to learn your native language so that we can exchange the same syllables. If need be, I will grab you by your shoulders and shake you until you realize how perfect you actually are.
I honestly don't even know who the vast majority of you are. But I will.

love,
me

At the Tampa airport, the lady in the security line in front of me is wearing heavy perfume. She looks to be, roughly, in her late 60's, and she is wearing a brightly flowered shirt. She turns to kiss the man standing next to her on the cheek--he is also wearing a flowered shirt. He asks her to call him when she gets home, and she agrees, hurrying off to catch the next shuttle to the gates. I catch up with her just as we emerge on the other side of the shuttle, and watch her pull a tissue from her purse to wipe her eyes. I wonder just when the moment was that she started crying.

Lying on Neven’s floor last night, I looked for shapes in the popcorn coating while he drunkenly psychoanalyzed me. "The problem with you," he said as though he’d just then realized it "is that you pine for the right men and pick the wrong ones." "Out of everything you could have come up with, you give me that? I thought you were providing information." I rolled over onto my stomach and combed the carpet with my fingers, disappointed with the lack of new insight.

In Dallas, one of the golf cart elderly transport vehicles passes me. The horn is broken, so the lady driving is yelling, "Beep beep! Beep beep beep! Move!" Anyway, I think the horn is broken. It could be that she just feels like shouting.

Around the table at the wedding, conversation centered on plans for our own matrimonial events. At the end of every obviously well thought out item, someone would throw out a halfhearted variation of, "But it’s not like I’m ever going to get married, anyway." We all seemed to be terrified and not a little confused by the prospect, but up for the adventure nonetheless.

Halfway home we fly through an electrical storm. I know that I should be trying to take pictures for the 'Electric' show, but I'm too busy being scared and trying not to look out the window. When we come out on the other side the horizon is a rainbow as far as I can see in either direction.

I was standing on a corner in Dunedin, waiting for Neven to come outside and squire me to a drinking establishment for cocktails and Psych 101isms. My toes, without shoes, picked up and dropped small rocks. I was tired out, drained from the time change and the mean-spirited jokes and the constant talking. My waiting was impatient--I needed to vent, and Neven was taking at least a year to emerge from his house. And so my foot that wasn't scrabbling through the dirt was tapping impatiently. That's why my eyes were on my feet, and why I saw when the small black racer snake crawled through the grass right in front of me.
I jumped. I'm not afraid of snakes, but I wasn't expecting to see one just then and the movement startled me. But it didn't even pause--just went on its way, paying me less attention than if I were a rock.
Nev stepped onto his porch just in time to see me hop backwards. He giggled at me, pointing, curly black hair reflecting the sun. I smiled too, shaking my fist at him, and when I turned back the snake was gone.

I leave for the airport in a few hours, and I can't wait to get home.

Mr. and Mrs. Davis.

Holy shit, man, we're dropping like flies.

The rest of the pictures are here. I apologize for their incredibly poor quality, but the lighting at the reception sucked for picture taking purposes.

This has been so many years coming that it's almost a relief that it's finally over. The ceremony was lovely, we all cried, and Amanda was absolutely radiant. I love weddings.

I did indeed inform the boy that I had a crush on in high school that I had, you know, had an enormous crush on him in high school, and received the incredibly gratifying response of, "What! But I had a crush on you in high school! Why didn't you say anything?" And that's always nice.
As a result, some incredibly unladlylike behavior may have taken place at some point. And if it did, it was totally worth it.

I'm so glad to have gotten a chance to catch up with everyone, and now I've got a whole new cache of memories that are so fabulous they make my skin hurt. I miss the Flagler kids more than I can say.

Oh, old times.

It took no time at all--about fifteen minutes--before I was wandering around outside barefoot, just like always.

I went to take a shower Thursday night, to wash off the travel stains. I pulled back the shower curtain and there, on the bottom of the tub, was a great big dead cockroach. I suppose it's just a lucky thing that it was already dead. There wasn't anyone around to save me from a live one.

That girl up there in the pink? She's the bride, and my old college roomie. I met Amanda in our Freshman english class. The blonde girl? Is Bethany, who was Amanda's friend. She was in that class too. Over the next few years she and I became inseparable. She was cute and blonde and so much fun, and I was shy and uncomfortable. I haven't seen her in a few years; we fell out of touch when she moved back here.
It's been years since the three of us were together, but last night was just like old times. We talked incredibly fast, shrieking 'do you remembers' at each other. For a couple of hours, I was the best parts of sixteen again.

My favorite chaser of geese died yesterday.

Haida was a sweet, sweet dog. Oscar and Lee have been through much lately, trying to keep her with them. It's a terrible loss.

Dear Haida,

I hope that you feel better wherever you are now, that you have all of your legs again and all the peanut butter-filled kongs you can chew on.

love,
me

As soon as I stepped out of the airport, the humidity grabbed my hair in its fists and wrapped itself around my face.

I was up late last night on the phone, gossiping with the bride to be, reminiscing and giggling and talking too fast. I left for the airport at 3:30, ghosting through the streets of my city, winking at the lights that were on.

My mother has done huge renovations on her house recently. I realized the other day that a large part of the reason I've been so unsettled about making this trip is that it's the first time I've stayed overnight in this house since the morning I only barely made it out with my life. Some of you know bits of that story and some of you know none of it, but the bare facts are that my ex stepfather was not a very nice man and one night finally nearly made good on what he'd been promising to do for years. Since good and dead wasn't what I wanted to be at seventeen I ran, and I haven't stopped running since.
I've been a little worried about how I'd react to being here in the dark. And it's been a little hard, a little more than hard. But the house is so completely changed that it's almost not the same place where so much that was bad happened. Being in this town is always a little bit like watching a movie of myself undergoing surgery, but I think I might be able to avoid any extra nightmares.

