never ending math equation

On the drive to the ferry all the worries I’d had that he was sick manifested in my open palm against the back of his seat. He was talking about politics and I was trying to heal him with happy thoughts because somehow still at 35 I think that can happen. My ability to believe in spite of all evidence to the contrary is one of my greatest strengths. I know for certain that it can’t hurt and I only know for maybe that it won’t help. So with open hand I thought about him being well and about how health can be shared and I sent it along the invisible wires connecting me to him and him to me. All the while he was making us laugh with perfectly timed jokes. All the time, my hand was pressed against the dark gray leather.

That was Friday.

Then Saturday.

Then Sunday.

And Monday. A birthday party for Erik. I hated the pants I was wearing. And the fishnets dug into the soles of my feet. I painted him a painting in about 20 minutes that I wish I had 40 for instead. Todd was there and oh my. All. I. Could. Think. About. Was. Hating. My. Pants. But then there was this polar bear. And she was reading poems and singing songs. And she said: the only thing standing between me and everything I want for my life is my own self hatred. Drinking my drink and silently loathing my pants - that struck a chord with me. I was like YEAH. I could be a fucking SUPERHERO if I could just stop thinking that I can’t be a fucking superhero. I was having my own mini ah-ha moment when all of a sudden the crowd starts going wild. Hooting. Hollering. Clapping. People were cheering their own potential. Acknowledging their self-loating. WOW! We really are all the same! Just like I HEART Huckabees said! At that very moment, I decided to hate my pants a little bit less.

Shall we bring this full circle? SHALL WE?

On Tuesday I told him about the party, the polar bear, the terrible pants. Him of the open palm against the leather seat. Him of the well timed jokes. I could see he was a little surprised that I’d admit so readily to self-doubt. Self-hatred. Bad pants. And all so cheerfully! I spent the rest of the afternoon not thinking a thing of it when PLUNK! - an email from him. He wanted to “give me the response I deserved” to our conversation and proceeded to pen the nicest and most you-go-girl three paragraphs that have ever been written in my honor. I wept. I wrote back. I remembered my hand on the back of his car seat.

spring forward, fall back down

I sent this to almost everyone I know. Now it's your turn, blog friends.

From: HaikuGirl
Sent: Fri 5/26/2006 5:13 PM
To: All who were silly enough to give me their e-mail addess!
Subject: "There was this one time ... "

Hello Friends, Romans, Countrymen.

As many of you already know, I’ve been slowly churning out a kid’s book illustration portfolio and dabbling with ideas to also write a little something something to submit along with it. Inspiration finally struck and the book is going to be about things that make 6 year olds cry. Not real things like daddy hitting mommy or cats getting run over by cars - - but silly things. Like not being able to have a cupcake for breakfast or being forced to wear velour.

I’m looking for your stories! Remember throwing a tantrum over something as simple as the crust still being on the bread? Witness a kid throw down in Target because they were out of pink toothbrushes? Clue me in! If it makes the cut, I’ll thank you, take you to lunch and hide an Ode To You in the illustration. I also will sign a waver so the Ode does not amount to your 15 Minutes Of Fame because that would seem like a total waste of your 15 Minutes.

Thank you in advance to the kind souls who share their stories. I will be forever in your debt.

xoxo,
HaikuGirl

everything smells like pink

Today, my friend Diana found an entire hard boiled egg in her egg salad sandwich. An apparent lack of Quality Assurance (or QA as the corporate kids like to call it) in egg salad making. She didn’t eat it. Oddly enough, it kinda grossed her out. Even stranger, it kinda grossed me out. So we did what any normal duo would do and photographed it. I’m awaiting the camera phone picture as I write this. And of course, I will share its clammy white entirety with you when it comes.

The egg has been a topic of conversation now for almost 4 hours.

It’s that horrifying to us.

Meanwhile.

My terrible ex-boss interviewed at the place I like to call heaven, i.e. my new job. Diana and I launched Operation Khaki when he was detected on the premises. Khaki because he was such a fan of the drab. His skin, his hair, his pants – all khaki. Had they not been pleated, he might have made the cut for a GapEvilDictator commercial.

