Dear Readers of the Internet,
Lately I have found myself in a tremendously flummoxed mental smorgasbord dilemma. It goes about like this:
What am I doing?!
Hopefully, friends and comrades, you think the same thing, else you wouldn't be reading this (and I don't why you do, frankly, but I also don't know why Rob insists on leaving three sundried tomatoes in the pack of sundried tomatoes because what good are three sundried tomatoes gonna do anybody? Five sundried tomatoes, maybe, but three? That's just useless).
But that flummoxed state of mind is really nothing new. I find myself thinking it in nearly all situations. Examples: When I decide to ride my bike more than the usual jaunt around the neighborhood. Usually the W.A.I.D. moment arrives when I am about to bike across a hideously busy intersection and my legs feel like they are made of straw and the bike seems to have somehow packed on a couple pounds. More than likely, most of the folks driving, seeing this lobster-hued half-midget struggling-to-gain-momentum on a blue-child's-bike through their fast-approaching windshields, are probably thinking the exact same thing, only "you" instead of "I."
Another example: When I am eating soup and pickles at the same time and consider amalgamating the two. Then I realize what a really, really bad idea that is.
Another other example: When I am interviewing for any of the dozen jobs I applied to, because these jobs are not at all related to me or what I want to do or anything--I feel sometimes like I took an AK-47 and just tossed off a few rounds into the crowd of job openings. But that could also be said for the map of where I applied to graduate school - pretty much me flinging darts while blindfolded (Montana? Rhode Island? Sure!).
Here's the skinny, though, the oh-so-soothing conclusion I made when I was eyeball-dueling with a potential employer, a man hoping to get into local politics, and he asked, "Why are you interested in this position?"
And I said, "Because experience makes good literature!"
And he said, "My God, that's right! You're hired! Also I will become your patron and build you a house on the beach! Also here is a puppy! I know you love puppies! Did you see the latest L.L. Bean catalog, the one with all the puppies?"
And I said, "I cut those very same puppies out of said catalog and pinned them to my bulletin board! But this puppy is better because it is real!"
And he said, "I love you!"
And I said, "Together we will conquer the very universe! Thanks for the house!"
This did not happen.
What I did say: "Uuuh, well, umm, you see, I like--uhh, see I'm a writer? And so I write things? And I am good at sentences. Yes. And experiences. I need experiences. I need to be PowerPoint-certified. But sentences, mainly. I like those."
(He has not called back.) (The part about cutting out pictures of puppies and pinning them to my bulletin board is 100% true though.)
I mean actually this: When I decided I wanted to be a writer, I did not exactly understand the fiscal consequences or realistic application of this decision. This might have had something to do with the fact that I was about six years old and working on a story called Frog and Toad Meet Dracula! But now I'm in a bit of a pickle (which, surprisingly, I don't like). I have a lousy degree. I take comfort in the fact that a lot of folks have lousy degrees, but my lousy degree is something I really love a whole lot, foolish as that is.
I guess, if you had told six-year-old Rachel, busy penning the dialogue of Frog and Toad Meet Dracula! ("Lets go to the beach" said Frog "Okay" said Toad "I WANT YOUR BLOOD" said Dracula "That was weird" said Frog and Toad together), that she would someday be one of those job-to-job-types, that she would someday acquire work experience that could only be called "erratic," that really, truthfully, honestly, this probably wasn't the wisest move to pursue this whole "writing" thing--if you had told her that, well. She definitely would have cried.
But she'd probably have kept writing.
Hence the title of this blog post. Not nigh on two hours ago, I just finished my 24th journal. Twenty-four, ghosts and ghouls. That is an awfully big number, considering I am shy of 23. My journal-keeping habit is both my proudest and most shameful. Shameful because, well, volumes 11-17 are pretty much entirely about Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and boys I wished would go to dances with me. Likewise, earlier ones are very concerned with recording what we had for dinner (phat kyd 4 LYFE). 16-18 are all knock-offs of On the Road, swapping the vast expanses of America for the rather small society of my high school. The more recent ones are just depressing, including more than a few entries written while very, very drunk.
Not to mention my insane personal rite of inauguration--up until two years ago, readying a new journal involved a lot of magazines and packing tape to make a suitable cover image, then titling the thing (usually based on the cover I had cut out and taped together because that made the most sense), then making a strange List Of Volumes that named and numbered all previous editions. I still do these last two, but I've finally graduated from taping irreverent-article-titles over quirky-images-that-become-highly-symbolic-when-recontextualized-onto-my-journal. Now I just acquire plain bound books, either as gifts or indulgences to myself--25 is nice, leather, with a tie and a bookmark.
But, still, I can't help but think: WHAT AM I DOING THIS IS THE BEHAVIOR OF CRAZYFOLK
So someday, I guess, when I am long gone and hugely famous (because you can't get literary credit if you're alive, Rule #1 of So You Wanna Ruin Your Life By Writin' Bout It?! Subtitled: Why Didn't You Major in Economics or Government You Dippy Broad), some ardent young literature student will come knocking on my grandchild's door, and this, fingers crossed, very tall and stately grandchild will produce the locked steamer trunk from where it takes up too much space in his attic, say something like, "I don't know why you'd want them, they're all nonsense." And then the young ardent student will be brought to tears by the maniacal multitude of all my idiotic journals, and he will dream of his amazing dissertation, and how he will be so very revered in the literary world for this discovery. He will begin to read.
Then he will discover that volumes 1-18 are useless in their preoccupation with what was had for dinner and how awesome Samwise Gamgee is. Volumes 18-24 will be illegible, half of their entries written, presumably, while very, very drunk.
Then 25. Ah, 25! Here it gets good. This--this stuff is pure gold!
Right? Right.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
The Saga of Crazies, Variety Thereof.
Define crazies:
a) pl. n. referring to a group of persons usually referred to in more polite society as mentally erratic and/or behaviorally eccentric.
b) n. a particular brainstate, induced by excesses of the following: caffeine, driving, alcohol.
c) pl. n. a delicious boxed snack, like craisins, only wilder and more frightful.
The answer is, of course, all of the above. (We will be serving Crazies, incidentally at one of, if not all of, the four restaurants I plan on opening when my writing career goes bust and I resort to food service entrepreneurship. Those 4 restaurants are, in order: (1) Mr. Waffles, which is actually a real restaurant but went out of business, and which I find the funniest name of any restaurant in the universe--wait, no, (2) Frickin' Chicken wins that. This will be a joint endeavor with Karlena Jimjams Riggles, and our menu will include three sizes of drink, Small Medium and HUGE, and everything will be served with a side of Ranch Dressing, including our staple, Fried Ranch Dressing Balls with A Side of Ranch Dressing, Drizzled in Ranch Dressing, Tossed in a Light Ranch Dressing Salad of Ranch Dressing. (3) Burger Plane. Like Sushi Train. Only burgers and tiny remote-controlled planes. Lastly, and this one is the murkiest in my mind but the name is too good to pass up: (4) Artichoklahoma. Get it? Artichokes? Oklahoma? Artichoklahoma!)
Actually the answer to the above multiple choice question was b. Which is the meat-and-potatoes of this post, or why I decided it was a good idea to post, because I had a bit of the coffee crazies earlier and have decided, as usual, not to channel that energy into something, oh, I don't know, worthwhile/meaningful and instead am typing while Rob does laundry downstairs. Hooray for Saturday?
