Hi. I am so unbelievably tired. I just spent a weekend in Chris’s hometown, and haven’t slept more than a few hours, and I won’t sleep more than a few hours until Monday night because we’re moving and all that jazz. My internet connection won’t be up again until Wednesday, so I wanted to quick leave you with some pictures from the weekend. My gallery program is currently fucked up, so please forgive the mess and please forgive my swearing. Fuck! Sorry again. See you Wednesday. I finally got to see my new home, and you know what? I live exactly two feet from a mall, in the middle of an intersection. I don’t know what to think about that. I’m going to miss Lake Superior like nobody’s business.
More nostalgia and swearing to come. Stay tuned.
I am sleep wonky. I haven’t slept correctly for days. Early this morning, I sat at my computer in my glasses wrapped up in a red flannel robe watching the sky wake up. I have allergies manifesting themselves in the form of sinus migraines that a handful of Advil can’t combat. I am moving in 3+ days, and I’m a bundle of nerves because I’m not too good with stressful situations lately. It’s going to be a busy weekend, and all I want to do is crawl in a corner of the bed and be covered with spider webs, but I can’t do that as the bed is being dismantled in the next hour.
Whine whimper whine.
My internet connection could go at any day, and if that’s the case, I won’t be back on here until Wednesday, July 2. Hopefully, I won’t have to give it up until Sunday.
My eulogy for Duluth will have to wait. Oh, I’m missing specific people and bagel shops and the lake already, so much that I’m not sleeping, but I don’t know if I want to sentimentalize yet. I just want to get this damn thing over with. I want to have my own room again because as much as I love my lounging buddy, and oh baby do I, I want to be able to fix my pouting with loud sing-a-longs to my playlist and good hormonal cries in my computer chair. You just can’t do that around other people. You know?
Laying flat on our backs, legs and arms splayed, sucking on orange and blue freeze pops, in serious discussion about if we should sacrifice the cool of the fan so we can listen to the excessively loud and bright thunderstorm outside
Sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table at midnight eating Ben and Jerry’s with a fork while the owner of said Ben and Jerry’s begs you to not eat the whole carton
Spending the day in lopsided pigtails, little gray shorts and a baggy patterned pink shirt, which is completely unbuttoned, J-Lo style
Grimacing as his whiskers brush your overly sunburned shoulders
Birds serenading the 4 AM heat
Ignoring the alarm, banishing the flannel cover to the floor and singing a godawful song from Grease into his ear while he swats at you and then sits up, stretching like a satisfied tomcat across your stomach
How Nerds Solve Arguments, First in a Series:
So we’re yelling because he’s crabby and I’m sunburned, and I just spilled a large glass of water onto his desk and his jeans. It’s a dumb fight, really, one of those we won’t remember in five seconds. He’s mad because I didn’t clean the carpet well enough. I’m mad because he smirked at me. One of those. Finally, he storms out into the living room, throws himself on the couch, turns on the TV. I slam the bedroom door and crank my music. Five minutes later, I shut off the music and fling open the door, ready to continue the argument. He is crouched behind a chair, peeking over the sofa arm into the kitchen.
“Um. What are you doing?”
“Oh. Hi. Um. Well. Actually, don’t ask.”
Argument over.
. . .
Addendum to this entry:
All I can say is: There’s a world beyond negativity, possessiveness and the illusion of moral high ground. Someday you will wake with this very thought, and your world will be so much more exciting, so looser, so unbelievably chill. I’ll be around. We can kick it in the basement throwing back Vodka Collinses with extra cherries, shoes shoved in the corner and laugh about the silliness of the whole thing. Until then.
So, back when I was a wee lass and decided to make the big step from keeping a website on the AOL server to my very own domain, I didn’t know a thing about organization and just threw every file into one big lump. I’ve been dreading having to go back and organize the chaos of the past 2+ years, but since I have ten days left until we move, which means ten days left of pure lounging, I decided I’d attempt it. It will take many many days (which means many many weeks in my personal timezone), but if you come across a wonky link or a weird-looking picture, you’ll at least know what I’m doing. I’m tackling all the galleries first, so beware of strange hauntings over yonder.
Still life.
Here is what happens: I try to be very very tough, squinty-eyed, poker-faced, asshole-mouthed, cold-shouldered. I try to stay true to my redheaded Irish stereotype and hold impenetrable grudges. I try to keep my lists consistent and yeah, once you’re on that list buddy, oh, you sure are screwed for life with me.
But it never works that way. I see one shred, a tiny molecule within a molecule within a molecule of humanity, a pixel that suggests she notices the blank coldness of the sheets when he’s gone or that he gets nervous at the dentist or that she still cries when she scrapes her elbows, and I am wiped out. Gone. I’ve made so many weird mistakes and wrong turns that I want to be forgiven for that I instantly forgive others. I want them so desperately to see that I never intentionally try to hurt or cause pain to anyone, ever. I am too aware of the goddamn human condition, so painfully aware that I become a naive puddle of feel-good mush. I want people to read things I’ve written and really see. That’s what everyone wants, right? The angst Bible’s first commandment is: Understand Me.
