in the blink of an eye, you get several meanings.

07.28.011

2011-07-28T21:11:00.000-04:00

well, i certainly wasn't lying when i said my blog would resume it's regularly unscheduled, sporadic updates, was i?

what has happened (we'll go in reverse chronological order):

remember when i was doing the clean food challenge last month and i broke my french press? i broke another french press tonight. i don't know. it's like the fates do not want me to drink coffee towards the end of the month. i am going to hold off on buying a new one until i can find one that is not made of such terrible glass (in related news, i am taking suggestions for brands that are good. the past two have been bodum's brazil models, so i am not necessarily wanting to buy another bodum, unless someone can attest to their durability [which i cannot do; tonight, a SPOON slid into the french press in the sink and broke it. i don't even know how that's possible]).

all this week, i have been dreadfully tired starting at around five until i go to bed (usually around ten). i don't know why. last night this was accompanied with a terrific headache that has lasted all day today and is still plaguing me. i don't know what is wrong with me (sidenote: this is a general theme in my life right now).

work is going well.

the weather has been really nice. it was wicked hot last week, but this week it has been in the mid-high seventies to low eighties, and it's been gorgeous.

traffic has been terrible. i've almost been hit at least three times this summer, which is way more than most summers. there is basically only ever one season when people don't drive like complete jerks in maine (autumn).

remember last year when julian koster was going to encourage saws to sing alongside the band organ at the paragon carousel on nantasket beach in hull? remember when it was canceled? well! it actually happened this summer! two saturdays ago (the sixteenth) hillary and i went down and aside from getting lost for a bit (both to and from hull [i was supposed to drop her off somewhere so she could go camping with her friends, but her friends gave us miserable directions, so we ended up on i495 somehow at like 10:30 at night? i don't know, it was awful]), it was a really nice day. we met up with alex, whom i had met at the music tapes show in durham, and met a guy named james who was also at the show (and who i had remembered seeing at that show), and were a nice little collective audience. it was a really lovely afternoon and evening. alex let us ride on her carousel ticket, and the band organ stopped working (only temporarily; the fellow who does the restoration work on the carousel got it back up and running for the next ride)! julian talked the folks who worked there into letting us ride again, which was really sweet of him and especially sweet of them. we talked about a plethora of random things (baby sharks and polish polkas and youtube and wire recorders, etc.). as we were saying goodbye (oh, such a terrible thing to do all the time; i would've liked to have stayed longer to talk to julian some more, but since i was planning on driving home after dropping hillary off, we had to leave around 9:30), a kid yelled "BYE MAGIC MAN." it was wonderful. watching the faces of kids riding the carousel and hearing this instrument that was very obviously not coming out of the band organ, and then seeing julian, wearing his top hat, encouraging a saw to sing, was just so endearing. they were all so awed. it was lovely. i'd like to go sometime again soon. i'd love to go in the winter. it seems as though they really otter have wintertime carousel rides. and it's always nice to see julian, although it never is for long enough.

THE OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL AND THE MUSIC TAPES ARE GOING ON TOUR IN SEPTEMBER. they're playing at the brighton music hall in allston. it is going to be ridiculous. it's nine/ten days after the jeff shows. seems very probable that i am going to get sick and die at the end of september. i hope this is not actually true, but it seems likely. i'm also secretly holding out hope for a maine date to be added. i am always holding out hope for a maine date to be added, but they're off the day before and the day after the show in allston, so it seems as though a stop to portland would fit in just so perfectly. i, of course, am slightly delusional in these hopes, but most of my hopes and dreams and wishes are slightly delusional things, so. you know. but then again, slightly delusional hopes and dreams and wishes are the best kind. you never know. the more improbable a thing may seem to be, sometimes the more likely it is to become true. i read something similar to that somewhere recently. not certain where.

hillary and i found a virtually deserted public beach earlier this month. we were planning on going to one beach, and on seeing that the parking lot was packed and that people were actually parking up the street in order to go, we searched out this alternate beach, where there were maybe five other cars at any given time. it's really nice and i might go again this weekend, if the weather is beachy enough (which it may be). it's nice because there are all sorts of good places to stop on the way to and from this beach as well. notice how i am not disclosing the whereabouts of this beach. it's nice to have secrets. it's nice to be a secret.

otter than that, i am just sort of crazy about things and my heart is warbley and weird and so is my head and yeah. i've been having a lot of really intense dreams that are not helping any sort of situations. i have clipped five pounds of images from books this summer, and am now trying to organize them before cutting up any other books, but i have problems with certain images (for example; a nice black and white image of a girl with an older woman inside of a house and a possum out on the windowsill. does this get classified as a photo of people or as a photo of an animal? do i start a new people with animals thing? but then where does that cross-genre-izing stop? because i can get wicked ocd about these sorts of things), so i'm not really sure what to do. i have made three friendship bracelets (like you'd make in summer camp, but i never went to summer camp, so i'm making them now because it seems like the right thing to do), two of which i wear, one of which i gave to hillary. i am going to be making more, but i feel weird about making friendship bracelets for myself. i am lonely and tired and i really want to make you some cake and take you to the chicken barn. and maybe wake up next to you. and kiss your face. ohhh deer. i am a thousand problems.

oh! i spent the week leading up to and all of my fourth of july holiday rewatching all the marx brothers movies i could find. i will probably be harpo for halloween AND christmas this year, to make up for all the times i said i was going to be harpo in the past (that one time).

06.27.011; clean food challenge, day seven.

2011-06-27T21:19:00.000-04:00

"finishing" strong today....

breakfast; fruit salad (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, mango, peach, plum, kiwi) with oats and sliced almonds.
lunch; leftover lentil patties, red ants on a log.
dinner; baked tempeh with russet and sweet potatoes, carrots.
water; a gallon and a quarter as of 8pm.

i say "finishing" because i have decided that i am going to go at least another three days or so. at least until all the food i have runs out. maybe even another whole week! we'll see how long i can go. it'll be an interesting test of will power. i am not really craving anything right now (except for maybe chocolate, but that is probably just hormonal), so i don't know. i'm sure i will add bread and pasta and processed foods back into my diet in the next week and a half or so, but i will be more conscious of the things i am choosing to power my body.

with the exceptions of the few stupid things i did, this wasn't really that difficult for me. i am not sure why. maybe because i desperately needed a good cleanse? maybe because my body doesn't actually need all that wheat and other junk anyways? both likely cases. they do put so much crap into so many foods. i feel really good and properly hydrated. in all honesty, i had been feeling dehydrated since returning from seeing the music tapes in new hampshire last month, so i am finally feeling aqueous again. i'll probably keep the increased water intake up until i go somewhere again. well, probably not a gallon a day, but between half and three quarters of a gallon. although who knows. i might keep drinking a gallon of water a day.

my blog will now resume it's regularly unscheduled, sporadic posting habits. i'll post when i have things to write about that are not food related. but probably will be music related because you know. i love that musical stuff.

06.26.011; clean food challenge, day six.

2011-06-26T19:42:00.000-04:00

oh boy.

i don't know what it is about weekends.
sometimes i make terribly huge mistakes.

breakfast; a banana, a peach, cold brewed coffee with coconut milk, tsp sugar in the raw.
lunch; ....
snack; carrot upon realizing that i hadn't eaten since breakfast while dinner was cooking.
dinner; lentil patties, baked potato with oregano, garlic, and nooch.
water; one gallon as of 7:30 pm.

I DID NOT MEAN TO SKIP LUNCH. especially after having had such a light breakfast. i am not even entirely sure how it happened. i spent most of the day looking up chords to songs online for a project i am probably going to be doing, and then i went up to bangor to get groceries and flip flops (few joys greater than that of new flip flops), and then i came home, showered, cleaned the bathroom a little, started to make the lentil patties, and then i realized.

i hadn't eaten anything in eight hours. i was crabby, but not hungry at all. probably the water? but i don't know if that's true because i just got through the whole gallon while typing this up. but i did sleep in until around ten, so maybe that was it? weird.

lentil patties; makes about eight.

1 medium sized onion, finely diced.
between 1 1/2 and 1 3/4 cup boiled lentils (i used red, but you can use any sort you have around).
little less than 1/2 cup flour*.
between 3/4 and 1 cup shredded carrots.
1 teaspoon of some sort of seasoning (more or less).
salt to taste.
oil for frying.

*SINCE FLOUR IS A NO NO, i read online that you can basically puree steel cut oats in a blender or food processor into oat flour. so that is what i did instead of regular flour. i cannot tell you whether or not it worked as well as regular flour would, since i've never made these before, but the patties came out okay, so. i'm going to guess it did.

peel and dice the onion.
blenderize boiled lentils until smooth.
transfer blenderized lentils to bowl.
mix in all other ingredients until evenly mixed.
form into balls.
fry one side.
turn over and flatten.
fry the other side.

so, alright. i am not a very good cook. anytime a recipe calls for me to fry something, it never ends well (unless that something is tempeh and/or pan fried vegetables, and then things are usually alright). but i figured, hey, i bought lentils last year and never did anything with them, and i had all the other ingredients, and the recipe seemed simple enough, so it was worth a shot.

after "frying," my patties never really firmed up the way i thought they would. they were mushy and falling apart. so i baked them in the oven at 400 degrees for about ten minutes on each side, until the outside was slightly browned and crispy. they were really delicious AND i have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, so that is good.

i am going to eat something else after posting this. red ants on a log, probably, since they are quick and easy and yeah.

click it and trust me.

http://www.kylemaclachlan.com/viewer.php?id=4

06.25.011; clean food challenge, day five.

2011-06-25T20:22:00.002-04:00

last night, around eleven o'clock, right before i went to bed, i went to take an empty plastic tumbler out of the dish drying rack to start my cold brew coffee in. somehow, it had been hung up on the french press, and the french press came out with it, and fell on the granite counter and shattered (alongside my spirit). at eleven o'clock at night. i decided i would wake up early to go to target to buy a replacement.

but then it stormed all night and i had an incredibly difficult time falling asleep (cramps) and whenever i would start to drift off, the thunder would act up and it was just. awful.

anyway, i went to target after waking up around eight, without eating or drinking anything. i didn't get back home until around ten, so i've been messed up a bit today.

breakfast; grapefruit and cold brewed coffee.
snack; carrots, celery with almond butter and dried cranberries, which i am affectionately calling red ants on a log.
lunch; the end of the quinoa/salsa! i actually didn't have as much left as i thought i did, which was really wonderful.
dinner; baked fried baby eggplant (i used olive oil instead of dressing and used gillian's gluten-free italian breadcrumbs), roasted potato.
water; one gallon as of 8pm. maybe another 32 ounces before bed?

i might have some more red ants on a log, because they were pretty delicious. because almond butter is so damned expensive and because i had never had it before, i bought two packets of justin's almond butter at the co-op. i like that they're individual servings, so you can't overindulge. and apparently there is a maple almond variety. mmmmmm. do want.

i've been thinking a lot about what i'm going to do after monday. i am sort of half considering doing another week of this because i do feel really good, but i really want cupcakes (well, that's not entirely true, i'm doing alright without them, but my uterus really wants cupcakes. and pretzels. chocolate covered pretzels. oh gosh, chocolate covered pretzels!). at the very least, i am going to try to maintain these less processed habits for a while. like if i have to have bread, i should be making it myself. i like knowing exactly what is going into what i'm eating, but i sometimes a very questionable cook and sometimes i just don't want to spend the time it takes to clean and chop and prepare and i just want to microwave pasta while i'm showering and douse it in tomato sauce and call it dinner. i don't know. there's got to be some sort of happy medium, right? right. i'll figure it out.

there's a really interesting article about the future of food in july's national geographic. it's kind of depressing and scary, but it's really good.

anyway. i spent the rest of the day cutting up books and watching various things on netflix. oh, and i recorded twentysix minutes of audio during a thunderstorm. because that's something that i thought would be good to have. yup. this is how my head works.

i finished up watching fire walk with me, which was really disappointing and not very good at all. not enough special agent dale cooper. and it really bugged me that they didn't go into laura's relationship with dr. jacoby. and the new donna was awful. it left me with more questions than answers. bah.

i think i shall spend the rest of the evening watching marx brothers movies and continuing to cut up books.

i haven't seen this in years, but i imagine that when i do, i will still be terrified of the same parts that i was scared of as a child. but this song is so good.

06.24.011; clean food challenge, day four.

2011-06-24T19:41:00.002-04:00

my head is feeling better today, although i am still tired. but we're always a little tired.

today was almost an exact carbon copy of yesterday.

breakfast; fruit salad with oats and almonds, cold brewed coffee.
lunch; salsa and leftover quinoa (i microwaved this today, and it tasted a lot better than the cold salsa and quinoa i had yesterday).
snack; sugar snap peas.
dinner; leftover baked tempeh, roasted spinach with nooch.
snack; watermelon.
water; about a gallon and a quarter, as of 7:30pm.

i seem to recall having this problem last time where, because i am not very good at gauging how much food any given recipe will make, i get into these ruts where i have to eat the same things day after day because otherwise it will go bad and go to waste and i'm not very good at reinventing leftovers into amazing next day meals. plus i am a rather picky eater, so that doesn't help. the good news is that i ran out of fruit salad and left over baked tempeh. the bad news is that i still have a boatload of quinoa (i made a cup of the dry stuff) and salsa. it'd be nice to be able to mix things up a bit more, but oh well. i am still feeling good about the cleanse overall. hillary even bought chinese food today and it didn't make me hungry for it at all (of course, i have kind of lost my taste for chinese food this year. i don't know why). i've lost two pounds since tuesday.

if you don't have any interest in feminine issues, you should skip this part.

i started my period today, andso i kind of just want to eat a loaf of bread and a bunch of chocolate. i'm wondering if my cramps will be less terrible since i am more hydrated and eating cleaner. i have a theory that they might ease up a bit. or they will be completely unbearable. it will be an interesting few days.

resume reading.

today is my brother's 30th birthday. i am next up in the family queue to turn thirty. that seems weird. of course, it's not happening for another three years. i think the weirdest part is the thought that my parents are old enough to have two sons who in their thirties and two daughters who will be joining them in the next three-five years. i really don't understand how that's possible. time is such a weird thing that exists and doesn't exist at all.

i am singing some parts on a song for a friend of mine, and it is fun. i don't know what has compelled me to be less shy about singing or why it is happening right now, but it has happened, so i am singing. i should sing and spend more time trying to make music. as tom waits said, songs are just interesting things to do with the air.

