Two Months Out

I make no illusions about grief. It has now been almost two months to the day of Natalie's death, and I can't say I've begun to learn this language at all. If anything I'm discovering more words I didn't know I didn't know. Grief comes in such tiny splinters that I don't expect them until they are in me—under my fingernails come tiny shards of a life I so dearly miss and they do their best to double me over in pain. The other week I cried for an hour about an AOL email address. Seriously. I realize it sounds ridiculous but that is the thing with splinters: outside of us they are so tiny, but when they are where they are they are monumental. The night I got back to Virginia from a very hard trip to Canada I went over to Nat and Mike's to try on some of her old clothes (yeah nothing emotional about that endeavor) and in all my mental fortitudes I wasn't prepared for the coats to smell like her.
They smelled like her. Her hands were in the pockets.
I felt them there.
I can't touch those coats now because they feel like a hug and I lose it. They are on a chair.

The trip to Canada was agonizing because I was with men who didn't seem too keen on the business of living. All of them had gone through divorces or rough marriages or wars or other losses, all of them exhibited no signs of zest. At times it felt like I spent the trip trying to convince them to keep living. Maybe I am more sensitive to it right now because of Natalie, but to them life was more a chore to be endured than a gift to be enjoyed. I just watched a woman with a love of life lose it and then to spend 10 days with men who have life and seem so keen to trash it was, in a way, utterly profane. It was offensive. I wanted to scream at them for being so careless with something I know others have fought so hard to keep. I didn't.

There is much to say about the trip to Canada but I don't think this is the place to do it. Coming back I felt like my heart was sunburned, rough, raw, flaking and peeling, hot and sore to the touch. I felt like I left pieces of my heart strewn along the highway, on the shoulders of those I hugged, on pillows where I slept. I picked at it in moments of quiet and regretted it in moments of movement. It was never comfortable.

I realize that living can be unsexy; it is by its very nature., because living is sustained and sexy isn't. Living isn't some big constant adventure, it isn't one high after another, because living is real, and to be real, it needs to be rooted and there is nothing sexy about rooting. Roots aren't pretty. They are dirty, they are unseen, they get no glory. But they endure.
And lord, when roots are true, do they produce some beautiful flowers.

Father Figured

I don’t write about my dad as much as I should.

My dad is a hero of mine, and I say that without a sense of irony or exaggeration. He is entirely human (and thus, flawed) but, in my eyes, the sun rises and sets with him. I unabashedly love my father.

My dad moved out of the house when I was 8. The moment he sat me down to tell me he was leaving is one I will forever hold, not because I want to, but because it was such a benchmark. Likewise, I remember the day we loaded up the moving truck, I remember the smell of the cigars he smoked as we did the drive back and forth from his new house to what was now my mother’s house. I remember the day when I realized he wasn’t coming back home.

But the weekends spent at the farm with him were full of magic and adventure. He taught me to shoot, he converted an old chicken coop into a clubhouse for us, he helped me build the model rockets that we’d launch and chase across the fields. For my 15^th birthday, he bought me my first guitar.
I know that he has tried to be the best father he can be, and for me he has mostly succeeded. Much of what I know and love is because he taught me. Camping, canoeing, books, plants, the Redskins, guitar, music: the stuff of him in me. I carry that with pride.

It is difficult to be so geographically far from him. I moved in with my dad two weeks after I turned 17 and have called his house my home ever since. There were weekends when I’d choose to stay in and hang out with him instead of going out with my friends. His back porch is a sanctuary of sorts. He is my friend.

In a few weeks I’m meeting up with Dad in Virginia and then we are riding together to Canada, where we’ll camp for 8 days on a remote lake with other family members. I haven’t been on vacation with my dad since I was 16. I’m so looking forward to the time spent with him.

The Thin String

Recently I’ve read a slew of books that have characters with a sense of place; they come from a culture rooted in some geographic area, a language spoken to their people and understood.

I don’t have that; I’m an American.

Which is to say I am a cultural mutt.

