Birfday

I just had the greatest birthday party ever.

It was perfect; it was hilarious, the weather basically held out, the food was terrific, the people were amazing, it was just rapturous. We played lawn games (Cups may be a new favorite lawn game, thanks for introducing that Andy), we drank beer, we ate a lot of food (except when it's my party I feel like I never actually eat because I'm distracted by the people, which is a problem when combined with drinking) we laughed, people got to meet each other—all I could have wanted and more. I did get this disgustingly giant bruise on my right forearm that makes it look like I could be the start of some Lifetime Movie but let it be known it is from a frisbee. I'm kind of self-conscious to go out in public with it.
A big thanks to all of you who stopped by; it means so much to me to have the people I care about all in the same area. Thank you Rita for the awesome French Press, which my hungover butt definitely used this morning. I am going to be enjoying that for a long time. Thanks friends for all the cards, treats, jokes, everything. Last year's birthday was severely lacking in company, hope and joy. This year more than made up for it. I am blessed to have you in my life.

Damn Hippies

HA! I feel somewhat validated by this cartoon, in a "I hated SUVs before it was cool" sort of way.

(Taken from The Sunday Washington Post; I do not own this image.)

Drivin' Miss Spooner

For 6 of the past 8 years I have lived an average of 7 hours away from my family; I-81 has become intimately familiar to me during those long solitary treks to and from the homestead (incidentially I have driven all 846 miles of I-81, from Knoxville, TN to the Thousand Islands, NY, just not all at once.) I haven't been home since Christmas and my family has not let me forget it; for this I am grateful. I'm glad to feel missed and loved as I am. Next Wednesday I'm hopping into my little Subaru and once again doing the great seven hour exodus back to LoCo. If my past trips are any indication, this is what the drive will look like:

9:22am: Plan to leave by 10am. Swear I will be out fo the house by 10:15am.

10:45am: Leave house, be very proud of myself that I left in such a timely fashion.

10:50am: Top off my gas tank, believe this is the trip where I will only stop once.

10:58am: Be bored with the drive, put something loud on the iPod which will probably involve Jay-Z.

11:38am: Begin game of guessing to the exact mile how far it is from my house to my parents house and what my gas milage will be for the trip. Forget my bets in about an hour.

12:04pm: Pause iPod, start making phone calls to whomever I can think to call. Get 9 voice mail messages straight, hate everyone for not answering their phones to chat with me at noon on a Wednesday. Realize I'm ridiculous. Keep calling people.

12:44pm: First pee break. Curse my bladder and coffee consumption, consider pulling a crazy astronaut and buying diapers.

1:21pm: Start playing the Choose Cheesy mix as loud as possible with as many wild hand gestures as possible. Sing "Greatest Love of All" at top of my lungs.

2:23pm: Switch to "Slow n' Steady" mix which causes me to curl deep into a furrowed brow and hypothetical conversations. Quite possibly stare at nothing as I'm driving through Roanoke. Realize this is just past the half-way point; get nervous and vow to not stop for any reason. Immediately have to pee.

3:16pm: Stop to pee again. Possibly stretch. Once again bet on total mileage and time. Feel confident that I'll win. Against myself. In a fictional contest. Wave at the exit for Rockbridge. Decide driving sucks and road trips suck and driving road trips alone sucks and you probably suck too, sucker.

3:30pm: Probably start a conversation with myself. Not even probably, I will start a conversation with myself, and I will ask myself questions and answer them in turn. I will find myself charming, witty, sincere and smart. I will think I am a good conversationalist. This will be right around the time I hit Harrisonburg. That will cause me to think about all the people who went to JMU that I could give a shout out to at that moment. I'll just yell "GO DUKES!" to no one in particular. I will only partially mean this cheer.

4:08pm: Bless the inventor of cruise control, get terrible back cramp, have indigestion from questionable gas station purchase from hour previous. Be in love with the Shenandoah Valley. Listen to a random episode of "This American Life" debate whether this will keep me awake or put me to sleep. Realize I will need to fill up cuz I won't make it all the way there on one tank. Curse this fact.

4:40pm: Stop somewhere near Front Royal and fill up. Think Arbys, but do nothing about it.

5:15pm: See exit 315 for Rt 7. Cheer. Exit and feel very strange driving at 55mph. Probably break out into "Old Dominion" by Eddie from Ohio, also with dramatic hand gestures. Get a little emotional driving down the roads I've known my whole life.

5:44pm: Pull into my dad's house. Feel the whole trip was already worth it.

Funhouse Mirror of Your Fears

During Christmas break of my freshman year of college, 10 of us from SU drove 28 hours to Florida to canoe close to 90 miles of the Everglades. It was a trip of a lifetime (and with gas being only 99 cents a gallon, it was a cheap trip too), an adventure I still learn things from almost ten years later.
We were out on the water for 12 days total and during that time we didn't have a mirror, didn't get to shower, didn't even step onto land (we stayed on platforms).
It was so freeing. Not being able to stare at my image was freeing. I stopped caring. I got ok with not worrying how I looked on the outside but how I looked on the inside and I could be honest.
It's like if you stare at yourself too long in a mirror you don't become more beautiful, your blemishes become bigger. It becomes a funhouse mirror of sorts. You spend too much time looking at yourself you are bound to hate what you see.
Me spending too much time looking at me does no good. That is where I need a witness; need someone who helps see the truth and see the lies; who loves me well enough to call out the blemishes,the bullshit and the beauty. Reminds me to stop looking so long at myself that I forget the world around me and those I love.
I had a long conversation with someone today about shame and I'm realizing more and more that the death of shame is honesty and voluntary exposure...bringing it to light to those who are your accountability, your witness, who love enough to not let you live in it. Shame is mold that grows in dark places. It forces secrets, lies, corners, covers, darkness, deceit more than anything else I personally struggle with. Not to say you shouldn't get yourself out of your own damn mess, but support is vital.
This is sorta jumpy, sorry. It's still stewing.