06.23.011; clean food challenge, day three.

2011-06-23T20:09:00.001-04:00

this is going to be brief.

i woke up this morning feeling miserable. headachey and sinus pressured and tired and ugh. and it's lasted all day long. i am going to blame this on the change in the weather (it had been warm and sunny, but today it has been overcast and colder) and allergies. i am hoping that's all it is, weather and allergies, because i do not want to get sick. because when i am sick, all i want to eat is toast. actually, just writing the word toast makes me feel wistful for toast. bah. and also, being sick in the summer is the worst.

no photos today.

breakfast; fruit salad with oats and almonds, cold brewed coffee.
lunch; salsa and leftover quinoa, a peach.
snack; sugar snap peas.
dinner; leftover baked tempeh, roasted spinach with nooch (this was my attempt at making a crispy kale-esque thing with spinach, but it didn't really work. it was still delicious).
snack; watermelon.
water; about a gallon and a quarter, as of 8 pm.

and i mean, for feeling so scuzzy, i still feel good about the cleanse, and physically, i still feel okay, it's just that my head region feels awful.

people one misses all the time.

06.22.011; clean food challenge, day two.

2011-06-22T20:23:00.000-04:00

today was alright.

breakfast; the same as yesterday; fruit salad with oats and almonds, cold brewed coffee with coconut milk and sugar in the raw.

lunch; fresh salsa.

mango.

(i recently recommended dandelion wine to deer silk friendy fellow, and in trying to tell him which copy of the book he should try to meet, i described it as looking a bit like mango skin, which today's mango shed willingly for a delicious post lunch treat.)

dinner; overly spiced quinoa (which i would've loved if i hadn't put so much salt in), crispy kale (always so good).

water; as of 8pm, at least a gallon and a quarter.

epic fail of the day; so yesterday i posted about a thing i might post about today if it worked okay. it didn't work okay, but it was such a giant disaster that i have to post about it.

i mentioned yesterday that last year, i was trying to make whipped cream using coconut milk. well, the recipe for the whipped cream never thickened up, so i threw it in the freezer. and it turned into ICE CREAM. IT WAS AWESOME. i figured i would try to recreate last year's coconut milk ice cream. but i couldn't find the recipe. so i winged it.

one can of a taste of thai coconut milk, with maple syrup and a little vanilla, left to freeze overnight.

well, i took it out this evening, and it was rock solid. so i took out my blender and got out a very large knife....

i managed to get most of it out and into the blender and started blending. decided i ought to add some berries to it. so i threw some frozen raspberries and strawberries in a mug and put them in the microwave. however...

gah. but anyway, i got the thing to blend with what hadn't spilled all over the microwave, into something like a frozen smoothie sort of thing that was very tasty.

but then when i went to clean up the bowl, i discovered this had happened when i was stabbing the frozen coconut milk.

oh well. it's not as though i don't have five other mixing bowls.

so yeah. still feeling good, but i definitely wanted to put margarine on the quinoa when it was done. i am a little disappointed that the coconut milk ice cream experiment was mostly a failure. i was looking forward to having it over some sort of warm medley of fruits. maybe i should actually try to find a coconut milk ice cream recipe that doesn't require any sort of ice cream making device. maybe. i will need to get more coconut milk probably tomorrow.

anyway, i spent most of the day at work stripping this dresser, which i am either going to paint some ridiculous color combination OR i am going to base coat it white-ish and collage over it.

ALSO. the third fanfare for the elephant six recording company is out today! i did a transatlantic cover the music tapes' majesty with my friend matt, who lives in the uk. i sang and played xylophone, and he played guitar and drummed and assembled it. i'm pleased with how it came out. there are a lot of really really really wonderful covers on this. i'm impressed. hooray, covers!

06.21.011; clean food challenge, day one.

2011-06-21T20:53:00.005-04:00

today was the first day of the clean food challenge. and i must say, it was a smashing success.

last night i made fruit salad for breakfast, consisting of blueberries, raspberries, mango, peach, plum and kiwi. i measured out a serving (about a cup, cup and a half) added oats (quarter cup) and sliced almonds (a sprinkling) and let the flavors meld overnight in a separate container. and oh boy.

it was delicious.

i had also left a tumbler of coffee grounds cold brewing in the fridge overnight, which i pressed the grounds out of in my french press this morning.

(forgive the blurriness, pre-caffeine photography is not my strong suit.)

i added a teaspoon of sugar in the raw and topped off the tumbler with chilled coconut milk, which i opened from the wrong end.

last year, i was attempting to make vegan whipped cream for a recipe (i am going to assume it was for some pie), and the recipe called for chilled coconut milk. i left a can chilling overnight, and it hardly thickened at all. it must've been the brand i used because this stuff is so thick and creamy and good. oh boy.

it was one of the most delicious breakfasts i have ever had.

now, when i did my sad attempt at the c.f.c. in december, i had a really hard time getting a gallon of water into my system. i am determined to not have that be the case this time. i even went so far as to make a water consumption schedule.

i don't know what it was about today, maybe that it was warm, maybe that i was trying to be more conscious of the amount of water i was drinking. maybe it's that this time, i am actually carrying around a full gallon of water that i am topping of my water bottle with at various points throughout the day. as of 12:30, this was what i had left of the gallon.

(that's a 32 ounce water bottle on the right.)

i finished the full gallon by 5 pm. i've gone through another 32 ounces and am slowing down for the evening. i am trying to taper my water drinking in the evening because i really hate getting up in the middle of the night to pee.

and oh my god, have i been peeing. it was almost every fifteen minutes while i was at work. i can make it about half an hour or so now. i'm so glad i don't work in broadcast news anymore. i would've had serious issues today.

lunch consisted of spinach and onion and shaved carrot salad with balsamic vinegar. HEY ANYONE. i need a recipe for a balsamic vinegar dressing, because as it turns out, balsamic vinegar on its own is too strong.

i also had a plum and a fist full of roasted, unsalted peanuts, but i don't have photos of those items because i imagine everyone knows what a plum and peanuts look like.

after work, i went to the nearest hannaford to get a few things that my local hannaford did not have in stock (most notably, tempeh and cheap cucumbers), things that i didn't realize i needed but didn't have (frozen corn, paper bags, coffee), and things that i wanted to get but didn't get yesterday because i had a lot of food (watermelon, celery).

dinner consisted of baked tempeh, which is the fall back meal for any night when i want something substantial, but do not want to cook. basically, take one package of any variety of tempeh (i love lifelight's vegetable tempeh, but they stopped carrying it at my local hannaford, so i have to get it at other hannaford branches), and cut it into cubes. and then it's just a matter of adding vegetables that you like; tonight's medley consisted of cubes of potato, sweet potato, carrots and onions. i've also used broccoli, peppers, and jalepenos in the past. sprinkled with olive oil, whatever spices you enjoy (pepper and dill and paprika tonight), and mix together with your hands until everything is well coated. bake at 425 for about 25-35 minutes, depending how largely you cut your tempeh and vegetables, and how well done you like it. best when served on a plate you made when you were five.

so good. the leftovers will last me at least three or four more meals.

tonight i finished up making the salsa i started to make last night. the salsa is sort of an odd experiment because i really really really really really do not like fresh tomatoes. they smell weird and they are slimy and seedy and i just think they are disgusting. yesterday, i bought fresh tomatoes for the first time ever in my entire life. i seeded the three medium sized tomatoes and diced them, along with a can of organic roasted tomatoes, half an onion and a jalepeno, added a splash of white and apple cider vinegar and cumin to it, and left it in the fridge overnight. i let a cup of black beans soak overnight and cooked them this evening (with a little liquid smoke), and added an entire package of frozen corn in addition to the beans, and a little sea salt and a bit more cumin and oh my gosh. it is really good. i'm very excited about it. it will be part of (if not all of) lunch tomorrow.

i will probably make a brown paper bag of popcorn in a little while (i have never taped a brown paper bag of popcorn shut. that seems wasteful. it will stay shut if you fold down the top correctly). i haven't been hungry at all today. i'm sure all the water is playing a huge part in that. i feel really good tonight. maybe i will never have pasta or bread ever again! (this is very unlikely.)

oh, i am keeping certain processed foods in the mix, but not many. the first is sugar in the raw, but only a teaspoon at breakfast in the coffee. nooch (nutritional yeast) is staying in because it is the best popcorn topping in the world (add alongside dill and garlic powder and a little salt, and you've got a cheap ripoff of little lad's herbal corn [the nooch and spices stick better if you use a little oil, but i don't really mind eating all sorts of leftover spiced nooch out of the bottom of the bag]), and i'm also thinking it might be really good on quinoa (which i am going to be making for the first time ever tomorrow), and it's also a great parmesan stand in for emilie's crispy kale recipe (which i am planning on making at least twice; once using kale and a second time trying it with spinach, maybe as part of dinner for tomorrow night). the last is liquid smoke, because that stuff is amazing.

so yeah! i'm feeling really good physically and i'm looking forward to the rest of the week (i've got a thing i'm working on which, if it comes out well, i will probably post about tomorrow). i hope my fellow c.f.c-ers have had equally successful first days!

in other news, my music tapes kazoo arrived yesterday!

kazoos are still available through merge, as is the digital download. i implore everyone who is currently reading this because you are trying to find a free download of the ep to please just spend the $4-$6 to actually purchase it and to support these wonderful, kind, sweet people who put so much time and effort into making these wonderful songs for us to enjoy, these songs that enrich our everyday lives when things are well and provide safe audible worlds for us to escape to and reside in when those everyday lives become incredibly difficult and we need other places to be that are not necessarily places that exist in the physical realm.

06.15.011

2011-06-15T23:12:00.002-04:00

this blog comes in 3 parts.

part one; the clean food challenge.
i don't know if anyone recalls, but this past december, i half-heartedly partook in something called the clean food challenge that my friend and former teacher and current blogger challenged her readers to do. i say half-heartedly because my monetary situation was tight and i think i only managed to actually post for three days during the whole thing. WELL! emilie has challenged her readers again, and this time, since i am in a better financial situation, i am going to go 100% whole heartedly into this clean food challenge. if you are interested, you can read more about it here. i am still debating whether or not i am going to cut out coffee completely (i didn't last time, and thusly ended up consuming silk and sugar in the raw as well). or maybe i just go the special agent dale cooper route and drink it black as midnight on a moonless night. my reasoning for doing this more fervently this time is that i have been eating a lot of pasta and a lot of bread for months, because they are cheap. but now i have money andso it would be nice to kick those overly carby, overly processed habits. plus it's warm and there is a plethora of fresh fruits and vegetables available now that most places are not snowy tundras. and i haven't been drinking enough water at all. so, that'll be happening the twentyfirst through the twentyseventh, and i will be blogging every day, so you have that to look forward to!

part two; purim's shadows (the dark tours the world).
this should arguably be part one, because it is the most important thing to happen in the past month, but i wanted to get the business end of things out of the way before going on to the solely pleasurable aspects of everything.

SO. the music tapes released purim's shadows (the dark tours the world) yesterday. it is a six song ep that is only available digitally and on kazoo. well, by "on kazoo", i mean merge is selling music tapes kazoos that come with a download code for the ep that includes a bonus track, that comes along with some sort of special julian surprise. i love julian surprises, and serendipitously, i realized monday night that i have either lost or temporarily misplaced the kazoo that lives in my purse for kazoo emergencies, so i purchased one (i am not entirely sure that i want the music tapes kazoo to be subjected to the rough and tumble neighborhood that is my purse, though. i usually always am carrying box cutters and butter knives or serrated knives or scissors or other stabby things that could wound such a fine looking kazoo. maybe only for special occasions. i'm writing this as though i do not have any other kazoos. i do have another plastic one). it's already been shipped, and i am looking forward to it's arrival so much.

BUT. because for some reason merge didn't announce that they were actually doing anything for this release (i found out about it monday morning through a friend), i ended up purchasing the ep off of itunes at five am, after one of hillary's cats woke me up by pretending she was going to vomit on my bed. it was funny because i had stayed up well past midnight in hopes that it would be active on amazon, but since it got to be around one am and there was no activity, i went to bed. and then after the cat incident, i figured "well, i'm already awake. might as well check." and i saw that it was available on amazon, as well as itunes. i opted for the itunes route (it was cheaper, and came with a little digital pdf thing). so i ended up buying it twice. which is alright with me because oh my gosh. it is just. so good.

i have been likening it to a the most perfect teaser trailer for what will undoubtedly be the best release of the year. it is the tastiest amuse-bouche for the third imaginary symphony, which is apparently going to be in two parts; the first of which will be called mary's voice and will hopefully be out later this year.

all but two of the songs are shiny new music tapes songs that i have never heard before. the ep starts with so the day long, with just julian's warbling voice and the sound of a distant metronome (maybe not distant, but muffled, as though escaping headphones) before the guitar and bells and some other instrument that i am not entirely sure of kick in before the chorus, which just slays me. "show me the lonely room that really can't let the evening in." it all builds up to the ending and it's perfect. the seven foot metronome is back as the main percussionist on a lightning's cheeks (everything gets born here). sort of an in an ice palace-y feeling song, but much different. these first two songs sound as though they were written for some sort of movie soundtrack. the middle two songs are transitional pieces; 3 being an instrumental song sounding a bit like one imagines the band organ at a carousel run by tom waits would sound like. 4 being the sweetest, most sentimental 27 second song i've heard ever; jeff, jill, and julian serenading julian's dog rudolph on the beach at nantasket. the whole ep is dedicated to rudolph, who was one of the sweetest dogs i've ever met (and i have met my share of sweet dogs). i am glad it's only twentyseven seconds long, since i start getting really emotional around the halfway mark, but then it's over so quickly that i don't have the chance to completely break into tears (confession: i most definitely cried at 5 in the morning when i read the digital liner notes). the last third of the album consists of a re-recording of night and day (better than the single that was tucked away in the new york public library two years ago), and a recording of nantasket (best known for haunting my mind all during pneumoniafest 2k9). the ep as a whole is so well done and it has me so excited to hear mary's voice.

part three; other.
the past month has been odd. we had a big family yardsale memorial day. my parents have listed their house for sale. i sang and played xylophone for a cover of the music tapes' majesty that i did with a friend of mine for one of the elephant 6 fanfares, which was odd. the first time i've ever recorded and publicly shared my voice. ever. of course, it's like an entire chorus of me on the song, and it sounds really good. which is weird and kind of gives me the creeps. i've been cutting up books for craft purposes and watching random things on netflix. i don't see many people most days and i don't get enough sleep. i read dandelion wine recently and it is one of my favorite books of all time now. i am currently reading children of the albatross by anaïs nin, which i am enjoying. i just bought eat, pray, love, which i am planning on reading during the clean food challenge. i became friends with a butterfly today. my brother is offering to sell me a set of drawers that i am currently stripping at least seven layers of paint off of. if i buy them, i am pretty certain i will base coat the thing with white and collage it. the sunroof on my car is broken and i can't open it, but somehow my hair is getting lighter. i've been having some weird ear issues today, and i'm not sure why. generally lonely but mostly alright with it. i ended up bringing jenga home after the yard sale. i play by myself. i don't know how to feel about that. i am not writing enough.

anyway, the other of hillary's cats woke me up at five in the morning to puke this morning, so i am fairly sleep deprived and weary eyed, so we will solve that now.

