old park and future old neighborhood

this morning

early Thanksgiving

I was thankful for lots of things last week. Getting to take a mini trip, even if it was for work. Waking up in the hotel to see snow outside my window and walking to work with snowflakes falling on my eyelashes. Touring breweries. Mary Oliver's new book, and finding a cool independent book store to buy it from. Seeing Band of Horses play in my town. Sunny days and kayaking with Linz. This Blondie song.

scab or scar

How long can a scab last, really? In August, I scraped my knee across a rock in Malibu. The waves were huge and knocked me over. I didn't see the rock in the water. (Why'd you go during south swell? my sister asked later.) The person I was with didn't care and swam away from me. Afterwards, I sat on my towel and watched it bleed a little. My hand is covering it in the picture. It left a purple scab that I thought would've gone away by now, but there it is. Maybe it's permanent? Nooo!

what's a month? five years?

The other day I woke up from the silliest dream. FP and I were getting married, a totally natural thing in the dream because we were in love. Only, on my way to the wedding (my mom was driving me in her minivan), I realized I wasn't wearing a white dress. I had on this magenta colored dress I bought that summer, the one I can't wear anymore because I now have the belly of Gary from Teen Mom. Ah, to be young and thin again. But I digress. I hadn't watched this video of FP I have in a long, long time. In it, I'm wearing the dress and we've just come back from his birthday dinner. I thought by watching it now I would see something new, maybe say "Look how young and naive I was. I'm so different now." Am I?

I prefer coworkers who are under the age of 7

Last week I got to babysit Ava, my little friend who I used to watch a few days a week. We had a princess tea party with fake names (mine was Ava, hers was Silfia), we read books, drew bunny people, and when it was time for bed she put on the Hello Kitty nightgown I gave her for Christmas. Aaw. She told me, "We're having so much fun right now, right? I wish we could do this over and over, I wish you could be my babysitter again. We can pay you $60!" She is so cute. I wonder where she got the $60 from? She also told me that she let a slug crawl across her toe once, and that it wasn't gross - it smelled like lavender. Kids...

summer medley; or summer don't go not yet!

from the archives

For a second, I couldn't find the files for my grad school thesis anywhere. Thank God I found them on my external hard drive. Enjoy this old precious gem.

Change

Consider the hau tree
positioned crookedly
on the side of the
red dirt road,
heart-shaped leaves,
buds blooming yellow
in quiet early morning,
orange under midday sun,
and, by nightfall, red
petals lying in the road-
dissolving into clay.

sandy times

I keep finding sand on my bed! Very unsettling for a clean freak like myself. I think I even chewed on a bit of sand a few minutes ago - how did it get in my mouth?? And now I'm listening to a song called Sacred Sands... Soon I'll have a sand carpet and and I'll sleep between sand sheets, and when guests come over and go to pour themselves a glass of water, sand will come out of the faucet. The ocean house becomes the sand house!

a little kick

Sometimes that's what you need to re-examine your life. It's painful, but maybe this came at the right time. Viv thinks I am projecting my own thoughts onto him, but even if I am, it's not such a bad thing to ask yourself why you aren't doing the things you want to with your life. I thought I was doing a lovely job of hiding the uncertain time that I'm going through right now, but those things have their ways of coming out whether you want them to or not. And I thought it would've been nice to have someone to help me out of it, to make it a little easier... But I can be brave and do it alone, too.

no hope, no harm

I'm sure all mimosa and Smiths-loving girls like to play that song after suffering a disappointment.

the teenage dream lives!

Tonight as I was driving over the bridge, the moon was a perfect crescent.

Art and my B on a Thursday night

I was really excited to find this new Elizabeth Bishop book.

This excited, me too. Annaville on a book cover!

Oh no.

I thought I was deleting my 100 Blogger pictures from my fancy new phone, but I was actually deleting them period. I was so sad when I realized what I'd done. I went back and replaced some of them tonight, but one that I can't find is the one I used as the cover photo. I took it in 2006 on a beach in Santa Cruz with Lindsay and Ashley, and Cody is the long haired shadow. WAH. Here's a new one. My old neighborhood in IV.

there must be a reason for all the looks we gave

I think I'm not good at talking about my feelings. I'd rather write them down somewhere in a way that isn't easy for others to read. One hour of feeling-sharing at work put me near tears. Maybe J was right, I'm just a baby.

bike ride day

it's everywhere

I hear it when I drive to work in the morning. Coming from the mail room at work. On my way home from work. I've almost, almost had my fill of somebody that I used to know. And my hair needs a trim and feels like hay, my hair dye is no longer being made or at least is not called "cinnaberry" anymore making it hard for me to find, and I am in agony waiting to get a response from someone about something potentially exciting... but I'm just going to remember Paul and the Philipians, not worry, and try to be joyful.

why is this so funny

Little things that remind me of the smallness of Baltimore make me giddy. Of course a guy from the internet who I went on a boring date with would end up marrying a girl who rudely doodled on my resume during a job interview. That kind of thing happens! Once, Meagan was telling me a story about a guy her boyfriend at the time knew... And a few minutes later, we walked into the Dunkin Donuts in the sketchy shopping center by our apartment, and there was a man ordering donuts with his two sons, and he was showing his sons a picture of the guy we were just talking about. Another time, I kept seeing the same person around town, again and again. Meg, my mom and I were driving to dinner in a neighborhood I didn't usually hang out in, Harbor East, and I told Meg to give me twenty dollars if we saw this person. Ten minutes later, there he was running in the rain. Yeah Baltimore!

