a thousand words

I've been a lazy writer.

Lazy.

While this piece of internet real estate has been vacant, over here it's hopping. Fall makes it easy to take pretty pictures and being lazy (as previously established,) I can't pass that up.

However, if I have any hope of selling this blog to Google for 1.65 billion dollars I really need to update it weekly. So things are a'brewin. Perk-a-lating. French pressing.

I'll post something new this weekend. Pinky swear.

i'm blinking off and on and off again

HOLY MOLY.

Writing is hard. Writing stories for newspapers that care about details and “getting things right” is extra hard. My sophomoric effort to the ass story made it’s debut on Sunday. I haven’t read it yet. I just can’t. It’s been the subject of enough e-mails to bring down AOL. It’s been passed from editor to editor with more frequency than a really bad cold. It’s been the inspiration for passionate rants in the parking lot about whether a word should be in italics or in bold. People. That is not worthy of a passionate rant. So this Sunday, I just let it come and go with nary a clinked glass to my second stint as a freelance writer. But let you not be fooled. I’m already signed up for round three.

It’s like San Pellingrino that way. It takes a little getting use to but once you like it you feel significantly cooler.

Want to know what is not cool? Amateur magicians.

I’ve been to many an advertiser recognition party. I’ve worked in media since you were a toddler and I know how they are supposed to go. The recipe is as follows: open bar, decent band. It’s really that simple. You are supposed to flex your market might to snag a band and venue that your competitors could only dream of. Then you get everyone drunk, fill them up on finger foods and watch the magic happen NOT hire a magician! His first trick were those hoops. You know the ones - where you clink them together a few times to no avail and then suddenly - poof! - they are magically linked together. “Can’t you buy those at Walgreen’s?” I asked Chris. “I’m fighting an urge to make balloon animals.” he said back. Thankfully, they nailed the open bar part.

It’s day 16 sans sugar. Feels a little like day 116. Keith seductively licked a Twix for my benefit. I passed up the prettiest little fruit tarts. I’m really really - really - sick of raisins. Day 21 will be on Saturday freeing me up to eat a wheelbarrow full of brownies on Sunday. Or not. The idea behind this little experiment is to reset my sugar tolerance. I want to feel it when I eat sugar. The highs. The lows. I want to face plant into my keyboard 90 minutes after eating a doughnut. I want to find candy too sweet and maybe, just maybe, chose something like an apple over something like a cupcake. I know it’s a long shot. These hopes typed from the fingers of someone who, say just 17 days ago, considered chocolate chip cookie dough a perfectly acceptable dinner.

Uncooked.

What else? What else? Chris accidentally dressed like an American flag one day. I’m undefeated in fantasy football. Clover The Cat tried to communicate an emergency to me using just her eyes. Boo finished her quilting project. That’s huge. BOO FINISHED HER QUILTING PROJECT. You know what that means ... pole dancing lessons are next on her agenda! This week is the corn-off! My coworkers and I are having a contest to see who has the shortest time frame from corn consumption to corn ... ah ... deconsumption? (a.k.a. pooping.) Kay’s having a football party. I’m making Chex Mix!

Woo-hoo!

Wanna come?

sing me the alphabet

I’m quitting sugar for 21 days. Cold turkey. When chocolate chip cookie dough sounds like a good thing to have for dinner, you know you have a problem. Or perhaps a number of problems. I’ve made it through two full days of turning my nose up at all things sweet and delicious. So far so good. Keep in mind that the Hawaiian economy may collapse but I can’t worry about island states when there are peanut butter labels to read. And jams to shun.

Yes. I've shunned jam.

But I don't shun prophetic dreams! People are having dreams! People like Kay. People like Diana. In these dreams I'm hooking up with a certain boy who makes me laugh like a goofball and who also happens to star in the following snippet. Names have been changed to protect the inocent.

Zach Braff: Hi, this is Zach.
Me: You referred to yourself in the third person.
Zach: What do you mean?
Me: This email. It says “Braff doesn’t like that.” and it’s from you, Mr. Braff.
Zach: What’s your point?
Me: Referring to yourself in the third person is kinda ... um ... weird.
Zach: Braff doesn’t think it’s weird.

Then he hung up on me. Click. For comic effect. And today. I caught him looking at my butt.