05.16.011

2011-05-16T23:16:00.003-04:00

i've started at least three different times to write about what has gone on since the end of napowrimo. not much, but there were two evenings worth writing about.

a few tuesdays ago, i went up to bangor to run some errands with my sister after i got out of work. upon arriving home around six, i discovered an email from nesey in my inbox, saying that he was playing up on the campus of umaine later that night. i messaged my friend casey, who goes to school in bangor, and we decided to carpool up to umaine.

the evening was really nice; i guess he and his friend sam had been invited up by two fellows who attend umaine. sam played his set outdoors, by the jordan observatory. i had never heard his music before and was pleased to discover that he had a very adrian orange/thanksgiving-ish sound going on. he had one song about whippoorwills that i was really taken by. it was rather chilly that evening, but the spring peepers made for lovely hidden accompanists. nesey played a few songs outside before we decided it was too cold and took shelter in the lobby of the class of 1944 hall that houses the school of the performing arts. the acoustics in that hallway were astounding. they should let people play there all the time. there were some really sad but sweet and exquisitely beautiful things that took place inside. after he finished playing, we wandered around campus for a while (i wanted to take over the college radio station, as it was on autopilot and we totally could've made it happen, but no one else really seemed up for it) before parting. it was good to see him again (i hadn't seen him since september of 2009), and i hope he is doing alright.

earlier that same tuesday (the third), someone posted on the elephant 6 forums that the music tapes were going to be playing at a free festival on the campus of the university of new hampshire that weekend (the seventh). this was amazing for three major reasons. one) it was free. two) durham is within a reasonable distance to maine (a little under three and half hours). three) it was a music tapes show on a SATURDAY. i did not have to miss any work to actually attend this show! i had seen the music tapes in some incarnation five times prior to last saturday and that had never happened before. casey had wanted to go, but she had finals all last week and had to do a video project, so she decided against it. my sister had expressed some interest in going, so as of last friday night, she was probably going to be going with me. i was still sort of half hesitant about the whole thing, since it seemed to be sort of strange to attend a unh end of school year shindig when i had never actually even been to unh before.

however, somebody drank half a bottle of whiskey the previous night and spent the entire morning puking, so she couldn't make the trip. but the weather seemed to be okay (there was rain in the forecast, though), and i was feeling up for it, so i made the trip on my own. i hadn't been to a show by myself in a long long while (october of 2009, and even then it was only portland), so it was nice to make the three hour drive by myself and to stay in a hotel room by myself and to just be by myself for a while. it is so rare that i am ever mostly alone, and i love not having to worry about anyone else; whether whoever is accompanying me is enjoying themselves, having to make pit stops, etc. i had booked a room in portsmouth and left searsport after printing directions around 1:30. the drive down went well, until around freeport, when it started pouring. and didn't stop. and there was thunder and lightning. the entire time i was driving, all i could think was "oh, please do not let this thing be canceled," remembering how rain foiled last year's best efforts to see julian and the saws at the carousel. but by the time i reached portsmouth, the rain had tapered off. i checked into the hotel and ventured upstairs to refresh and refuel before venturing out to durham.

whenever i travel anywhere, i don't like to have to try to find some sort of vegan or vegetarian friendly place (especially when i am not entirely sure what time i will be heading back to wherever i am staying for the evening), so i usually pack bread and peanut butter (and usually snacks, although i didn't bring any with me on this trip, which was stupid) so i don't have to worry about foodstuffs. well, while unpacking the bread and saltines i had brought with me (saltines came with because i only had four pieces of bread left), i discovered that in my haste to leave the house, i had completely forgotten the peanut butter. a crushing blow to say the least. so i had a few slices of bread and ventured down the vending machines to get water (i have this really terrible habit where i dehydrate myself purposefully while traveling so as not to have to stop to use the bathroom), and score! through some mechanical malfunction, received two bottles of water for the price of one. i made mental note of the peanut butter and cracker sandwiches (which i later bought and was very sad to discover that they were incredibly stale and not very good) and left for the campus.

i made it out to durham around 6:15. unaware that there was actually a lot designated for festival parking, i parked at the visitor's center. i dumped four hours worth of quarters into the meter and walked over to the festival. upon arriving, i saw the designated festival parking and felt really silly, but after having spent four dollars on parking, i wasn't about to move my car (i should've asked if festival parking was a thing when i posted on the facebook event page, but i didn't think of it at the time. oh well). i recognized some folks from the townhall and previous elephant six events, but the fatal combination of me being painfully shy the first time i meet people and the fact that it is really kind of strange to introduce yourself to people you've never met before but know of from the internet kept me from saying anything until later in the evening. which was okay, because a few minutes later, i saw robbie and ian and julian coming across the road. robbie spotted me and everyone came over and greetings and hugs abounded. we discussed all sorts of various things (the new music tapes record and various maine happenings and cemeteries and the really awful johnny cash remixes that they were playing over the p.a. between sets) for a while, and they drifted and came back and drifted and came back. also of note; the first band that took the stage that i saw was this hardcore screamy sort of band, and i said to robbie in between songs "oh please tell me you guys are going on after this band, because it would be the most absurd juxtaposition ever." but i guess they had postponed some sets due to the rainstorm, so they followed a more appropriate act (mmoss, who are a sort of psychedelic sixties throwback band, and who were my favorite of the three non-music tapes bands i saw that evening). once the tape fellows took to the stage to sound check, i took the opportunity to introduce myself to heather and her boyfriend. they were both super nice (i've been in touch with heather quite a bit since the show), and sometimes it seems so silly to be so shy, but that's how it works. the music tapes set was a bit of an amalgamation of the holiday surprise tour and the lullabye delivery tour (due mostly to the fact that they had been working on the new album and hadn't really rehearsed much for this show), but with the additions of takeshi and elijah, an new introduction to a song from the lullabye delivery tour (that introduction was stunning. every new thing i hear out of the music tapes makes me so happy and warm, and i really cannot wait for the new record), and the television tells us. STATIC!!! it was so great to see static after a long two years of him not having performed at all. i really enjoyed hearing a music tapes set take place outdoors, having never had experienced such a thing before. voices and instruments resounding through the streets and the moon was quite lovely and there was a really nice clock tower on campus too (i should mention that unh has a beautiful campus that i would like to spend more time wandering around on sometime).

and then i basically spent the rest of the evening with the tapes after the show. i was pulled into all sorts of conversations about all sorts of things (new york and houses and maine and hotels and hats and carousels and tours and stories, etc. etc.) and met some nice folks. julian is always rather shy when i see him before a show, but then afterwards he is much more talkative. maybe it is nerves? i don't know. i do know that he is the most adorable, endearing, and kind friend in the world and i would marry him without a second thought if he proposed to me tomorrow. there was discussion about me possibly driving ian back to maine, but it was decided that they would drive him up that night and then drive back to massachusetts (since i was staying in portsmouth [although arguably, they could've stayed with me in the room i had since they had given me a room with two double beds, but i didn't realize that i never offered until later]). at one point, julian and ian went to move the van, and robbie refused to leave me alone, which was incredibly sweet. they are honestly some of the kindest gentlemen i have ever met. such elegant bachelors. i adore them all so much. and once we were all getting ready to leave, they offered me a ride to my car. and people say chivalry is dead. it was wonderful to see them, and i hope to see them all again soon.

i spent part of the next morning wandering around prescott park and an old cemetery in portsmouth. i had only been to portsmouth once before. i should go more often; it is so close and really beautiful there.

other than that, my existence is about on par with what it usually is. i found my ipod, which was pretty exciting, given that it had been missing for three months. i saw a baby chameleon and decided that it's probably the only sort of reptile i would ever want to live with (assuming i had to live with a reptile). i want some sort of fluffy pet. corgi, preferably, to be named special agent dale cooper, or cooper for short. i am feeling pretty lonely and like i probably need to be kissing somebody soon, but that would require either going out to meet somebody to kiss or finding someone to come over to kiss, and i am not sure either of those things are things that would happen. i keep wanting to spend more time making things and trying to be better about being musically inclined, but i enjoy sleep far too much. in fact, i should really be sleeping right now. it is supposed to rain a lot over the next few days. oh well.

i am sure i am forgetting things that i want to write about (birds, probably), but i wanted to write something about those two nights of lovely music before my memories start to get more fuzzy than they already are.

a kind soul posted this video of static's triumphant return to the stage, so i will leave you with that tonight.

04.30.011

2011-04-30T21:05:00.000-04:00

another-go-round.

we were enveloped in it;
the flash of lights kept time with the
music, swirled around all legs,
twirling against the green.

silent jockeys of painted mares,
the wind at our backs
and these valiant steeds
galloped on gallantly as
fingers twist into wooden tendrils
carved into their necks.

our veins tight, blood
throbbing against the skin,
the pithy pulsing red that courses through us,careens into the caverns
of our circulatory systems,
beats wildly against the blue,
our winterskins alternate between
pallid with cold,
flushed with warmth.

hoofed and bewildered in
the swill of snowflakes smiling across our faces.

never seen a more beautiful sight
than the white caught in your hair,
against the frame of your face,
in that light,
in the wind
by the sea.

sometimes you have dreams that are subconsciously based off of a song you heard once or twice or a-hundred-and-forty-one-odd-times, and they become a relatively nice thing to write about at the end of a month that always feels slightly nightmareish. the end. sorry if you read all of these. i had a hard time this year. i have a hard time every year, but this year seemed worse. a lot of haiku. of course, i like haiku, so. alright. thanks for reading.

04.29.011

2011-04-29T21:50:00.000-04:00

fingers intertwined,
zippered teeth, tumbled lock, key
pressed to palms, silent.

monger peddles brass
rings; skeletons of former
dwellings, abandoned.

cobblestoned twilight
above, uneven pavers
arch against our feet.

i should really stop writing about zipper teeth, but i like them a lot. okay. still not feeling very well. i hope to end napowrimo with a bang and not a whimper. i've been whimpering for a while.

04.28.011

2011-04-28T20:55:00.000-04:00

indicated.

originates in my tailbone,
an ache, as though having fallen recently,
but not having fallen recently,
the harbinger of something more nefarious.

the next hour it shimmies
shivers up my spine,
splits at the base of my neck;
slides down my arms, elbows,
tying into knuckle joints,
a game of uncle i never win.
slips sandpaper into my throat,
rasps, cheesegraters, etc.
ladders up the rungs of my neck
into the hypothalamus to cast
feverish nets across my face;
the big catch of the day,
one twenty seven year old immune system.

i am afraid that it is coming. i've got aches everywhere and i feel wretched.

04.27.011

2011-04-27T21:18:00.000-04:00

perforated.

pages of braille
high school handouts
train tickets.

snake bites
bowels and ulcers and eardrums and lungs
junky veins.

lsd blotters
books of stamps
drain pipes.

watermelon flesh
swiss cheese
wingtips.

i do not feel very well, so apologies if this seems half assed (it should). note to self in the future when all is not as it is now; this should be reworked as all things holey instead, but i love the idea of perforated lungs. that's normal. so maybe split in two.

04.26.011

2011-04-26T22:16:00.002-04:00

cohesivitiy.

pseudohalfcursive
scrawling letters tied, wispy
inked cobwebs cloud white,

meaning flows between
words, black rivers, wonderfalls,
wallop against rocks.

04.25.011

2011-04-25T21:59:00.001-04:00

eyes carrying baggage
over the weight limit
from spring's first pollen,
last night's dreams
of eating ravioli
in the room where i
spent four years singing,
never enough sleep,
trying to see something
better than this,
but blind;
half mooned,
heavy lidded,
and tired.

today was really awful, and thusly today's poem is also really awful. you'll all live, i promise.

04.24.011

2011-04-24T22:39:00.000-04:00

for four variations on thee theme.

midnight. fingers turn, tighten; turn,
untighten tuners. pick, pluck, strum
strings until the chord resounds just right.

if there were a night for instinct to fail, to forget how to breathe, this would be it.

curved blade bent over your lap,
trilled notes spilling happily through the air, swinging
arm keeps perfect time

philco predicta tilts face upwards,
ending the broadcast day with
static sung songs.

true facts; all the photos i took of my music tapes wintertime wandering invitations were imported to iphoto under the following event names;

2008: sleepy face project/music tapes finished.
2009: oh boy/absurdity.
2010; ahhhh, i'm sorry julian/sorry sorry sorry.

evolution is a funny thing with a loose definition.

04.23.011

2011-04-23T21:13:00.001-04:00

murked.

ribbon running down my spine
unzipped silently,
as in deep space,
black holed and inversed.

the teeth slid apart effortlessly
falling to the sides,
as in a dream.
step out and wait.

fingers traced constellations
across the ceiling,
perfectly cleared river black skies
suspended above the mattress.

madly losing steam and desire to write.

04.22.011

2011-04-22T21:51:00.000-04:00

time machine.

i coerce time out of
the broken russian
stopwatch i stole from a
previous life,
remnants of a cold war.

the portable comforts
of that soft consistent tick;
the heartbeat of the song
you played once when my
heart stopped;
the second hand kept time for me,
the wind did my breathing.

04.21.011

2011-04-21T23:11:00.001-04:00

communed.

notebooks spread out
paper petals plucked
from scoliosised spiraling spines,
splashing over the edge to the floor.

their crumpled counterparts cascading
out of the wastepaper basket,
their previously paled faces
smudged bruises of black and blue

like our fingers,
lilting across the table
clothed with red checks
cold hands quiet, nimble
creatures living in
the ends of our arms
wildly converting

synapse into
syntax.