But first a PSA: JUNIORS OF GLAMILTON COLLEGE, OR ANY OTHER COLLEGE REALLY: are you currently in a country that is not the United States? Are you keeping the perennial tradition of all college students living in distant lands, The Study Abroad Blog? If the answers to both of these are yes, by all means let me see them! They will be linked! They will be touted! They will inevitably become abandoned as you realize you should be out and living in the great wide world and not sitting at your computer typing about it!
Truthfully, though, I just love blogs. I love blogs the way I love Clean House and Ross Dress for Less and gray t-shirts (I own four, potentially six. I am trying very hard not to wear gray t-shirts exclusively in 2010 as I think it is a bad sign for my mental well-being) - with a certain sense of shame, but with an overwhelming sense of deep and strange satisfaction. If you have a blog, persons of the world who I may or may not know, rest assured that I have found it, and read it, and taken delight in it. I think we all need to be more upfront with our blogging, especially when we are blogging about nothing more than our silly little lives - none of this thematic, political, topic-by-topic business (Minimum Wage Stories, you are an exception because you are singularly amazing). There has, however, been a disturbing trend in my dreams where people in real life accost me about things done in the foggy realm of the Internet, and say things like, "Oh yes I saw on facebook" or "I read on your blog." I think the idiocy of the word blog is definitely partially to blame for the sad, narcissistic,certainly pathetic reputation of them.
But then I also frequently dream that I am beating the shit out of somebody. No joke. Complexes ahoy!
Point being, give me your blog and I will adore it.
As for the crazies: I am here to address three kinds of crazies. The Road Crazies, The Coffee Crazies, and Tulsa As Capital of Crazy But Not in A Good Way.
The Road Crazies are what happens when you drive 20+ hours, at least when that driving is being done East of the Mississippi. I'm picking on the East because once upon a summer, I drove 6,000 miles in the West, and the landscape was so bizarre and strange and changing that I never felt my brain start drifting away like an unmoored rowboat the way it does driving in the East. There are other factors too, naturally - Katie was with me in the West, but she napped a lot (the first time I was convinced she had died in the passenger seat and I nearly pulled over just so I could take her pulse - she was not, in fact, deceased). I'd never driven such a monumental distance before, so there was the thrill of Can I Actually Do This. Overall, though, the Road Crazies have been a singularly Wilmington-to-Tulsa phenomenon.
The Road Crazies go like this: It gets dark. You have been driving for 8, 9 hours. You are contemplating stopping and sleeping but you are also determined to make the next city before doing so (because you have this weird numbers/competition thing and somehow you will have failed if you do not complete the next 38 miles). You have listened to about 45 episodes of This American Life, backdated at least a month, possibly a year, and now Ira Glass is narrating your thoughts. You turn on the radio, and this is when the really bonkers thoughts begin--thoughts like I really should listen to The Police more often or Maybe this year I will go to an amateur rap battle; I should begin a notebook for my rhymes or My father gave me this leftover Tupperware of New Year's Dinner--instead of stopping for a snack I'll just eat these slices of ham and, consequently, Ham breath is one of the lesser-publicized plights of the modern age.
Then you hear yourself thinking and you find a motel and run a hot bath and fall like a proverbial felled tree into your overpriced, oversized, overstarched king-sized bed, but not before considering sleeping diagonally solely because the mattress would allow for that.
The Coffee Crazies are self-explanatory. You drink too much coffee, your stomach lining feels like lava, you take a shower and are so overwhelmed with psychotic spurts of ideas and plots and plans that you can barely concentrate on rinsing your hair. A few hours later, you will be on the couch, watching another episode of Clean House, wondering how you got so tired.
And, lastly, Tulsa As the Capital of the Crazies but Not in a Good Way. During my bout of Road Crazies, I decided I would write an entire piece, an ode if you will, about QuikTrip. The virtues of QuikTrip. My deep and abiding love of QuikTrip. That time we were stoned and went to QuikTrip. It would be a commercial, but it would be more than that - a treatise, where I ultimately discover the source of my infatuation with a gas station (I'm open for suggestions as to what that source may be).
Thing is, QuikTrip is about the only thing left in Tulsa that I can count on being there whenever I go back. Tulsa seems possessed with a burning need to raze or relocate every landmark I ever cared for: the amusement park is a parking lot, the Metro Diner is a ceremonial gate, the supermarket-down-the-street from my childhood home was long ago replaced by a Jamba Juice (don't get me wrong, I love me some Jamba). Altogether, the state of Tulsa elicits one reaction from me:
What up with that?
And the capstone on all this, the really coup-de-grace or whatever (I took German goddammit), is this new business with area codes. Tulsa is changing its area code.
What up with that?!
No longer the 918, all new Tulsa phone numbers after a certain date will be some bullshit like 536 or 549 or something terrible like that. I feel a little guilty, but also a little proud, that I have retained my 918 number, even though I live in the 910 - it's like a collector's item now. So much for the Don't Hate the 918 campaign. While I do not hate it, I am certainly wary of it now. I feel like this will spawn a huge sentimental movement along the same lines of Pluto-used-to-be-a-planet. Poor Pluto. Poor Tulsa.
Tulsa, I'm disappointed in you. But so long as there are QuikTrips, and so long as there are 49-cent drink specials in summer, and so long as Penny is still sad and adorable, and oh, right, my parents too - I guess I'll keep coming back. Mainly QuikTrips, though. And Penny.
a) pl. n. referring to a group of persons usually referred to in more polite society as mentally erratic and/or behaviorally eccentric.
b) n. a particular brainstate, induced by excesses of the following: caffeine, driving, alcohol.
c) pl. n. a delicious boxed snack, like craisins, only wilder and more frightful.
The answer is, of course, all of the above. (We will be serving Crazies, incidentally at one of, if not all of, the four restaurants I plan on opening when my writing career goes bust and I resort to food service entrepreneurship. Those 4 restaurants are, in order: (1) Mr. Waffles, which is actually a real restaurant but went out of business, and which I find the funniest name of any restaurant in the universe--wait, no, (2) Frickin' Chicken wins that. This will be a joint endeavor with Karlena Jimjams Riggles, and our menu will include three sizes of drink, Small Medium and HUGE, and everything will be served with a side of Ranch Dressing, including our staple, Fried Ranch Dressing Balls with A Side of Ranch Dressing, Drizzled in Ranch Dressing, Tossed in a Light Ranch Dressing Salad of Ranch Dressing. (3) Burger Plane. Like Sushi Train. Only burgers and tiny remote-controlled planes. Lastly, and this one is the murkiest in my mind but the name is too good to pass up: (4) Artichoklahoma. Get it? Artichokes? Oklahoma? Artichoklahoma!)
Actually the answer to the above multiple choice question was b. Which is the meat-and-potatoes of this post, or why I decided it was a good idea to post, because I had a bit of the coffee crazies earlier and have decided, as usual, not to channel that energy into something, oh, I don't know, worthwhile/meaningful and instead am typing while Rob does laundry downstairs. Hooray for Saturday?
But first a PSA: JUNIORS OF GLAMILTON COLLEGE, OR ANY OTHER COLLEGE REALLY: are you currently in a country that is not the United States? Are you keeping the perennial tradition of all college students living in distant lands, The Study Abroad Blog? If the answers to both of these are yes, by all means let me see them! They will be linked! They will be touted! They will inevitably become abandoned as you realize you should be out and living in the great wide world and not sitting at your computer typing about it!
