a recent middle of the night meal
a bowl of trader joe's o's
two pieces of deli cheddar cheese
marshmallows
some tasks I have run for our giovanni
hot and sour soup delivery
hot and sour soup delivery
drive to and from spray tan
hot and sour soup delivery
things I fantasize about when I consider taking the whole week off at thanksgiving
staying in bed
watching korean tv
pajamas
hot chocolate
sleep
knitting
no human contact
what I will probably actually be doing the week of thanksgiving
running projections for a disney show with the symphony and trying to look professional while I sing along under my breath
a decent metaphor for my heart
two and a half years ago I was knocked down as I was trying to maneuver several hundred pounds of hay. on my right thigh I have a scar from being forcefully slammed into the lip of the little truck I was driving. it's a visible dent, the width of maybe two fingers. it's fully healed, just dented. if I push on it, it produces a very dull ache.
I believe this is how this thing with g will always be: a thing that will heal with time but will somehow, also, always hurt.
recent google searches
how to build a balloon arch
balloon arch tape
red chuck taylors
fraggle rock theme song
piriformis spasm
bob woodruff hairpiece
peter dinklage
single word said recently to the opera timpanist which subsequently made him crack up
frankenberry
top 5 favorite candies, as requested by the timpanist
cadbury cream eggs
laffy taffy (strawberry or cherry only, none of that banana-flavored shit)
charleston chew
valomilk
gummi sour apple rings
bottom 5, as requested by no one
peeps
candy corn
jelly beans
red vines
necco wafers
backstage noises I have been asked to make in the past seven years, onomotopoeia style
boom
rumble
ding
crank
bang bang bang
the general consensus
still sad
a probably true thing
I'm going to have to write my way out of this.
October 22, 2012
high hopes
It wasn’t that they were so
high, exactly,
they were more
low-down,
close-to-the-ground,
I could rub them
the way you touch a cat
that rubs against your ankles
even if he isn’t yours.
So yes I feel lonely without them.
Now that I know the truth,
that I only dreamed someone liked me,
the cat has curled up in a bed of leaves
against the house and I still have to do
everything I had to do before
without a secret hum
inside.
-- naomi shihab nye
bravely forward, I said. I meant it, though the sentiment comes in flashes of motivation. in between, there are long slow blank spaces. I crawl between moments of conviction. the rain pours.
I really, really miss my friend.
October 8, 2012
7
seven years ago today, my mom called me at sunrise to tell me that my stepdad had died overnight, in the hospice wing of the hospital, his brain hopelessly speckled with inoperable tumors. I can still remember his ridiculous, raucous laugh; the way we always teased him about his hair thinning; the grease always on his hands and under his nails from all the cars he worked on during the day; the sound of his voice as it carried from the full mechanic's garage we'd built next to the house, mingled with the sounds of the lift and the air compressor; his exuberant smile; his ridiculously short shorts; the smell of motor oil on his coat, cold from being outside.
I'll never forget the way I drove through the back roads of my hometown in early fall, a beautiful day, all the colors changing, and thought, 'I recognize there is beauty here, but it is not for me.'
nor will I ever forget the days following the funeral, absurdly nice outside, when one afternoon my mom, my siblings, and I drove to the hanover playground and played the longest and most intense game of freeze tag of my life. we played for over an hour, running like crazy through that most amazing of playgrounds, laughing and squealing. they were eight years old. afterwards we sat on the bank of the susquehanna river, in the sun. all of that impossibly incongruous, but real.
seven years. it gets easier, but also, it doesn't. we miss you, stevie.
I'll never forget the way I drove through the back roads of my hometown in early fall, a beautiful day, all the colors changing, and thought, 'I recognize there is beauty here, but it is not for me.'
nor will I ever forget the days following the funeral, absurdly nice outside, when one afternoon my mom, my siblings, and I drove to the hanover playground and played the longest and most intense game of freeze tag of my life. we played for over an hour, running like crazy through that most amazing of playgrounds, laughing and squealing. they were eight years old. afterwards we sat on the bank of the susquehanna river, in the sun. all of that impossibly incongruous, but real.
seven years. it gets easier, but also, it doesn't. we miss you, stevie.