Did I mention that Diana use to work at the same place I use to work? We over-lapped by, oh, about three days. Here though, we’ve become pals.

Sooooo.

Operation Khaki consisted of batting eyelashes at security guards to peek at visitor logs, chit chatting to secure elevator rides with the Evil Dictator in order to find out which floor he was going to, scouring the company intranet for possible job postings, making plans to “bump” into key decision makers while sporting our hand made t-shirts that say “Only Goofballs Hire Guys In Pleated Khakis” and so on. We’ve also peed all over the building figuring if the t-shirts didn’t work, our estrogen laced pee would surely keep that woman-hater at bay.

The story continues to unfold. Perhaps the whole egg in the egg salad is some sort of terrible prophecy.

What else. What else.

I’m making some art. I’m buying some clothes. I’m dying my hair a darker shade of brown. It makes me look Belgian. Aw, yeah. ”I'm Belgium!” Again, I said that aloud and wasn’t even drunk. I’m your friendly blogging nation-state!

Did I ever tell you guys that my cat has a really tiny head?

She does. It’s wee.

Did I ever tell you guys that I like to sing jazz standards in the shower?

You should hear me. It’s lovely.

And.

Last thing.

I’m pretty sure that I have magic powers. Ask me nice and I’ll turn your stapler into a monkey.

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.

say cheese

He posted this on his blog!

secret superhero surprise

I’m still coughing. Seriously. Hacking up lungs every time I go from horizontal to vertical or vice versa. I’m starting to crave Robitussin and wonder what type of cookie would taste best dipped in it. Chocolate chocolate chip would compliment the cherry taste well, no? It says on the bottle to consult a physician if coughing lasts more than seven days. Assuming they mean earth days, I should have gone in about a month ago.

Two Wednesdays have passed. That is one more Wednesday than usual.

In spite of my designation as a “sick person” I got gussied up (read: showered) and headed to Wednesday Night Rendezvous Number One with The Boy On Whom I Have Crush. I accidentally on purpose got a little drunk and we somehow wound up thumb wrestling. (Important side note: I have never thumb wrestled a boy I didn’t later sleep with!) I think he officially “made eyes” at me when I first sat down and there were about 10 perfect minutes when our legs were touching from hip to knee. The night ended well enough - us chatting outside the bar and him asking me to stay as I walked away, waving, with Boo to her car. Which rat pack type said always leave them wanting more? That’s riiiiiiight.

We met in a bar and while that’s nothing to be ashamed of, it doesn’t give much for the best man to say during the toast, so I decided to launch a secret admirer campaign to up the cuteness a few notches and give us both something to smile about in the meantime. He has, according to his myspace page, one and a half fake teeth. I do not know the story, nor do I know which teeth. Which is a relief - meaning they are not gold nor made out of anything other than tooth-like material. His smile is flawless. Appreciating it as I do, I stitched up one an a half plush teeth complete with happy faces and mailed them to him at work in a rather plain envelope lacking a return address.

Behold the camera phone foto!


I mailed them on Monday and come Wednesday Number Two, I was all a twitter to see if he guessed it was me. I expected a pointed question about my sewing skills or some clever ploy to get a handwriting sample but upon arriving at the Wednesday Night Rendezvous HQ, he was no where to be found! The horror!! All his friends were there, everyone was chatting and drinking and chatting some more. Boo and I settled in and had a couple drinks and suddenly it seemed a good idea to confess my crush and mad sewing skillz to his office mate. Erik is a fine lad. Friendly, smart and secret worthy. After about 15 minutes of qualifying if he could keep a secret and about 10 more minutes making him promise and double promise and then super promise that he would, I said this: Did any strange mail arrive at your office this week?

His eyes big. Open mouthed smile. Finger pointed at me. He said: That was YOU?!? His mouth was still formed in the “o” shape when The Boy On Whom I Have A Crush patted him on the shoulder and we all yelped like the Beatles had just walked into the room. Erik stood up! I yanked him down! Boo started laughing! Maggie threw herself against the back of her chair! He, well, all he did was look confused and order a drink. About 5 minutes later he sat down and asked what we had all been talking about, Maggie cleverly and without skipping a beat replied: Our periods.