On the bus:

"So I have this boil on my leg, right..."
"You have a what? A boil? How do you know it's a boil?"
"Dude, what else could it be? Do you want to look at it?"
"No."
"Fine. So, I have this boil. And the other day, I was wearing shorts."
"I hate this conversation already."
"This girl walked up while I was waiting for the bus and asked what the thing on my leg was. I told her I thought it was a boil."
"Was she cute?"
"Yeah. That's the point of this story. See, 'cause in the end, I got her phone number."
"Dude. If you get a girlfriend because of a boil, we're not friends anymore."

Turns out that remembering that I could once do a cartwheel and actually, you know, doing one are two entirely different things. My dignity? Tends to go out the window three or four times a day.

I've been paging through my high school yearbooks, trying to guess who might be showing up at this matrimonial shindig on Saturday. I haven't spoken to Amanda recently, so I'm not positive who of our old crowd she and Jimmie may have tracked down. I'm excited to catch up with whichever of them end up there, and it's no secret that I'm especially thrilled to see that unrequited high school crush.
I am even more thrilled to see my high school crush while I'm wearing my amazing new dress. Not all parts of my brain have managed to become a grownup.

My schedule is a little insane for the next few months, and I'll be in and out of town. I need to organize myself tonight to send the application for my Chinese visa sometime in the next few days. I need to buy plane tickets for two trips and start seriously planning a third. I need to decide how I want to get to the airport on Thursday morning.
My brothers will be here to visit in just a few weeks. I haven't decided if I'm planning any organized outings or not, but if anyone wants to hang out with us, meet them, and make them feel like total rockstars because cool people in Seattle know who they are, let me know. (You could also try and make them feel guilty for how much their poor sister worries about them.)

Years ago, when I stilled dabbled in fiction and harbored delusions of a literary lifesyle, I wanted to write a story about a man whose whole goal in life was to write "choose your own adventure" books for grownups. His problem, the source of all of his grief, was the sad fact that no one wanted to buy his books because adults don't want to go on adventures. I've since met many, many adults who love adventures, but the sketch of this guy has stayed in the corners of my brain ever since.

I've made plans for many different lifestyles over the years. I was to be a ballerina--no, an underwater archaeologist--no, a teacher--no, an editor, and I had everything worked out for all of them. In the end, I'm hard pressed to be anything but samantha, and too busy to worry about all the other versions I'm missing out on. I make it from day to day and that's pretty much as far as I get.

Spaulding Gray told us that it was almost impossible for him not to tell everyone everything. I'll be back in Florida in a few days, but the Florida I return to isn't a place of breezy palm trees and quaint alligators. It's a place where too much dirty water has gone under too many rickety bridges, a place where little feels clean anymore. It tears at my fingers, the past does, and yet I do not tell you about it because in the end I am not very brave. I spend too much time being grateful for things and not enough acting grateful for them, too much time trying to blame a child for the actions of adults.

Whenever I get a new haircut, the first thing I do is go home and undo all of the special styling things that my hairstylist has done. I always want to know what it's like without the magic, so there aren't any surprises.

I left the office early this afternoon, in a sparkly fifteen minutes between rainshowers. The bottoms of my chronically too-long jeans soaked up puddles and now and again got themselves caught between my feet and the back of my broken red loafers. It's been another couple of weeks of long days and late nights, and although I pretend like I'm surprised that I'm still a little bit sick, I know what the reason is.

There have been slugs on my morning walk in for the last week or so, and I always want to pet them. Last night I had an armful of cute sleeping baby. I am calm, and a little bit exhausted, and enjoying the back-and-forth of the weather. I need to work on my posture.

I am still in love with Seattle, all over again every day. I have a great big huge ridiculously not very secret crush on one of you, and these blustery undecided days make me almost brave enough to call and say so, except I have no number to call. Which is probably, in the end, for the best.

There's a certain time every day when the light outside and the light inside my apartment cancel each other out and it's not dark or light in here. When that time is depends on the weather. Today, that time is right now.

"To me, all sports are just a game of 'who's got the ball?' Who's got the ball? I don't give a fuck...I want a pretzel."

When Tara and I drove around the corner on our way to Neumo's, we found a great big crowd standing in a circle outside. Turns out Mike Doughty was hanging outside with his guitar, having what appeared to be an impromptu show on the sidewalk.
I love that guy.

Dear Mike Doughty,

I noticed that you were wearing pants this time around. Not that I made it a point to look at your pants. Um. This is not the point.
The point is, hooray for you coming back to Seattle and playing another show for us. And thanks for playing The Gambler--you really do need to know when to fold 'em, y'know.
I've said all that I have to say to you a million times before, so this time around I just want to say thanks. Please consider my idea of doing a guitar showdown with Lou Barlow. It'd be such a party.

love,
me

All I need is air in the spare, kids. Air in the spare.

So evidently the thing about hot air balloons is that they won't, um, lift off if it's raining. Rather unfortunately, it was doing just that this morning in Walla Walla when we woke up unbelievably early to go look at them.

Hot air balloons or no, it's been a good weekend. I went to my first ever prom on Friday night, and then got to drive across the state with two lovely girls yesterday morning. There were cherry trees, tumbleweed, hats, and free chocolate Frosty milkshakes. And they did light up the balloons at night, so at least we got to see them on the ground.
Man, those suckers are big.

We drove away in the rain this morning after a little bit of shopping and went wine tasting. I was in search of a Syrah and came away with a sweet Riesling instead. And as always, the best part of leaving is coming home.

Thanks for the weekend, ladies!