Truthfully, though, I just love blogs. I love blogs the way I love Clean House and Ross Dress for Less and gray t-shirts (I own four, potentially six. I am trying very hard not to wear gray t-shirts exclusively in 2010 as I think it is a bad sign for my mental well-being) - with a certain sense of shame, but with an overwhelming sense of deep and strange satisfaction. If you have a blog, persons of the world who I may or may not know, rest assured that I have found it, and read it, and taken delight in it. I think we all need to be more upfront with our blogging, especially when we are blogging about nothing more than our silly little lives - none of this thematic, political, topic-by-topic business (Minimum Wage Stories, you are an exception because you are singularly amazing). There has, however, been a disturbing trend in my dreams where people in real life accost me about things done in the foggy realm of the Internet, and say things like, "Oh yes I saw on facebook" or "I read on your blog." I think the idiocy of the word blog is definitely partially to blame for the sad, narcissistic,certainly pathetic reputation of them.
But then I also frequently dream that I am beating the shit out of somebody. No joke. Complexes ahoy!
Point being, give me your blog and I will adore it.
As for the crazies: I am here to address three kinds of crazies. The Road Crazies, The Coffee Crazies, and Tulsa As Capital of Crazy But Not in A Good Way.
The Road Crazies are what happens when you drive 20+ hours, at least when that driving is being done East of the Mississippi. I'm picking on the East because once upon a summer, I drove 6,000 miles in the West, and the landscape was so bizarre and strange and changing that I never felt my brain start drifting away like an unmoored rowboat the way it does driving in the East. There are other factors too, naturally - Katie was with me in the West, but she napped a lot (the first time I was convinced she had died in the passenger seat and I nearly pulled over just so I could take her pulse - she was not, in fact, deceased). I'd never driven such a monumental distance before, so there was the thrill of Can I Actually Do This. Overall, though, the Road Crazies have been a singularly Wilmington-to-Tulsa phenomenon.
The Road Crazies go like this: It gets dark. You have been driving for 8, 9 hours. You are contemplating stopping and sleeping but you are also determined to make the next city before doing so (because you have this weird numbers/competition thing and somehow you will have failed if you do not complete the next 38 miles). You have listened to about 45 episodes of This American Life, backdated at least a month, possibly a year, and now Ira Glass is narrating your thoughts. You turn on the radio, and this is when the really bonkers thoughts begin--thoughts like I really should listen to The Police more often or Maybe this year I will go to an amateur rap battle; I should begin a notebook for my rhymes or My father gave me this leftover Tupperware of New Year's Dinner--instead of stopping for a snack I'll just eat these slices of ham and, consequently, Ham breath is one of the lesser-publicized plights of the modern age.
Then you hear yourself thinking and you find a motel and run a hot bath and fall like a proverbial felled tree into your overpriced, oversized, overstarched king-sized bed, but not before considering sleeping diagonally solely because the mattress would allow for that.
The Coffee Crazies are self-explanatory. You drink too much coffee, your stomach lining feels like lava, you take a shower and are so overwhelmed with psychotic spurts of ideas and plots and plans that you can barely concentrate on rinsing your hair. A few hours later, you will be on the couch, watching another episode of Clean House, wondering how you got so tired.
And, lastly, Tulsa As the Capital of the Crazies but Not in a Good Way. During my bout of Road Crazies, I decided I would write an entire piece, an ode if you will, about QuikTrip. The virtues of QuikTrip. My deep and abiding love of QuikTrip. That time we were stoned and went to QuikTrip. It would be a commercial, but it would be more than that - a treatise, where I ultimately discover the source of my infatuation with a gas station (I'm open for suggestions as to what that source may be).
Thing is, QuikTrip is about the only thing left in Tulsa that I can count on being there whenever I go back. Tulsa seems possessed with a burning need to raze or relocate every landmark I ever cared for: the amusement park is a parking lot, the Metro Diner is a ceremonial gate, the supermarket-down-the-street from my childhood home was long ago replaced by a Jamba Juice (don't get me wrong, I love me some Jamba). Altogether, the state of Tulsa elicits one reaction from me:
What up with that?
And the capstone on all this, the really coup-de-grace or whatever (I took German goddammit), is this new business with area codes. Tulsa is changing its area code.
What up with that?!
No longer the 918, all new Tulsa phone numbers after a certain date will be some bullshit like 536 or 549 or something terrible like that. I feel a little guilty, but also a little proud, that I have retained my 918 number, even though I live in the 910 - it's like a collector's item now. So much for the Don't Hate the 918 campaign. While I do not hate it, I am certainly wary of it now. I feel like this will spawn a huge sentimental movement along the same lines of Pluto-used-to-be-a-planet. Poor Pluto. Poor Tulsa.
Tulsa, I'm disappointed in you. But so long as there are QuikTrips, and so long as there are 49-cent drink specials in summer, and so long as Penny is still sad and adorable, and oh, right, my parents too - I guess I'll keep coming back. Mainly QuikTrips, though. And Penny.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The Saga of 2009, Part Two, and The First Saga of 2010.
Seven days overdue - and I know you all have been sitting at home, biting your nails, perched painfully on the edge of your seat, impatiently and anxiously awaiting the gripping, thrilling, scintillating conclusion of 2009 - for that I apologize, but here it is.
First, though, 2010. I need to type it a few more times so it looks less like some crazy future date and more like, you know, now. 2010. 2010. 2010. (Poll: Is it two thousand ten? Or twenty ten? Or, if you are me, and from Oklahoma, where we tend to mush our words together like the innards of a loaded baked potato, tweneetun?)
The drive from Tulsa to Wilmington (the Southerly route this time, still 20 hours, but with a few more turns than the I-40 NC-VA-TN-AR-OK route) was fraught, so I'll relay it to you points-style, because if there are two things in the world I truly and eternally love, it's Diet-Coke-with-Strawberry-Fanta-32-ounce-QuikTrip-drinks and assigning arbitrary points.
Oklahoma: will be omitted due to author partiality (needless to say it wins).
Arkansas: -100 for being so damn big, but +15 for the crazy Hitchcockian flock of birds viewed over the Eastern deltas. Also, +5 for some really entertaining radio, and for the existence of Stuttgart, pronounced, of course, Stut-gard.
Tennessee: +55 because I only clipped the corner of Memphis and traffic wasn't bad at all. -30, however, because I didn't get to drive over the big Mississippi bridge and see that crazy inexplicable glass pyramid.
Mississippi: +40, divided into two 20s - one for the nice moon, which was full and orange, and one for being relatively swiftly overtaken by my speeding Toyota.
Alabama: -200 for the disgusting gas station cappuccino (serves me right I know), the overpriced motel room with the bad TV reception (I spent the whole time composing a letter to the manager: Dear Sir, Not only was your reception awful, there was nothing good to watch. Also breakfast was pretty subpar. Please send a refund immediately), AND the Taco Bell I for some reason decided was a good place to grab a bite to eat, only to wait 20 minutes for a goddamn CrunchWrap Supreme. For the record, CrunchWrap Supremes are a) disgusting and b) notoriously hard to consume while driving on an interstate.
Georgia: +200. Two words: Quick. Trip. So. Many. Of. Them.