On one side I have relatives arriving in America in 1637. I have a straight line from there to membership in the DAR (should I want it), to a diary from my Civil War veteran ancestor, to census documents from 1890 on up to 2010. It is an easy shot. I am named after one of these ancestors. I know nothing about her.

Yet it is a shot with no identity. In America, we love to say what we are. We are Italian. We are Jewish. We are Cherokee and Mexican and Polish. I believe I am a mix of British, Dutch, Alsatian, Scotch, Irish, Swedish and Iroquois but nothing about me confirms that. My family has no traditions, no meals we share or prayers we say that have passed down from generation to generation like a loving quilt of identity and home. We don’t have those words that tie us to each other. Every holiday is a rudderless experience; they are new each year and thus wide open. Nothing has any sense of sacred.

We have one phrase from my Swedish grandmother. She is the only one of my relatives of any “pure” culture heritage, and thus the only one who has any. What I know in Swedish is a toast she taught my mother, a silly little bar song to celebrate all the pretty girls in the room. That’s it. 9 words. And the grandchildren, me included, are so attached to this, because it is something. It is a clue; it is our family’s secret language that ties us to what we wouldn’t otherwise know.

Maybe that is it: culture ties us to history, ties us to family and ties us to the sacred. That commonality tells us who we are by telling us where we came from; it serves as the string, collecting the beads of each life and each generation.

Fitting

I went to church by myself yesterday.
I am enjoying my new church; it is a strange feeling as I can’t remember a time when I liked church as much as I am right now.
But it was the holiday, and I was there alone. I don’t think I’ve ever gone to church on Easter alone before; in college my church was full of friends and in the years since I’ve either not attended church on Easter or I’ve gone with friends. This was a first.

As I was getting ready to go, my roommate came home. She’d just met her boyfriend’s parents and she walked in with tears in her eyes. My immediate response was to find out who I needed to kill/shun/threaten. She smiled and said, “No one. I just really, really miss my family today.”

I realized that I did too.

It was with this thought that I went to church and took a pew toward the back. Two pews in front of me sat a family: a daughter about my age and her parents. Half-way through the service she smiled at her father and put her arm around her mother to hold his shoulder. He smiled and did the same and they sat there, the three of them together, arms holding each other into this family. It was sincere and shockingly intimate. I couldn’t stop looking at them and could feel this sadness simmering inside me, bringing tears to my eyes. I snuck a photo of them because I knew I’d want to write about it later.

Easter is about redemption, about defeat over darkness, about good news fulfilled. In the midst of a suffocating sense of loss there came hope and life, in the midst of seeming abandonment lay love never before seen. It is fitting it is celebrated in spring; life lives again personified.

I left church with the intense belief that I am loved beyond reason but the sincere desire to share in it with someone. I went home to an empty house, sat on my deck and spent my day in virtual silence, save for the birds. I could hear life as it kept on living.

Speak Through the Snow

I’m from Virginia and I learned from an early age that snow was God’s sign you stay home.

No exceptions.

If there is snow, God gave you a bonus Sabbath or two—take the time off, read a book, sled, nap; it’s a gimmie day. Don’t drive, don’t move too quickly; don’t attempt anything that could be construed as chores.

In New York, snow isn’t a sign of anything but a season. God didn’t speak through snow. Life doesn’t slow down, schools don’t close; offices stay open and work keeps happening. My years up there taught me how to drive in snow but made me lose some of my love of the fluffy white stuff. The common things lose their wonder.

This winter has changed and brought a bit of that love back; this past weekend helped.

The snow started on Friday afternoon. There were threats of 8 to 12 inches and the whole area was buzzing with anticipation. Grocery stores were selling out of eggs, milk, bread and beer; liquor stores did business like it was the holidays. I left work at 3, jettisoned home to quickly pack and begin the trek to the Big Blue Barn, a converted barn that is now a beautiful apartment housing three brave friends.

It took me one hour to go 8 miles.

8.
Miles.
GAH.

I was joined at the barn by the usual suspects of Doug, Justin and Tara (who brought her 3-month old puppy, Rooney) and with barn residents Jenna, Betsy and Emily (and a few other characters who popped in and out) and we settled in for our own version of a winter wonderland in a landscape covered in 12” of snow.