04.20.011

2011-04-20T21:39:00.001-04:00

raspberry infused
dried cranberries, half pound spent.
lunch was delicious.

i don't really care today. it's cold and i'm cold and i can't get the pellet stove to work right and i certainly do not want to run a space heater all night and i'm grouchy and i think tom's of maine toothpaste is not as good as i want to believe it is because my teeth feel weird, but i've been using it for two years now, but maybe that's part of the problem and i'm tired and i don't like much of anything except for dried cranberries and being asleep and the idea of naming a corgi special agent dale cooper and thinking a lot about the possibility of things being better than they are, even though i am not entirely sure how to proceed from here. and flickering blue lights. i miss you.

04.19.011

2011-04-19T22:08:00.001-04:00

caked.

mountaintops lit, glow
golden. flickering candles
on birthday caked towns;

buttercream frosted
sidewalks, gingerbread houses,
blue sugar rivers.

i really just want some cake and something better to write about than wanting cake and the idea of lit mountaintops as birthday candles, which i really love the idea of but couldn't work into anything other than a really shoddy double haiku (partially because i did not start writing earlier, partially because i am not entirely sure what to do with it, partially because my mind is not in any sort of correct place for writing anything, partially because i just want to go to sleep forever). /post-disclaimer.

04.18.011

2011-04-18T22:03:00.001-04:00

defense mannequinisms.

venetian blind
cords of my heart
pulled taut.

slats
unfurl
fall
slam
shuttered so tight
against the storm, not even
the brightest flash from
the sharpest fork of lightning
could leak light in,
could pierce this suit of
white plastic armor.

but we forget;
plastic melts.

hey, this is alright. i started off writing about the poor mouse that fell from the cotton candy sky of the heat exchanger room and died this weekend (rest in peace, dear friend), and then this happened instead. fair enough.

04.17.011

2011-04-17T21:29:00.003-04:00

ram-sacked.
ramshackled.

once while driving,
i saw a sheep charge up someone's front steps.

in my head, it played out as a breaking and entering,
although it was really more like an entering and breaking;
the sheep quietly wiped his hooves on the rubber welcome mat
and proceeded to thrash about like a bull in a china shop,
except more like a sheep in a ranch style house.

he'd leave and the homeowners would return to find
everything in shatters and shambles and call the authorities
who would arrive and be unable to find fingerprints,
(sheep don't have fingers)
and it would become this terribly great mystery
and i would be the only person who knew what happened.

the sheep would be arrested and indicted
(in addition to fingers, sheep don't have alibis),
and i would be some strange hero amongst
folks who have their homes ram-sacked by sheep
(this obviously happens all the time)
who enter like lambs, and leave like lions.

except the problem therein lies that i really do like sheep,
and would never want to see one incarcerated,
so perhaps instead, it'd be best if i just stayed quiet.

I REALLY DID NOT WANT TO WRITE TONIGHT, SO THIS HAPPENED. i think ram-sacked is one of my best awful jokes ever.

04.16.011

2011-04-16T21:38:00.001-04:00

malignant.
be mine.

blue highways plowed through
fields of freshly fallen snow,
variegated

vines. veins mined, quarried,
ivy twining 'round tumors,
tropic of cancer.

i have been thinking a lot today.

04.15.011

2011-04-15T22:02:00.001-04:00

stooped.
marsh streamed.

ashes strewn across the wood,
windowpaned,
lawn mower reel, rusted,
bicycle unchained,
front door, a jar,
last halloween's pumpkins, deflated skins,
forgotten like those who came before us
through forests.

and yet some pale sliver of life;
white eggshell standing upright,
muted beige nestled down deep
on the nest,
brooding.

i keep trying to write some sort of something appropriate as an ode to the constant stream of thoughts in my head and in my toes, but it is hard this year, and i don't know why. it should be easier. i know what i'm trying to say, but it's not coming out in any sort of way that does everything justice. i bought vegan onion poppyseed bagels today, as well as vegan strawberry jello. i am excited to try the jello. sometimes that is a food that i miss. i will probably get tings tomorrow if i go up to bangor for record store day. i shouldn't, but i might.

04.14.011

2011-04-14T22:52:00.000-04:00

asleeping through the springtime.
magpie eyed.

the way air caught
under cotton while making the bed
echoes like thunder,
salted waves against the shore,

and the spring sneaks in
through open windows, cold weather stagnation
replaced by the scent of clean laundry and new life
wafting beneath the rafters.

your toes and heels, restless and cracked,
weary after a long winter
want nothing more than to
twist and tangle sheets around your feet.

warsh. i always try to spell sneek with two e's. darned red dots of mispelleddoom.

04.13.011

2011-04-13T21:06:00.001-04:00

crushed and smitten.
wandery hearted.

it is surely no small coincidence that
we call feelings of infatuation
by the same words
that describe the action of trash compactors
and the action of being dealt heavy blows.

this is funny because i don't actually feel this way. crushes and smittenry are two of my favorite things in the world.

04.12.011

2011-04-12T21:13:00.001-04:00

white with red stains;
toska.

the back of a napkin after dinner,
spaghetti and marinara,
living room carpet kissed with wine,
ice follies tulips,
barbershop poles, peppermint sticks,
ink cascading down the face of a corrected manuscript left in the rain,
the toilet bowl, bowling pins,
fruit punched smiles,
fragile tape,
japanese flags, bandages,
sunday's best stockings,
snow in the schoolyard,
swollen vessels across the sclera.

i feel mid-april slumpy. oh well. i have some pretty decent pieces of things, but i am having a lot of trouble with unfurling them into something nice. i think my head is too caught up in various other non-writing problems this month. the national geographic magazine is really good this month.

04.11.011

2011-04-11T21:16:00.000-04:00

ragdolled.
milk eyed mender.

quietly mending
patchwork arms, needle through skin,
pull taut, cut thread, knot.

haiku are lifesavers for nights when you've spent the whole day at work staring at a screen, trying to get a program to do something that it supposedly capable of doing and your eyes feel terrible and you think you might have actually been mistaken about having allergies already and instead you might actually be getting sick and you haven't written anything and you are tired and both the cats are sleeping on your bed already and they look so comfortable and you're lonely but you don't know what to do about it and you want to write something else, but you just feel tapped out, but then seventeen syllables later, you are off the hook for the evening.

04.10.011

2011-04-10T19:58:00.000-04:00

a constant misbuttoning of coats.
surgeon general of misbuttoned coats.

fingers cracked, a combination
cold air, hard labor, hot water.

consistently, i cut my fingernails too short
and when pressing fingers against the frets in your neck,
the pain shoots sharp; never a sharper shooter in the west
than too short fingernails,
so i stop.

the canyons by my thumbnails opened up again
wednesday night, having spent the evening
swinging a hammer at the broken boxspring,
breaking pieces of wood into trunksized portions
for transportation purposes
without wearing work gloves.

cat scratches across my hands and arms,
reminders of the way they looked in high school,
that dull ache when submerged in sudswater,
reminders that
you are alive,
you are dying.

fumbling fingers in the morning,
bumbling thumbs again in the afternoon;

first button into second hole,
second button into third hole,
third button....

you are full of potential, but you are not living up to it (that title promises such great things [oh, how proud i was when it came to me], but then it fizzles and resparks and fizzles and flares up and fizzles out almost completely). i changed the ending at least three times. i am still not happy with it. oh well.

04.09.011

2011-04-09T22:41:00.001-04:00

stretch.
mongoose.

watching the shadows
of eyelashes extended
from under your eyes

flicker in the wind,
leaves, wings bending with the breeze,
breaking in the blue.

slack. i had written something else today, but it's not okay.

04.08.011

2011-04-08T21:51:00.001-04:00

stand.
mmmmmm.

birch skins gleaming white,
black scars cut across bellies,
green fingers unfurl.

moss below absorbed
melted snow, fallen starlight,
spring rivers swollen.

geese swim brown waters,
breast stroke the blue skies, honking,
traffic over trees.

conjured up while en route to the grocery store. it was around the golden hour, and the light hit this stand of birch trees and sometimes i don't understand why people live in other places. this usually happens when i am most wanting to run away. i don't understand anything. like why is it that i very rarely can write one haiku and call it good, why does it always has to be three? questions with no answers. it's alright.

04.07.011

2011-04-07T21:40:00.002-04:00

cedar hedges, waxwings.
mallard goose.

why waxed wings wane with
the moon, deliberately believing and delivering
hellos like goodbyes on a sunday
you never wanted to have.

why we sometimes scribble in overheated bedrooms,
feeling fever trapped,
each breath heavier than the one preceding it.

there is precedence in our fingerprints,
that even if clearcut and dredged,
the valleys remain unchanged.

nature standing stoic and stagnant.
somedays (sundays) we feel things more deeply.

copper bellied rust buckets,
sunspotted wings and smiles across sunburnt lips,
shoulders peel and cherry skinned.

we are paler than before.

pallor palace walls and facades
turning away, sunny side up,
yolk split and yellowed,
like the face of a daisy on a sweltery summer day,
like wings across your back, nictitating eyelids.
we show fear in the whites, flatbreaded and crestfallen.

hey alright hey. i'll stop using the word pallor now.

04.06.011

2011-04-06T22:29:00.002-04:00

alurched.
marousha.

palloress and powerless,
the blood letting begins.

ten fingertips
ten leeches
suckling the prints.

the blood leaching out
of their wormy mouths
no longer crimson,
but some sort of dark,
like the polyps of blood oranges,
seaweeds.

plummeting deep into the inky black
lit by angler fish,
our hooks hang overboard.

we reel in things;
old tires and bodies
cast of cement and cremains
sunk below the surf to stand,
sentinels in sub-sea level statuaries.

sat high tide on the rocks,
watched a snail trail
slime across the toe of my boot,
chemtrails
but irridescent
slacked pace,
antenna waving
so slowly.

the word languidly cannot be read with any great speed.
it demands respect, syllabic and sleepy.

erk. okay. so the leech thing has been stuck in my head since i tweeted about napowrimo on the first day, and it's been wanting to come out and wanting to come out and wanting to come out and who am i to deny these weird sort of impulses i have that sometimes result in me wearing my rainboots in my room, hammer slung over my shoulder, stomping on pieces of wood, trying to break apart a boxspring on a wednesday night because it seemed like the right thing to do™ and sometimes result in me making nice things and sending them off to deer friends and i think i'll never see these things again (unless i go to visit them, but they are all very far away) but then suddenly i see one of them in the most unexpected and wonderful way and sometimes result in me writing some sort of gross thing about leeches on my fingers and catching statues out of the ocean and snail trails and then some completely unrelated thing about the word languidly? i would be a fool to deny myself these impulses, because sometimes they result in very nice things (a level and non-creaky bed, the most absurd and happy smile, a finished poem for the night).

the fact of the matter is that i remembered today that, for the past two years, i have wanted to do twenty six alliterative poems during national poetry writing month. so i started at the very beginning, but everything was just coming out wrong. i was thinking about scrapping the idea of doing 26 full length free form alliterative poems and just doing haiku, but the word i so desperately want to use in the last line of the haiku is four syllables and i couldn't come up with a monosyllabic a-word to use that would make sense in the context of the rest of the haiku, and if i'm going to do something i've been considering doing for two years, i have to do right by it or i'm not going to do it at all. i've never been one to understand the allure in half assing anything, which is probably the only reason why i did so well in school.

i have been in my head a lot these past few days, which is probably the only reason why this post-poem disclaimer has been so long. i feel as though this happens at least once every napowrimo, i get really longwinded and absurd post-poem. i am always absurd, so that's not what i mean to say. i don't know what i mean to say, so i'm just going to stop saying anything.

04.05.011

2011-04-05T22:09:00.002-04:00

all upon a foggy night.
a magic zero.

fog hangs
heavy this evening.

like a fifth of vodka the
day after you drink it;
dark thunderheads cloud over your eyes,
mimicking the circles beneath them.

not a kind nimbus, stratus, or cirrus in sight,
simply miles of grey lingering above,
the scent of ozone as heavy as the threat of electrocution.

the momentary blinding followed by
the echoes of empty
beer barrels bowling
down the mountainside
and into the valley below.

but lo,
not really.

just fog,
as thick as cobwebs
undisturbed by feathers for so long,
for so many centuries.

fog swallowing
mountaintops and
spruce trees and
red squirrels and
salt flats
whole.

fog like the silence in the stories told by white christmas lights,
the ghosts strung around the room,
our dear specters as spectators;
the things that are watched and lost,
taken by wind;
empty swingset seat swung,
stirred by your fingers
tangling the chains.

title adoringly borrowed with lots of love and respect from mister tom waits. probably could do without all the cloud confusion and things about drinking (2-5), right? probably, but second drafts are still drafts, my deer friends, andso they stay for now.

04.04.011

2011-04-04T22:03:00.000-04:00

thirtythree and a third.
mangled grandma.

sat squarely,
i mean
circularly
in the center
of the turntable.

switched on
and set needle
in the outermost
groove of your
pointer fingerprint.

the revolutions began,
scratched
crackled
and popped.

and i listened as you played.

vocals warped
and warbling,
percussive smashes hiss,
bass and banjo overblown,
guitars gutted and fuzzed
past recognition.

the whole thing recorded
in a cavernous tin can,
you are my favorite
cacophony.

i have a really bad headache and it's been a very long day. EXCUSES.

04.03.011

2011-04-03T22:36:00.000-04:00

a forest so sweet.
grandma mangles.

the air hung with the golden scent
of freshly boiled maple syrup.
light and liquid,
condensed and sweetened,
with just a hint of vanilla.

we stretched out our limbs
in the arms of the oaks
cradling us.

the rustle of leaves,
languid in the wind,
cast shifting shadows
where the sun broke through
across our bodies.

we laughed and were gently lulled
slowly to sleep.
leg over leg,
arm across arm,
head nestled into shoulder,
smiles coated in sap.

awoke sundappled and alone,
lips sticky and hair leafed,
room filled with the harsh white light of reality.
outside, the steel of the plow truck scraped down the street.

i had started about three other things today. this was the only one to be fleshed out into something like a complete piece. okay. also i hope my dad's friend gives him some more of his homemade maple syrup this year. it was so delicious, it was like swallowing light.