I don’t want to be different. Not really. I want to crawl into a cocoon of empathy and drag everyone down with me.
Five Tuesday thoughts:
Good work, Dateline, on the phrase “Bitter Battle Over Botox.” Someone’s an English major!
Duluth has 97 percent humidity right now. There are big loud scary weather service warnings all over the radio and television begging Duluthians to stay away from windows and trees because a thunderstorm is about to tear our shit up. As I sit in front of a window looking at a large pine tree, I am mildly nervous.
Without fail, if Alex is home, these three phrases will be shouted at five-minute intervals: “This is HORSESHIT!” and “Jesus Fucking Christ!” and “WhatEVER fucking piece of fucking whatEVER.” This is all shouted to Tiger Woods on the XBox.
In the past two days, I have eaten approx. eight bagels and a whole yellow pepper.
I can see straight into my neighbor’s window right now. She is wearing a zebra-striped halter top and dancing around by herself drinking a Corona. I could be crazy, but I swear she is lip-synching to “We Are The Champions.” I am five seconds from going over there and joining her.
I’ve spent a lot of time with doctors lately because of various stupid health problems, such as my stupid ulcer and all the stupid side effects that go along with it. I ended up in the ER earlier this week because my stupid medicine sensitive body couldn’t handle the combination of drugs it was given. It pooped out on me and made me pass out into the arms of my rockstar in shining skin armor.
So, I’ve spent a lot of time in ERs. I get so interested in the other patients around me, their groans, their aches, their whispers. I couldn’t see the man in the curtained off room next to me, but I could hear his irritated voice and cry of pain every time the other man who was with him, someone I assumed to be his lover by the things they said to each other, adjusted him on the bed. His companion staged-whispered: “Do you have any underwear on?” The ailing man whispered back: “No. I should’ve listened to my mother.” And then the companion had to leave, he was hungry, just gonna go grab something quick, the cafeteria was closed. So I listened to the breath and the swallowed groans of the man while he lay alone, and my heart just broke into a motherly mushy puddle. I almost wanted to hike it over there in my ass-revealing (but nicely patterned) gown, plop down next to him, read him a book, touch his forehead, tell a joke.
There was a family there with three Lyme-diseased kids. They were platinum blonde and quiet, their blue eyes following the doctor in synch as he checked each of them with solemn care.
Then there was the drunk woman who came in flailing, chained and screaming, voice smoke-torn and sloppy, like her mascara. She was thrown into a locked room, and her yells were muffled. She sounded strangulated.
This is a movie. The man next to me is dying of a fatal disease and will become my lifelong pal when I befriend him. The Lyme diseased Aryans are alien clones with wobbly high voices. The drunk woman is my long-lost mother who gave me up at 16 for meth and dark filthy brothels. I am the the fair-haired teenaged heroine with the soft voice and gentle smile. Woodland creatures adore me.
In the hospitals, they tease me about my small veins, my pale skin, the way my whole body shakes when they examine my ears and eyes with that bright light. The young male doctors and nurses flirt with me; the females are reassuring, comforting. My dinner smells like latex and vials of blood. I sleep on starched white sheets that have only been touched by me.
When I walk outside, there are too many colors. I touch the velvety purple petal of a flower in a granite pot. I squint. Even the grays are blinding. Where is my hospital white and plastic blue?
At home, my tiny veins ache from the loss of the needle.
The new Sunny Wicked website is up, though it’s still in a work in progress (I spy the sizzling hot rockstar this very moment slaving away). This one, unlike the other one, actually will be completed.
It’s been quiet here because I’ve had a rather stupid (as Mark put it) week. Hopefully, the following week will be unstupid and I can get a little more accomplished.
On Friday night, I was squeezed like a Tetris piece into the back of Andrew’s SUV. A hardshell guitar case loomed over my forehead and drums, in all their separate hardshell cases, boxed me in. An amp and a gear box shoved my neck upright. Another guitar would’ve completed the coziness but Chris was given the ultimatum: “It’s the extra guitar or your girlfriend.”
And so we went to St.Cloud for Sunny Wicked’s gig at The Java Joint. On the car ride there, I spit sunflower seeds into a Dixie cup and snuck sips of the Jack Daniels Andrew had hidden in his bungee cord compartment. Andrew and Chris, who just graduated from Music College, sat in the front and analyzed Radiohead and Neil Young in an offhanded way that made me believe they didn’t even know they were doing it.