Like the other nights, he and I wound up sitting by each other and talking over the music. Yelling in his ear has overtaken singing in the shower as my most favorite thing to do. The gratuitous touching amounted mostly to high-fives this time around but the night ended with him saying that he would like us to hang out more. Did you catch that? He. Would. Like. Us. To. Hang. Out. More. HECK YES!

On the way out the door I grabbed Erik and found out that he was teased about the mystery crush and stuffed teeth the entire day of their arrival. He tossed out a couple names of possibility and I was not in the mix. But! He had talked about me that week. Erik also said the postmark was too smeared to read so they couldn’t even tell if this girl lived in Seattle or Denver or Nashville. Couldn’t have planned it any better!

I have two more packages in mind and after they are sent, I’m handing him a note the that reveals my secret identity as the maker of plush teeth and other delights. It’s the bravest thing I may ever do. Let’s hope he smiles.

take a picture

The new kitchen looks like all the other kitchens I’ve had and there is something very comforting about that. Old and charming with a big porcelain sink and window looking out to the back yard. Something about it makes me want to mash potatoes and bake a pie. It inspires me to fold the dish towel and hang it sweetly over the oven door handle. Suddenly, I am the maker of cozy. Stand still too long and I’ll wrap you in blankets and turn on cartoons. Watch out! I’ll smooth down your hair with a licked finger and top it off with a kiss on your forehead. Make room in your fridge because you aren’t leaving without a tupperware container full of left overs. That’s just how it’s gonna be.

Aside from the near nervous breakdown the move unlashed and the 30 hours of sleep it induced, it went pretty smoothly. The week leading up to it was filled with hard to get sales calls and me nursing a bad cough. Or perhaps The Consumption. I’d pack and swill Robitussin until which time I’d pour myself into a pair of dress pants and hoof off to the 41st floor of a swanky high rise office tower to pitch the benefits of online advertising with a smile. In three days I probably eeked out a mere 6 hours worth of work and somehow my boss was still pleased with me. God love him.

I slept after that. 18 hours on Saturday. 12 hours on Sunday. Putting away dishes and folding laundry for the few hours I was vertical, pushing the recommended daily dosages on cough syrup and Advil. Come Monday I was shocked to still be sick figuring the germs would have died from sheer boredom if nothing else. Four blocks from here is a drug store containing my next bottle of cherry flavored silence that I’ll be due to purchase tomorrow if my immune system can’t crack this puzzle. But if you think that will stop me from my Wednesday evening rendezvous with The Boy On Whom I Have A Crush, you’d be wrong. I’m going to go on the assumption that he finds cold medicine induced stoopidity charming and thinks Halls Vapor Action breath is sexy.

I have a mountain of art supplies to unpack. I was fairly unaware of the magnitude of my craft arsenal. It seems big enough to require some kind of license or registration with the state. I have enough pipe cleaners to reenact Hands Across America in stick figurine. Enough glitter to glam up the Space Needle. Paint for days. Sharpies by the dozen. I have the evil plan of turning my bedroom into an art studio in which I sleep. Ideas for shelving and storage bins are dancing in my head. I see bulletin boards with tacked up sketches and a big basket of yarn in my future. It’ll be a fine fine day when painting requires little more than sitting down and the skirt I want to make is covering my ass instead of kicking around my head. Making things keeps me happy. And out of trouble. So make things, I will.

The move was the last stressful thing on the agenda. That’s not to say another thing won’t come up and bite me in the ass, but after the break up with the Boy I Should Have Never Been Seeing, the job change, The Event ... it seems as though a break is in order. I’m playing it cool, focusing on art and work and filling my time with as much peace and glee as I can pack in. I’m shooting for a calm that borders on boring and if I even land close to it, I’ll be glad. I imagine my blog deteriorating into shopping lists and detailed cat updates. I can picture myself chatting with clients about how cool it is to watch dust settle. Like really cool, mind blowing cool. Like the plastic bag in American Beauty. You can’t take your eyes off it kind of cool.