We cooked huge meals of spaghetti, pizza and lasagna. We had bacon and eggs and cinnamon rolls and knockoff captain crunch; we ate way too many cookies and chips and dips and we drank leisurely.

We watched movies. Lots of movies. And TV.

We played games like Scattergories and Farkle. We made unreasonable consequences for losing.

We went sledding. A lot. We injured ourselves in the process. We laughed so hard we snorted. We chased the puppy through the house and through the snow and gushed over him when he’d pass out from exhaustion.

Saturday night was the full moon and when it would pop out from behind the clouds the sledding track would be lit as if a spotlight had been shone upon it.

As if God was enjoying the snow right along with us.

Burn With the Fire of Ten Million Stars

The 'major motion picture event' known as “Fame” came out the year before I was born. I don't remember a time when I didn't know this, didn't know that Irene Cara played CoCo in “Fame”, I didn't know all the words to “I Sing the Body Electric”. I thought everybody did. It was the sort of knowledge that comes from the deep place of knowing something before you have the conscious to realize you didn't at one time know it. Like peanut butter, or Mr. Rodgers.
I know all this because I have an older sister.

My oldest sister is 9 years my senior, so even she was too young to be obsessed with the “Fame” LP like she was when I was a toddler but that didn't stop it from being played ad nauseum. My other sister and I kept up the tradition long after the eldest had tired of it. Bubby and I would pull out that big black and red disc jacket, knowing of the movie only what we could glean from the photos inside the cover and the words of the songs. In fact, it's all we knew of New York City. Those photos are still so vivid to me, our eyes pouring over every detail.

Here is what our skills of observation were able to collect:

1. We knew it was gritty; there was a photo of kids dancing on cars. IN THE STREET. Gritty.

2. We knew it contained dancing. In like outfits and stuff.

3. And there was a guy with big red hair. Who may or may not have a crush on the girl who is sitting in the snow next to him in that one photo.

4. It may contain dogs. There was a song about dogs in the yard, but we weren't sure where dogs fit in with the dancing storyline. Could be a dead end.

5. We weren't sure what “The Body Electric” was, except an exercise show on PBS but that didn't seem right.

6. There was a character named Leroy, as evidenced by the photo of him in a cut-off sweatshirt with said name ironed across the front.

7. It contained New York City, Boys AND girls, which means one thing: kissing.

And even as I have gotten older these are still the basic facts about “Fame” that I've kept. The first song I learned on guitar I got from that familiar “Fame” soundtrack. This is what I knew of “Fame”, what was safe about it, and that is what I loved. It wasn't until this year that I got around to watching all of “Fame” and let me tell you, NOT a kids movie. Strong references to drug use, pornography, abortion, junkies, homophobia and, most shocking of all, Freddie Prinze SENIOR. I didn't even know there was a Senior. I just knew about the one in “She's All That.” To top it all off that red haired guy in the movie would lose his hair and in twenty years end up as Dr. Romano on ER and there lose his arm (and later his life) to a freakin' helicopter. In some ways it is like a childhood safe space has been shaken up; concussed into a present mindset. Yet in other ways, it's hilarious. Watching the movie I found myself saying, “Oh! That's that one photo!” as if the movie supplemented the soundtrack and not vice versa.

I heard they've released a new version of FAME. I probably won't see it. I don't have the same connection to it as I do the original one. And to be honest, the story in my head will always be better than the one that played out on the screen.

Dual Citizenship

I have ten cousins and five siblings.
My mother is one of four; father is one of five.
So far this sounds like the beginning of an SAT word problem.
Ten cousins. That's it. My siblings and I double their cousin numbers.

I'm not close to cousins on either side. I didn't grow up near cousins; I saw them on holidays or random weekends or not at all. I have cousins I don't recall ever meeting; cousins I couldn't pick out of a line up, cousins I haven't seen in over five years. I don't know my extended family past a perfunctory point. And there are only ten of them.