Alright, fellows, I have to ask you this, because I’ve gotten it from three consecutive men in the last bunch of months and I’m curious. That walking on the outside of the sidewalk thing? In case of, um, runaway carriages or something? Where do you get that from?
I’m serious. I want to know. Do you learn it in guy school? Is it a father-to-son passing down of information sort of thing? It doesn’t appear to be age group specific, since there’s a twelve-year difference between the youngest of them and the oldest. It’s not a regional thing. And it’s also not all men—I’ve walked places with lots of you who don’t make a point of always being closest to the street.
I’m not complaining even a little bit: I think it’s sort of adorable. I just want to know who tells you to do it. Come on, guys. I’m willing to give up female secrets for the information.

My dad blames the hospital for the death of the father that he never really liked, anyway. I’ve never been sure what actually killed him, what the specific ailment was that required a tube in his throat. It’s a touchy subject.

Going back to Florida always makes me grumpy. I just can’t figure out how to be anchored by the past without being covered over by it, how to make the happy memories weigh less than the sad ones, and the sad ones weigh less than the terrifying ones. I feel more and more like a character in a Tennessee Williams play every time I go back for a visit and I can’t walk anywhere without tripping over a million little ghosts of the same sad girl.
I am very tired of the notion that I’ve just climbed out of a box of after school specials but haven’t yet gotten far enough away that they can’t snag me and drag me back in.

My nana’s Parkinson’s seems to be gaining momentum, rolling her faster and faster back inside her own head. She didn’t really like my grandfather either. And yet there must have been a time, however brief, that she loved him enough to throw over her family and her religion for him. We can’t really say what it is that happens between two people in and out of love, the transactions and the compromises and the angry tightening of lips. I wonder often if, as she finds herself further and further down the tortured crystalline paths of her own brain, she ever thinks fondly of him—if disease is enough to overcome fourteen years of absence and all those other years of angry marriage.

Good things are coming. This weekend Cat, Caroline, and I are off to look at hot air balloons in Walla Walla. Next week Tara and I will be going to see Mike Doughty, and I’ll be getting a haircut. The Peach People’s wedding is going to be an awful lot of fun. There’s really no reason for me to be as gloomy as I get whenever I think about this trip, but the bottom line is that I hate Florida and always have.

Not too long before my grandfather died they moved him into a different part of the hospital that I couldn’t go into—you had to be fourteen, and I was only nearly eight. And there was a point where it was made known to me that he wasn’t ever going to be coming back down that elevator. I don’t remember any of what happened then, not who told me or how. All that I remember is the nurse that came down with them turning to me while she waited for the elevator to take her back up. My arms were wrapped around a stuffed koala bear that had been in his bed with him since he’d gone into the hospital, my whole upper body curled around it. The nurse bent down and took me by the shoulders, looked me straight in each of my eyes individually, and nodded. She might have spoken, but the elevator doors opened then with a chime and she stepped inside. And then the mirrored doors slid shut and I was left standing there, looking back at myself.

For the first time, I've brought my new computer out of the house, taking the wireless card out for a test drive.
I feel very silly, sitting here with my laptop and a cup of chai.

I hadn't planned on leaving tonight, but after an extended dawdle through the rain back to my rental kingdom I realized that the very last thing I wanted to do was stay home. I spent the day bowed under a great big project, and the thought of an hour out around other people was very tempting. At home there is a fruit bowl and cupcakes and a couch that loves me, but there is also a pile of unwritten letters and unread books. I couldn't take the extra responsibility.

"You know, you've never asked how old I am."
"I haven't?"
"Nope."
"Oh. Should I?"
"Is it important?"
"If it were important, I probably would have asked you two weeks ago."
"Oh yeah, good point."
"...Should I ask how old you are?"
"Well, I'm older than you are."
"Right, I figured that much."
"Oh."
"Alright, I give. Fine. How old are you?"
"You know, I think I chipped my tooth."
"You're not allowed to talk anymore, old man."

Happy Mother's Day, moms!

When my mother was my age, she had a two year old child and was two years away from her first divorce. She had long, straight brown hair, a twisty-mouth sense of humor, and a heartfelt love of rock-n-roll.
They've put up with a lot from me over the years, she and my stepmother. They've nodded and smiled at my freakish stance on not brushing my hair when I was seven, nodded and smiled while I plotted a million ways to leave Florida, nodded and smiled when I refused to use silverware. They have never tried to stop me from doing the things I wanted to do, and they've let me grow in whichever directions I choose. I give them a lot of grief for the choices that they've made, but I seldom allow for the fact that they were their choices to make.
And I remember her laughing like a kid, her hair fanning around me to make a curtain between myself and the rest of the world. I remember her haircuts, her boyfriends, her silly mistakes and her sillier jokes. I remember watching from corners while she laughed with men that weren't my father, and I remember knowing even then that although she was my mother she was herself too. She is many things that I will never know about.
I talk to my mother, these days, once or twice a week, and to my stepmother a few times a month. We are friends. And that's lucky, because as we grow up most people realize that their parents are just nice people. It has taken a lot of work and a lot of forgiving, but my mother is also my friend.

Thanks to everyone that came by last night! It means a lot to have you guys around. (Bonus points to Manuel for bringing along the hook and Elvis glasses, and to Brandon for coming to drink tequila in a house full of strangers. Pictures by Dayment have been posted.)
Update: Looks like I have my own Flickr tag.

I like anniversaries, as markers and signposts and as a clear place to pause and figure out what's happened between there and here.