September 10, 2012
up, down
me and three of my dudes climbed st. helens this weekend.
2 miles of the hike is just a steep hike; everything above treeline is a scramble. you can't walk more than a few steps before you have to climb a rock.
(there is no space for a trail so the poles are your only markers. this one had lost the will to live)
micah, who led the way most of the time, found this treasure about 3/4 of the way through the hike:
it was an actual barbell. you know, the kind that weigh, like, 40 pounds. how anybody got it up there is a real mystery. we were amused.
(apparently I had my camera on the "dark and shitty" setting)
the way the cloud cover formed made it seem like we were very, very high.
I climbed that mountain once too.
we found wall-e along the way.
also, it was really effing windy. I didn't do my hair like that on purpose.
we got to the top. it looks like this inside the cauldron.
Nub got there too. it was too windy to put him down.
(also, teeny tiny mt hood!)
I'm still not sure mountain climbing is really my bag. but I'm glad I went.
otherwise, things are pretty hard, internet. it's a herculean effort just to get out of bed in the mornings. and that's all there is to say about the rest of my life.
August 3, 2012
!
yesterday me and my bike set out in the early morning cold -- I could see my breath! -- and went on a bike adventure to salem. the cloudy weather they had predicted never materialized, which I was grateful for; those first 8 or 10 miles before the sun came up were cold, particularly without the benefit of bike gloves. but the sun came up and the temperature was perfect, and everything I needed was stuffed into the pockets of my jersey. I opted for the scenic route, ten miles longer than the more direct way, cutting west for awhile to travel along the willamette valley scenic bikeway: back roads littered with orchards and vineyards and two tractors tilling the earth, dirt clouds I rode through happily, glad to be able to smell the land. 66 miles from portland to salem, where I was greeted with beers and ice cream and a couple of happy dogs.
this is the last week of my summer. this week I've processed chickens at my friends' farm, I've skipped stones on the willamette, I've eaten candy, I've ridden my bike, I've cleaned stalls at the barn. I've read my book. I've hung out with my favorite person (twice). I've woken before dawn (twice). it's easy to spin everything as lovely, but in truth I've also been restive and bored and lonely, itchy and yearning in ways that I find difficult to articulate, even to myself. they are feelings that I suspect I should probably sit with, listen to, but I find myself avoiding them instead. one recent morning I lay in bed thinking, I wish I could travel more, I wish I could just up and go away for the weekend, I wish I led that kind of life, and then I got mad at myself, because if there's anything I've learned in the last year, it's that you're never stuck. you're only as stuck as you think you are.
although I let it pass without mentioning it to anyone, a year ago yesterday this happened. it took me months to pick up the pieces. I wasn't sure I wanted to acknowledge it at all, because JESUS, I've talked about it enough. I don't want to give the mistaken impression that I have any lingering regrets or pain or sadness. I don't. that ship sailed long ago, and good riddance. but this morning, I was standing in the sun-soaked barn, cleaning a stall, thinking of my one-year-ago self, and feeling a great deal of compassion for her. she thought she was stuck; she thought nothing would ever get better.
she came such a long way to get here. here, there might be transient boredom and worry, but there is also so much sunshine, adventure, playfulness, humor, resilience, courage, gratitude, love.