South Carolina: - 10,000,000. Of course my luck would run out one state away from home; some asshat did not see me cruising past them in the passing lane (which is for passing and not for driving I will have each and every one of you know) and decided to merge, right into me, or what would have been me if I had not honked like hell and swerved right into the grassy median. Smoke, rubber burning, the works. Then I had a little go-to-pieces over the steering wheel and very soberly drove the rest of the way home.
North Carolina: Should also be omitted due to author's partiality but I just want to mention the radio station I found called BOB FM which proceeded to play, in order: Hall & Oates, that White Town song I was obsessed with at age 11 called "Your Woman" or something, Kings of Leon, Journey, Lynrd Skynrd, and then 15 more completely arbitrary songs. It was amazing. Behold! BOB FM
And now I am here. Which leads us to the past 6 months, briefly summarized below.
JULY
As a celebratory end to our down-country then cross-country odyssey where we successfully procured an apartment and an enormous sense of apprehension, Rob and I conclude the trip with a sub-trip from Tulsa to Branson, Missouri, where we ride roller coasters and play mini-golf and Captain Professor, the man steering the Duck, makes some snide remark about how we are "so in love" after he views me merely resting my weary head upon Rob's accommodating shoulder. Needless to say a chorus of "Aww" ensued. Rob drives back to New Jersey; when we next see each other it is at our shared address.
I dog sit. The dog in question escapes. Twice. Both times she is recovered. Both times I consider throttling her. Moral: Shih-tzus are the devil.
My childhood bedroom becomes a maze of papers and boxes and trash bags and chaos as I bravely attempt to condense the past 22 years into piles. I manage to cram my entire education in to one single box. This disturbs me, but not as much as discovering every single hot lunch menu from my elementary school, which I apparently diligently saved, marking each day's fare with smiley or frowny faces (fishstix : ( - cinnamon rolls : ) ). Someday this will be fodder for my sidesplitting and deeply depressing Fat Kid memoir.
AUGUST
I move to Wilmington. During the drive there, I think mostly OH HOLY SHIT OH FUCK REALLY IS THIS HAPPENING OH MY FUCKING GOD. Then we, being my parents and I, arrive at my apartment and spend the next week or so really wishing I owned some chairs. My dad takes his first dip in the ocean; he remarks both that "I can understand why people do this, this beach thing. It's quite relaxing" and also "I'm mad at that ocean. It knocked me down." My folks depart, and I spend three empty days in the apartment, watching too much Law & Order Criminal Intent and having trouble sleeping until Rob arrives, which he finally does, bearing, among other things, furniture.
I attend Orientations and am generally bamboozled by the prospect of being at a different school than the one I just graduated from. I meet some dandy folks. I decide to start a blog.
SEPTEMBER
Rob and I watch too much TV, eat too many hamburgers, do not find jobs. That's about it.
OCTOBER
I go to New York City and get real drunk and don't really want to talk about it again. But then there are jobs! Albeit short-lived ones. At the end of the month, my mother arrives and sets the Crisco can on fire, plays DRIBBLIT in a game of Scrabble, sits in the passenger seat while I am breathalyzed, etc.
Rob and I go as a deer and hunter for Halloween. The antlers are currently hanging above our front door.
NOVEMBER
I get published for the second time! Then I write sometimes and then sometimes I don't when I should, but then I just end up watching marathons of Clean House while Rob is gone for Thanksgiving and wonder why I love Niecy Nash so very much. MFA Thanksgiving is a smorgasborg of tasty. It rains.
DECEMBER
I drive back to Tulsa for three weeks that become evenly split like so: reading, drinking, driving, and sleeping. I spend $60 at Gardner's in one amazing sweep of manic book buying. Penny and I go on a few tremendous walks, then she spends the rest of the time moping. She is a sad, sad little dog. Christmas happens - Matthew receives his 30 pound jar of North Carolina sand with grace and confusion, then New Year's - which we ring in with rum and Dr. Pepper - and then, glory be, it's 2010.
I had my first class of the semester the other day and it was like a good slaparound - I'd somehow forgotten that I was a student, and a writer, and pretty much anything else beyond a mere human being. This does not seem like it would be a good thing, but marvelously, I am very determined not to squander any more time. So I redid my desk corner, made it into an actual workable space, and then I cluttered it up with books and letters and Polaroids, and now it certainly looks like a crazy writer's nook, if nothing else. Got myself a new printer, too. We also bought another bookshelf, so the teetering metropolis of paperbacks is gone from the study floor, now shelved nicely downstairs. It looks halfway respectable here.
Shamefully, though, I have to say I am a little more in love with the kitchen than anything else right now. Two reasons: 1) the George Foreman Grill coupled with the prospect of Jarlsberg grilled cheese sandwiches (no really have you tried Jarlsberg? it is the cheese of the gods) and 2) the wall cling Where the Wild Things Are stickers I got at the closeout Blockbuster sale so now we have...wait for it...A Where the Wild Things Are panorama across our kitchen cabinets!
Plus, tonight, I'm grilling salmon. George Foreman would be so, so very proud.
First, though, 2010. I need to type it a few more times so it looks less like some crazy future date and more like, you know, now. 2010. 2010. 2010. (Poll: Is it two thousand ten? Or twenty ten? Or, if you are me, and from Oklahoma, where we tend to mush our words together like the innards of a loaded baked potato, tweneetun?)
The drive from Tulsa to Wilmington (the Southerly route this time, still 20 hours, but with a few more turns than the I-40 NC-VA-TN-AR-OK route) was fraught, so I'll relay it to you points-style, because if there are two things in the world I truly and eternally love, it's Diet-Coke-with-Strawberry-Fanta-32-ounce-QuikTrip-drinks and assigning arbitrary points.
Oklahoma: will be omitted due to author partiality (needless to say it wins).
Arkansas: -100 for being so damn big, but +15 for the crazy Hitchcockian flock of birds viewed over the Eastern deltas. Also, +5 for some really entertaining radio, and for the existence of Stuttgart, pronounced, of course, Stut-gard.
Tennessee: +55 because I only clipped the corner of Memphis and traffic wasn't bad at all. -30, however, because I didn't get to drive over the big Mississippi bridge and see that crazy inexplicable glass pyramid.
Mississippi: +40, divided into two 20s - one for the nice moon, which was full and orange, and one for being relatively swiftly overtaken by my speeding Toyota.
Alabama: -200 for the disgusting gas station cappuccino (serves me right I know), the overpriced motel room with the bad TV reception (I spent the whole time composing a letter to the manager: Dear Sir, Not only was your reception awful, there was nothing good to watch. Also breakfast was pretty subpar. Please send a refund immediately), AND the Taco Bell I for some reason decided was a good place to grab a bite to eat, only to wait 20 minutes for a goddamn CrunchWrap Supreme. For the record, CrunchWrap Supremes are a) disgusting and b) notoriously hard to consume while driving on an interstate.
Georgia: +200. Two words: Quick. Trip. So. Many. Of. Them.
South Carolina: - 10,000,000. Of course my luck would run out one state away from home; some asshat did not see me cruising past them in the passing lane (which is for passing and not for driving I will have each and every one of you know) and decided to merge, right into me, or what would have been me if I had not honked like hell and swerved right into the grassy median. Smoke, rubber burning, the works. Then I had a little go-to-pieces over the steering wheel and very soberly drove the rest of the way home.