some wisdom from my brother

In an attempt to modify my own behavior I asked him for some help. He told me to ask myself why I'm doing what I'm doing, and what I'm looking for or hoping to find. When he told me that, I regretted calling him from the conference room with the glass walls and wished I'd gone for the one with the fogged walls. Both my brothers are good at asking me hard questions and making me think about things I don't want to. He says if I keep watching the rear view mirror, I'm going to miss what's ahead. I think he's right.

the perfect amount of Saturday morning fog

GTS

Gym, tan, stop Silvia if you think you've heard this one before. It was almost like Morrissey was ridiculing me on my way home on Monday night. (Imagine - Morrissey ridiculing someone??) I know I said goodbye to piney times months ago, even years ago! Every time has been a failure. But now it's real, and it's a good feeling.

My heart is probably turning into what the Grinch's looked like in the beginning of the story.

I can handle anyone else who would like to break personal ties with me this spring. What's one more.

Guess what's still awesome?

This song!

Secret Affair, my gold brocade dress, watching David Beckham play soccer up close, and some love from my friends is just what I needed this weekend.

come on, future

I wish I were in the future already, months from now (no, weeks), looking back at this time and laughing at how pathetic I was. Like when Meg and I laugh about falling asleep clutching someone's beer bottle. (ha!) But for now I am in it, really in it. Rodney sent me this song awhile back and I told him I didn't like because it was too sad, but now I can't stop listening to it. I wish someone else would stop listening to it. I wish I could stop caring about what they're doing! I know I don't usually curse, little blog, but fuck.

lykke li on the moon

how do you get tougher?

Early early this morning something so scary happened to my nephew. He was climbing around in the dark and an entire dresser full of clothes fell on him. Some glass pitchers and vases on the dresser fell and broke, too, and the little guy was pinned between his bed and the dresser drawers that rolled out onto him. Thank God he didn't even have a scratch on him, but I was so scared that he was hurt I had a panic attack and thought I might throw up but instead just passed out near the toilet. If I ever have children, someone else is going to have to be with me during emergencies because I will be totally useless. Coincidentally, this dresser accident happened the day after my boss told me in one way or another that he thinks I may be too meek and mild mannered for the cut throat corporate world. But how do you get tougher?

insomnia, why are you here

I haven't not been able to sleep in a really long time. I used to be a professional insomniac. Not anymore. I don't know why this is happening! I did drink more caffeine than usual today... Yes, that could be it.

you're staying here, teeth

It looks like my wisdom teeth aren't going to be removed anytime soon, no thanks to my barely existent health insurance. The good news is my headaches have gone away. All it took was one trip to the sketchy office and a leathery tanned dentist with shaggy highlighted hair asking me if I clench my teeth, and the next day I realized I do. Headaches gone! Other problems still here.

a truth

I hate getting ready for bed. There are too many things to do and it takes too long. It would help if my bathroom's sink faucet would give hot water instantly.

I have to get my wisdom teeth removed as they've been giving me a constant headache for nearly three weeks. I read a news article online about a teenage girl who died while having her wisdom teeth removed, and people keep telling me weird things, like they had their wisdom teeth removed and woke up puking or sobbing. I'm sure both will happen to me. I wonder if it'll be like when they gave me morphine at the hospital, and the nurse told me it was normal to feel nervous. I guess I could deal with a few minutes of extreme anxiety. I do every day anyway! Ha... ha... ha...

the cheese stands alone

On Sunday I was having breakfast with my brother and his fiance after church, and M sort of bemoaned having had to spend Friday night watching movies by herself because my brother went out with his friends. It was weird to me because I did the same thing that night, except all day at work I'd been looking forward to staying home and watching movies by myself. My mom is ziplining through Central America, so I had the house to myself, I had cool new popcorn that pops in its own bowl, champagne, and Something Borrowed. (Don't judge me for my romcom addiction. I ended up changing my mind and watching Eclipse instead, but that's not the point.) And then that got me thinking about all the other things I do by myself that just feel natural to me, like riding my bike at the beach, shopping, sitting outside in the sun at work and wondering why someone would ask why I'm just sitting there. Can't a person just sit somewhere by themselves and think? And what if I've been doing things, living life, by myself for so long that if someone came along and wanted to share it with me, I didn't want to? Am I going to be that single aunt who wears weird clothes and has an old beat up car and gives the kids ice cream for dinner? Actually, Nanny Silvia would never do that ice cream bit. But I would let Boots watch Up as many times as he wanted. Oh, here we are. I'm the cow and Boots is little critter. Too bad there's no "Just Me and My Aunt" book.

Goodbye, piney times!

It was fun until it wasn't. I'm going to really try to see things for what they are and not what I wish they were. Starting... now.

oh no

I'm at the part in my Flannery O'Connor biography where Erik, the Danish bookseller she loves, moves back to Copenhagen and marries an actor's daughter. Now it's just Flannery and her mother at the farmhouse. I wonder if she would have liked The Smiths.