The Java Joint was scattered with pierced black-haired high schoolers with chain wallets. They sat in corners chain-smoking, drinking Lattes and Wild Cherry Pepsi, playing cards, looking around to see who was watching them. The High School inner monologue: please please please look at me and like what you see.
Sunny Wicked played late to a small crowd. Their show was tight, energetic, fun - one of the best shows I’ve seen them play in a while. A blonde-haired wallet-chained boy stood smack in the front of the stage, mouth gaping. Two youngish wallet-chained pretty girls, one prettier than the other, leaned on the speakers, giggled, hugged each other.
Another band played after, during which Andrew and I strolled through the rainy empty streets of St. Cloud in search of a gas station. We talked about the new house, the appliances we’ll need, who will get along with who. Not really talking at all, really, just listening to the buzz of the music lingering in our eardrums, watching the neon lights of the bank clock reflecting in the gravel puddles.
Soon after, Chris, Andrew and I piled back in the car. This time Frank Zappa was under scrutiny while I dozed against a guitar amp, clutching a handful of seeds.
Duluth was gray on arrival, foggy and strangely empty. I’ve already left it, really, so the lake and the familiar hills and streetlights don’t do much for me anymore.
We crawled into bed soon after we arrived home. Chris relaxed instantly, his worn-out rockstar body breathing a slow legato rhythm. Right before my eyes closed, the foghorn sounded in the distance, welcoming a ship into the harbor.
We have a house! On a road that sounds like a muscled Greek hero! In Richfield! We move in two weeks! The landlord is perky and awesome!
More later, there’s some hot Sunny Wicked action at the Java Joint in St. Cloud tonight, so I must be off to sleep in a car for two hours and then boogie.
The apartment boys in their natural habitat.
It’s an almost-rainy day in Duluth, the almost-rain predicted by the dull gray lake with white cap licks. My future roommates are in Minneapolis, finding us houses, and I’m still in Duluth, in a hopeful orange tank-top that reveals more 20something cleavage that I’m comfortable with. I think in this interim of inactivity, I’ll start telling stories.
We didn’t get the dream house in Edina. It was lost to a family with a “steady income,” though we all proved and made quite clear we had steady incomes, even if the incomes we have aren’t quite conventional. I understand where the landlords are coming from: if it comes down to Mr and Ms Outstanding Grown-Up With Jobs and Children or to five bohemian recent college graduates (well, four) who don’t look like punk kids but could very well be punk kids, including a percussionist and two couples living in sin - well, the obvious option is the Outstanding Grown-Ups. But, damn, is this frustrating.
We’re doing everything we can to appear like the respectful non-rowdy kids we are, from dressing up in ties and fake engagement rings to using our best phone voices and not even mentioning the band that might be practicing in the house, but no one wants to give us a chance. It might be easier if we didn’t have so many people, but we want a house on the outskirts of the city with five people for economical and comfort reasons, damn it. We’re going back down to Minneapolis tomorrow for the third time.
I have five million piddly errands to take care of, and at the same time, I have nothing significant to accomplish, which is causing jitters of antsiness and sluggishness and general feelings of “Dear sweet Lord, I can only invent new recipes and make lists of seemingly important, yet entirely meaningless tasks to fill the day before I explode,” combined with the fact that I’m unable to do expensive sweetyoungthang event which include debauchery like alcohol because I’m saving money and also saving my ulcer from poisonous, yet sweet liquor.
I’m enjoying this time, in a way. It’s a breather before I meet the “real” word, I know. But for now, I’m going to grab some coffee (fuck you, stomach lining!), a hack book and go commune with the lake. I’m determined to make friends with it this year.
So, Happy June. How time fleeees. Seriously: I know everyone says this as they grow older, but I remember in high school when a week felt like sixteen jillion googolplex years (I also cried myself into a frenzy when I wasn’t going to see my boyfriend for a week, so I wouldn’t trust my high school self too much). Now, a week is a blip and months are becoming like that, too. Yesterday felt like February.
Everyone has been gone from the apartment for the weekend, so I’ve been left to my own little devices. Yesterday, I learned to sauté (though actually mastering the art of sauté takes a lifetime, according to every stuffy chef page that came up on Google), and today I repotted my cacti. In a few minutes, I think I might vacuum. I know, please contain yourself. I might be new competition for the World’s Dullest Blog this week.
I did watch movies: Far From Heaven (wonderful; Julianne Moore was so interesting to watch as an actor) and White Oleander (fairly good, as well; Allison Lohman was fabulous).
We should hear about the house in Edina tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll get it, and I can start a whole new lifetime of laughing until I cry, sitting in new living rooms drinking whiskey, crying desperately in new bedrooms, falling down new sets of stairs and laying in the summer sun under new lilac trees. (I’ll also be stressing over work, bills, new furniture, stretching a paycheck and driving in the city, but I’ll stick to the positive for this first day of June).
We’ll see.