04.02.011

2011-04-02T21:09:00.002-04:00

the autumn roost.
amaze corgi.

once,
i saw you sleeping.

all the silent secrets sheltered in your belly escaped,
whispered within the slumberative sighs
exiting your lips.

the quiet hiss
of tires deflating,
a steel puncture wounded rubber
revolving against wet asphalt.

you give up your phantoms
as though undressing,
hesitantly,
as though it was the first time.

the soft and slow circling of
walrus whiskers around your ankles.
that night, the streets silvered solemnly,
loosed leafed and mottle feathered.

at dawn,
you turned to fog.

POSTSCRIPT. this is about three different poems all happening at once and will most likely be composted, unless i can find some more cohesive way of executing this. i have a serious obsession with tires on wet pavement. YOU CAN'T BLAME ME, THEY SOUND SO NICE. like teakettles and crashing ocean waves and cymbals.

POSTSCRIPT POSTSCRIPT. it is some sort of fate that corgis are my favorite dogs and one of the best maria gocze anagrams is amaze corgi.

04.01.011

2011-04-01T21:54:00.000-04:00

i apologize for the giant lapse in entries. and since it is now national poetry month (and thusly, national poetry writing month), i can promise there will be no further giant lapses until may. let me catch you up on things before we get into the terribleness of the things that come out of my fingertips.

since i last wrote, the only real noteworthy thing that took place was a trip to western massachusetts for this year's holiday surprise show in easthampton. my friend casey, who had originally been planning on going, decided not to go, but was kind enough to switch her tickets over to hillary's name, so she came along with me a few sundays ago. the show was awesome, albeit cut short due to a town curfew. the set contained a lot of the gerbils and a lot of the music tapes, which was really nice. scott was in top form. his new songs (two skies and as time passed) are brilliant. i hope they see some sort of release sometime in the not so distant future. and julian is just. the most wonderful person in the entire world, basically. he told a story that took me back to the night of the lullabye delivery and left me feeling incredibly warm and happy. spare the dark streets was incredibly powerful that night. oftentimes when i watch him perform, the entire rest of the room disappears, no matter how populated the room is, no matter what else is going on, no matter who else is there. it just ceases to exist. it's nice. they also did majesty, which was great. the sunshine fix's hide in the light and sail beyond the sunset one-two punch was a KNOCKOUT (i'm sorry, i couldn't stop myself. i wanted to stop myself, but you can't stop your blood). pete was sick so we didn't get a lot of pipes you see, but you can't go wrong with karaoke free. i picked up lost in the pancakes, which has very quickly become my favorite work of pete's. b.p. was also very sick and bundled up in a knitted beard, large dark sunglasses, and trucker hat. there was a group of people somewhere near where hillary and i were staked out (approximately the third row?) who were certain that he was jeff mangum in disguise, which is just funny because b.p. was wearing neon shoes and he plays a red and blue electric guitar. will was sick as well (there was supposedly a fourth band member who was ill, but i never discovered who it was). they closed with an epic rendition of sun ra's enlightenment that ended with the whole band down in the crowd and leading everyone out into the street (i took this opportunity to buy merch, ha). on our way out, hillary and i stopped in the lobby where john, julian, and will all were. i talked briefly to john about my failed attempts to find him a replacement mouthpiece for his bass clarinet. julian and i talked for a while, and he told me some nice things that i am looking forward to (mostly; the completion of the new music tapes album, some sort of tour [perhaps later this year], and also a reply to an email i sent to him after the lullabye delivery evening). this has been an extremely brief wrap up of the show. i had a whole longer thing written about it, but sometimes i don't like to disclose all the details about everything to the interwebs. especially the details of things that are important to me, and as should be blatantly obvious, the elephant six recording company is very important to me.

it snowed today. a funny sort of april fool's joke, but really just a beautiful excuse to stay home and make cupcakes and read (burroughs' my education) and watch scrubs on netflix. the blue light has been flickering a lot for several weeks now, which is nice. i've been having a lot of odd dreams (perhaps due to reading material, but more probably due to feeling rather out of sorts). we are busy at work, but things are still slow. i don't know how that happens. i am still rather depressed, but that's just because things are still fairly disastrous in my life right now. hopefully things will calm down someday soon, as everything is still very exhausting.

anyway, ON TO NATIONAL POETRY MONTH. i am playing the game a little differently this year.

i am going to strongly suggest that you sign up for poets.org's poem-a-day email list. you can do so by clicking here. in previous years, i have posted the poem-du-jour in with my terrible napowrimo offerings, but something about that seems strange this year, so i'm not going to do it anymore.

instead, you can look forward to (or completely dread) reading some sort of garbage-ish offering that happens to pour out of some part of me that i am not entirely sure of (toes?).

so, without further ado, on with the disaster.

someone pulls the pin.
a magic zero.

you feel unhinged on a friday afternoon,
leaning against the doorway where you once stood
and watched it all unravel.

the fabric fell about you,
soft tendrils of black cotton
swarmed at your feet,
and your hair let loose waterfalls
brown the white of your back.

dislocated snake jaw
trying to swallow the world whole,
telling yourself the entire time,
come on, throat muscles, you can do it,
and you wonder what it is that makes you swallow
when everyone else is wise enough to spit.

the grenade tumbles across the floor
and you have five seconds to
get out or
get dead but
it gets caught in the flytrap of your mouth
and you choke.

what on earth were you thinking.

DISCLAIMER. THIS GOT REALLY WEIRD. it didn't start out sounding like this, but something happened when i was reworking it and it got...uncomfortably weird. i don't know why. my voice is unrecognizable. i haven't written written rotted in a very long time, so i guess that is understandable? okay.

END DISCLAIMER.

here is a terrible quality video i took of an awesome cover from the holiday surprise show at flywheel.

02.20.011

2011-02-20T22:52:00.001-05:00

i am depressed. so i built a fort in my living room. a permanent fort. by permanent, i mean, i suspended an old shower curtain rod (i don't recall if i ever posted about buying a double shower curtain rod and then having it fail miserably on me because my shower isn't level or plumb or square or something, so i only actually used it in the shower once or twice before buying a new singular rod, cleaning the double shower curtain rod fellow, and retiring him to the closet) from rather large eyehooks in the ceiling and covering it in all the fabrics i bought last year that have not become curtains or skirts yet. i've hung up icicle lights and i have a table and pillows and afghans and it's quite cozy, although a bit chilly (even though it is next to the pellet stove) due to the fact that it's on the wall that hasn't been properly insulated yet. there will be another two rods added to make it more tent-esque once i can afford to get two curtain rods. i don't want to discuss that i can't afford two curtain rods right now.

well, that is theoretically a lie. theoretically, i can afford two curtain rods, much like i can afford groceries and gas and pellets if i absolutely have to get these things. anytime i buy things using cash, i save my change. i'm pretty sure i have close to $70 in change right now. but i am trying desperately hard to not need any of those things. i'll starve and not drive anywhere and freeze to death. because.

jeff mangum is playing two nights in boston in september. tickets go on sale late this week.

i have to go. not going is not an option. it is just... not an option at all. i never thought that this would be a likely thing to take place. i have spent nine years being fairly certain that this opportunity would never come up. and now it has, and i haven't been paid in two weeks, and i'm not entirely sure when i will be getting paid. and it's not as though these tickets aren't going to sell out super quickly, so i have to buy them as soon as they go on sale. i'll have to get to a coinstar and the bank by wednesday or thursday this week. i do not know about my life. it has become a thing that i am terribly unsure about.

i really don't want to spend the change box money on the tickets because i was hoping to cash that in for holiday surprise merch (there are so many things i know about that i want to get, and i'm sure there are things i don't know about that i'll want to get too). hopefully things will catch up this week and i won't have to spend that money on jeff tickets. i'm also still trying to determine if either the buffalo or new york city holiday surprise shows are possibilities. i guess the elephant six orchestra are looking into adding a 3rd show in new york on the 21st (which really should be a boston or portland show. but i am biased). that might actually be kind of ideal. if i carpool with my friend to easthampton and we stay somewhere overnight (we haven't really hammered out details yet), i know there is a bus that runs between northampton and nyc ($25), and she could probably drop me there on the way back to maine, and then the bus from nyc to maine is only $60 or so. it all depends on the monetary situation. but then if i'm already in new york, i'll want to stay for the brooklyn show (another friend of mine has a ticket i could have if i can make it down there). floof. i don't know what to do. ever. i wish money didn't exist.

so i'm partially depressed due to financial reasons, but there is something deeper and more nefarious going on in my head that i can't fully identify (there are a lot of contributing factors to how i feel right now) and that i can't seem to crawl out of. so i made a fort to hide out in. i kind of want to sleep in here, but it's cold and not yet cushioned properly (i would like to get giant floor cushions or bean bag chairs or something). since i last wrote, i lost my ipod and my fridge broke (the computer died? why on earth are there computers in refrigerators?). twentyseven has been pretty rough so far, but it seems to be proving slightly better for live music (given that the only live music i heard last year was the music tapes lullabye delivery two days before the year ended. but honestly, if i could only have one live music experience every year, i'd want it to be the music tapes wintertime wanderings). i don't know. i am tired.

02.02.011

2011-02-02T14:00:00.001-05:00

this winter has been so wonderful. quiet and snowy and soft and just. perfect.

i did something to my back this past weekend. i am not looking forward to shoveling, whenever i decide that's a thing i'm going to do.

my birthday was on monday. i am now twentyseven. i didn't do much of note and all i received was money (do not get me wrong; money is an awesome present. i just sort of miss the days of being given things that people put some sort of thought into). i got the best parking spot at the grocery store and mangoes were on sale. birthdays are strange creatures. it is probably for the best that they only happen once a year. although there is something alluring about having all of one's birthdays over the course of one year and getting it over with.

i'm sort of in love with alyosha karamazov. i don't know what to do about it. all of the people i am in love with are either fictional, dead, improbable to reciprocate, or not people. houses. the amount of the snow falling outside my window right now. jumping in puddles.

it is difficult to be alive.

i finished watching ken burns' jazz and am probably going to have to buy a lot of cds and records in the very not so distant future. my hope is to get to the big chicken barn, perhaps this weekend. i'm also going to the book sale that was postponed last weekend.

relatedly, at the amphitheater in camden, they now have an ice skating rink. i should know how to ice skate. ice skating is one of those skills people from away assume people from maine automatically know how to do (like swimming, skinning a deer, tying your shoelaces in the non-bunny ear fashion). little do they know.

or maybe i am just an exception to all sorts of rules.

i am still feeling a bit off and lonely. am i too young to start leaving christmas up all year? i can't make this decision on my own. i am going to vote probably. perhaps i will get started taking things down this afternoon. that won't be depressing at all.

well, alright.

01.22.011

2011-01-22T16:56:00.004-05:00

i spent all day yesterday nestled inside. it was snowing. we've been having some really nice snowstorms this winter, which i think is nature's way of making up for the wussy winter we had last year. it's also been very cold and windy. you take the nice with the less nice and it makes it okay. it's going to be even colder (well below freezing, with wind chills in the negatives) this week. in snowier news, there is the potential for snow on my birthday. i am always hopeful that the conditions will be just like they were when i was born; blizzardy and terrible. i don't know why i am so enamored with the idea of terrible birthday weather, but i am. i think i like to use it as an excuse to not have to go anywhere or do anything but get drunk and watch movies and listen to music.

the little teakettle arrived this week and we've been spending some nice time together. i've tried the vanilla green, acai green, and jasmine green teas. i still haven't tried the pomegranate green or any of the earl grey teas yet. i will probably brew a pot of earl grey before i start watching ken burns' jazz on netflix streaming (which i am ridiculously excited about). the flowers bloom pretty well, although i've found that most of them float instead of sitting upright in the base of teapot, which is a little disappointing. they're still lovely to watch, though, and they taste good, so no complaints. twenty seven dollars well spent.

weightloss things are going well. i am now tracking my diet and exercise and sticking to my plan with reasonable ease, which is nice. the only wrench that has been thrown into it was a surprise early monthly visit that i was not expecting until the 24th which has left me crampy and tired. oh well. i'll be making a big batch of vegan chili at some point this weekend. i hate having to cook black beans, and i don't like to buy them pre-cooked and canned because it adds a lot of unnecessary sodium. i am thinking about investing in a slow cooker. it seems like a good idea.

i am still writing a fair bit, although less than i was when the year first started. i've managed to work in some reading time as well. i'm reading the brothers karamazov at work and before i fall asleep at night, and i've been reading harpo speaks while working out and cooking dinner. i'm in the initial stages of writing and illustrating a children's story about the little teakettle's big texas adventure. by "initial stages" i mean, i came up with an outline and i can visualize the way i want the whole thing to look, but i can't actually buckle down and write the story. i think i'm going to do the art first and write it second, which seems odd, but i think it'll work out okay in the end. my plan is to make copies of it for all of my friends who are having babies, because there are a lot of them.

oh what else. it's weird not having a set schedule for writing here. and apparently not having a set schedule results in me not writing here for two weeks. i apologize for the giant lapse in entries. i will try to be better, but i make no guarantees.

if you would like to send or deliver to me any of the following for my birthday, you are more than welcome to.

corgi puppy.
donkey.
small bunny (dwarf and adorable preferred, but really, any bunny would be awesome).
giant tambourine.

a love letter.
a song.
cuddles.
a nice meal.
something nice and handmade.
vintage papers.
books.
records.
tickets to travel to different places with lodging included.
large blankets.
another fainting couch.
bookshelves.
flowers.
somebody nice (male).
more time.
other various surprises that i have not listed, but would be excited about.

after my birthday, i have to take down all of the christmas things and perhaps rearrange the living room again in order to utilize the space better. i need an area to make things in. the problem right now is that the dining room table (which i do most of my creative things on) is in the kitchen. i could move it back into the living room today, but i have some weird reason for not wanting to do this. i never named my christmas tree this year. i feel bad about it.

i've been having a lot of nice dreams that, although being nice, result in me feeling palpably lonely, to the point where i spend a long time walking around in the grocery store, watching people, because my non-familial human interactions have been basically cut down to grocery stores and gas stations. i should probably go visit the olde crew at the tv station (especially considering that one of my dear friends just got married last weekend) sometime this week, but the weather makes me want to stay inside where it is warm and i don't have to drive. the days are getting longer, at least. and time is passing quickly.

i don't know what else i've been meaning to write about. someday, i'll start posting the things i've actually been writing writing. once i figure out exactly what that is.