North Carolina: Should also be omitted due to author's partiality but I just want to mention the radio station I found called BOB FM which proceeded to play, in order: Hall & Oates, that White Town song I was obsessed with at age 11 called "Your Woman" or something, Kings of Leon, Journey, Lynrd Skynrd, and then 15 more completely arbitrary songs. It was amazing. Behold! BOB FM
And now I am here. Which leads us to the past 6 months, briefly summarized below.
JULY
As a celebratory end to our down-country then cross-country odyssey where we successfully procured an apartment and an enormous sense of apprehension, Rob and I conclude the trip with a sub-trip from Tulsa to Branson, Missouri, where we ride roller coasters and play mini-golf and Captain Professor, the man steering the Duck, makes some snide remark about how we are "so in love" after he views me merely resting my weary head upon Rob's accommodating shoulder. Needless to say a chorus of "Aww" ensued. Rob drives back to New Jersey; when we next see each other it is at our shared address.
I dog sit. The dog in question escapes. Twice. Both times she is recovered. Both times I consider throttling her. Moral: Shih-tzus are the devil.
My childhood bedroom becomes a maze of papers and boxes and trash bags and chaos as I bravely attempt to condense the past 22 years into piles. I manage to cram my entire education in to one single box. This disturbs me, but not as much as discovering every single hot lunch menu from my elementary school, which I apparently diligently saved, marking each day's fare with smiley or frowny faces (fishstix : ( - cinnamon rolls : ) ). Someday this will be fodder for my sidesplitting and deeply depressing Fat Kid memoir.
AUGUST
I move to Wilmington. During the drive there, I think mostly OH HOLY SHIT OH FUCK REALLY IS THIS HAPPENING OH MY FUCKING GOD. Then we, being my parents and I, arrive at my apartment and spend the next week or so really wishing I owned some chairs. My dad takes his first dip in the ocean; he remarks both that "I can understand why people do this, this beach thing. It's quite relaxing" and also "I'm mad at that ocean. It knocked me down." My folks depart, and I spend three empty days in the apartment, watching too much Law & Order Criminal Intent and having trouble sleeping until Rob arrives, which he finally does, bearing, among other things, furniture.
I attend Orientations and am generally bamboozled by the prospect of being at a different school than the one I just graduated from. I meet some dandy folks. I decide to start a blog.
SEPTEMBER
Rob and I watch too much TV, eat too many hamburgers, do not find jobs. That's about it.
OCTOBER
I go to New York City and get real drunk and don't really want to talk about it again. But then there are jobs! Albeit short-lived ones. At the end of the month, my mother arrives and sets the Crisco can on fire, plays DRIBBLIT in a game of Scrabble, sits in the passenger seat while I am breathalyzed, etc.
Rob and I go as a deer and hunter for Halloween. The antlers are currently hanging above our front door.
NOVEMBER
I get published for the second time! Then I write sometimes and then sometimes I don't when I should, but then I just end up watching marathons of Clean House while Rob is gone for Thanksgiving and wonder why I love Niecy Nash so very much. MFA Thanksgiving is a smorgasborg of tasty. It rains.
DECEMBER
I drive back to Tulsa for three weeks that become evenly split like so: reading, drinking, driving, and sleeping. I spend $60 at Gardner's in one amazing sweep of manic book buying. Penny and I go on a few tremendous walks, then she spends the rest of the time moping. She is a sad, sad little dog. Christmas happens - Matthew receives his 30 pound jar of North Carolina sand with grace and confusion, then New Year's - which we ring in with rum and Dr. Pepper - and then, glory be, it's 2010.
I had my first class of the semester the other day and it was like a good slaparound - I'd somehow forgotten that I was a student, and a writer, and pretty much anything else beyond a mere human being. This does not seem like it would be a good thing, but marvelously, I am very determined not to squander any more time. So I redid my desk corner, made it into an actual workable space, and then I cluttered it up with books and letters and Polaroids, and now it certainly looks like a crazy writer's nook, if nothing else. Got myself a new printer, too. We also bought another bookshelf, so the teetering metropolis of paperbacks is gone from the study floor, now shelved nicely downstairs. It looks halfway respectable here.
Shamefully, though, I have to say I am a little more in love with the kitchen than anything else right now. Two reasons: 1) the George Foreman Grill coupled with the prospect of Jarlsberg grilled cheese sandwiches (no really have you tried Jarlsberg? it is the cheese of the gods) and 2) the wall cling Where the Wild Things Are stickers I got at the closeout Blockbuster sale so now we have...wait for it...A Where the Wild Things Are panorama across our kitchen cabinets!
Plus, tonight, I'm grilling salmon. George Foreman would be so, so very proud.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Saga of 2009, Part One.
Friends! First and foremost, there are officially seven of you! Seven! As of my last post there were three followers; this is a 200% increase from last post! Or possibly infinite! Disregarding the actual mathematics, I can say only that it makes me very happy to know there are at least seven individuals in the world who care to squander their non-Facebook time on this little site o' mine (I'm gonna let it shine?). There is also a very large possibility that I have eight readers, the eighth being my father, who googled me once and found my previous blog even though I expressly did not inform him of its existence. It was weird.
Matthew and I just braved the wintry streets of Tulsa to go see The Road. Here's a tip: if it's wintry out, do not go see The Road. If you are feeling at all unhappy, do not go see The Road. If you are with a person who is not your arch nemesis, do not go see The Road (if it is your arch nemesis by all means go ahead). If you, like me, watched Children of Men and then demanded that someone in the room give you a hug promptly afterward because you felt so generally unhappy, do not go see The Road. (The hug was helpful though thanx guyz).
So now, having seen The Road, which is about the apocalypse and eating grasshoppers and running from crazy hillbilly cannibals and overall despair and bleakness and the dregs of humanity, a year-end review seems a little silly. But I'm gonna do it anyway. Because this is my blog. And I can do what I want.
Plus I mean 2009 was kind of a big deal. Behold!
JANUARY
After experiencing such thrilling sites as the World's Largest Totem Pole, The Big Blue Whale of Catoosa, and Pop's Soda Store Emporium Gas Station Burger Joint of Wonder, Rob concludes his first ever visit to Tulsa; his departure is saddening, but also reaffirms that my hometown is the absolute shit.
We acquire Scrabble, the cat, who spends a lot of time being adorable and kittenish and then morphing into a hellion with razor claws, which somehow find their way up my nose one night while I am trying to sleep.
I return to Blam Blamilton for the last semester ever but am too busy flailing/berserking/breakdancing in the throes of grad school applications to really take notice and/or care. The last of my nine applications goes off; at the end of the month, I'm accepted at Pittsburgh.
FEBRUARY
My birthday (the 1st!) falls on a Sunday; after considering the chaos of my 21st birthday in Berlin combined with a growing sense of unease tacked on to the awful weather of central New York in February, I decide not to throw a party for the big double-2. While I am talking on the phone with Rob the Thursday before my B-day, Winston comes by to insist I go downstairs right that second because SURPRISE they threw me a surprise birthday party! There was a cake; there was also a case race. It was an overall tremendous evening and Cameron made a B-Day Hell Mix CD (which I am listening to right now!) and I think we listened to the Fleet Foxes/All The Single Ladies mashup at least 45 times straight. Or that might have been another night. It doesn't matter.
