we have a whole life to live together you fucker,but it can't start until you call

My art space is almost put together. I have over purchased many things. Things like hole punches. And black embroidery floss. My previous lack of organization has cost me at least $14.74. Maybe more. Shopping was easier than digging through boxes. And my complete surprise at how many hole punches I have would lead one to believe I didn’t know either. But no more. It’s all tidy and I dare say that everything has it’s place. Believe it or not I have an entire drawer dedicated to creepy doll parts and another entirely to glue sticks.

A glue stick related snippet circa 2005:
Amy: Do you have a glue gun I can borrow?
Me: Yeah - I have two.
Amy: That’s one of the reasons why I like you.

The boy! The crush! My sophomoric secret admirer effort was in the form of embroidered dish towels. A gold fish in a bag, a hand on fire and this: ))<>((. All from Me and You and Everyone We Know. Our shared favorite movie. I’ve never embroidered before and the back sides ended up looking like little yarn afros. I was surprised at how much I loved it. The taught hoop and muffled puncture sound of the needle poking through again and again. The picture slowly taking shape on one side and looking like a total mess on the other. There are as many metaphors wrapped up in that as there are dye lots.

The towels!


He knows it’s me now. A two day e-mail exchange with about a dozen pointed questions outted me before I could finish the oatmeal in the would be pinhole camera container. It was the one present that deserved him as much as he deserved it. Did I mention that he’s a photographer? And a good one? He uses a real camera. Develops his own pictures. Must look cute in the dark room red light. I haven’t seen him since he guessed it was me. But we virtually pinky swore that it wouldn’t be awkward. That we were still on for Minneapolis. That we should hang out more.

On Friday we missed each other by about 30 minutes and I spent the night hanging out with his office mates. We bar hopped in Ballard and Erik said he wondered about this time in my life. What it was like to be me during all this. How I held it in my head. When he said it, it seemed rhetorical. Two days later, I’m not sure how I’d answer anyway. Other than I like being asked stuff like that. And hey, let’s make it into a movie. And you know what else, I wanna pick the soundtrack.

June 25. That’s the day my first ever published piece of writing hits the streets. It’s a sidebar in the Sunday paper. Boo sent this very blog to an editor and I was asked to write something for a quarterly supplement. My assigned topic: butt acceptance. As in: work it. As in: shake that thing. As in: spankable. First draft is due tomorrow. It’s ready to go. Sitting on the desktop. I think it says “hi.”

Lots else happened. I should have written last week. I made a close friend out of a casual one. I bought a pair of brown shoes. I met this guy Adam and think Boo and I found the sidekick we’ve been looking for. A 23 year old guessed I was 21. I suddenly realized it was possible to have a favorite 23 year old. I saw a band play in a church. I saw a band play in a bar. A member of Sound Garden held open the door for Boo and I and said “Good night, ladies” as we stepped on though. It’s been a good week.