Today, of course, marks two years since I found myself in Seattle. We had spent the week wandering across the country, talking to locals and wearing cowboy hats and singing along to everything. We had decided against Memphis and for tumbleweed, we had eaten huckleberries and freedom fries, and we had seen Wall Drug. We had been having an adventure.
Neither one of us had a clue what would happen next. Andrea was headed back to Florida via California to drink Mint Juleps and languish. I was staying here, without any friends or job or money. But I had an apartment. I don't think I'd ever been as sure of my own fool self in my life, but then I guess I didn't even know it was possible to fail.

We drove up to my apartment, unloaded my world from the car, and went off to hunt for a grocery store. It had hailed on us driving through the mountains, and as we had little experience with hail and none at all with driving through mountains, it was a miracle we made it at all. Somehow we happened upon the Albertson's in Greenlake, which seemed full of people who looked like the ones I had just left.
This was our first meal, spaghetti and a bottle of Riverboat Red from the Les bourgeois winery outside Kingdom City, Missouri. It was the best thing I'd ever cooked.

And so it looks as though I'll be headed to my first conference at the end of next month, right after my family leaves town. Do I know anyone in Indiana? I don't think that I do. I'm terribly excited, of course (a free trip to a section of the country I've never been to, and an opportunity to learn so much about something that I love? This career shit works, man), but I'm a little scared as well. I am so much younger than other people who do what I do: the jump in position that I just made should have taken a couple of years rather than six months to reach. And though I generally try to pretend that the years that they have on me--that all of you, really, have on me--don't affect me at all, the bare truth of the matter is that sometimes it scares the stuffing out of me. I'm afraid of being found a fraud for things I didn't even realize I was pretending at.
I have a habit of tossing myself into new waters to make sure I remember how to swim. This time, it's someone else that's doing the throwing.

Feeling much better today, thanks. An unexpected visitor yesterday evening helped cheer things up, and my throat no longer feels like I've been trying to swallow sand spurs. I met a very nice roly-poly this morning on my walk in to work and I didn't trip over my own feet once today.

Steph and Ryan were here on Saturday, typing stories on Ethel, my typewriter. They were doing so well that I set them a task, to start a story with the sentence, "If you feel faint, it's because all the blood is rushing to your still-intact hymen! Lose it ASAP!" and to end it with "That is the power of grapes."--lines pulled from my envelope of words. They did splendidly, and now it appears that they've brought home their own typewriter to love and cherish. It makes me want to do a little dance.

My party is coming up this weekend, and so I'm getting into the usual panic about playing hostess. (This time, there's someone famous who says he's stopping by. I've got tequila, my friend.) I'll fret about it right up until people start showing up, and then I'll quit it and enjoy myself. This is what always happens, but knowing what's at the end doesn't make me any less spastic now.

Things are still just slightly off center. There can be, often during strokes, damage to certain parts of the brain that make a person able to see noses, mouths, eyes, but not a whole face. It makes recognizing the person to whom you are speaking nearly impossible, visually. I feel a little bit like that now, as though I'm seeing fits and snatches of something and if I could just cross my eyes properly I could figure out what it is. And I should know by now that the best way to open a stubborn jar is to leave it alone and come back later. But then, there are a lot of things that I should know, and one of them is that knowing and believing are generally not the same.

Dear everyone,

Hello! I had intended to write you this weekend, but then I got sick and spent all of my free time clutching my shoulders, trying to make the room stop spinning. It's stopped now, so now is the time to get down to brass tacks. Or, you know, whichever other kinds of tacks.
But I hope that your April went well, and that you got some of what you had planned accomplished. You've been so quiet lately, and I've been worrying about you in all the usual ways and also some brand new ones. I worry that you're spending too much time looking over your shoulder, that you're going to turn around and run smack into what you never saw coming. I worry that you keep losing sight of the million little things that you're so good at in the glare of the few big ones you can't just get right. I worry. And this is not the time for that. It's spring! Our toes should feel like they're each tied with helium balloons. There seem to be too many days where that's just not the case.
I've been doing a pretty good job at things recently, at standing up straight against the thousand pound weights of my collarbones. I have been seeing people and behaving irresponsibly and writing a million notes inside my head. I have only panicked a little.
I called my mother this morning to tell her that I saw her gout and raised her a strep throat. We went back and forth for a while about whether my strep throat against her gout could be considered a see and a raise. The doctor, diagnosing me, informed me in the usual way that I should get a houseboy to fetch ice cream and apple juice. I asked her to write me a prescription for one, one that did magic tricks. And also, where would I fill that? She just laughed and patted me on the shoulder.
Had I told you that I've been having strep throat? It feels like I've been eating gravel.
My favorite dog west of the Mississippi has been having health troubles lately. I'm sure good wishes would be appreciated. Haida is a sweet dog, a lovely dinner guest, and a fantastic chaser of geese. I hope everything goes ok.
I stopped by my favorite sandwich place on my way into the office from the doctor's office today. It's been a while since I've been down there, and every time I go in I remember why I love it so. A man named George handed me a mother's day poem he wrote for his mother when she was 87. The boy with a hoodie making my sandwich sang songs and danced the whole time, and the fellow who often gives me cookies smiled and waved with his hands full of bread. This city always makes me feel like it's glad I'm here.
I can't wait to see you all again. I've been cooped up for days and my hands are itching to organize picnics and hugs and funny jokes. I want you to teach me how to make origami cranes, how to make wounded fish swim. I want to be a whole bouquet of flowers sitting on your side table.

Love,
me

This is the newest member of my family, for the moment alternately called Owen and Dick Turpin until I can hit on a suitable name. I've been talking about switching for a while, and decided that now was the time to go. So far so good, aside from some minor troubles with getting files off the old one. Stubborn thing.

Mike went with me to get it yesterday during lunch, because he's the closest accessible technosexual--his office is right across from my cube. I don't know quite how annoyed I'm supposed to be that whenever I find myself in public with a male friend, people automatically assume that we're together. I do know that telling Mike to help me along getting the thing set up was a bit much.