But Facebook has done its best to bridge all distances.
My final sibling joined FB the other day. The five of us are now like Captain Planet & the Planeteers; I'm making my brother be Ma-Ti, the stupid kid with the power of heart. That kid was lammme.

With this fun coming togetherness crap the inevitable reunion banter begins. A cousin (one of the ones I don't quiiiite remember meeting) sent out an email to the rest of us, enthusiastically declaring we should have a big ol' family reunion because look at us, we are all on FB and it's high time we hung out. I don't think our parents have even attempted a family reunion since 1984. I saw my aunt for the first time in 20 years at my grandfather's funeral.

I understand the idea, I really do.
Family is family; blood is thicker than water, and on.
Sorry to be Debbie Downer here, but I don't know you. What we have in common is our parents are siblings; you know less than nothing about me and I can't say I know a thing about you. If you can't tell, I'm hyper negative about the idea of getting to know my cousins and I've been racking my brain as to the why. I usually thoroughly enjoy meeting people and making connections but to this I have a visceral heel-digging reaction. This is my theory as to the why.
When my parents divorced, my mother's family rallied around the flag of the country YourExIsABigFatBastard-ilvania while my father and his family choose the smaller country of NoGoodCrazyChristianBitch-instein. While two very worthy countries on their own, those who were born holding both those passports were unfortunately stuck like Tom Hanks in that equally unfortunate movie, “The Terminal.” But the viewers of that movie had to suffer for two hours; my siblings and I suffered...well...I think I still do. My aunts and uncles and grandparents fought bravely for their respective countries, and so family visits consisted mainly of listing to my family load cannons of hate and fire them, aiming them to destroy one who was half of my genetic material. I was eight years old. Didn't make me like my extended family much. I felt like I was evidence of a past mistake made by my parents; “look there's that reminder of that marriage implosion to the spouse we never thought was good enough for our kid/sibling. Maybe she'd like a popsicle.” With the exception of one fabulous uncle & aunt, not a single one of my parents’ siblings has ever tried to know a thing about me and that tastes a bit like bile. So, strange cousins, why now? What is so great about our genetic material that we should come together to see the ways in which it manifests itself? There were years and years when I needed family so badly and it wasn't anywhere to be found; why the hell should I give it audience now?
I'm happy with my siblings; our personalities and dramas and personal universes make five seem all the larger. Though the five of us have never lived together under one roof, we still manage to make weather systems whenever we gather. That is enough. I've seen their two passports; that's all the family I need.

This is not meant to knock any cousins. I'm reflecting on my reaction to the invite, not to the people themselves. I'm sure the ones I do not know are very nice.

Fighting Basics for Artists

There is a blessing and a curse to being in a family of creative types. We can’t turn off the creativity and it seeps into everything, from our doodles and humor to, in the case of my brother, sister and I, how we fought each other.
It wasn’t just a slap here or a tripping foot there; it was hours and days spent figuring out a way to accidentally kill each other. We were viscous. Knock down, drag out, attempt-to-throw-out-a-window viscous. My mom wouldn’t let me take karate in 6^th grade because she was sure I’d permanently damage my little brother; she knew I didn’t need the edge that karate would have given me. I was shocked and disappointed she didn’t believe in me/saw through my plan. She tried strict rules but the three of us would figure out ways to de-tangle what she saw as a water-tight web and still manage to inflict the maximum physical harm. Mom said we weren’t allowed to hit each other so instead we’d pick up our sweet, mild-mannered cat, Sam, shake her up and then launch her legs-first at whoever had incurred our wrath in hopes that she, in her airborne panic, would latch onto their faces. Usually, this worked splendidly. Sam would screech in mid-air and then land with her claws wrapped around my brother’s head. And I didn’t cause the injury, Sam did. I didn’t touch Elliott’s face, I don’t know how those scratches got there, Mom.

And you thought you and your siblings had cat fights....