Rob and I and a few SU folks drive from central NY to Geneseo to Chicago, allegedly to attend AWP. In reality, the conference makes me fidgety and anxious about grad school, so Rob and I ditch the whole thing and go up the Sears Tower on Valentine's Day. We sleep in Kara's closet in Hyde Park - no, actually, in a closet. I walk past the table of my future grad school and see three dudes with beards; in later months, I will learn their names. On the drive back, Sara's mother feeds us a delicious meal of chicken and itty bitty onions which she got from Top Chef. This makes Sara's mother unspeakably awesome. Also: chocolate-covered pretzel rods. With M&Ms.
MARCH
Things get crazy busy and I stress out a lot and all is quiet on the grad school front for quite some time. Then the rejections start piling up. One Friday, conveniently the English department's First Friday, I am rejected from both Brown and Iowa; I proceed to join my professors in the pub for First Friday, get belligerently buzzed, and accost everyone. And by everyone I mean all of my professors.
Spring Break meant one week in Tulsa of which I don't remember anything; there may have been Scrabble (the game, not the cat). I may have lost. Poorly. The other half was spent in Rob's dorm room in Pennsylvania, where we inadvertently watched only movies featuring animated mice (The Rescuers Down Under, The Secret of Nimh) and played a lot of Super Mario 3. Actually, Vish played Super Mario 3 and I shouted things like "GET THE RED YOSHI NO DON'T LET HIM FALL NO GO GET HIM."
APRIL
Back at Shamilton. A lot of things I don't want to remember occur, mainly things involving idiotic student media bureaucracy and certain individuals who once graced the uppermost spots of my hypothetical hit list (that spot now belongs permanently to Scrabble - the cat, not the game. No, seriously, she's a bitch). My list of grad school responses dwindles, slowly, and within a week I'm admitted to Montana and good ol' UniWilmi. At my senior dinner, where, unsurprisingly, we all get trashed, a certain alumnus regards my two options as such: Good skiing or good golfing? This, apparently, being how a Hamilton student should think.
At this point I have also read so much Willa Cather she is haunting me like a creepy, conservative, cranky old lady ghost.
MAY
My thesis: written. My final Willa Cather paper: fought through like a machete through a jungle. Willa Cather: back in her grave where she belongs. My spare time: spent looking at pictures of the ocean!
Senior Week is mainly Rob and I running amok, wading in Oneida Lake, then driving around all of Oneida Lake, then wondering where the last four hours went.
I graduate! Good riddance! No, not really. Well, kind of. Our last night is tearful, then smoky, then it's sun-up, then I'm driving off with my folks, to Cooperstown, where we participate in the Beverage Trail, which might as well be called Get Tipsy All Day Every Day Best Graduation Trip Ever.
JUNE
After a creepy and kind of bizarre rendezvous in a Binghampton Dunkin Donuts parking lot, I send my folks back to Oklahoma and Rob drives me and all my stuff to Jersey. Here, we plot and plan and I do laundry, and then we embark on three weeks of East Coast road tripping. Our mission? To find an apartment in Wilmington, and to not kill each other. Both are successes.
Highlights include but are not limited to: the craziest mini-golf course ever outside of D.C. with Annie, the wild ponies of Assateague, Graceland in Memphis, one night of hard drinking and nostalgia in Nashville (hi Alec!), the Atlanta Aquarium, riding boats on the Outer Banks, that lake we found in Virginia, the reliably delicious Catfish Hole in Arkansas, reading the entirety of The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull aloud to one another, and many, many others. Lowlights include but are not limited to: 200 mosquito bites in one night, the rainy weather in Maryland, the scrapple omelet I had in Ocean City (to be fair this one was my fault), rain, rain, rain, the hipsters at the Rune Stones in Georgia, the traffic in Atlanta, the heat in Memphis, oh, and trying to find an apartment and deal with the whole holy shit we're moving here business.
An eventful first six months, to say the least. The next half comes tomorrow, though it probably won't be as exciting, considering you folks already read about all of it - either way, that's all for now, my knuckles are all achey and my pillow's a-calling.
Good Night, God Bless, and Guten Appetit.
Matthew and I just braved the wintry streets of Tulsa to go see The Road. Here's a tip: if it's wintry out, do not go see The Road. If you are feeling at all unhappy, do not go see The Road. If you are with a person who is not your arch nemesis, do not go see The Road (if it is your arch nemesis by all means go ahead). If you, like me, watched Children of Men and then demanded that someone in the room give you a hug promptly afterward because you felt so generally unhappy, do not go see The Road. (The hug was helpful though thanx guyz).
So now, having seen The Road, which is about the apocalypse and eating grasshoppers and running from crazy hillbilly cannibals and overall despair and bleakness and the dregs of humanity, a year-end review seems a little silly. But I'm gonna do it anyway. Because this is my blog. And I can do what I want.
Plus I mean 2009 was kind of a big deal. Behold!
JANUARY
After experiencing such thrilling sites as the World's Largest Totem Pole, The Big Blue Whale of Catoosa, and Pop's Soda Store Emporium Gas Station Burger Joint of Wonder, Rob concludes his first ever visit to Tulsa; his departure is saddening, but also reaffirms that my hometown is the absolute shit.
We acquire Scrabble, the cat, who spends a lot of time being adorable and kittenish and then morphing into a hellion with razor claws, which somehow find their way up my nose one night while I am trying to sleep.
I return to Blam Blamilton for the last semester ever but am too busy flailing/berserking/breakdancing in the throes of grad school applications to really take notice and/or care. The last of my nine applications goes off; at the end of the month, I'm accepted at Pittsburgh.
FEBRUARY
My birthday (the 1st!) falls on a Sunday; after considering the chaos of my 21st birthday in Berlin combined with a growing sense of unease tacked on to the awful weather of central New York in February, I decide not to throw a party for the big double-2. While I am talking on the phone with Rob the Thursday before my B-day, Winston comes by to insist I go downstairs right that second because SURPRISE they threw me a surprise birthday party! There was a cake; there was also a case race. It was an overall tremendous evening and Cameron made a B-Day Hell Mix CD (which I am listening to right now!) and I think we listened to the Fleet Foxes/All The Single Ladies mashup at least 45 times straight. Or that might have been another night. It doesn't matter.
Rob and I and a few SU folks drive from central NY to Geneseo to Chicago, allegedly to attend AWP. In reality, the conference makes me fidgety and anxious about grad school, so Rob and I ditch the whole thing and go up the Sears Tower on Valentine's Day. We sleep in Kara's closet in Hyde Park - no, actually, in a closet. I walk past the table of my future grad school and see three dudes with beards; in later months, I will learn their names. On the drive back, Sara's mother feeds us a delicious meal of chicken and itty bitty onions which she got from Top Chef. This makes Sara's mother unspeakably awesome. Also: chocolate-covered pretzel rods. With M&Ms.
MARCH
Things get crazy busy and I stress out a lot and all is quiet on the grad school front for quite some time. Then the rejections start piling up. One Friday, conveniently the English department's First Friday, I am rejected from both Brown and Iowa; I proceed to join my professors in the pub for First Friday, get belligerently buzzed, and accost everyone. And by everyone I mean all of my professors.