I woke up this morning with an angry porcupine in my throat and chills that made my skin hurt. But I am a trooper, or a masochist, and so I shuffled myself into the office anyway. A couple of hours later, I conceded defeat, came home, put on the warmest clothes I could find, and fell asleep for the next three and a half hours.
That was the best I've felt all day. I took a nice long bath, filling the tub up with enough bubbles that I almost expected my mom to call from Florida to yell at me for overfilling. The water wasn't ever hot enough to make my skin stop wanting to crawl off, and I think I'm officially sick. And craving apple juice.
My shower curtain rod is crooked.

A voicemail message from my mother this afternoon says, "By the way, your grandmother got hit by lightning yesterday and I have gout."
And you wonder where I got my penchant for dramatic and slightly inaccurate turns of phrases from. (Grandma's house got struck by lightning, not my grandma. It fried some of her electronic equipment but otherwise things are fine. Almost getting hit by lightning runs in my family.)

Years ago, my friends were in the habit of actively trying to hook me up with single boys. They have of recent years (thankfully) fallen out of this habit, but back when it was the thing to do they would always start their laundry list of good qualities with the words, "I know this guy, he's really strange, you have to meet him."
I was alternately amused and really irritated by this particular way of putting things. Was it a comment on me myself or just my taste in men? Eventually I decided that I really didn't care, and I moved on.
Except that recently I've realized that this sentence is making a sort of inverted comeback. When my coworkers ask me what the men I've been dating lately are like, I notice that one of the first things out of my mouth is, "He's a great guy. A little odd, though." And when I say this they look at me like I'm intentionally being thickheaded, and they reply, "Well, yes. That's how you like them, isn't it?"
And thinking about it today, I guess it sort of is.

At the very beginning of our senior year of high school, Amanda, Jimmie, and I were walking down the hall and carrying on a conversation. This was before Amanda became The Peach People, before I became Bovine Woman (hey! there's a story you'll not be hearing!), before almost everything. We were walking towards class and chatting, and then suddenly I was walking alone and chatting because Jimmie had pulled Amanda between the lockers, in a very teen movie sort of way, to ask her out. I knew what had to be happening--the whole school knew it was coming--and so I continued to class. When Amanda arrived she was as fluttery as I've ever seen her, and it was that day that I started talking about their wedding.

Many of you have heard this story before, and in a month I'll be on my way back to Florida for that wedding. It has been a whole lot of years in the making, but I don't think anyone has ever expected that things would turn out otherwise.

Not too long after they got together, Jimmie wrote Amanda some sort of missive spelling out his feelings for her. She sent it in an email to me--there are some things no girl can keep secret, especially not at eighteen--and I have kept it all of these years. I've found myself the keeper of these sorts of things often, and I still have several such declarations that have outlasted the relationships they were made in. I doubt that Amanda even remembers sending it to me, but I'll keep it. I won't bring it out for the wedding, because if I tried she'd fly all the way to Seattle just to kick me in the head, but I'll hold onto it because I have this poem in my head for the future. And in this scene I see myself visiting their kids, good old Aunt Samantha, and sharing it with them in secret. Just so that there's always proof of how much these two have always loved each other.

I met a man in the market today who told me all about his trip hitchhiking across the country in the sixties. It sounded a little like he was making up the story as he went along, but since he seemed pretty convinced, I wasn't going to argue. His eyes stayed unfocused above my right ear the whole time.

A little bit later, I shared my cookie with a boy named Alfred. He was six and visiting Seattle with his mom and dad and aunt and uncle. He was bored, but he thought that my cookie (oatmeal raisin from Three Girls Bakery) was pretty good. He asked if I could do a magic trick, and wandered away when I said that I couldn't.

Down at the waterfront, an elderly lady stopped to comment on my bright coral shirt. I made a small joke, my usual 'you can see me from outerspace' line, but evidently bright colors are no joking matter. She warned me at least twice to enjoy wearing them now because soon enough I'll be too old for them. I'm pretty sure she thought I was approximately fifteen.

Another man on the bus ride home asked what I was thinking about. I just smiled at him, and he sighed and said, "Ah, must be a young man. When a girl smiles like that, there's always a young man on her brain." I'm sure I blushed--I'm always blushing, and I'm not certain how to stop--and told him that I'd been reflecting on how I've noticed recently that exceptionally self-confident men have a way of looking at you as though you're a new species that they've just discovered. It is, I explained, disconcerting. "Do you want them to stop?" he asked me. "Well, no, but I do want to have some way of reacting that doesn't involve blushing, stammering, looking away, or fumbling with my hands." He leaned forward and looked me right in the eye. "That," he said firmly, "is exactly the reaction that they are going for." He chuckled dryly, and I noticed that he smelled a little of liquor. "You listen to me, young lady. I know. I was once a chaser of girls myself."

"Who are you hoping to run into? Donatello? Leonardo? ...Raphael?"
"Um. Those? Are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
"Oh. Oh yeah, I guess they are."
"I don't give my phone number to Ninja Turtles. I don't care if they are heroes on the half shell. What sort of girl do you take me for?"

For a few years my father drove a motorcycle that I remember as red but which was probably black. My stepmother eventually made him get rid of it because she's not a fan of motorcycles, and the thing is neither am I. But I can't seem to get away from them--even my mother rides them now, and the last boy I went out with was in the process of buying one when we fell out of the habit of, um, dating. I do not like them, and will not like them, as there are too many pictures pinned to the back of my head. I have been to too many funerals of boys I once knew.
I am, on the other hand, a big fan of motorcycle helmets. I remember taking possession of my father's helmet whenever I could find it, carrying it around the house with me until someone took it away. I'd snatch it as soon as he took it off and hide my hands in the heat inside. I am certain that it was red, and I'd lay down on the floor with my head inside it, face mask closed, breathing in the smell of my dad in the dark.
That helmet always smelled like shampoo and Drakkar Noir and sweat. And it is still through that helmet that I think of my father most fondly.