Hockey Hair

My mother was too cheap to buy my brother a bicycle helmet.
The three older kids had survived just fine with nare a protective covering over their sweet noggins but the first and only boy in the family necessitated a hard candy shell and mom didn't want to spring for it. Brother was constantly banging his head/arm/leg/face on something be it stationary or by the hands of his older sisters and when bike riding came into the fold a helmet was a logical step.
Mom was an avid yard-saler and would often come home with things we did not want/need/use and she's proudly show off the new-used purchases' wonders to the bemused faces of her skeptical children.
One Saturday mom came home with a bright orange-yellow hockey helmet. It was the color of the crayon a child would choose to use to draw in the noonday sun; a color that causes conspicuousness to hide. It was an adult small, much too big for Brother's 6 year-old noggin but this oversight hardly mattered. Brother's head would be protected, and that protection cost about 75 cents. When we put the helmet on him we'd have to cinch it all the way down, so that the ear holes covered his cheeks and the two parts of the buckle would be only about an inch apart, hanging loosely under his chin. Once that was as tight as we could get it (which wasn't much) he'd be set to go for a play. It would sit so far back on his head that it really only covered the back quarter of his melon and his big ears hung out the sides, making him look very much like a wing-nut. An orange-capped wing-nut.
We lived on a very quiet, very seldom driven gravel country road, but this helmet situation would have embarrassed my brother even if his only witnesses had been the trees. He refused to wear it.
I couldn't blame him, I pretended I didn't know him when he was wearing it, but then again I pretended I didn't know him all the time so my opinion on the matter hardly counted for much.
My older sister decided she wanted to help out Brother. She thought maybe if we decorated the helmet he'd be more inclined to wear it. I don't quite remember the details of how it came about, but I do remember my sister proudly displaying the new and improved version of the Hockey Helmet from Heaven, this version entirely decorated with glittery puffy paints. You know the kind.
Her version of humor was to paint on the back of the helmet one of those big reflective orange triangles one sees on the back of tractors or other slow-moving farm equipment that travels the roads, so that when Brother did finally wear the helmet out on the road, he'd be sporting the same signage as that John Deere down the street.
I called my sister to ask her what else she remembers painting onto the hockey helmet but all she could recall were pink glittery swirls along with the orange triangles so that didn't help much. My brother remembered about the same, and validated the previous comment about the pink glittery swirls. Brother also recalled when we'd roller-skate in our unfinished basement and he'd have to wear the helmet and we'd all sing and dance to “Stop in the Name of Love” as it was the only song we knew that contained traffic signals.
The end.

Send in the Robots

I can't really post the whole story behind this photo, but really it is a story you should hear and I'll email it to you if you ask but...this is what a robot mask looks like.
And a bit of what my holiday home with the fam entailed...

My god.

A Pocket of Skipping Stones

The party on Saturday was hilarious and late and dance-filled and memorable and a bit fuzzy and I still can't hear out of my right ear so it was, to me, in mono. It is like half of my head is in a constant state of sinking, like my brain is threatening to capsize. Every sound is underwater. I've found I am engaging less as I hear less; I fear I'll miss a conversation or don't want the attention that comes from asking people to speak up or repeat a comment.
Also: I've stopped singing in the car. I always sing in the car, but what I hear now is tinny and distant and my voice isn't familiar and I quit singing.
Yesterday I finally began my Christmas shopping and I traveled around town, collecting gifts like they were skipping stones. All are small and thoughtful, as they should be. Once again the whole family will be in town so my sister is in overdrive organizing the duel holidays that come with duel houses. I hope my hearing will improve before next week; I'll be disappointed if Christmas came to be merely a spectator event for me. I am detached enough as is.

Fancy Free

It seems like every time I speak to my mother some new revelation pops up. Last week I was catching her up on trips, etc when she asked me quizzically and in all sincerity, "What exactly do you DO with your time?"
I realized that my mom doesn't really know anyone my age who isn't/wasn't married and/or has children.
At my age she had three children.
Me? I have Cranium tear-away calendar.
Just a somewhat hilarious revelation.
How does she relate to me? I worry about money and where I should go get dinner and what I'm doing with my life just like most people but that marriage/children thing is quite the chasm.
I told her, "Well, I go out to dinner a lot, hang out with friends a lot, go on spontaneous adventures fairly often, sleep in as late as I want on my weekends, I'm terrible at cooking full meals for one person, I read, I waste time online, I'm not good at getting back to my leftovers...that's about it."
And she told me I was footloose and fancy-free.
Trust me, nothing fancy I own was free. That shit expensive.