01.08.011

2011-01-08T21:02:00.001-05:00

resoluting.

lose a million pounds, get back into shape. the latter being more important than the former, but the former also being important because i've been slacky and terrible and i put on about twenty pounds last year, in addition to the twenty i put on in 2009, and i just feel gross. but so far, we are off to a good start. i've done 20-30 minutes of cardio every other day, starting on this past sunday (therefore; sunday and tuesday and thursday and today). i'm basically just trying to remind my muscles that they are supposed to do things like this all the time, and i will start doing daily cardio this week, maybe starting tomorrow. twenty minutes to half an hour seems reasonable for right now. i'm not doing the pedometer thing like i was in 2008 and i don't really give a crap how many calories i'm burning, so long as i'm doing something. nor am i currently tracking calories consumed (i will probably start keeping track of these things at some point, but just not for right now), BUT! my eating habits have also gotten better (so much amy's black bean and corn salsa is being consumed. i need to find a cheaper alternative, given that a jar of that stuff is almost $5, and i'm currently feeding a 1/2 to 3/4 jar daily addiction, which comes to almost $20 in salsa a week, which is kind of ridiculous) and i'm drinking plenty of water, so things are going well there.

no drinking sunday-thursday night, unless it is a supremely special occasion. not a problem, given that i haven't been drinking much at all for the past few months. also, once i start to see and feel results from working out and eating right again, i will be less likely to drink much at all, given that it is empty calories and mostly pointless (that being said, i am drinking tonight).

write more. this is going well, although i am writing mostly crap, but this is to be expected because i hardly wrote at all last year, so i am backlogged in things that no one cares about, but it has to come out in order to get things flowing again.

keep reading basically the same amount as last year. I AM FAILING AT THIS. it's awful. i am still reading that charles dickens book i was reading last week and the week before that and the week before that and so on until sometime in december. the problem i am running into is that if i am writing, i do not want to be reading, because more often than not, i am reading really beautifully written things that just make me feel shameful and awful. and if i'm reading, i can not really write because everything i read is so well composed and i just feel worthless. i figure i can probably get over these problems with enough practice and good self esteem, but i like to invest a lot of time into either reading or writing, and the idea of having to split my spare time between the two makes me nervous. perhaps i should start a read monday, write tuesday, read wednesday, write thursday, read friday, write saturday, read sunday, and so on schedule. i don't know.

spend more time with the musical instruments. yeah, this hasn't happened yet at all. maybe later tonight.

create more. this is still sort of brewing. i have all sorts of ideas and projects percolating in my head and i'm excited to start trying to make them realities.

additionally, i would like to take some classes or do workshops or join some sort of creative group through an arts center located in the town next to where i work. it would be wonderful for me for a plethora of reasons, not the least of which being that it would force me to stop being a hermit and i would meet people with reasonably similar interests. unfortunately, they are currently only offering drawing and clay groups, neither of which i am terribly interested in. i have to keep reminding myself that it is the dead of winter and most people don't go out in maine in the winter because it is bitterly cold, and that there will probably be something more towards what i'm looking for later in the year.

i keep waffling back and forth on creating an actual schedule for myself, but i really cannot stand having a schedule. well, that's not entirely true, because i do like having some sort of structure to my day. but i just hate tying myself down to times for the things i want to do. although i guess if i consider it more of a loose suggestion instead of a strict schedule, that would be alright. maybe.

so far, 2011 has been alright! i won two free tshirts from cottonfactory.com (chemistry power and in loving memory of tape) by solving one of their scrambles on their facebook page. i listened to a music tapes thing on the radio over the internet yesterday afternoon and got all ridiculously giddy and warm feeling again.

OH MAN. there are really weird interwoven things happening that are freaking me out.

last thursday, while i was having a flood of rapid, intense (but really lovely) half awake, half asleep dreams, i had this vision of a kindly old sea captain in a blue coat sitting on the edge of my bed. he was singing this really short and repetitious lullabye to me. i cannot recall the words.

so fastforward to a few days ago. i read the story a message from the sea by charles dickens. and in this story, there is a kindly old sea captain who wears a long blue coat and at one point sings a really short, repetitious song to a small child. silas jorgan plays the organ.

AND THEN! in the same story, there is this whole other storyline about this clerk who had stolen 500 pounds and in order to hide the fact that he had done such a thing, he ripped out a page out from a ledger and sewed it into the lining of a hat. the kindly old sea captain discovers this. this draws parallels to a story julian told about a certain hat that had a piece of music sewn into the lining of it that was purchased by one miss billie holiday (previous records mistakenly report that the hat belonged to one miss ella fitzgerald, which julian claims he was wrongly informed about originally and that he has now been properly educated in the story of who owned this aforementioned hat).

these things seem so tightly interwoven that i can't dismiss them as mere coincidence, but instead are obviously residual music tapes magic that i cannot explain. i want to know if julian has read that story, because it's just... too weird for it to be coincidence (i've already emailed him about it, but i'm not sure if he's checking the email address i sent it to or not. oh well).

my left eye has been twitching on and off since wednesday. it started while i was watching the gubernatorial inauguration. this may or may not be coincidence.

i am thinking about getting a bunny. every bunny i encounter is always so excited to see me. like, stand on hind legs, press front paws against glass, wiggle nose at you excited. it'd be nice to have a living thing that would be so excited to see me around. maybe i should just try to meet some new people. new people are free. bunnies cost money in upkeep, but they are fluffy and usually are a lot more adorable than people. but you don't have to clean up after people either. hmmm.

i want too many books. there is a book sale in a few weeks that i am looking forward to, as i haven't been to a book sale in months now.

it snowed a little this evening, but not enough. hardly a powdered sugared donut's worth. depressing.

i ordered a glass teapot and some of those flowering teas. i am hoping it will arrive this week, but whereas it's being shipped the most stupid way possible (fedex smartpost; which involves being carried to maine via fedex, and then reprocessed through the postal service and thusly taking at least an extra two days to arrive), i am not holding my breath.

i am turning twenty seven at the end of the month. that is a weird thing. every birthday past twenty has been strange, given that when i was younger, i never could envision life past the age of twenty. i don't know what that says about me, but it's a thing that is true. this probably plays a large part in why i have no idea what i'm doing with my life at all and why i never figured out what i wanted to do with this time i have on earth. maybe this year will be the year i figure it all out. probably not. that's actually really unlikely. at any rate, i don't know what my birthday will bring. hopefully something nice. i enjoy it when nice things happen. it is rather infrequent that these things occur. okay.

12.31.010

2010-12-31T23:00:00.002-05:00

friends,

it is rare that i have nice things happen that turn me into lit candle; dripping with melted happiness and glowing brilliantly. i am currently candelabraing to a point where we are on the verge of burning down the house.

i spent most of monday watching the blizzard, cleaning the house, and making gingerbread cookies. tuesday i made dreams (dreams are a family cookie recipe that you either have to be born into or marry into the family to acquire) and the patties for the peppermint patties and continued the cleaning. and then wednesday.

wednesday i was a crazy cyclone of ridiculousity all day long. i had the worst trouble sleeping i have ever had. worse than any christmas eve i ever experienced as a child. it was absurdly wonderful. i woke up and went to bangor to run errands. i was home around noon. made chocolate chip cookies and dipped the peppermint patties in chocolate and decorated the dreams and hillary attempted to decorate the gingerbread cookies, although we don't have an actual piping bag, nor do we have piping experience, so it was a sort of failed attempt. rearranged the living room, finished cleaning. showered, prepared food. started to get real anxious.

my friend jayson showed up at 8:30 (i should mention that he was the only one of my friends to actually show, despite being told by several other friends were going to show. some had good reasons for not coming. others had no reason at all, and i don't know how i feel about it [other than disappointed on their behalves {behalves is really a word???}]). he had called me earlier in the day, wickedly excited. we snacked (or rather hillary and jayson snacked, i couldn't eat. i was too excited) and hung out with cats and listened to glenn miller and i tried not to be nervous/overly anxious, but it didn't work at all. we kept hearing car doors that weren't actually there. it was very silly.

until we did hear car doors that were actually there. hillary got up to check. and yes, the music tapes had arrived and were unloading. a friend from belfast came up with them. it was so wonderfully surreal after three years of invitations to see that, yes, maria, the music tapes really are santa claus, and yes, they are going to be playing in your living room.

while they were loading in, a fellow from bangor showed up, followed shortly by at least ten, maybe fifteen people (three of whom were named jake!) who basically materialized out of thin air as far as i'm concerned. all really kind folks who offered to help clean up before they left after the evening was over. i was so glad that there was such a nice turn out.

andso they load in and then proceed to play music and tell stories and games for about two hours. as i do not want to spoil anything for people who are still expecting lullabye deliveries, i will not post anything about the evening itself that will give anything away.

the new songs that were played were some of the best music tapes songs i have ever heard. there is something really special about this new batch of music that julian and friends are making and i cannot wait to hear the new album.

after one of the stories, julian told everyone about my invitations, and i almost cried, because that's what i do (robbie and i had discussed them earlier, while it was just jayson and hillary and i, and i almost cried then as well. i love that they love them as much as i love making them because i love them [them being the music tapes, not the invitations, although i am partial to the invitations as well]). i almost cried about four or five times throughout the evening, but somehow, it never actually happened.

they are magic. there is something really magical about the music tapes and seeing them just leaves you feeling warm and glowy and happy for days and days and days afterward. i refer to this as the happiness hangover; it leaves you feeling kind of drunk and sleepy and smiley, like you just spent a lot of time drinking with someone you love or something. i don't know how to describe it. you just have to experience it to get it.

the cats were surprisingly well behaved. robbie was really vying for bella's attention, but since she's pretty and she knows it, she was being rather temperamental about it. pepper LOVED julian. it was very sweet watching them interact after everyone had left.

there were about three hours of rehearsal interspersed with conversations after everyone had left, before we all went to bed (around 3:30?). it was a nice experience to be able to hang out with them while they worked out the arrangement for a song they were trying to figure out.

i had trouble sleeping again because i am ridiculous.

things i found in my living room yesterday morning: three pennies, a piece of green ribbon with white polka dots, a green and white swirled peppermint candy candle (this is really weird because i have really similar looking red and white swirled peppermint candy candles as part of my christmas decor), a few bits of shredded paper, and a broken christmas light bulb. and i think julian said that ian had pulled harpo speaks off my shelves for him.

unfortunately, they weren't able to hang around and explore in the morning, as they had a long drive to vermont ahead of them. but it was easily the best, most fun, exquisite time i've had all year. maybe in years. it was such a beautiful evening. and i think julian and ian and robbie all enjoyed their time in winterport. i hope they did, and i hope they come back next year.

there were a lot of other things, but i can't really go into them because it would give too much about the performance away, or i don't want to because i like to keep things close to me sometimes.

so basically i've been functioning in a happy, sleep deprived state for the past few days. i am still very tired (despite sleeping for nine hours last night). OH MAN. and the craziest thing happened last night, which i am certain was related to the lullabye experience. i had all of these really vivid half asleep, half awake dreams. at least a dozen and a half. at one point, there was a wonderful old sea captain sitting on the edge of my bed, wearing a blue coat, with a corn cob pipe, and he was singing lullabyes to me. it was amazing. and i recall hearing a lot of british accents as well. very quick, sort of interstitial-y sorts of things. all really nice and comforting. i hope they happen every night (they should).

otherly; it's new year's eve! i am so glad to see this year end, and especially on a high note, given that the rest of it has been mostly garbage and terrible things and death. entirely too much death this year. i hope next year is a lot better. resolutions include getting back into shape/losing a bunch of weight, writing more, and spending more time with the musical instruments that live in my room (there are a lot of them and they are all rather neglected).

i made a list of all the books i've read this year.

charles bukowski; sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way.
jonathan safran foer; extremely loud and incredibly close.
billy collins; sailing alone around the room.
adrienne rich; a wild patience has taken me this far.
john cole, charles wing; from the ground up.
sylvia plath; ariel.
louise dickinson rich; we took to the woods.
ernest hemingway; the old man and the sea.
susanna kaysen; girl, interrupted.
sylvia plath; the bell jar.
f. scott fitzgerald; the great gatsby.
john green, maureen johnson, lauren myracle; let it snow.
roald dahl; fantastic mr. fox.
virginia woolf; mrs. dalloway.
annie dillard; teaching a stone to talk.
jd salinger; nine stories.
virginia woolf; to the lighthouse.
edith wharton; ethan frome.
marjorie filley stover; when the dolls woke.
the modern library; a new anthology of modern poetry (1938 edition).
o. henry; waifs and strays.
bernd heinrich; mind of the raven.
rainer maria rilke; letters to a young poet.
mark haddon; the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
jeanette winterson; sexing the cherry.
noel botham; the book of useless information.
nick hornby; high fidelity.
jd salinger; the catcher in the rye.
barbara robinson; the best christmas pageant ever.
van reid; cordelia underwood or, the marvelous beginnings of the moosepath league.
melissa bank; the girls' guide to hunting and fishing.
laurie notaro; the idiot girls' action-adventure club.
james joyce; dubliners.
anton chekov; the black monk/peasants.
jack kerouac; on the road.
jeffrey kacirk; the word museum.
miranda july; no one belongs here more than you.
eb white; poems and sketches of...
elizabeth von armin; the solitary summer.
annie dillard; pilgrim at tinker creek.
jd salinger; franny and zooey.
elizabeth von armin; elizabeth and her german garden.
alain fournier; le grand meaulnes.
haruki murakami; the wind up bird chronicle.
david berman; actual air.
anne frank; the diary of...
oscar wilde; the complete fairytales of...
maud lindsay; the story-teller.
jeanette winterson; lighthousekeeping.
fyodor dostoevsky; notes from underground/white nights/the dream of a ridiculous man/selections from the house of the dead.
mac montandon; innocent when you dream: the tom waits reader.
george carlin; naplam and silly putty.
john green, david levithan; will grayson, will grayson.
john green; looking for alaska.
grimm's fairytales.
fyodor dostoevsky; crime and punishment.
ray bradbury; fahrenheit 451.

currently reading;
charles dickens; christmas stories and other stories.

started and abandoned;
henry david thoreau; walden.
virginia woolf; a room of one's own/three guineas.
jack kerouac; mexico city blues.

next in the queue;
fyodor dostoevsky; the brothers karamazov.
ken kesey; one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
richard brautigan; trout fishing in america.
(but probably not in that order, except i am reading the brothers karamazov next, as i decided it is appropriate post-holiday reading.)

which brings us to the pressing topic at hand: the future of this blog.

the future of this blog is kind of uncertain. i am doing away with scheduled writing dates, as i am going to try to spend more time writing things that are worth reading, instead of "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED TODAY" because that stuff is (usually) boring. i recognize that today is an exception, but only because something not boring happened. usually my life is boring. so. i don't really know what i'm going to do with this space. it'll still be here, but it'll be more focused on very particular things i want to write about, instead of the "oh, it's wednesday/sunday, i have to write" fare that usually ends up here. since i am giving myself a writing schedule, maybe i'll post at least once a week with things that i really liked. i don't know.

i love that the first live music that i've heard in over a year was an incarnation of my favorite band playing in my living room. i don't think that happens very often. hillary didn't take many pictures, and jayson is currently out of town, so i can't get high resolution copies of the ones he took until he gets back into town (either monday or tuesday), so here is one of the better ones that hillary took.

sometimes it doesn't seem terribly real.

alright. i suppose that is all! i hope you all have beautiful and prosperous new years that find you happy and healthy! lots of love.

i started watching this on either monday or tuesday and just finished tonight. certain parts of this song will sound familiar to music tapes fans.