Also, it looks as though I'm having a party on the 7th of May. Not invited? Want to be? Let me know.

The town the I grew up in smelled of the Gulf of Mexico, of warm oranges burst open on sidewalks, of suntan lotion and wet bathing suits and fast food chains. It smelled like steamy wet dirt and car exhaust and old people. It never smelled like home.
The town I went to college in smelled of sulpher water and late night palm trees. It smelled like butane and history and superstition, like sheets of paper torn in half. Like surfboards and cheap alcohol. Almost like home.

I wandered downtown today from the post office on Broadway, carrying in one hand a package from the clever pretty kids written all over in Chinese characters. I had left work a little early with a coworker to catch a ride up to the hill, and the sun was whispering in my ear like a new best friend. (I am seriously one lucky punk to have the coworkers that I have. They're amazing.) My brain, as I moseyed, was elsewhere. I dreamt last night that you were standing behind me fastening my dress while I spoke on the telephone, but when I woke up I couldn't remember who you were. I still can't, and it was this I was thinking of when I stopped walking and focused on the scent of this town. It smells like slightly damp grass and smiles from strangers, like the breeze right before sunset, like a little bit of self-righteousness. It smells like open water and pastries and pink colored cocktails, like the color green.
I took off my jacket during my walk, and officially earned myself my first sunburn of the year. If you need to find me anytime during the next few months, you can follow the smell of coconut and bananas, SPF'd 45.

Yes, that tulip bud is staring at you.

It has recently been blood-giving time at my place of employment, a time of year that makes me feel terribly guilty. I've never been able to give blood. I wouldn't meet the minimum weight requirement soaking wet with my heaviest shoes on, and even if I did my blood is lacking in iron and tends toward the sentimental. So every time I pass the tables inviting the passers-by to sign up and donate I shrug sheepishly and avert my eyes.

A coworker brought me a bag of clothes and shoes that are too small for her. Other women tend to see me as a doll for grownups, and they're always trying to dress me up. Included therein is a smoking pair of dangerous black heels. I won't be able to wear them often--I do too much walking--but when I do wear them it will be completely worth it.

Also, it appears that this is an even better year than last year for being my ex-something (boyfriend, one night stand, long distance correspondent) if you want to get married or have kids. Just as a warning to those of you who are reading this and are an ex-something.
I guess the logical conclusion of that ought to be an invitation to become an ex-something if you're looking to get married or have a kid. There's still a few months where we could do something and then stop, with a few left over to acquire someone to marry or have a child with.
There is honestly absolutely no bitterness here, just a little bit of 'huh, well isn't that interesting.' I wish them all the happiness they deserve, and even more than that for some of them. Better them than me--my apartment is far too small for either husband or children.

The best possible way to have spent yesterday was squelching around in a muddy field of tulips with Cat and Caroline, frozen fingers clamped around my camera, fighting with the wind for control over a red and white umbrella. And before the flowers, girlyness and pirate shirts. Afterwards, creme brulee, fondue, and Axe.

I watch myself in my rearview mirror and wonder what exactly it is that I think I'm doing. But then I realize that what I'm doing is fumbling.

I promise to stop dwelling on this soon (or, at least, to stop talking about it), but I cannot believe I managed to forget my own phone number just when I needed to remember it most. Dear Boy, please return for dancing on Thursday. I promise I'll fix it.

Cat and I are starting to recognize the regulars at Neighbors, which almost certainly makes us regulars ourselves.

"I told you so" is never the way to go, not even when it feels like it should get to be.

I saw her on my walk through Belltown tonight. The little girl was blonde, and her hair was so thin that her scalp shone through it, seashell pink. She had big green eyes and a Barbie in each hand, and I could tell from the cut of her cheekbones and the lines of her neck that someday the boys will be wild about her. Her shoes were shiny and yellow, and she was huddled up against a brick wall, crying.
I stopped. How could I not? From across the street she had already broken my heart, standing there so perfect and alone on the sidewalk. When I asked what was wrong, she sniffed with all of the power of her little nose and told me she was cold.
I dropped my bag on the pavement, fondue pot and fixings clattering too loudly inside it, and threw my coat around her shoulders. She sniffed again, softer this time, one big leftover tear shining in each eye. I asked what she was doing out there in the cold, and that was when she told me that she lived in this building, had dropped a Barbie outside on the way in, and her mommy had let her run back out and get it. She was supposed to buzz up to her apartment like a big girl, she said, but was not tall enough to reach the buttons on the call box.
A sob shook her all the way through at this point, and she launched herself at me for a hug. When I cuddled her to me, I could feel her whole body shaking from the cold, her little bird bones clattering against each other. I hugged her close and we took a few deep breaths together, and she held my hand while I pressed the buttons for her apartment. I watched outside until she got into the elevator, where she turned and waved and then disappeared.

I've been trying not to think of what may have happened to her if I had not happened along, but the thoughts creep in and they hurt my soul. I hate to think that something that wonderful and pure will be stained someday. I hope that she went upstairs and had hot chocolate and a warm bath, and I hope that by tomorrow she will have forgotten being trapped outside in the cold.
I hope that she doesn't mind that I took a little of her light with me, caught in the fibers of my jacket and the backs of my eyes.