Photo of the week: Mike and Natalie and Mike's new smartcar. He's been drooling over one for almost two years and finally got off the waiting list and got his own! He's about 6'2" and says it's roomy. Natalie is my dear mentor and friend and all good things. This photo made my day.

A Series of Sentences That Have Nothing To Do With Each Other

Yesterday morning I saw three hot air balloons floating in the cloudless blue above the just-starting-to-turn Smokies and I sighed and was in love.

When Tina Fey's Palin made fun of people playing drinking games with the VP debate I laughed because I was guilty of that.

I leave for London and Paris in three days and I am stressed about travel.

My father and stepmom came to AVL on Thursday night for dinner and didn't meet a single of my friends and it breaks my heart to have had them here without knowing it as I do.

My youngest sister turns 15 on Wednesday and I suddenly feel creaky and unbearably old.

I believe there is a timelessness to "Find the River" by R.E.M., the last cut on "Automatic for the People"

My summer shoe collection is much more extensive and feminine than my winter shoe collection.

I feel like all I do in conversations is tell stories, like all I am is just a bundle of stories...maybe I am and maybe that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

My friend Paul sent me the following text: "Do a search for 'ferret' & 'hat' under google images sometime. I won't tell you how the subject was broached initially." and I burst out laughing without even doing the search (which is very funny) because it was just so bizarre and typical.

I have been needing more time alone lately than normal, and I normally need a lot of alone time.

Why is it that blogger (which is owned by Google) doesn't recognize the word "google" and just started to recognize "blog"?
(mystery solved...capitalize Google and it's all well and good)

Lastly, this is what I look like when I do an impression of Seth, my dear friend (and a 260lb man)...now that I know what I look like when I'm thinking uber fat man, I'm a little creeped out.

Update on Thud

Thank you to everyone who offered prayers for my little nephew Thud. I got an email update from my sister, telling me that they went back to the doctor to make sure there wasn't anything injured and the only sign of any problem was minor bruising on his torso.

That's it. This is Thud (with one of his brothers, his sister and friend) the day after the fall:

It's not even as bad as my sister's toe, which is straight up broken.
This is a photo of the back of their house to give a perspective of how far he fell (top window to the deck):
This is the view from the window to the deck...and he broke NOTHING. He literally hit the deck. Astounding. I get the shakes just thinking about it.

Find Me Home

I love maps.
I am genetically bound to love maps; I come from a long line of hobbyist and professional mappers. As soon as I learned to read words I learned to read a map. I started as the navigator for family trips when I was probably 7 or 8. I just can't stop staring at maps. I used to have stationary made of old topo maps. I am that bad.
My grandfather is credited with being one of the inventors of the 3D relief (topographic) map during WWII; I have rather fond memories of the old foam models of much of SE Asia hanging on the walls in my grandparents' basement. Talking to him about maps was learning another way to communicate. I just love how much information can be translated through something so straightforward as a map, like it is a cartographic Rosetta Stone.
Just as I have an undying love of maps, I have an uninhibited disgust of GPS systems.
I think they are lazy, insulting, and encourage and even enable people to be more helpless. Learn to read a map, you moron. Learn the cardinal directions, figure out which way you are facing, and save yourself. Maps aren't getting their credit, shiny new GPS is taking away all of their thousands of years of thunder.
And with that I have a confession...I went to visit my father and stepmother on Monday night and was driving home yesterday and took a wrong turn. I had been looking at maps all day with my dad (to plan out their week) so I knew basically where I was, but I have a navigator program on my phone I've never used and thought this was the time to check it out. Yes, a GPS device.
I have become what I despise.
Observations:
(1) Creepy how my phone new exactly where I was. Very big brother.
(2) It was distracting having a screen to look at to tell me where to go; my eye was drawn to it repeatedly, thus I am too ADD to use such a program.
(3) There was something comforting about being able to tell my phone to find me a way home and it did. I felt a bit like a child crying "I wanna go home!"

