back in the saddle again

Not home from vacation twenty four hours and already my jaw feels like I've been crushing walnuts with it.

So yeah, the vacation was fantastic. We camped at a hilarious campground with some old people in their campers, some of whom sat in screened tents and watched dvds. Hilarious! We had fires and ate s'mores and I learned how to use the camp stove. Which is, in fact, that easy, but how was I to know? My parents told me to stay away from the stove because it was very dangerous, and then they never told me otherwise. Ah, when in doubt, blame the parents. Very smart, very smart. And we went on some beautiful hikes and all the way to the top of Mt. Rogers (the highest point in VA), and got good and sore and saw wild ponies and hiked back down and slept in a tent about the size of a womb. Really the only downside (apart from our kind of silly campsite) was that my intestines decided to f everything up last week, so I wasn't exactly the happiest camper in the world. I guess something has to go wrong, and that was it.

Then off to the farm and saw the boyfriend's whole family, which was lovely as always. A couple hours of watching the cutest 5 year old in the world shoot arrows and then trick me into going and picking them up. Good times.

And now I'm back, to focus on fun things like moving and new health insurance and applying to school. Eeek!

rainy sunday

I had a dream this morning that we were in upstate new york looking for my sister and some very strange friends of hers, and we had to camp at a trailer park, and it was raining and we hadn't brought a tarp for the ground. ugh. we were going to get all muddy.

Meaningful? I doubt it. I slept late and woke up with only the sheet on and the fan blowing and it was raining outside. I love how physical sensations create whole plot arcs in dreams.

And now the constant decision, should I clean or should I sew. Or should I go shopping. Each of them helps me in their own ways, and each is frustrating too. Do I have the patience to work on a new dress pattern? If I start to clean the house will I want to strangle the boyfriend when he gets home? Do I have any money/will I feel totally guilty coming home with new clothes, books, etc.?

I think what I really want to do is cook. Plan a menu, go to the organic butcher and talk about cuts of meat, splurge on the expensive salami, work on a new recipe. At the end of the day have something beautiful and new and also deliciously rewarding.

So okay, maybe it will have to be a skirt instead.

The 24th of The Rest of My Life

Holy Moly it's been a long time since I've posted. It's interesting to me that the more that is going on in my life the less I feel like writing about it. Also worth noting and perhaps thinking about some day that I write so much less now that I'm sober. A coincidence? Probably, but not necessarily. Anyway, I'm really just getting around to saying that there has been a lot going on.

I had another birthday, and so did Andrew. We had a lovely party and delicious cupcakes and you're all jealous that you weren't there to eat them. No, seriously. If I have a wedding cake half as delicious as those cupcakes it'll be a miracle. From heaven. Or that I hired the same guy to make them.

VCU rejected me, for reasons that I may never fathom. For a couple days I thought the world was closing in on me, and I got all panicky and didn't get off the couch, and this was the same week that the Gilmore Girls went off the air, so there was a lot of crying to be done. But in my panic I reached out for every possibility of what to do with myself next year, and came up with some pretty good alternatives. A full time job at my current workplace, and maybe an apprenticeship working on costumes. So, it's not all lost.

Now I just need a new place to live and another dog and an mp3 player that works and for the world to invent a healthy cigarette and I'm back on top of the world!

april

so I guess I got through that week. I suppose. I am still living and breathing and sitting here drinking green tea. Hilarious, in fact, that I applied to college, got audited, stopped drinking coffee, paid my 2006 taxes, my boyfriend implied that I might grow up to be a bag lady, and my ipod died of corruption, all in the span of about a month, culimnating in one weekend we went on a rainy vacation. Horrifying. And all that without any extra money to throw around as shopping therapy. Goodness! I know, you're all sitting back and saying my my, how does she do it? If only you saw my medical bills! But seriously, folks, I'd like to give a shout out to my therapist for helping me not run right off the rails the last little while of my life. But now it's getting warmer, someday I will hear about my future as it pertains to fashion school, the boyfriend seems to want to have actual conversations, I'm realizing I can't just will him to say the things I want him to, the taxes are getting paid, I'm tightening my belt. And my birthday's right around the corner! It's looking up? Thank god that month is over.

i've got the crazies

Here's an apology to all the people who have to speak to me this week: Oh my, I'm so sorry. I'm a total loony bin. It won't go on for much longer.

The pressure! I want to know how other people deal with it. Yoga, really? Beer? Punching things? Deep breathing? Sex? Yeah, I could probably use more of all of that. But I don't have time! I'm too stressed out! Taxes, dresses, drawings, leaky roofs in the middle of the night (thank you for dealing with that, piece). I'm too wigged out to even appreciate the fact that a raccoon tried to break into our house last night. Which was, by the way, hilarious in retrospect.

And what's that coming around the bend? Oh, hey, period. Cool, you always make me feel so calm and rational. Everything's coming up roses.

Next Tuesday, man. Everything's going to be better.

a mandate to blog

So I'm thinking a lot about shopping recently. I hate my clothes. Not in an "i think i'm fat i can't stand it" way, or in an "everything i bought was cool when i rocked it at age 19 and now just looks sad" way, but in an "i don't have a cohesive look and when i tell people i'm a fashion designer i just feel ashamed" way. This need for clothes is intersecting with my complete inability to buy things that were made in china. (okay, not complete, i did just buy that jean skirt from american eagle, but i really needed it and it was on sale). So i see cute stuff and I want to buy it and then I see that made in china label and my stomach sinks and I just can't pay 95 dollars for a skirt that was made in a sweatshop.