July 29, 2012
homestead
maryland, summer, nighttime: silent but for the sound of the crickets -- endless crickets. the windows open, the house warm and sticky and still.
the yard is populated primarily by weeds, which must always have been the case. there's an enormous amount of wild strawberry. the backyard is overgrown, or rather, overgrowing, but in a sweet, homey, unkempt way. the front yard, flat and easy to mow, is tame. business in the front, party in the back.
the smells are all different. I can't put my finger on how, exactly. when I was a kid growing up in that house, I used to think of the smell of the front yard (as I spent hours mowing it) as "buttery." now, better accustomed to it, I can recognize it as a kind of hay smell, though buttery still comes to mind: warm, yellow. as a teen on the mower in late summer, grasshoppers would shoot in all directions from the dried stalks of grass as I passed up and down the yard. six acres. it took a long time.
my brother is taller than me -- taller than me!! this was a great novelty to both of us -- but still the kid I know, just surrounded by a new, slightly surlier teenage exterior. we play frisbee in the yard. we're both pretty bad at it but we have a good time. one night while my mom and sister are at 4-H camp, we watch a bunch of episodes of "deadliest warrior" on spike TV. we eat pizza, which he heats in the oven and brings out for us. he's finally hooked on doctor who (I've been telling him for years) and we watch something like 15 episodes while I'm home.
the cornfields are everywhere. the houses are old, with older barns, the silos crumbling into the earth. in general, everything feels older on the east coast. I might just be imagining it.
I eat snowballs. I actually declared to my mom when I landed at BWI that I wanted a snowball at least every other day, since it's such a regional food that there's no chance in hell of ever having one here. I didn't get my first one for four days, which continues to feel like a great travesty. then, instead of getting a bunch of kiddie cups of every flavor I like (fireball, spearmint, chocolate, egg custard, birthday cake, sour cherry), I got chocolate every time. I did get crazy and ask for a chocolate/fireball combo for my last one, the day before I left. it was delicious.
actually, I ordered chocolate cherry a few times. with marshmallow. so probably you shouldn't pay attention to my complaining.
my sister showed two lambs at the 4-H county fair. do you know how you trim a lamb's hooves? it's hilarious.
they flip the lambs over (an athletic maneuver in itself) and plop them on their butts. for whatever reason the lambs go totally docile the minute they're put like that. I don't know whether there's something akin to twitching a horse in it (where maybe the position releases some sort of calming endorphin?) but more likely the lamb is like, "fuck it. I'm stuck." I took like a hundred pictures of this because I could not get over how hilarious it was. also my sister clipped those hooves like a boss. I'm glad I don't have to do this to Cookie.
(practice-showing her southdown)
I showed my sheep earlier in the week.
that's ethel. lucy was in the other room. in the background you can see my brother racing out the door. this is because my sister was about to recite, apparently for the 900th time, the FFA creed. I was holding the lamb as a tribute.
we drove to the beach. I already told you about that. on the drive, I told my sister wicked stories about my troublemaking as a kid. I didn't think I was a particularly bad kid but in comparison to her, I was. she was pretty horrified. I hope I didn't give her any ideas, or blackmail fodder.
my mom and I visited my brother at his internship at the national aquarium. they still have the bubble columns from when I was a kid. I was pretty nervous about them because they used to be right at the entrance and they weren't there when we walked in, but it turns out that's because they built a whole other wing that you have to walk through to get to the old entrance. I was so happy about the columns that I hugged them.
yeah, I don't know either. that's a shark fin on my head, in case you're wondering. my brother was, sadly, not embarrassed. he's pretty used to these shenanigans by now.
also at the aquarium there is the best sign ever. EVER.
I really wanted to.
this fucker is beautiful but he starts crowing at, I don't know, 4 AM? party foul, buddy.
his name is jimbob. that's not a joke.
we go to an O's game. not-quite-nosebleed seats that turn out to be pretty good, and in the foul zone, but no luck on catching any. we do get there in time for FREE JERSEY NIGHT which I am irrationally stoked about.
fuck yeah, natty boh.
yeah, nobody can ever see the family resemblance.
one day travis and I run one of my favorite old trails, whose turnaround point is a spot on the gunpowder where my track buddies used to sometimes jump from a bridge into the river. the water was too shallow to make the leap but I did wade in from the shore. it was utterly frigid. of course we skipped stones, because anybody who's ever been with me near a body of water knows I can't not skip stones. the trail was just as I had remembered it. but harder.