Spring Break meant one week in Tulsa of which I don't remember anything; there may have been Scrabble (the game, not the cat). I may have lost. Poorly. The other half was spent in Rob's dorm room in Pennsylvania, where we inadvertently watched only movies featuring animated mice (The Rescuers Down Under, The Secret of Nimh) and played a lot of Super Mario 3. Actually, Vish played Super Mario 3 and I shouted things like "GET THE RED YOSHI NO DON'T LET HIM FALL NO GO GET HIM."
APRIL
Back at Shamilton. A lot of things I don't want to remember occur, mainly things involving idiotic student media bureaucracy and certain individuals who once graced the uppermost spots of my hypothetical hit list (that spot now belongs permanently to Scrabble - the cat, not the game. No, seriously, she's a bitch). My list of grad school responses dwindles, slowly, and within a week I'm admitted to Montana and good ol' UniWilmi. At my senior dinner, where, unsurprisingly, we all get trashed, a certain alumnus regards my two options as such: Good skiing or good golfing? This, apparently, being how a Hamilton student should think.
At this point I have also read so much Willa Cather she is haunting me like a creepy, conservative, cranky old lady ghost.
MAY
My thesis: written. My final Willa Cather paper: fought through like a machete through a jungle. Willa Cather: back in her grave where she belongs. My spare time: spent looking at pictures of the ocean!
Senior Week is mainly Rob and I running amok, wading in Oneida Lake, then driving around all of Oneida Lake, then wondering where the last four hours went.
I graduate! Good riddance! No, not really. Well, kind of. Our last night is tearful, then smoky, then it's sun-up, then I'm driving off with my folks, to Cooperstown, where we participate in the Beverage Trail, which might as well be called Get Tipsy All Day Every Day Best Graduation Trip Ever.
JUNE
After a creepy and kind of bizarre rendezvous in a Binghampton Dunkin Donuts parking lot, I send my folks back to Oklahoma and Rob drives me and all my stuff to Jersey. Here, we plot and plan and I do laundry, and then we embark on three weeks of East Coast road tripping. Our mission? To find an apartment in Wilmington, and to not kill each other. Both are successes.
Highlights include but are not limited to: the craziest mini-golf course ever outside of D.C. with Annie, the wild ponies of Assateague, Graceland in Memphis, one night of hard drinking and nostalgia in Nashville (hi Alec!), the Atlanta Aquarium, riding boats on the Outer Banks, that lake we found in Virginia, the reliably delicious Catfish Hole in Arkansas, reading the entirety of The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull aloud to one another, and many, many others. Lowlights include but are not limited to: 200 mosquito bites in one night, the rainy weather in Maryland, the scrapple omelet I had in Ocean City (to be fair this one was my fault), rain, rain, rain, the hipsters at the Rune Stones in Georgia, the traffic in Atlanta, the heat in Memphis, oh, and trying to find an apartment and deal with the whole holy shit we're moving here business.
An eventful first six months, to say the least. The next half comes tomorrow, though it probably won't be as exciting, considering you folks already read about all of it - either way, that's all for now, my knuckles are all achey and my pillow's a-calling.
Good Night, God Bless, and Guten Appetit.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Saga of Snow-klahoma.
Please also see the following representations of the past two weeks spent here in the 918, also known as Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I once grew up: Smoke-lahoma, Broke-lahoma, Bro-klahoma, Karaok-lahoma, Folks-lahoma, Choke-lahoma, Oh No-klahoma.
There are 1, 296 miles between Tulsa and Wilmington. Probably 1,150 of those miles are on Interstate 40. Interstate 40 and I became very good pals over the twentyish hours I spent cruising across North Carolina, the southeastern corner of Virginia, the great long expanse of Tennessee, the brain-numbing deltas and cramped traffic of Arkansas, until finally, the glorious Muskogee Turnpike, where the speed limit is 75 and the state troopers busy someplace else. It was a day and a half's drive total (I spent most of the time shouting at the other cars, scolding and cursing them); my folks were expecting me in the next day (it took them 3 days to do the same route, which you could make a mathematical equation out of: half the age equals twice the speed?), so I arrived to an empty house, and for a minute I actually thought, why did I stop? I could be in Amarillo tonight. I could see the Pacific ocean by Monday morning.
Then I let Penny in the house and we fell asleep on the couch together and all was well again.
Then I did a lot of tremendously idiotic things, most of which involved vodka tonics and karaoke and that sweeping and utterly false sense of grandeur, cinematic significance, that comes of driving home alone on a Tuesday night at 3 in the morning when all the streets are empty and you definitely wouldn't pass a breathalyzer test. Fortunately these were not solitary plummets (WHAT UP BITCHES) into the realm of Going Out in Tulsa and therefore I do not regret them one mite. Though I do regret the tequila shots. And Gold Digger. You know it's bad when the emcee announces, "Look at this little white girl trying to rap. How cute." Never mind that the emcee is a scrawny white guy himself, emceeing karaoke at the only leather bar in Tulsa, a place called the Screaming Eagle. Never mind that I was there in the first place.
I am, for the record, an amazing rapper. Just not on Gold Digger.
Coming home this time around has been weirder than ever, a trapeze act of swinging from Wilmington, where I'm the youngest, where I'm inexperienced, where I feel like a kid-playing-at-adulthood a lot of the time, to Tulsa, where Jesus H Happenstance, how did we get so old? We try and remember what year it was when we stayed up all night getting lit on two shared Sam Adams in Ariel's attic bedroom during the Solstice Party, or smoking peach cigars in Woodward Park, or who was first chair in the cellos in Orchestra; all our memories one enormous cardboard box that's suddenly become very old, very heavy.
Meanwhile I'm realizing I've already undergone a semester of graduate school, and that invites a whole slew of doubts and confusions and ugly unwanted conclusions: what the hell do I think I'm doing? where is this going? In this way it is uncannily like being in Vienna - I'd sit in some ornate cafe outside the Hofburg complex and smoke Lucky Strikes and write and write and write, ignorant to the architecture, the atmosphere, wanting only to know what the fuck I was supposed to be doing. As if there is some one accountable thing, some planner, recipe, instruction book that I lost.
But the visiting writer in November illuminated a lot for me, a kindly, softspoken man who forgave my absolute incoherent nervous rambling when I met with him, and who convinced me that I am learning, I am working towards something, even if it doesn't feel like it. I asked how do you train yourself; he said it happens, or something to that effect.
In essence, he forgave me for spending 3 hours hunting down graph paper composition notebooks (another symptom of Vienna, because they don't use lined paper over there), and for scribbling dozens of insane fragments on notepads and pinning them to my bulletin board (SANDY ALLEN TALLEST WOMAN IN WORLD/ WALKING RACES/ BLACK FRIDAY?), and for driving to the beach in December for no other reason that to look at the water. Drinking too much coffee, spending all morning and some of the afternoon reading in a big armchair. Riding my bike. Wearing cardigans and purchasing tote bags and checking out too many books from the library.
In essence, it was forgiveness for not doing what I thought I'd be doing, which is waking up early, editing, printing, mailing, submitting, discussing, researching, analyzing, pondering, epiphanizing, philosophizing, writing.
And that's why I am real keen on 2010 getting here. It's a new goddamn decade! And I am full of a hundred thousand resolutions, or even just suggestions, or even just hopes. Those are easiest, by far. And really, at the top of the list is something my father keeps telling me to do when I am scowling and cranky (usually hungry): lighten up. Don't be so hard on yourself. Rob tells me to do this too, but I've had a lot of time to perfect being self-brutalizing, if only in my head.
