8.29.2003

come to mama, you cute little punk rocker, you
my friends and i all felt ridiculously old last night as we watched the MTV Video Music Awards and felt disgusted and out of the loop. when you don't get MTV's jokes or like the presenter's outfits, you're obviously not their target market anymore. it was a little sad, but ultimately for the best.

however, sasha and i totally fell in love with the cute indie punk rock boys with their ironic t-shirts and demeanor.

8.27.2003

from the ranks of the freaks who suspect they could never love anyone
last night i dreamt about an ex-boyfriend.

we had set up a fort around his bed, as usual. i remember feeling cozy and protected by the blanket forts, staying in bed all day listening to aimee mann. everything we did was secretive and hushed. it was so romantic and beautiful and fabulous and deep and meaningful and, ultimately, annoying and difficult.

the dream didn't really have any kind of plot. it was more like i was standing over a photograph being developed - the chemical liquid swishing over some hazy and dreamy snapshot of a former me.

i wasn't really much different then. i just needed different things.

yesterday, i was reminded of a conversation with someone i'd just met a few weeks ago... he said, "man, i can't believe you're getting married." i said, "what? why? because i look young?" and he said, "no, because it means now i can't have you."

while i walked away from that gorgeous stranger feeling unbelievably flattered and self-confident, i realized how happy i am with the page my life is turning. i don't need clandestine passionate afternoons spent tucked away in a makeshift fort. i don't need men i've just met to fall in love with me. i just need erik. for the rest of my life, i just need him.

it's a remarkable, peaceful feeling.

8.26.2003

things that kind of suck:
  • realizing, 3 weeks before the wedding, that you forgot to invite some key people. this only "kind of" sucks, because a) i'm good at begging for forgiveness, and b) it would suck much worse if we realized this after the wedding.
  • trying to quit your vicious espresso habit. this only "kind of" sucks, because a) ultimately, it's a good thing, and b) the suckage will soon pass. caffeine headaches are so transitory.
  • starting to "come down with something," mere weeks before the Most Important Day Of My Life, knowing full well that my colds have been known to last months. this only "kind of" sucks, because a) i get lots of attention, and b) i frantically start to take better care of myself by adding vitamins and sleep and subtracting caffeine (see above).
  • getting regret r.s.v.p's for the wedding, and immediately wondering why people don't love us. this only "kind of" sucks, because a) there's no way on this good earth that we could have fit everyone in the church or ballroom without having to buy out some fire marshalls, and b) $57 a plate is no pocket change. (i feel so dirty)
  • getting made fun of by my readers and loved ones for turning to tweezers for solace during a potential run-in with a potential intruder. this only "kind of" sucks because, a) deep down inside, everyone wishes they were as geniusly astute and resourceful as i, and b) even the fricking FAA agrees that tweezers are a vicious weapon, not to be allowed in airplane cabins. so there.
  • 8.25.2003

    my inner environmentalist cringes everytime i pee in a public restroom
    1. take smallish wad of toilet paper. wipe down seat. this also ensures that the toilet paper that touches your nethers later hasn't been handled by strangers. dirty strangers.
    2. put down toilet seat cover.
    3. pee. that is all. nothing else is allowed in public restrooms.
    4. wipe, etc., then flush toilet with foot.
    5. if you're feeling extra sanitary, use a piece of toilet paper to open door.
    6. get a small piece of paper towel. get a large piece ready if it's one of those machines you have to touch.
    7. use small piece to turn on faucet and dispence soap.
    8. use small piece to turn off faucet.
    9. use the large piece to dry your hands.
    10. use the large piece to open the door. DO NOT TOUCH THE DOOR HANDLE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