I like having a map function but the GPS was a bit too much. I don't need that much hand holding. So there is my compromise I guess. I can save myself, just need a little nudging.

Shoes for Bros

My brother is walking around the house wearing these shoes. I'd like to nominate them for the "awesome or apocalyptic" list. They are more awesome in person.

When I was Younger, So Much Younger Than Today

Ahh yes, the station wagon. My first memory of our family car was a 1970s solid chocolate brown Ford wagon, an 8-person land yacht with that way back seat that let you look at the people driving behind you and create elaborate games as to what they will do when you:

(1) Smile

(2) Wave

(3) Give them the peace sign

(4) Flick them off

And got approximately 8 miles to the gallon. Ah yes, the early Reagan years...

Well our awesomely American beast was so 1970s cool that it didn't have one of those new-fangled cassette players, no. We had an 8-track player. Booyah.

I distinctly remember one of my mother's favorite 8-tracks was "The Best of the Carpenters" in all its schmaltzy glory and the one song in particular I recall is Karen Carpenter covering The Beatles' hit "Help!". My mother, being my mother, did not hide the fact that Karen Carpenter had recently essentially committed suicide and my impression of that song is sitting in that very back seat with my sister, "Help!" playing on the sweet 8-track stereo and being totally baffled how no one could have helped this poor girl out...I mean she sang about it. Did no one get it? And thus the song is really freaking morbid to me and I kind of hate it. And I think my mom also had an 8-track of Buddy Holly so for a long time I thought that if you were a successful singer you probably had to die first.
Here's to you, early 1980s.

Dodge These Bullets

• With the addition of the queen sized bed (thank you Leslie) I bought two new pillows. In other news, I'm still domesticated and mildly boring.

• Our Quizzo team finally won a pitcher for the best team name. This only took 7 months. And before you ask, yes, yes I do have friends. That I don't pay. Much.

• What ever happened to that cute girl from “Northern Exposure” with the mole and who could do that eye brow lift thing? The one opposite Aidan (I'm sorry even 5 years before “Sex and the City” John Corbett was Aidan. He still is. Always will be. That Aidan gets around) up in Alaska? Where the heck has she gone?

• Riding high on the lazy river-like tsunami of confidence from the McSweeney's print, Easter afternoon I got to seriously delve into some writings and I actually finished a short story. “Story” is a loose description, it's really a very stylized monologue from an old woman living on the coast in Maine. I like it, but I'm the only person who has ever read it. Time will tell whether it is any good or just adjective-heavy word vomit. Sometimes I feel like a Chimp playing with his own poop. Some may call it art, others call it “Hey, that monkey is playing with his poop,” while the monkey is thinking, “Wheeee!”. How's that for an artist's statement of purpose.

• Lately I've been stuck on the song “Sons and Daughters” by the Decemberists. I've had this song for over a year, but it's got new life. I heart Colin Meloy. He go wit his nerd self. Only person I know that can use words like “dirigible”, “Legionnaire”, “indolent” and “colonnade” in songs and still sound earnest.

• Friday night I had a very vivid dream that I was thrown into running a trail race that I hadn't trained for. In the dream it was a 7 mile race and I was three miles in and breathing hard. That's when I woke up having an asthma attack. I don't know if the attack spawned the dream or vice versa, but while I wasn't breathing I marveled at my subconscious' imagination. If I'm ever not breathing ask me where my inhaler is and I'll try to tell you. Or just yell “Does anyone have an albuterol inhaler!?” and maybe someone will throw one at you.

• Murphy and Romano: two days. Bad Idea Girls take on the Dirty South. Look for highlights. There will be many I'm sure.

• I got an email from Nat the other detailing how her drive back to her house was interrupted by a cow giving birth on her road. It got out of the fence and was giving birth, right there in the road. That is the part of my hometown that I truly miss. That sort of thing isn't exactly abnormal and part of some of my most fond memories. Being stuck behind cows was a normal excuse for being late to school.