12.26.010

2010-12-26T21:22:00.001-05:00

hello! i know i was undecided as to whether or not this blog was actually going to happen today, but apparently we're getting some big blizzard tomorrow, so assuming this actually happens, i will have ALL DAY to bake cookies and make peppermint patties and prepare for wednesday, and it felt wrong to abandon the blog for so long. i had a very weird, nice christmas. lack of complete participation from one of my brothers made it weird, but all other aspects were nice. christmas eve, my parents came over and we (parentals, sister, and myself) had chinese food (i ate a ton of garlic vegetables. SO GOOD) and exchanged gifts. my sister gave me a stylophone, on which i immediately played a terrible rendition of particle man, and an otamatone.

mine is black and looks less spermish. i gave her a bunch of crystal clusters, because she is into that sort of thing. my parents gave me two new penguin mugs to replace the one that fell down the stairs and broke a few weeks ago, and some cash. i gave them gift cards for ebay. (on christmas day, my other brother gave me a gift card to bull moose [which is always awesome, but doubly so now that they sell books too], and i gave him a gift certificate to ming's.) they left around 8:30. i watched it's a wonderful life for the first time ever, cried a whole lot, and had trouble falling asleep. i am embarrassing/silly.

yesterday, my parents and other brother came and picked us up around one, and we went to visit my grandmother in the assisted living center. it was a nice visit. as she gets older, i think she gets more funny. example: there is a christmas tree in the common room outside of her room. one of the other residents was putting tinsel on the tree in a fashion that upset my grandmother, so she took all the tinsel off the tree and hid it and now cannot recall where she put it. AMAZING. also, at one point, she said to my sister "you look younger!" and she turns to me and puts her hand on my arm and says "and you! you look beautiful! really beautiful!" it was very sweet.

after the trip up to bangor, i watched elf and scrooged and a christmas story and mostly figured out what i'll be making for wednesday. i made a rather inebriated and long list of things i will need, without really making clarifications on said list as to what i'll need for what.

today i went down to my parents' house to pick up the cookie tins for cookie storage purposes. we went on a drive to rockland where we saw some ducks and christmas lights and picked out houses we'd like to live in and discussed the hairstyles of male home improvement show hosts. i left immediately after we got back in order to go shopping for supplies for tomorrow.

i hate shopping with a list. because i don't write shopping lists in any sort of order that makes sense. for example: at one point on today's list i had listed

clementines
q tips
basil
hand soap
chickpeas

in that order. not even taking into consideration the layout of the store. i only purchased about half of what i needed, and still ended up spending $120. whoops. the problem is that spices and baking supplies are so freakin' expensive. a tiny little thing of ground cloves cost $8.99. THAT'S ABSURD. IT IS ABSURD AND STUPID. frustrating. i'll try to make my list for tuesday/wednesday morning better, because i kept going back to the baking aisle. over and over and over. it was at least five times. and i still forgot to get brown sugar (i think i have enough for what i need to do, but i'll be out after this). i also forgot to get another thing of tofu and also lemon juice for a dip i wanted to make in advance to taste and see if it's actually any good. i get nervous when i'm making things i've never made before for people. because what if it comes out awful! the cookies i am not concerned about, as there is only one new recipe that is being thrown into the mix, but most of the savory things that aren't crackers or chips or what not are things i have never made before. i get worried for funny reasons. and there's really nothing to worry about anyway, as i have enough things planned that aren't things i have to make, so if something goes terribly awry, it's not a big deal.

ANYWAY, I AM SO EXCITED. i am going to get so little sleep this week, it's going to be silly. i know i am going to have trouble sleeping tonight because of the blizzard. it has already started snowing and i love watching snow fall at night. tomorrow night i'll probably sleep alright, but tuesday night i doubt i'll get much sleep at all. eeeeh! i'm so excited to see julian and friends again. although i do have this terrible, rational fear that this blizzard will stall over new england and they'll be unable to make it up and then i will be so sad. hopefully the blizzard will stay on it's projected path and be out of here tomorrow night. also, it's so silly that wednesday night will be the first live music i've heard since last november. two days before the year ends. haha. i'm curious as to whether or not any area music tapes fans will come. i hope so. it'd be nice to meet some new people.

okay. all this being said, i will not be writing on wednesday, but i will be writing at some point before the end of the year. still not certain what 2011 will bring for this blog. really gotta figure out what i want to do with 2011 in the first place (outside of following around the holiday surprise tour for a month and a half, which will probably not happen). OKAY. i may be posting things re: wednesday night on my tumblr throughout the week, so you could check things out there, but know that if you do, you'll mostly see pictures of adorable animals. okay.

okay.

okay.

OKAY!

12.22.010

2010-12-22T22:10:00.002-05:00

ok. basically i am extremely stressed out due to christmas and a complete lack of finances right now; our pay for last week is running late since the postal service is clogged up with christmas parcels and people are slow in sending things out because of the holiday. i seriously have $9 in my checking account and three people left to buy gifts for and less than a quarter of a tank of gas. also, we're doing the gift exchange christmas eve and i think we're doing it here. i have no food. i mean, i have food, i just don't have food that anyone else in my family would be interested in eating. there is a chance we might get paid tomorrow, in which case all of my stress will be for no good reason, but if not i have to do all sorts of juggling and borrow money from my sister and drain my life savings ($48 in change in a box in my bedroom) in order to be able to do christmas right. so my head hurts. the good news is, that since i am upset and stressed, i have been cleaning most of the night and i found a peppermint lollipop on top of my fridge. the bad news is that i just want to get into bed and cancel christmas and i am apparently extremely wasteful when it comes to vegetable broth (i somehow had four open containers of it in my fridge). so. there's that. i'm not certain where i put my water bottle when i got home from work. it's been snowing all day, which is nice because it rained all day yesterday and melted what little snow we had, and christmas just doesn't feel right without a little snow. hopefully everything will sort itself out in the next few days, and i can have a nice, less-stressed christmas. i hope you all have really wonderful holidays and get everything your hearts desire. thanks to the few of you who read this and have some sort of interest in the random life of a girl in maine. i might actually be able to blog on sunday, but i'm not making any promises. if not, you'll hear from me sometime after the 29th, but before the new year. alright! merry christmas!

12.19.010

2010-12-19T23:11:00.001-05:00

we have reached that point in the winter where i am fairly certain i will never be warm again. i know it is unreasonably and untrue, but it still happens. it came earlier than usual this year. it's a little disappointing.

okso, on thursday, i went to the co-op after work to get new conditioner and toothpaste, and i discovered that they had the exact sort of christmas trees i had been looking for! it was really sad, although wonderful as well, because at least i know for next year.

i set up the tree thursday evening and was going to decorate friday, but instead i got drunk and watched all the christmas episodes of the office. treefellow was decorated yesterday, and he still is lacking a name. i made a pretty paper (silvery vellum-y snowflake paper!) garland chain to go around him, but it's not long enough and ended in his middle and looked kind of silly/sad, so instead it's hanging from the ceiling. perhaps i will make a regular construction paper chain for him instead. we shall see.

i've run out of white christmas lights, but i have yet to decorate the fake tree, so i am now faced with the conundrum of whether or not i should even bother doing the fake tree. i have two strands of multi colored lights left, which might be enough to properly light the tree, and then i could do just the silver ornaments (which is what i had been planning on doing until pete took his tree back), but it feels strange to be thinking about not doing the woodlandy tree. perhaps i will just put all those decorations on the real tree? i don't know. it's all really silly.

so i think i'm mostly done with the decorating, which is a nice feeling. just a few more things to put up and out, and a nice cleaning to be done, and then it will be christmas. it has still yet to be determined where we are doing christmas, but i'd guess we'll be gathering here. we are also planning on visiting our grandmother in bangor either on christmas eve or christmas day, which will be nice. i still have to do a reasonable amount of shopping left to do (which may or may not include still trying to figure out what to get my parents, depending on whether or not i can find what i was thinking about getting them locally or how long it would take to ship if i can't).

and then shortly after christmas, it will be music tapes day, and i can't wait. i now have an estimated time of arrival (between 10:30 and 11) and it makes it all the more real. i'd like to figure out what exactly i'm serving this week and get the list all made up and figure out exactly when i should have things done by because i know the days leading up to the 29th are going to find me scatterbrained and sleepless and weird. i am probably going to miss at least two days of blogging; sunday the 26th, and wednesday the 29th (OBVIOUSLY). HOWEVER, i do promise to write at some point when things are still fresh and wonderful and it will most certainly be before the end of the year, when i will reassess this twice-weekly blogging schedule and try to figure out if it is going to change (likely).

at any rate, i am pretty tired and excited and i'm overly emotional (i watched miracle on 34th street tonight [holiday inn tomorrow! i don't think i've ever seen holiday inn all the way through], and then read the yes, virginia, there is a santa claus column), so i should go read some more dickens and go to bed.

the audio is a little funky on this video, but i love this song so much.

12.15.010

2010-12-15T22:20:00.002-05:00

i am really tired. we're really busy at work this week, which would be great if it seemed like anything was getting accomplished. i feel as though we've been running around in circles, which is a lot more exhausting than knowing exactly what you're supposed to be doing at all times. and then i get home from work and i run around my house trying to figure out what i'm doing in terms of christmas decorating, which is fun, but also tiring. we got the tree tonight. he's not au natural, but still handsome. he's spending the night in hillary's car since i am lacking a hacksaw and not really wanting to try to cut off an inch of stump with one of my regular handsaws (i did this last year and it took entirely too long). while putting up christmas lights last night in my bare feet, i stepped on a plug, which has somehow resulted in a really gross blood blister in the bend of my big toe. i don't know. oh, so this afternoon, since i was let out of work a little early, i decided to put up the hooks for the exterior lights. so i take out my little step stool and i venture outside, only to discover that i had grossly underestimated the height difference between the top of the step stool and where i had wanted to put the hooks (above the light fixture and across all the stoop roof joists). i'm at least a foot too short, even on the top step. the only way this could be remedied is either to borrow the ladder from work (probably over this weekend), or to get my dad to do it (he's probably going to have to come over anyway since i can't get my automatic light to not be an automatic light anymore). at any rate. the music tapes are going to be here in two weeks (i think, still waiting for more information), and that's a crazy wonderful thought. i'm so excited. it's going to be the most fun and i can't wait. tickets for the easthampton stop on next year's holiday surprise tour went on sale this week and i have purchased one. also, i might be going to the show at the knitting factory in brooklyn! oh man. i hope i can go. it would be wonderful to be able to go to two of the holiday surprise shows. i wrote a little bit the other day in the memo pad on my phone. if ever anything were to happen to me and someone were to find my cell phone and go through the weird things i have written in there, they would think i am one strange cookie. i suppose i am. i don't understand why i was writing on my phone instead of an in a notebook. it is not as though i don't always have four with me. anyway. i'm pretty sleepy and cold and i've been reading an old collection of charles dickens' christmas stories (which does not contain a christmas carol) and i like to read in bed so that is going to happen now.

12.12.010

2010-12-12T21:49:00.004-05:00

well, i didn't blog about cfc days 4 or 5, but i did partake in them. they were pretty much carbon copies of day three, so you didn't really miss much. however, i completely fell off the bandwagon this weekend. i woke up early yesterday morning, and i had a bagel. i couldn't take it anymore. oh well. it was an interesting experience. i am still trying to get more water into my system, and i'm not going to go back to eating as much bread or pasta or processed food at every meal, but oh man. my sister was making toast on friday night, and it smelled so good. so that's done with.

as i already mentioned, i woke up early yesterday in order to do a little shopping before everywhere in bangor got too crazy. i picked up a light socket to outlet adapter and some lights for my stoop roof! i was so excited about this that i neglected to check the status of my roof before doing this. i got home to discover that it was covered in snow and ice. whoops.

FORTUNATELY (i guess???), it's currently 45˚ and rainy and windy, so all the snow that was on the stoop roof is gone. unfortunately, a lot of the snow that was on the ground is gone too. bummer.

i started to clean the living room and did just a smidge of decorating today. we were supposed to go get the real tree today, but my sister didn't wake up until one (we actually made plans on friday to get it yesterday, but she slept in until three. her sleep schedule is so annoying sometimes) and she had too much to do (i want to take her car to get it because the tree will fit in the back of it and the hatch will shut, whereas i'd have to either tie it to the roof of my car [uhh, no], or tie the trunk half shut with the tree hanging out [also, no]). i'm hoping to go somewhere someday this week to find one. unfortunately, most tree farms close around sunset, and the sun sets around 4:30, so it looks as though i'm limited to parking lots until saturday, which would then be a week before christmas, and i can't handle that. additionally, she is going to portland for tomorrow and part of tuesday, so that only gives us three days to get one. i hate waiting to get the tree. i like to get it reasonably early in the month, because december goes so quickly, and i always end up feeling rushed.

i started my christmas shopping yesterday as well. i have to acquire my oldest brother's gift, and figure out what i'm getting for the parentals. my other brother and his wife don't want anything because they can't give anything, but i will probably give them something anyway, because it feels weird not to give them anything. they're important members of the family too!

i finished reading let it snow. it was good for what it was (a trio of intertwined young adult romantic stories). i'm now reading the best christmas pageant ever, which i will probably finish tonight since i'm going to be fairly early because...

i have a weird sinus thing going on and it's very uncomfortable. it is either from the bizarro weather or from the fact that i cleaned the pellet stove today. or maybe both. or something else entirely.

so hopefully tomorrow i will come home and finish cleaning and start decorating in earnest. i really wish tomorrow weren't monday. i feel like i was gypped out of this weekend. i don't know where it went. mostly i'm just annoyed that we haven't acquired the real tree yet. oh well. i should've just hijacked her car and gone by myself, but it's fun to have someone else around while picking out a christmas tree.

i've been in a weird place mentally the past few days. that happens with me a lot this time of year, but it's pretty bad this year. i'm overly worried about so many things that i have no control over. my motivation for doing things is kind of busted, which is weird because i do have a lot to do. i am feeling distant and lonely. oh well. it will pass.

i have two or three small-ish tinsely trees that i bought at target years ago. they have small disco ball ornaments. i have three sets and each set has 10 ornaments in it. last year, pepper would knock them off the trees and bat them around the house. at the end of the season, when i was packing things up, i could only find approximately 22 of the 30 balls. i found four or five this year when i rearranged the living room closet. i think there are another two in my room. the tall fake tree i decorate also was a victim of this game. suffice it to say, i relate to this (although neither of the cats have actually climbed up the tree or broken any ornaments yet; knock on wood).