    8.22.2003

    the curse of the overactive imagination.
    11:20pm
    i get home, open the front door to a dark house. i lock the door behind me. i notice the front window open and say to myself, "self, leave the window open. you can do this. overcome."
    12:00am
    i turn on the fan, climb into bed. the breeze is coming in through the window, making the sheer moonlit white curtains flow softly, peacefully. i'm tired.
    12:07am
    pounding on the front door. a brief pause. more pounding.
    12:08am
    i call erik. i'm wondering if the pounding on the door was our roommate (t-2 days until he's an ex-roommate!) who had lost his key or something. i had thought he was home in his room. but i sure as hell wasn't going downstairs to find out. i get the roommate's cell phone number. call it. he's in los angeles. los fucking angeles. i'm home alone.
    12:15am
    i put my clothes on. i find my tweezers. they're sharp.
    12:20am
    erik makes me go downstairs in the dark with the tweezers to close all the windows. i grab a steak knife. (the steak knives really don't get enough action in this house, so the knife was happy for a purpose). as i'm walking back up the first flight of stairs, erik asks me, "did you close the bathroom window?" my heart starts pounding even more. THE FUCKER IS IN THE BATHROOM! regardless, i go into the bathroom in the dark, almost dropping the knife and the tweezers several times on my bare toes to shut the window.
    12:45am
    tweezers on the nightstand. phone on the pillow. knife beneath the mattress. i hear footsteps and door handles out of thin air.
    3:00am
    i'm still awake, thinking about which friends i would call while frantically driving over to their house, if i could ever muster up the courage to go back downstairs.
    6:30am
    i wake up feeling this weird embarassment after dreaming that i called all of my friends, including people i've never met, in the middle of the night while afraid, asking for them to come over and sit with me until i fall asleep.

    luckily, in real life i didn't call too many people, though.

    this reminds me - i left the knife under the mattress. i should probably move that before erik comes home tonight.

    8.21.2003

    blood
    today i had some "tests."

    i know the science. i know i have a lot of blood. enough to spare, at that. but something about getting blood drawn always triggers an unfounded greed.

    give it back, you blood hoards! i need every last ounce! i will die!

    the same lab employee that's always there - the german-looking young guy with the inappropriate comments - caught my eye as i cringed at the sight of the needle and gigantic vile to steal my blood. in passing, he made some joke about whether he'd need to hold me down. then he proceeds to come back around the corner and watch as the lab tech slides the needle far too slowly into the inside crease of my elbow. he adds a little more pressure to get the last few milliliters/gallons of the vile filled, and then pulls the needle out. far too slowly. i accidentally trace my eyes past the gloved hands, past the needle, to where the deep red blood swishes around in the rounded glass vile. the gigantic rounded glass vile. my stomach flips, the same way it does when someone you're in love with brushes their hand against yours for the first time. except this sucked.

    and to top it off, they were testing for anemia. they're hoards, i tell you. hoards!

    8.20.2003

    t minus exactly one month
    looking over a giant list i just scrawled of Shit Still To Do For The Wedding, i'm regretting the choice of wholesome green tea over a 3X latte. zen just isn't cutting it right now.

    8.19.2003

    home
    as the sand snuck between my toes and this woman tightened her grip around me, i wanted to say something like "i didn't know your husband all that well," but i could feel her sobbing where my hand rested on the back of her neck, her long hair tangled and moist from the ocean air, probably still freshly grown out for some bridal updo.

    i said nothing. it may have been the longest hug i've ever been involved in, and it was with someone who's path may never have crossed mine otherwise.

    matt and i didn't know each other well. we saw each other maybe 3 times since last fall. i remember hearing all this chatter about "the homeless guys" until i finally met him and his run-away-from-wyoming cohort justin at a campus ministry event at UCSD. matt and i sat on the steps outside the building for some time while he taught me how to play the doxology on guitar, talking quietly about our lives and music and god, plotting the elliott smith cover band we'd form some day. he smelled like even though he'd probably found a place to shower recently, he hadn't washed his clothes in a long time. his blond hair was pulled back into a haphazardly tied ponytail at the back of his neck, curly and untouchable. everything he did was driven by passion and faith. everything.

    there was always going to be so much more time. we'd get together tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. hey, maybe when erik and i finally settled into the condo we'd open up the spare room to them. tomorrow. we have to hang out. tomorrow.

    there isn't any time left. friday was the last tomorrow.


    the sun set behind the overcast sky and the smoke billowed from the fire. waves crashed indignantly against the shore and jets launched themselves into the night above our heads. we stood, uneasy, in a few curves of a circle and talked about matt and about god and about love and ate cheesecake and drank corona.

    i couldn't look at the frightened beautiful young widow for fear of seeing myself.