I unearthed some treasures from the basement, in the midst of searching for my yearbooks. all my old track ribbons, two pairs of track spikes, my powderpuff jersey, my kindergarten gym uniform (private school). my uniforms from the years I spent as a competitive jumproper. they still fit. sort of.
jacket model, jumprope model
a great deal of nostalgia, in general, but when it was time to go, there was none of the homesickness of last year. in truth, part of me was glad to be coming back here. the country doesn't get any smaller, and it doesn't get any easier to be so far from them, but in oregon, there's more to look forward to these days. which I am grateful for.
the yard is populated primarily by weeds, which must always have been the case. there's an enormous amount of wild strawberry. the backyard is overgrown, or rather, overgrowing, but in a sweet, homey, unkempt way. the front yard, flat and easy to mow, is tame. business in the front, party in the back.
the smells are all different. I can't put my finger on how, exactly. when I was a kid growing up in that house, I used to think of the smell of the front yard (as I spent hours mowing it) as "buttery." now, better accustomed to it, I can recognize it as a kind of hay smell, though buttery still comes to mind: warm, yellow. as a teen on the mower in late summer, grasshoppers would shoot in all directions from the dried stalks of grass as I passed up and down the yard. six acres. it took a long time.
my brother is taller than me -- taller than me!! this was a great novelty to both of us -- but still the kid I know, just surrounded by a new, slightly surlier teenage exterior. we play frisbee in the yard. we're both pretty bad at it but we have a good time. one night while my mom and sister are at 4-H camp, we watch a bunch of episodes of "deadliest warrior" on spike TV. we eat pizza, which he heats in the oven and brings out for us. he's finally hooked on doctor who (I've been telling him for years) and we watch something like 15 episodes while I'm home.
the cornfields are everywhere. the houses are old, with older barns, the silos crumbling into the earth. in general, everything feels older on the east coast. I might just be imagining it.
I eat snowballs. I actually declared to my mom when I landed at BWI that I wanted a snowball at least every other day, since it's such a regional food that there's no chance in hell of ever having one here. I didn't get my first one for four days, which continues to feel like a great travesty. then, instead of getting a bunch of kiddie cups of every flavor I like (fireball, spearmint, chocolate, egg custard, birthday cake, sour cherry), I got chocolate every time. I did get crazy and ask for a chocolate/fireball combo for my last one, the day before I left. it was delicious.
actually, I ordered chocolate cherry a few times. with marshmallow. so probably you shouldn't pay attention to my complaining.
my sister showed two lambs at the 4-H county fair. do you know how you trim a lamb's hooves? it's hilarious.
they flip the lambs over (an athletic maneuver in itself) and plop them on their butts. for whatever reason the lambs go totally docile the minute they're put like that. I don't know whether there's something akin to twitching a horse in it (where maybe the position releases some sort of calming endorphin?) but more likely the lamb is like, "fuck it. I'm stuck." I took like a hundred pictures of this because I could not get over how hilarious it was. also my sister clipped those hooves like a boss. I'm glad I don't have to do this to Cookie.
(practice-showing her southdown)
I showed my sheep earlier in the week.
that's ethel. lucy was in the other room. in the background you can see my brother racing out the door. this is because my sister was about to recite, apparently for the 900th time, the FFA creed. I was holding the lamb as a tribute.
we drove to the beach. I already told you about that. on the drive, I told my sister wicked stories about my troublemaking as a kid. I didn't think I was a particularly bad kid but in comparison to her, I was. she was pretty horrified. I hope I didn't give her any ideas, or blackmail fodder.
my mom and I visited my brother at his internship at the national aquarium. they still have the bubble columns from when I was a kid. I was pretty nervous about them because they used to be right at the entrance and they weren't there when we walked in, but it turns out that's because they built a whole other wing that you have to walk through to get to the old entrance. I was so happy about the columns that I hugged them.
yeah, I don't know either. that's a shark fin on my head, in case you're wondering. my brother was, sadly, not embarrassed. he's pretty used to these shenanigans by now.
also at the aquarium there is the best sign ever. EVER.