So! In the physical, actual world, there is a lot of snow. Tulsa, in hopes of keeping its throne in the finals for World's Worst Weather, received its first ever blizzard warning. It was a white Christmas, yes, but a snowed-in one, too, a drive-if-you-dare, a good-thing-you-have-on-Demand-TV-and-can-watch-4-hours-of-Mad-Men Christmas, too. Penny and I went on an adventure up and down the street yesterday afternoon; there are few things funnier than watching a Corgi trample through a foot of snow. We had a grand time.
I also received the most amazing gift of all: a George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. This was remarkable because I had expressed want all of a week before Christmas, and usually, this means No Chance in Hell, but remarkably, Mom--or Santa!?!--pulled through. Truthfully, I'm awful glad the holidays are at last at an end. Matthew got us 4 dozen oysters for our Christmas Eve appetizer feast. Mom refused to eat any because they looked like sputum. Then she had to work on Christmas Day, so our Christmas Dinner Proper is currently cooking downstairs--at last count, Mom had used 5 sticks of butter. I love this state.
And hey! I just discovered I have all of THREE subscribers! This is monumental. One is Rob, shockingly, and one is Rob's pal Jordan, but the third is Ball of Flame Shoot Fire, this band of guys who are all right I guess (no I'm kidding they are actually great) who should a) save me a t-shirt and b) institute a holiday tradition of covering songs from Muppet Christmas Carol. Please listen to this and then tell me you are not beside yourself with unmitigated holiday joy. Then go listen to their other songs too.
Soon!
There are 1, 296 miles between Tulsa and Wilmington. Probably 1,150 of those miles are on Interstate 40. Interstate 40 and I became very good pals over the twentyish hours I spent cruising across North Carolina, the southeastern corner of Virginia, the great long expanse of Tennessee, the brain-numbing deltas and cramped traffic of Arkansas, until finally, the glorious Muskogee Turnpike, where the speed limit is 75 and the state troopers busy someplace else. It was a day and a half's drive total (I spent most of the time shouting at the other cars, scolding and cursing them); my folks were expecting me in the next day (it took them 3 days to do the same route, which you could make a mathematical equation out of: half the age equals twice the speed?), so I arrived to an empty house, and for a minute I actually thought, why did I stop? I could be in Amarillo tonight. I could see the Pacific ocean by Monday morning.
Then I let Penny in the house and we fell asleep on the couch together and all was well again.
Then I did a lot of tremendously idiotic things, most of which involved vodka tonics and karaoke and that sweeping and utterly false sense of grandeur, cinematic significance, that comes of driving home alone on a Tuesday night at 3 in the morning when all the streets are empty and you definitely wouldn't pass a breathalyzer test. Fortunately these were not solitary plummets (WHAT UP BITCHES) into the realm of Going Out in Tulsa and therefore I do not regret them one mite. Though I do regret the tequila shots. And Gold Digger. You know it's bad when the emcee announces, "Look at this little white girl trying to rap. How cute." Never mind that the emcee is a scrawny white guy himself, emceeing karaoke at the only leather bar in Tulsa, a place called the Screaming Eagle. Never mind that I was there in the first place.
I am, for the record, an amazing rapper. Just not on Gold Digger.
Coming home this time around has been weirder than ever, a trapeze act of swinging from Wilmington, where I'm the youngest, where I'm inexperienced, where I feel like a kid-playing-at-adulthood a lot of the time, to Tulsa, where Jesus H Happenstance, how did we get so old? We try and remember what year it was when we stayed up all night getting lit on two shared Sam Adams in Ariel's attic bedroom during the Solstice Party, or smoking peach cigars in Woodward Park, or who was first chair in the cellos in Orchestra; all our memories one enormous cardboard box that's suddenly become very old, very heavy.
Meanwhile I'm realizing I've already undergone a semester of graduate school, and that invites a whole slew of doubts and confusions and ugly unwanted conclusions: what the hell do I think I'm doing? where is this going? In this way it is uncannily like being in Vienna - I'd sit in some ornate cafe outside the Hofburg complex and smoke Lucky Strikes and write and write and write, ignorant to the architecture, the atmosphere, wanting only to know what the fuck I was supposed to be doing. As if there is some one accountable thing, some planner, recipe, instruction book that I lost.
But the visiting writer in November illuminated a lot for me, a kindly, softspoken man who forgave my absolute incoherent nervous rambling when I met with him, and who convinced me that I am learning, I am working towards something, even if it doesn't feel like it. I asked how do you train yourself; he said it happens, or something to that effect.
In essence, he forgave me for spending 3 hours hunting down graph paper composition notebooks (another symptom of Vienna, because they don't use lined paper over there), and for scribbling dozens of insane fragments on notepads and pinning them to my bulletin board (SANDY ALLEN TALLEST WOMAN IN WORLD/ WALKING RACES/ BLACK FRIDAY?), and for driving to the beach in December for no other reason that to look at the water. Drinking too much coffee, spending all morning and some of the afternoon reading in a big armchair. Riding my bike. Wearing cardigans and purchasing tote bags and checking out too many books from the library.
In essence, it was forgiveness for not doing what I thought I'd be doing, which is waking up early, editing, printing, mailing, submitting, discussing, researching, analyzing, pondering, epiphanizing, philosophizing, writing.
And that's why I am real keen on 2010 getting here. It's a new goddamn decade! And I am full of a hundred thousand resolutions, or even just suggestions, or even just hopes. Those are easiest, by far. And really, at the top of the list is something my father keeps telling me to do when I am scowling and cranky (usually hungry): lighten up. Don't be so hard on yourself. Rob tells me to do this too, but I've had a lot of time to perfect being self-brutalizing, if only in my head.
So! In the physical, actual world, there is a lot of snow. Tulsa, in hopes of keeping its throne in the finals for World's Worst Weather, received its first ever blizzard warning. It was a white Christmas, yes, but a snowed-in one, too, a drive-if-you-dare, a good-thing-you-have-on-Demand-TV-and-can-watch-4-hours-of-Mad-Men Christmas, too. Penny and I went on an adventure up and down the street yesterday afternoon; there are few things funnier than watching a Corgi trample through a foot of snow. We had a grand time.
I also received the most amazing gift of all: a George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. This was remarkable because I had expressed want all of a week before Christmas, and usually, this means No Chance in Hell, but remarkably, Mom--or Santa!?!--pulled through. Truthfully, I'm awful glad the holidays are at last at an end. Matthew got us 4 dozen oysters for our Christmas Eve appetizer feast. Mom refused to eat any because they looked like sputum. Then she had to work on Christmas Day, so our Christmas Dinner Proper is currently cooking downstairs--at last count, Mom had used 5 sticks of butter. I love this state.
And hey! I just discovered I have all of THREE subscribers! This is monumental. One is Rob, shockingly, and one is Rob's pal Jordan, but the third is Ball of Flame Shoot Fire, this band of guys who are all right I guess (no I'm kidding they are actually great) who should a) save me a t-shirt and b) institute a holiday tradition of covering songs from Muppet Christmas Carol. Please listen to this and then tell me you are not beside yourself with unmitigated holiday joy. Then go listen to their other songs too.
Soon!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)