My French lessons have been pretty hit or miss the last couple of weeks, and I imagine they'll continue to be so for at least several more, as Cecile could really go into labor at any moment. I should be taking advantage of this and, I don't know, memorizing vocabulary words or something, but I'm not. Perhaps I'll make myself some flashcards and badger you all into quizzing me whenever I see you.

One of the many things I learned this weekend is that red shoes are appropriate for every occasion, including going away parties for people I don't know and dancing until late with friends. A very pretty boy asked Cat if I was her girlfriend, and another pretty one slid his hand into that place on my side reserved for the hands of boys and spoke in my ear. I blame it all on the red shoes.

I had to perform emergency surgery on my myrtle tree tonight, which sadly needs to be repotted in a bigger pot. The clouds are doing lovely things right now, and I want to give them all names and social security numbers, and invite them over for dinner.

The thing is that not all rectangles are squares, you know?

And I wonder sometimes what happened to all the late nights talking dirty to the potted plants, to the little girl that would leave plastic bags and plates and bowls full of baked goods on doorsteps, ringing doorbells and running away. I find that most days now I can resist those urges that encourage me to bite my friends on their arms and shoulders, to put m&m's in my belly button, to put my hands over my eyes and insist until I cry or you give in that you can't see me.

I have erased many, many things from my dance card. And there's a whole stack of stories that I can't figure out, all the ones that haven't ever left the present tense.

I would love nothing more than to be able to stop talking to you for days or weeks. But these sentences get stuck inside my head like song lyrics and I find that I can't stop pacing around my apartment until I get them out. Somehow the rattle of the typewriter isn't the noise that I need to drown out all of those words ricocheting inside my skull and all I can do to make myself rest is to give them to you. And there are mornings when I wake up and know that what would be best would be to move to Nebraska and start a dairy farm and never read another book again.

The thing to remember about the relationship between me and spring is that it never delivers on its promise, either.

Did you all notice the lovely spring day today? I always told you I was magic. I hope you took full advantage of it. Me, I jumped in all the leftover puddles, and I may or may not have charged face first into the breezes on my way home.

I learned today about the demon in the veins of a friend. I don't think he wanted to tell me--I don't think he wanted to tell anyone--but sometimes we don't get to choose who we confide in any more than we get to choose who confides in us. If I am to be perfectly honest, I'd have to tell you that it isn't a secret I'd have chosen to pick up. I'm not sure how to learn not to search for dying inside his face, how to learn not to want to make him soup every time he coughs or hold his hand when he sneezes. And learn how not to do those things is just what I'll have to do. The rest of his friends and family will know soon enough. And then he'll need someone to be his friend not because of his illness or even in spite of it, but because it doesn't figure into the equation at all.
I will be that friend if it is possible for any person to do so.

I can see you there, Spring, hiding beneath all of this mist and this chilly
bluster. You can't fool me. I've been walking through the rains and listening to the flowers and chatting with the bugs, and all I'm hearing is the end result of these April showers.
I've been spending whatever amounts of free time I have lately sitting at my
little blue table, watching the hazy grey sheets on Lake Union and drinking tea, making up stories about all of you. I do love the rains, and the weather of my city in all of its moods. But I am impatient (this comes as no surprise) for daylight that lasts until bedtime, and irresponsible road trips, and cold beer on hot days. I am impatient for dancing too late, for petting puppies, for talking about books until my tongue goes numb.
Any of these things could be happening right now. And to be perfectly honest, most of them are-my recent trip to the maudlin side of things notwithstanding. I have been having a whole lot of fun. But something about spring makes my palms itchy, makes me want to grab you by the shoulders and memorize the shades of your skin and the whorls of your fingerprints. It makes me want to be bold and shy, saucy and innocent: to go out and paint the town all night and to stay home and reorganize my closets.
So you just hurry up and get here, Spring. I have a lot of adventuring to do.

I've meant to mention this to you all for days, and now it's First Thursday and almost too late. But.

Art Squad Presents ......

Le Piéton Super
Photography and Paintings by
Joy Andrews
Lee Dicks Clark
Caroline Colón
Sally Moore
Donna Whitsett

Music by
Hakea

619 Western Ave. in Pioneer Square
5th floor, North Studio
6:30-10PM

I'll be there around 8:00ish. Anyone wanna meet me there?

My invitation to the Peach People's wedding came in today's mail, addressed in the perfect copper-plate handwriting that I've been making jokes about since we were freshmen in high school. The inside envelope? Addressed to "Spamella," a nickname no one has called me by, fortunately, for years.
It has always impressed me what an easy decision marriage was for these two. It wasn't ever even really a decision, just a logical conclusion--an assumed eventual step, from the day they finally started dating. Any yet I'm still stunned that things have gotten to this point.

I have a loaf of zucchini bread for my office baking right now, and it smells delightful in here. I used to be a baker of birthday cakes, although it's a habit I've fallen out of in recent years. The next time I'm home for an evening I'll make another batch of Bitchin Potato Leek Soup, which also makes my apartment smell just yummy.
You can always tell I really like you if I'm cooking for you.

I walked home in the rain today, which is something that people who live in rainy climates rarely do. But I did not move to Seattle to stay out of the rain and if you drove past me today I probably grinned like a fool at you. My leather jacket gave off a slight animal tang that mixed with the damp grass smells and the Lake Union smells.
I wish they could make the scent of my walk to and from work into a perfume.