• I don't think I've loved my family more than I do right now. After the McSweeney's thing, I got a voicemail from my mom that said, “It's mom, I just wanted to let you know that I'm thinking of you and I'm proud of you. I love you, bye bye.” I cried a little bit, saved the message and now look forward to having it come up every few weeks. This message is a miracle. A true, heaven sent, blind man can see, deaf man can hear sort of miracle. I am so thankful for it.

• So the question about the obligation of citizenship that you all did a fine job of not answering is becoming an essay on its own. And if its any good and it goes anywhere, I'll make a point to not reference you. No no don't feel like you need to thank me. I know I'm gracious.

• Still don't get the obsession over fancy handbags. Don't get it. It must be how gay men feel about women. Sure they are nice and all but nope, not feeling anything either way.

In Between Pages

My bible has a whole bunch of crap shoved in it, and I don't mean books like Leviticus or Numbers, I mean actual junk (Robin: that was a bible joke. It's OK.). Tonight as I was flipping through it I started to think about some of the stuff I have in there. One thing is the above sticker. It's from when I worked for the environmental consulting firm during college. We had a whole collection of hazardous waste stickers for shipping soil samples and they let me keep this one. It makes me laugh; I wanted to put it on a t-shirt for quite a while. And yet I found that if I keep it in my bible, it reminds me that though sometimes I'm feeling hazardous and irritant, I'm still known and loved. That even when I'm prickly, I'm still cared for. Well, and when I don't feel like reading I think of the whole task of sitting down and shutting up (which I first accidentally wrote as shitting down and sutting up, which I also do) as one of annoyance and I'm irritated. Oh well. It's a conversation piece at least.

One of the other things in my bible is this film strip. It's from a photo booth in the lobby of the Spaghetti Warehouse (or Whorehouse, thank you Romano) where my sister, brother-in-law, niece and mom joined me for my college graduation dinner. We were waiting for a table and thought, “Why not?” so the five of us piled in the photo booth and this is what came out. It's been in my bible as a bookmark ever since. I simply love it. We look ridiculous and I'm convinced it captures us better than any posed shot ever could.

Mitts Up

As most of you know I moved in with my father and my step-mom right after I turned 17 (why is a long story and a blog isn't the place to tell it). It was probably the single most significant moment of my life, that move. I was on a field trip with yearbook when I found out I was allowed to move and came back with a suitcase packed for six days in hand. My mom and stepdad wouldn't let me get any of my stuff from her house, so I lived out of that suitcase for close to two months. My stepmom took me shopping for clothing, underwear, etc so I could live that summer in something besides what I'd packed back in late May. There is this roller-coaster at Kings Dominion (shout out, VA) that is entirely inside and completely in the dark. I love roller-coasters but I hate this one, because I can't see what is coming next, there isn't a way to brace my head and neck for the next loop or sharp curve. It is so painful when there is no way to prepare for what's next.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my family in metaphor. I got a phone call Saturday from my step-mom, telling me goodbye. She's leaving my dad after 15 years or so, moving back to Massachusetts in two weeks time. She's been a big part of home for 10 years. How weird is that? A part of my home calls to say goodbye, to not be seen again. We aren't close enough that we'd ever visit each other but she was there for the most seminal moments in my life. God, she got me ready for prom (and got me drunk while doing it...well done), came to both of my graduations, knows all my friends, served as a go-between for a 18 year old girl and her father (very necessary), is responsible for my love of both J.Crew clothing and Victoria's Secret underwear (too much info? Too bad) as well as champagne. For most of the time we knew each other, we got along fabulously. Almost two years ago my dad called me to say that they were splitting up (Read the original post here. It's much better written than this one), but it was my understanding that since then there had been drastic improvements; that they were working it out. Guess not. I think this is why I've historically been so cynical of relationships. Gotta keep your mitts up, kid. I tried this past year to put my guard down, and I'm thankful I did it, if only to learn what it's like. I would love to walk through life unarmed. Well, at least life is never boring. I'll take just about anything over boredom.