But there is not a great directory of where to find clothing online or even in person that isn't made with the blood of little girls, and I'm beginning to think that I must be the one to create this blog. The blog to tell you all where to shop. Because really, is there anything I like to do more than tell people what to do? No, not really.

homestyle

All I want to do is move. It's spring, time to move! Or graduate, or at least plant things. So I'm sewing and trying to build flower boxes and cleaning and tossing out old clothes (or not so old clothes) in a vain attempt to corral the amount of stuff that had built up around me in the last few years. It's so much stuff! It's an ungodly amount of stuff! Papers and books and shoes and pots and pans and knick knacks and cds and pens and lamps and couches and god only knows what else. And we're thinking about moving. No, that's wrong: we live for moving day, and when we do move we will relocate to a place that is approximately 2/10s of the size of the place we live in now. So...where's all that stuff gonna go?

a blessing and a curse

I'm feeling amazingly lucky at this moment, that I have friends doing such amazingly creative things. My sister at www.400words.com, evan and alex at www.urbanhonking.com/hotknives, ali and evan at www.greenandgreensaladpdx.blogspot.com.

And there are more of you out there doing more amazing things. And fuck all, why can't we live any closer to each other? So, happiness, and maybe also a tear.

spring fevah!

Today it *might* get up to 75 degrees. I am creeped out, I am overjoyed. I've got that itchy season changing feeling that feels a lot like anxiety. I want to take a lot of showers. I want to go to the gym. I don't want to eat anything but fresh vegetables, which really isn't going to be possible for another month or two. I'm trying to forget that it's going to get frigid again. I moved all my summer clothes out of storage, but they're just sitting on the floor because it's too soon to move my winter clothes into storage. It's the time of year where I need twice as much stuff as I did a month ago. I get sweaty this time of year. I can't stop smiling this time of year.

are these things ever really inevitable?

Are they? Yes, I think some of them are. And some of the things that happen are purely luck, and some we make happen with the sheer force of our will. And that makes the world confusing, because we cannot say yes this is the way, no that is not the way. Because there are so many ways. Sometimes it is fate, and we cannot change. Sometimes what happens is a creation of our minds, and most of the time its a muddled in between state that will never be known.

It's odd that I enjoyed political theory so much, when these questions of what is reality just tire me out. I think I liked that it took big questions of right and wrong and justice and nature and laid them out simply like geometric proofs. Passionate and yet emotionless.

We just finished our work on "The Violet Hour." Please do see it, if you ever get a chance. Not just our performance, but any performance. Or read it again and again. I'm really all wound around it in wonderful ways.

laws of the land

So I spent a lot of yesterday gearing up for tax time. This feels exactly like when I tried to do an entire year's worth of latin translations the night before they were due. And I did them, but did they end up in real human sentences? I really doubt it.
So, like, I'm "doing my bookeeping" but it's totally nonsensical. And about every fifteen minutes I picture the IRS descending on my house and hauling me away in chains and making me sign a piece of paper that says I will never try to do this on my own ever again. Which, hey, would be a great idea! Not doing this myself! But as it turns out I'm way too embarassed to go to a professional and say hey, I only make 150 dollars a month from this business, but I can't keep track of even that. I also needed to think about this in August, not late February. But in August I was thinking about how all my melons got stolen, so I was kind of busy.

Well, back to the grindstone. I hope you all write me when I'm in jail.

it feels like a short pier

So I'm applying to college. Again. So I applied twice in high school, then to transfer out of George Mason, then again to transfer out of Oxy, although I didn't end up going. I think I just needed that UVA acceptance to feel right in the world. So for the fifth time I'm ordering up those SAT scores. Gugh.

But I have to think that I want to learn this better. I want to know how to sew, and I want to think about design, and I want to meet other people who want to think about design and talk about it and I want to be better at this than I am. And if I go to VCU it's cheap as hell. So that's nothing to sneeze at. But I feel silly. I feel absurd, like all of a sudden looking down and realizing that my toes have popped out of my shoes and I've been walking around like a hobo for the last few months. But it's not anyone else's life, it's mine. These are my toes, and I'll put them wherever I want.

The Scourge Continues

A big fat flea crawling on Pistol's head. Unmindful of the fact that it has been below freezing for days, or that there have been no fleas in this house for 2 weeks now, or that there is no reasonable way that the dog could have picked up said flea. It's like how in the Middle Ages they thought that bugs just appeared out of nowhere. I see what they're talking about. What eggs could there possibly be? Where have they been hiding?

The whole thing makes me want to sit down and cry. I am helpless. I am scarred and bloodied and beaten and overwhelmed by fucking bugs. There is no way around it. And I let this bundle of flea sleep in bed with me. Because there's no way I could say no to him. Sigh.

cold toes

The wind is whipping through this two-bit town. I made an adorable skirt yesterday, one with pleats and a 50s boomerang print, but even with wool tights and legwarmers, it's just too darn cold this week. My feet hurt, here in the house in my pippy longstocking socks. When they touch the drawers of the desk they're a little sore with cold. Blarch.