    8.18.2003

    brief, rivetted update
  • i'm now 24.
  • i thoroughly enjoy mcewans ale.
  • there's nothing much tastier than using the last few chips (as in the limey fatass french fries) of the pile to sop up the layer of vinegar and salt left on the plate.
  • john, one of my best friends and Most Fabulous People In The World, showed up accidentally/surprisingly to the pub on saturday night. since he lives in virginia, it wasn't really accidental. but i was tickled pink none-the-less. he's a boy, and has an engagement ring. i love it!
  • my parents have successfully mastered their sole vegetarian dish, eggplant parmesan, for when erik and i come up for dinner. mmm.
  • my dad is as uninterested in the wedding father-daughter dance as i am. of course, we'll do it anyway, but i was definitely very touched to know we're kindred spirits.
  • erik: "what sucks about techno music is if you recognize a song, you can't exactly sing along," five seconds after i hear him humming/"singing along": "bmm bmm bmm bmm."
  • baby gracie is the sweetest little girl EVER.
  • to his mother's dismay, i am officially hell bent on making sure baby lucas walks before his 9 month birthday. he's 8 months and 3 days old now. he's so close, and totally excited about anything that involves using his legs.
  • i'm getting bored with the internet. but not bored as in i'm going to stop using it. hell no! i'm just realizing that the spark is over for me. i didn't really "discover" the internet in it's GUI/gooey format until 1994 or so, and up until the last year or so, there always seems to be something New And Fabulous to occupy me/rekindle my interest. 2003 hasn't yielded anything yet.
  • i'm currently enjoying a training course at work, which means i'm not really working. hell yes!
  • one of the most talented and spiritual people i'd ever met -- and i hardly even knew him -- was killed on friday in a car accident. he moved to san diego from wyoming to pursue musical and vagabondish goals, living out of a car with another musician for many months. he was just married two weeks ago. something inside me is wounded because we have lost this person i barely knew.
  • that's all.
  • 8.15.2003

    oh, i almost forgot
    tomorrow is my birthday.

    i'd put a "here's me almost exactly 24 years ago" just-born baby picture on here, but i'm a middle child.

    8.14.2003

    this new house
    when both of these books find their way to your nightstand at the same time...



    ...you naturally find yourself wondering what the hell might have "happened" in your house prior to moving in.

    then it hits you. your house was built in 1998. nothing happened. no heads in ovens. no nooses on rafters. no blood in the bathtub. no infant ghosts in the floorboards.
    in fact, you probably don't even have any floorboards or rafters.

    -

    up until six months ago, i may not have been living there, but i was paying rent on an adorable little cottage built haphazardly behind a pale yellow victorian stick house near downtown san diego. my landlord grew up in the big house, and thus, i had some glimpses into the history of the little shack.

    i knew the cottage was built by hand by her family. i knew babies were born in my living room. i knew people died in the big house. i knew crimes happened in the alley, a foot from my door. police chases, attacks, robberies, rapes. names had been written by the children in the concrete pathway with fingertips or twigs decades ago.

    this is the life i crave - something so rich with history that it may even make you a little afraid at times. at two in the morning you're awakened by nothing more than the air, thick with passion of former lives and former loves and former endings.

    -

    perhaps history, then, is why people pay $389,000 (current asking price) for something like this:

    8.13.2003

    that whole gay bishop thing
    you may have noticed julia hasn't said much here regarding gene robinson and her lovely episcopal friends.

    well, that's just because the onion always says it better anyway.

    "Isn't worrying about God stuff all the time kind of gay anyway?"

    8.12.2003

    simple math
    1 vegetarian + 4 days in mississippi = ~5 lbs weightloss

    and to the quiet vegetarian in the japanese restaurant in columbus, ms, who picked this edamame and cucumber roll lover out of a crowd and started conversation:
    sorry i'm not from your neck of the woods. you were momentarily so excited to have found kin.
    and i disappointed.
    day 1.
    happy zeroth birthday to grace elizabeth.

    i can imagine how beautiful you are with your mother's hair and your father's eyes. i can't wait to meet you and watch you grow up. well, i won't just watch. i promise.

    i love you already.