I finished my story for Gender F. Gender Foosball. Gender Foxy. Gender Fifth of Gin. It’s about crafts and girls. Girls and crafts. If you’re in the knitting know you’ll be able to make a pair of leg warmers by following the bouncing ball. It hits the streets on September 25 and get this - THEY ARE PAYING ME AGAIN. I thought the first time was some kind of accident but apparently it’s on purpose. Even more amazing - I’m gearing up to write something for a section that is not special and is not about women. Hint: It doesn’t start with and G and end in an F. It’s about my friends and their super cool company and social networking sites and saving the world and doing what you love and seeing how many bottles of Perrier you can drink in an hour without blowing up.

The jam I shunned was blackberry.

I’m thinking of going back to school. I dunno for what. Maybe law. Or maybe French. Or art. I need more assigned reading in my life. And index cards. I’m severely lacking in index cards. Preferably scribbled with words in a foreign language and held together with a rubber band. I might just decide to bake raisin-walnut bread instead. Or join a particularly challenging book club. I could always take up Latin again. Nothing cured my want of an education as effectively as a quarter of Latin.

Ah. Those were the days. The frustration. The erasing. The cassette tapes.

I’d write something snarky here, in Latin, if I was able to retain anything that I could use in somewhat normal conversation. Instead, all I can say are things about killing. And herding sheep.

that dress looks nice on you

Painting the hearts on the rocks and typing up the fortunes was the hard part. It was the part that made me cry a little and it was the part that made Boo want to come over for a bit to see what I’d made. I had six little polished black rocks with imperfect bright red hearts painted in the center of each one. In a few hours time they would be holding down carefully worded fortunes and a row of lucky numbers.

You are free to move on.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

When I moved here. See. Right here. I want to justify what happened by pointing out that I was a mess when I moved here. I was bruised. Bandaged. It was all I could do just to go to work. I felt like I’d landed here, accidentally. Spit out of some tornado that was mostly made up of hurt feelings and no where else to turn.

You can have fond memories of bad places.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

Really. I’m guilty of holding on too long. Of allowing mud dragging door mat hit by a bus rinse lather repeat. I had forgotten that I’m pretty much the best version of me that ever has been and instead was remembering that there is a little insecure place in me that thinks I don't deserve very much at all. That little insecure part of me is willing to put up with a lot. And it’s also willing to not be so little sometimes.

You did the best you could.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

So round two happened. An affair. And there I was settling for a hundredth of what I deserved. Talking myself into thinking it was all these things that it wasn’t. Mainly: harmless. And then come a Tuesday in December everything crashes into a brick wall that I didn’t see coming even though. Geeze. I should have. We both should have. It was a lot of disbelief and confusion. The kind of crisis that shows what you are made of. I’m made of some pretty good stuff.

You are forgiven.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

The next month is not a blur. I wish I could say it was a blur. That it was dulled and almost forgotten. But it is not. It was a mix of me being a superhero and me being unable to get out of bed. Disbelief. Deer in the headlights. Vacant. Swimming pools worth of tears. Finding a place in myself that could love something enough to make a rock solid decision in the face of a thousand voices a thousand feelings a thousand possibilities.

You are always welcome here.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

Just like that it stopped. The out of control. The chaos. The toxicity. A few more changes. Adjustments here and there. I came across the calm I had been searching for. A quiet place to gather my thoughts and get over the last couple years, the last couple months. I beat myself up a lot. For being a door mat. For making bad choices. But no more. August 4 was the day I let go. I freed myself. I put 6 happy ever after fortunes out to change the lives of who picked them up but mostly to change mine. I made pretty offerings to other wise dark places and poked around in the idea of forgiveness. Forgiveness of him. But mostly, forgiveness of me.

You have purpose.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

i don't laugh like a french man

Although I've been accused of it.

Here is me trying to leave myself a voicemail about a sales lead I saw while driving around with my friend Chris. In the time it took me to dial the phone, I had forgotten the name of the business. This was funny only because it followed a two minute conversation about how I didn't need to write it down because I would "totally remember" it tomorrow. Yeah. Either that or completely forget it in, like, 20 seconds.

So, here ya go kids, this is me laughing while Chris mocks me.

with a side of punk rock

Oh. I’m tired.

It’s a good tired. Hard day’s work kind of tired. Don’t be fooled, I wasn’t out in a field and my job does not typically require that I sweat. Instead, I was inside juggling about two dozen things including clients, proposals, coffee breaks, contracts and insertion orders. It was three o’clock before I would have guessed it was noon. And come 7pm I was a little cranky, a little hungry and a little accidentally calling one of my clients Karen when her name is Kristen. When you become a liability, it’s time to go home.