I really wanted to.
this fucker is beautiful but he starts crowing at, I don't know, 4 AM? party foul, buddy.
his name is jimbob. that's not a joke.
we go to an O's game. not-quite-nosebleed seats that turn out to be pretty good, and in the foul zone, but no luck on catching any. we do get there in time for FREE JERSEY NIGHT which I am irrationally stoked about.
fuck yeah, natty boh.
yeah, nobody can ever see the family resemblance.
one day travis and I run one of my favorite old trails, whose turnaround point is a spot on the gunpowder where my track buddies used to sometimes jump from a bridge into the river. the water was too shallow to make the leap but I did wade in from the shore. it was utterly frigid. of course we skipped stones, because anybody who's ever been with me near a body of water knows I can't not skip stones. the trail was just as I had remembered it. but harder.
I unearthed some treasures from the basement, in the midst of searching for my yearbooks. all my old track ribbons, two pairs of track spikes, my powderpuff jersey, my kindergarten gym uniform (private school). my uniforms from the years I spent as a competitive jumproper. they still fit. sort of.
jacket model, jumprope model
a great deal of nostalgia, in general, but when it was time to go, there was none of the homesickness of last year. in truth, part of me was glad to be coming back here. the country doesn't get any smaller, and it doesn't get any easier to be so far from them, but in oregon, there's more to look forward to these days. which I am grateful for.
July 22, 2012
sunset beach at sunset \\ kite flying on a windy day \\ impending storm \\ kid sister & me \\ jack \\ hole digging, day 2 \\ prohibited words & related offenders \\ ashley learns to juggle \\ evening walk \\ dusk
north carolina. all things are the same as always, except that we grow older. the house is, as usual, crowded. beth (34) and her daughter kaitlin (14); amy (33) and her boys (3 and 6); me and my sister ashley (just weeks shy of 15); my aunt and uncle. my other cousin, stephanie (30), is too pregnant and doesn't make the trip. beth and I share a bed, which is somehow hilarious and comfortable and fine. it reminds me of when we were girls, when amy and beth and I would all sleep in the same bed and I would hate waking in the middle of the night to use the bathroom because I'd have to crawl over them, afraid to rouse them in the process.
it's the same boring wonderful routine: breakfast, coffee, sunscreen, beach. I bring a book down every day but hardly read at all. we talk idly, for hours. the teenagers swim. every day I dig a giant, elaborate hole for the boys, who seem to remain unimpressed but continue to ask me for another one every day anyway. jack, the youngest, can't remember my name so I tell him he can call me whatever he wants. he names me 'hermit crab.'
the girls catch a guy from a neighboring family repeatedly checking me out as I walk past and we take to calling him 'boyfriend.' boyfriend becomes a week-long joke. 'you can't eat any more today if you want to impress boyfriend,' beth says. 'we just figured out which house boyfriend lives in,' kaitlin declares one day, triumphant.
this is literally all we do. sleep, eat, beach, trashy TV. one night we steam 4 dozen crabs. there is always shrimp, cooked in the maryland fashion, boiled in a ton of seasoning. we mix ketchup and horseradish into a seafood sauce and then we make pained faces with every bite, as the horseradish hits our noses. this is part of the endless traditions. the others: we sit on the porch in the rocking chairs, painting our nails. we play cutthroat rounds of double solitaire, a game which, incidentally, I've never encountered outside my own family. there are beers.
we stay for five days, then late one afternoon, it's time for my sister and me to hit the road. just off the island, we stop at alice's produce stand, where I buy butter beans and enormous, heavy tomatoes and one peach for the road. alice rings us up, and thanks us. "y'all come back now," she calls, and we are in the car again, the windows down, the radio up.
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