    8.11.2003

    i'm back, y'all.
    i'm back from the glorious state of mississippi. (and a brief, peaceful, beautiful drive through alabama.) eight glasses of wine and three pints of guinness spread out over two nights. the ninth glass of wine still staining the brown silk-lined embroidered dress that made me feel beautiful and airy and glamorous and bohemian all at once. seven bug bites and counting. smoke and tears and hot thick air stinging my eyes.

    i'm still tired, happy, numb, drunk, interrupted.

    a special thanks to the lovely jason killingsworth, guest blogger extraordinaire, for keeping the readers entertained in my absence, even though he puts my writing to shame. and for giving an exclusive update - his own readers haven't seen or heard a peep since he moved to atlanta last week. we're just that special.

    and it's okay, jason... i understand that the path to the seattle's best coffee stand in concourse B is riddled with incongruous bundles of sidestreets and vaguely recognizable landmarks. there'll be a next time.

    and one of my best friends (the most amazing woman in the world, if i do say so myself) is currently pushing out her baby. i am so excited to meet their lucky child.

    8.07.2003

    Atlanta

    You are a mystery to me, an incongruous bundle of sidestreets and vaguely recognizable landmarks. You are a conglomeration of one-way streets and pointless stop signs to heed or disregard. You are a passageway of tree-lined veins, carrying beat-up Hondas like off-white blood cells to the heart of town. You are the nearly absolute proliferation of Coca Cola fountains and Braves merchandise. I am Jonah, running from God, and you are the swimming metropolis that gulps me down whole. You are the peer-pressure to form contractions of "you" and "all."

    You are the dream job, the inexhaustible fire hydrant sippie cup of new music, old music. Old new music and new old music. You are the job that I love. You are the office, the black leather desk chair in which I camp out until after midnight. Like morse code from another world telling me that everything's OK, I hear your 1s and 0s coming in loud and clear, in that order. David Bowie, My Morning Jacket, The Faint, Ed Harcourt, The Incredible Moses Leroy, The Frames. You are the friends I've made so far. You don't call me to hang out on weekends but you invest my life with song and feeling.

    I resolve to work hard. I resolve to make friends. With guys who are cool. With girls who are single. But first I must sleep. Because you are the parade of enjoyable long days, which are still long, regardless.

    8.06.2003

    adorable in 1981


    a portrait of my sister's lifelong relationship with me: oh look, julia is being devastatingly cute, that bitch. i'll just sit back here and continue hoarding all the tall, skinny genes and resent her.

    8.05.2003

    quiet little unassertive julia has nothing to blog about
    today, my boss told me that i'm "quiet and unassertive."

    i'm neither, actually.
    this speaks volumes for how much passion i have for this job.

    i promise i will write more than an inch of blog very soon. before i leave for the grand state of mississippi tomorrow night.
    i'll be gone for four days! i may just surprise you all with a guest blogger.

    8.04.2003

    it's for the best, really

    office beautiful boy, in between sips of his starbucks drink: "yeah, i'd rather just go home and watch reality tv shows than read something like Fast Food Nation."

    oh well.

    8.03.2003

    it's a big month
    it's august.
    i'm getting married next month.

    next month.

    i also just discovered the best wine. a navarro 2001 gewürtztraminer. it, strangely, goes well with mild spinach curry. and bach. and copland.

    8.02.2003

    ecoterrorism
    i don't have the words to describe how wrong this is.

    okay, of course i do.
    a few questions for the "earth liberation front," the organization claiming responsibility for this lovely little "jam":
    this is/was a high density residential complex in an urban area!!! isn't that what we want? isn't that smart growth? isn't that the best way to accomodate population growth and residential needs without raping the soil? this is a package of land between a major shopping mall and skyscraper commercial units, and between two major interstates.
    how much lumber has been wasted here? how many trees will have to die to go into the rebuild?
    isn't a fire bad for the air quality? how much metal and strange composite building material burned? how much pollution have you spewed into the atmosphere by doing this?
    now what do you think will happen to mild sensible environmental protests to things that are actually bad for the environment?
    you've ruined it for us all.

    8.01.2003

    windows down
    music that makes me drive fast:
    joan armatrading, "everyday boy"
    doves, "pounding"
    enya, "book of days"
    belle & sebastian, "legal man"
    music that makes me want to pull over under eucalyptus trees and sit still and let the heat of the metal and glass box penetrate me:
    elbow, "scattered black and whites"
    indigo girls, "cedar tree"
    over the rhine, "latter days" (...alright, i suppose practically anything by over the rhine.)
    as you know by now, any lists of music of any kind are always editable. i reserve the right to add to this list all day. and i probably will.