Isn’t it weird that I have a real job? I read some of the stuff I write and think, DANG, amazing that I’m employed in, like, a professional position and, like, I make good money and stuff. Because I write about boys and stitch fake teeth. And want a yurt.

I more than want a yurt, actually. I am OBSESSED with yurts. I’ve been rallying the troops, i.e. my coworkers and friends, to start a yurt colony with me. We’d each live peacefully in our own separate yurts and all pitch in and buy a Command Yurt or Yurt HQ where we can gather to watch movies and bake cupcakes. I have the yurt brochure on my desk and make yurt jokes at every opportunity. Chris accuses me of being a yurt instigator. I’m not sure what that all means, but if it has the word yurt in it, I consider it a compliment. Abby found a yurt tree house today so now the colony is looking for woodland property instead of grassy fields near babbling brooks. This whole idea kinda makes me want to start a cult.

Other obsessions: large scale graffiti style knitting, hamsters, scoop neck t-shirts from Old Navy and if soy milk is giving me stomach aches.

I was asked to write two, count ‘em, two stories for the next issue of Gender F. Gender Fuck You. Gender Flunked. Gender Fabulous. Gender Fun! I said yes so eagerly that you’d think they’d negotiate on rate. “Yeah, um, we’re not gonna pay you this time...” I have yet to get the full details on the assignments but I know this much: one of the stories will be on how hipster girls are getting together and getting their craft on. That’s almost as good as it being on yurts. Because if there is one thing I know, it’s ah, being crafty.

What else. What else. I got my hair cut. Used Rock, Paper, Scissors to efficiently settle a dispute. (I lost.) Saw As You Like It in Volunteer Park. Had a sno-cone. Pet a really cute dog. Oh! Chris threw his gum out the car window and it somehow landed on the hood. I got a picture! I made a t-shirt. Finished an iBook cozy and checked on airfare to Europe. Oo la la. Tres jujujuju oui oui oui le croissant, non?

someday somebody's gonna ask you

He said he’d been antisocial and spent the holiday on his roof watching the tops of fireworks peek over trees from miles and miles away. I spent it on my neighbor’s deck watching them explode over Elliot Bay and having my mind wander sometimes to what he was doing and sometimes to how fortunate I was to be surrounded by tipsy friends with s’mores on the horizon. The mint julep had made my cheeks pink from two sips and I bet he was drunk, too. The booms were setting of car alarms and my friend Laura’s daughter was eating red licorice by the handful. Everyone looked so pretty in the darkened glow of red, white and blue.

All the important people were there. Laura. Boo. Charity. Charity is new. Met on 43things and have become fast friends. Together the four of us form some dream team of smart girls with special talents. Laura can speak French and makes an amazing macaroni and cheese. Boo works graphic magic and lights up a room. Charity is an emotionally smart genius who can knit you anything your heart desires. Me. I can paint and embroider dish towels and turn any problem into happy. If only we could fly. If only we could bring about world peace with well designed flyers, little sweaters and pasta dishes. I musta done something right to have found these girls in a city this big and this sometimes rainy. Apparently, I've had at least three lucky Seattle days.

I made a flag cake and baked beans and bought more food than I needed . Way more. Like four times more. I was sending leftovers home with everyone who had a spare arm to carry a zip-lock bag or covered dish. Laura and I made a trip to Costco for the occasion and while a giant jug of ketchup seemed like a good idea in the moment, it’s now turned into a lifetime supply. Same thing with graham crackers. Same thing with veggie dogs. Same thing with jell-o. In event of nuclear holocaust, I’m totally covered. Boo promised that next time I have a party she’ll follow me around and secretly put back 2/3 of everything I have in the cart.

It was my second Fourth of July here. The first one, I was a bit wide eyed and homesick. Remembering very clearly my last 4th of July in Minneapolis. Remembering riding my bike. Remembering the mosquitos. Then, from my perch on Capitol Hill, I watched the fireworks while playing with Sophie’s hair and wondering how exactly I had landed in Seattle. Figuring the reason would make itself known in time. And my only job was to be patient and recognize it when it crossed my path. That’s me still, one year later. Keeping an eye out and sipping summer drinks while sitting on the porch.