I Hate Drake

Umm....this is just hilarious. You know you wrote like this as a kid. "Mortified" is a live comedy show that lets people read their real childhood writings. Just...wow. "That is the worse curse ever, and he is."
(warning: there are them curse words.)

Turbid

Very often I'll get a word or two in my head and they'll sort of tumble around in there until I can figure out why I'm thinking about them or I get distracted by something shiny. A few weeks ago the word was Turbid....interesting. I'd actually started to write something about it but it was absolute crap so I ditched it but I hadn't stopped thinking about it.

Last night I scribbled something down on a scrap piece of paper after some thoughts.

Turbid: (1) clouded, opaque or muddy, as a liquid. (2) confused, muddled.

When I was in AP Bio in high school we took a five day field trip and did coastal ecology experiments, one of which included testing the turbidity of the water. This uses a secchi disk that's dropped slowly into water; when it's no longer visible that depth is marked. The more turbid the water, the more contaminated it is (by runoff, algae blooms, science stuff). The visibility is low, things are lost. Ever tried to snorkel in a clouded lake? Sucks.

Turbidity...losing myself in a situation, hoping to fake it til it works, forcing a square peg in a round hole, shaving edges and boundaries...hoping to force an ends rather than living the means. Not just in relationships but expectation, occupation, even memory. Letting things get turbid; forsaking definition for comfort or the feeling of safety and losing the better parts of oneself in the process. Stirring up things that should've settled long before. Turbid: a sort of succubus preying on standards and boundaries. I'm astounded how turbid things have gotten recently, how I've let them get there. I wasn't just passive, I was permissive. Hoping clarity is coming.

Big Girl

I got a shout out on Norman the Pug's blog today.
I'm going to be pug/housesitting from Saturday to Thursday in South Asheville, so yay for that.
Anyway, I thought it was a funny shout out.

Old Man

Reasons I may be an old man trapped in the body of an almost 27 year old woman:

1. Yankee magazine. If it is near me, I read it.
2. A love of good bourbon, scotch and whiskey. And a knowledge of their differences.
3. Tools. Love tools. All tools.
4. The persistent cough that plagues me in the morning.
5. Chronic pains that actually do predict the weather
6. A love of John Prine
7. Dark, strong, black coffee every morning. Preferably in the same mug as the previous day. I enjoy consistency.
8. I get really annoyed and short with people I see too much.
9. Repetitive stories
10. Grunts when I stand up from a chair
11. LL Bean duck boots
12. Fly fishing. Love it.
13. “I can probably just do it myself” as a mantra.
14. Really cold hands and feet
15. Owning more than three “Peterson's Field Guides” or “National Audubon Society” guides
16. A sincere, undying love of quiet.
17. Zero interior decoration skills
18. Lots and lots of scars
19. I actually do pull my glasses off and clean them with breath and my shirt
20. Wanting to play a good game of Bocce or croquet for my birthday

Reasons I know I'm not an old man trapped in the body of a nearly 27 year old woman:

1. Don't have hairy ears
2. Don't have hairy nose
3. Still look good in a sports bra
4. Can hear
5. I don't think Matlock was all that great
   

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.

Good Times

I don't have much else to say about this photo other than this: I love my friends, I love JotW and I can't imagine loving life any more than I am right now.

An Open Letter to Zippers

Oh zippers. When you were invented you were revolutionary; you created a whole new way to, say, put on a ladies boot. You stole time back from the sticky hands of incessant buttoning. You changed the world; you were a uniter. Look at the footie pajamas I wore as a child—all would be lost without the trusty zipper to guide me. Remember those candy-cane striped ones with the butt flap? Those were good times, zipper. My extensive denim jean collection owes its fitting to you my friend. To you.

So why do you get cocky, zippers? Why do you get cheap? You were once so reliable, so straightforward—a haberdashery workhorse. Why do you simply give up on the life you have with a garment at inopportune times? At, say, a wedding? Look at all those teeth you use and if you lose a one of them then you, zipper, you give up on any sort of functionality. And not only do you stop functioning, you let all of your previous zipping go to pot. That's shoddy, zipper. Stand by your work. Stay strong in the face of injury.

And don't blame me for this, zipper. We've worked fine together in the past. Is this your passive-aggressive way of saying you think I've gained weight? Is that it, zipper? That now I'm “too big” for you to hold me all together? That's a lie, zipper and you know it. I won't be manipulated by you; I won't play your games.

And so, zipper, I wish I could quit you but I can't. I'd like to tell you that I forgive you for the spectacular wardrobe malfunction you caused me this past Sunday at David and Alana's wedding but it's still a little raw; you spoiled a perfectly good looking outfit with your breaking all the way down my back, causing me to flee with my butt virtually hanging out the back of my dress. You cut me deep, zipper. You let me down. I'm going back to buttons. It may take time to build our relationship but buttons don't hurt me like you did, zippers. Buttons stick around.

(And thank you to Leslie for this little gem:
“Run, Spooner. Run to your car, go home and change, there is no hope for this dress. Meet us at the reception, just run.”)

Link of the Day

Thanks to my friend Andrew for this one...

Stuff White People Like

It's funny because for the most part, it's true. I mean, I like most of that stuff and I'm as white as they come. Andrew thinks its mildly racist and I agree, but sarcasm and being able to laugh at yourself are necessary. I love NPR, David Sedaris, Sushi, Apple products, 80s night, not having a tv, Wes Anderson movies, coffee, organic food, microbreweries....I am that cliche. Awesome.