Dear Bell Jar,

Hi there. It's been a while, my old friend, and yet I am honestly amazed at how it feels like no time at all has passed since we saw each other last. I've had a few visits with your cousins in recent months, but during a bout of vicious wallowing Saturday night I realized that you'd come to town again. You've got me firmly by the shoulders, and though I'd really like to kick you in the shins and run away I know from experience that you'll just kick back even harder.
Now that I know it's you I see that it's probably likely that you've been standing behind me for weeks now, wearing a mask and waiting to jump out and yell 'Boo!' You know that I've been drinking too much and reading too little lately, and you've been giggling up your sleeve at how I've been feeling rejected and inappropriate and so, so stupid. You think it's funny because you think it's your doing, but I've got news for you.
I'm on to your game. You and I, we've gone around and around like this for many years. We've called each other names and we've beaten each other up and I have done ridiculous things in your name. You've caught onto my neck with your fingernails and I've let you stay there because if nothing else you were a feeling that was familiar. But no more of this. You can stay as long as you like, because I know I can't get rid of you that easily, but I don't have to pretend to listen anymore.
Oh sure, I know that until you leave I'll have more hours and days where I feel useless and unattractive and dumber than most rocks. I'm not going to fool myself into believing that I'm cleverer than you. But I can fill my time in ways that you can't understand. I can wall myself in with work, and with friends, and with long walks around my city. I can hunker down and wait for you to get bored and go.
Because the thing is, I'll always win in the end.

love,
me

Normally I'm not a big fan of memes, but honestly, when am I going to pass up a chance to talk about books? Besides, it was Ryan that poked me with it, and although I don't know him I just love the way he writes and the way he talks about his son.
Also, he said complimentary things about me, and flattery'll get you everywhere in this house.

So.

1. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Possibly I'd be Fahrenheit 451, as it would be a shame for it to be consigned to the flames. But. More likely than not I'd be Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. These days, it's almost a forgotten work, and it's a little sniffed at by Hesse scholars, but it so beautifully captures the disconnect between the needs of the body and the needs of the spirit. It explains the ache that happens in the space right below your heart.


2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I'm totally in love with Andy in Generation X. But really, I find myself having crushes on authors. There could be an argument there about the authors as seen through their books being fictional characters, but honestly, I just don't have the energy right now.

3. The last book you bought is:

Anne Sexton's letters. You can tell by her poetry what sort of woman she'd be in her letters, but the fact that she is scatterbrained and needy and wants passionately just to live brings things home a little more.

The last book you read:

The Orestes Plays of Aeschylus. The translation I have is from the sixties and a little shaky, but the Orestia are proof that words can live longer than anything else. Written in the early 400's BC, they're still vibrant and valid today.

What are you currently reading?

Anne Sexton's letters. Still butting my way through Remembrance of Things Past, which is proving to be such a worthwhile experience the further along I get, and I can't wait to get through it and try it again in the new translation.

5. Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Criminy. This question hurts my soul.

1. Mindfield by Gregory Corso. The work of the streetwise angel poet will follow me to my grave. He is the lover and the clown, the best friend and the distant stranger. He's like a radio station tuned to the soul. I could no more survive on a deserted island without this poetry than I could with both hands tied behind my back.

2. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. I could read the same Borges story every day for a month and be reading a different story each time. My poor brain is always going, but after a Borges it's quiet and tuckered out. His absolute skill with language makes me humble.

3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I love these characters. I love how they are listlessly self-destructive and I love how they don't ever seem to notice that where they end up and where they started out from are exactly the same place. I hate that this is now an Oprah book and that people are asking book club questions about it. It should be kept under glass unless it's being read, and it should only ever be bound in scarlet and gold.

4. The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche. I know that Nietzsche has a bad rap and all, but I read this for the first time when I was fifteen and it held my hand the way a philosophy book only can at the very beginning and the very end of a person's life. It remains, for me, the best of his work.

5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I believe in the goodness of people. I know that there are always bad people, and that good people will do bad things, but I believe in the light. And I believe in this book--that it's one of the stones holding up this haphazard American culture.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

1. Sarah. We got the same English degree from the same teachers at the same time, and we've known each other half of our lives, but I'll bet our literary souls live in different houses.
2. Dylan. Because of our mutual love of Flannery O'Connor.
3. Cat, who has spent a lot of time on airplanes reading lately.

The thing about your ways and my ways being so alike is that we like to pretend we don't know it. But I've seen that face you make when you'd like to smack me in the mouth. I've seen that face a million times, and I've made it a million too. You and I, looking at each other, are like a particularly vile version of a mirror.
You don't write your letters, you grind them out as though you were armed with a mortar and pestle instead of a pen and paper. I scratch mine into flesh with heated needles. But the end result, it's the same every time.

I told you about one of the times he punched me in the mouth, about how I couldn't even hate him for the act itself, because at least he'd finally done what he'd been threatening for so long. I didn't respect him for it, never that, but I was relieved that the wall had finally broken and we could stop pretending that violence wasn't actually the answer. You asked how I didn't hate him for it, and you smiled with that knife in your eyes when I told you that there are some actions beyond hate.

If the doorbell were to ring right now, and you were on the other side, would I gasp like a fish for words, eyes wide, mouth open? I would. I would curse and founder and wholly lose my cool. That would be what you were expecting, and you would be amused, and you would offer whatever you held in your hands like a consolation prize, pretending like you hadn't planned it this way all along. You're tricky and clever, but I know your ways because they're my ways too.

We are slaves to the groove.

80's Night at Neighbors last night was what every 80's night should be--a bunch of strangers/new best friends squished together, drenched in sweat, and rocking out.
Steph, Cat, and I combined our girl's night out with Andrew's 30th birthday dance party (because this wouldn't be Seattle if we didn't run into people we knew), and had a blast. And we're making this into a tradition, so you're all invited to join us next Thursday. Come on! Don't be a stick in the mud! This is much better exercise than going to the gym.

Also of note:

Performance Anxiety
a group show by Seattle Photo Meetup members
Friday April 1st, 6-10pm
4911 Aurora Ave N (1 block south of the zoo)