12.08.010; cfc day three.

2010-12-08T20:34:00.001-05:00

i woke up late. it wasn't really late, but since i am actually cooking in the morning instead of toasting something and putting some sort of spread on it, it was late. and for some reason, my oatmeal would not simmer down enough for me to be content (i hate overly watery oatmeal). so, as a last ditch effort, i nuked it, thusly rendering it too hot to eat. i had maybe three spoonfuls. i knew it was going to be a rough day. i packed up my oatmeal in the hopes that i would be able to have some once i got into work, i packed up my lunch (with extra clementines) and i packed pete's christmas tree (which he had given me at the end of the christmas season last year, but needed back because he didn't end up getting a new one this year) and headed into work.

also i should mention it was snowing and i was stuck behind this old guy driving in a subaru impreza that i get stuck behind sometimes because he apparently heads out from somewhere around where i live around the same time i do, but he drives really slow, and today it was even worse. the roads were alright. he was just slow. i'm used to it, but it was frustrating today because there was some guy in a truck behind me who thought that i was the one holding up the traffic. oh well.

work was alright. i didn't get to eat my oatmeal. i didn't drink a lot of water today (32 ounces at work, i'm working on getting through at least another forty before i go to bed). but i was fine. i mean, i was sluggish and i wanted to curl up in from of the wood stove, but other than that, i was fine. not very hungry at all. it was really bizarre.

chili and clementines for lunch.

while driving home from work, i decided that i was going to make hasselback potatoes in addition to the oven-fried eggplant and spinach that i was planning on having. i was pretty hungry at that point in time.

when i pulled in the driveway, i noticed that hillary had gone out (her car was cleared off completely).

i opened the door to the house.

and out it comes.

the smell.

of chinese food.

glorious, terrible, really processed and fried and delicious chinese food. it assaulted my nostrils and my heart sank and my stomach started yelling "OH GOODNESS GRACIOUS, YOU BETTER GET SOME FOOD IN ME NOW OR ELSE THERE WILL BE PROBLEMS."

so i ran upstairs with three clementines in the hopes that the smell would dissipate before i started to cook (it did).

the thing with me and preparing new foods is that, if i don't have a photo reference of what the food looks like, i go in fearless and brave. BUT, if i know what it's supposed to look like when it's done, and it doesn't look that way when it's SUPPOSED to be done, i get unnerved and freaked out.

i had made oven fried eggplant before using this recipe. since i am trying to avoid heavily processed foods, i used olive oil instead of the dressing. everything coated fine. it just took a lot longer than 15 minutes them to bake. more like thirty. i might not have let the water sweat out of the eggplant for long enough, which may have been the cause. or the fact that some of the slices were a lot thicker than others. either way, it came out fine. the breadcrumbs were pretty good, not as good as real glutenous breadcrumbs, but a respectable replacement.

i had never made hasselback potatoes before, but i had seen some tweets maureen johnson posted about some that she made, and i thought they looked delectable, so i decided to give them a try. i used this recipe, but with some variations on the general theme. i left out the butter completely, and started off by sprinkling them with a little olive oil. i put a little garlic on one of them, and put a little salt and pepper on all of them, and then covered them in nutritional yeast and dill. and then i put them in the oven.

they didn't fan out after the first forty minutes. i re-read the recipe and realized the error of my ways (the lack of that sprinkling of olive oil after you've put all your spices on). i applied a little more olive oil and they were fanning out in no time.

so dinner was delicious. i made a few of the potatoes, and i am considering having another. so good.

thoughts on today; i really don't have any. i mean, it was weird that i wasn't hungry at all until lunch, considering that i didn't really have breakfast (i still have the oatmeal i made which i probably will just reheat for tomorrow). the water thing failed today too. today definitely would've been a pasta day, and i didn't crave it at all, so that's good. thursdays are usually a junk-y food day because it's the one day i watch tv, so we'll see about how tomorrow goes. hopefully better than today.

it's weird blogging every day again. i don't really like it, ha. the peta vegan recipe of the week is a gingerbread cookie recipe. i want to try making it, but i obviously can't this week. i'm also hoping to find a nice sugar cookie recipe as well (i don't have one yet! yeesh!), and i want to test it out before the holidays. i was talking with hillary about cookies yesterday, and i'm going to have at least three different cookie varieties for the evening with the music tapes. that number has possibly gone up to five. is that too many cookies? is it possible to have too many cookies? i don't think these questions have answers. they may be rhetorical. who knows.

it's terribly cold. earlier in the week, the forecast said it was going to warm up today or tomorrow, but now instead, it's just going to be cold cold cold. oh, some good news is that my dad is buying a couple of tons of pellets for the shop, and he says that we can buy individual bags from him if we desire. that will be a real nice option to have once winter is in full swing or i decide i don't want to be going up to bangor every weekend (at some point, my direct deposit will kick in, and i will no longer have to go up on friday afternoons).

speaking of bangor, i do have to go up tomorrow morning to get some things, so perhaps i should turn in earlier than usual tonight. it's too cold to not be wrapped up in blankets anyhow.

i want to figure out how to play this song on the accordion and do terrible renditions of it for change on the streets on bangor some snowy saturday. that's normal, right?

12.07.010; cfc day two.

2010-12-07T22:50:00.002-05:00

today went a lot better than yesterday. i had the same thing for breakfast (soaking overnight and cooking the oatmeal properly did help making it less al dente), except for that there was the great coffee machine malfunction of 2010™ this morning, so my coffee was all ground-y and worse than yesterday and i had even less of it this morning. i think just smelling the caffeine helps to wake me up though, because i was roaring to go this morning. i had a glass of water while breakfast was cooking.

i think i was right about how focused on my hunger level i was yesterday due to not being at work, because i was fine all day today. lunch was more chili (still so good), and a few clementines.

and then i didn't eat anything until 7:30! what! i went shopping with hillary after work. i came home and had the rest of the tempeh and greenbeans from yesterday as well as all the popcorn i made last night and a few more clementines.

and most excitingly! i definitely drank at least half a gallon of water today. i emptied my water bottle at work twice and had water with breakfast and i've been drinking water most of the night. i've been peeing every hour or so. i'm gonna try really hard for the full gallon tomorrow (gonna bring the nalgene bottle everywhere).

i went grocery shopping tonight and stocked up on potatoes (i need starch) and also bought an eggplant and some gluten-free breadcrumbs, which may be questionable, but i'm going to attempting "bake-frying" the eggplant tomorrow night for dinner because eggplant is so so so good and i need a break from the tempeh. also, apparently it is impossible to find unsalted peanuts? i don't know, it's frustrating. i like raw almonds when they're in things, but i have trouble just snacking on them. so i bought lightly salted peanuts because i feel like i do need more protein.

thoughts at the end of day two: i feel really good and energetic. also i think my teeth are whiter, which makes absolutely no sense at all, but there it is. drinking water is keeping me fuller, so that is helping a lot. there are times when i feel kind of hungry, but i know i'm not really hungry because i just ate all the popcorn that i made the previous night and i know i couldn't eat any more food if i tried. i think that's because everything i've been eating has been so much lighter in comparison to what i'm used to eating. i don't know if that's really what's going on or even if that makes sense at all, but alright. i said the word "bagel" in the car because i have some left over from last week, and i did start to get a little crave-y, but i was pretty hungry at that point in time and the craving has subsided. being a vegan and doing this is pretty difficult, because choices for protein are really limited. basically it's tempeh, beans, or nuts (i know some fruits and veggerables have protein in them, but they don't pack as much of a protein punch as a serving of tempeh [20 grams]). i seem to be in an alright pattern, but as i mentioned earlier, i really need a break from the tempeh. part of my problem with food (and i've always been this way) is that when i like something, i eat it every day and very rarely mix it up. for example, one year in high school, for lunch, i used to have a cream cheese sandwich and goldfish crackers or cheez-its and some apple sauce. EVERY. DAY. i know. I KNOW. i am a finicky eater. i don't like to try new things by myself because, what if i hate it and then i throw it away and all that food is wasted? i had that mind set for a really long time; it's gotten slightly better now that i don't eat meat, but i am always hesitant when i try something new, because what if i hate it? what if i prepare it wrong and ruin all the things that went into it? i know it's not the end of the world, but it is such a terrible feeling to throw out food. andso i get stuck in food ruts. i'm even in one this week. i've never been one to plan out a different lunch for every day of the week. i feel as though maybe i'm missing out in that regard? i don't know. maybe next year, i should try to have something different for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. or maybe not. i don't know. i definitely had a point when i started this digression, and now it's gone. oh well. pepper looks really cute and sleepy on my bed, so i'm going to go imitate her for a while.

12.06.010; cfc day one.

2010-12-06T20:48:00.001-05:00

(it appears as though i have decided to blog every day this week for the clean food challenge. at least for right now, anyway.)

allow me to start with what happened last night. i had a bottle of grape juice i wanted to finish off before i started the cfc. i had three very tall glasses of grape juice last night. apparently it was way over the line of how much grape juice my stomach could handle, and i got sick. it was gross. i had not thrown up since march 2009, and i forgot how completely unpleasant it is to do. i changed my shirt and washed up and went to bed.

i woke up this morning hungry. it had been snowing, so i woke up earlier than usual to try to get out the door earlier (my dad called me around nine to tell me to stay home; i was more than happy to oblige, the roads looked nasty). i made coffee and added a spoonful of silk and a little bit of maple syrup to it. it tasted terrible. i didn't drink that much of it. the oatmeal, however, was really delicious. i had measured out half a cup of dry steel cut oats and didn't bother to read the canister before i started to prepare the oatmeal and didn't realize they actually wanted me to prepare them in a pan on the stove. whoops. i've never had non-instant, pouchy oatmeal before, but this was absolutely delicious. the maple syrup and the blueberries and oh boy. delicious. i couldn't finish what i had, so i put it away for later today.

i had two clementines around eleven, as i was starting to feel hungry again and was thinking about going out to shovel. i completely forgot about water until right before i went out to shovel, so i drank a cup and prior to going outside around one.

it was heavy snow. it didn't look heavy, it looked nice and fluffy, but oh boy. either that or i am a big wuss. i wasn't out for very long; it was cold and i was in no big rush to go anywhere. i came inside and had a big bowl of chili.

oh, the chili. it's heavenly. wonderful to have right after having been outside in the cold and the snow and the wind. i had a big bowl of it, but still wasn't feeling terribly satisfied, so i took the opportunity to finish off my oatmeal and have some more clementines. once i became conscious of how little water i was drinking, i tried to drink a glass every hour and a half or so.

i did another bout of shoveling and had more clementines. i had rice cakes with peanut butter and raisins around four. and i just had dinner a little while ago; pan fried tempeh (with just a splash of soy sauce) on a bed of green beans and a frozen green bean/potato/red pepper mix i had purchased and forgotten about. it was really delicious. i added a lot of garlic powder to the veggerables. i'm on a big garlic thing right now, i guess. after i post this, i am going to have an apple with a little peanut butter and make some popcorn and peel some carrots and get my oatmeal soaking for tomorrow (my friend joe suggested soaking the oatmeal overnight so that it cooks faster and is softer).

thoughts after day one: i have felt hungry all day. i think part of the reason why is because i was home all day, and i didn't really do all that much, so i was more focused on my level of hunger. also, i didn't finish my whole breakfast, which may have played some weird mental trick on my stomach. i think drinking more water will help. it is hard to drink a gallon of water. i don't even think i'm remotely close. maybe six glasses. i don't know how much the glasses i have hold, but they are rather large. i will try to be more aware of how much water i am drinking tomorrow (this will also be easier since i will be at work with the nalgene bottle). i may buy a gallon of water at the grocery store and just fill it up once a day to see how far i get. my stomach is definitely digesting things differently, and i do feel better and more energetic than if i were to have had a bunch of bread products over the course of the day.

other news: all elephant six-y news! there have been a bunch of dates announced for the elephant six holiday surprise tour next year. so far, the closest to maine is the date in easthampton, mass, which is sunday, march 20th. i am hoping that they will come just a smidge closer on the 21st (the date is empty right now), either to boston or portland. either way, there's already a lot of excitement from my friends casey and amy. the one show i saw in 2008 was enough to make me wish i had found out about it sooner and quit my job and followed the tour around, so i'm hoping to catch this tour at least once, if not twice. AND the music tapes just did a session with daytrotter, which is going to be really wonderful and exciting. that will probably give me the motivation to get a-moving on decorating and preparing for the holidays. i don't know when it's going to be released yet, but i'll probably post the link. alright. until the morrow.

amy krouse rosenthal helps everyone realize how lovely the world is. i still haven't read any of her books, but i love her videos and she makes me want to do things like this too.

12.05.010

2010-12-05T22:55:00.002-05:00

OKAY. i basically failed at decorating again this weekend. i do not know what my problem is, but my motivation is lacking, which is ridiculous, because if anything, i should have more motivation. then again, it is only the 5th of december. i do still have time. i went through my closet and got rid of a bunch of clothes i never wear and did some laundry. i think part of the problem is that there is a lot to do, and some of it is hard to do because there is stuff in the way that hasn't been taken care of yet (most notably, a lot of returnables [we haven't donated in months and months], and also the treadmill, which has to make the trip to work sometime this week). we might be having "near blizzard" weather conditions tomorrow. if this comes to fruition, i'll either be told not to come in or at least dismissed early due to crappy weather. it flurried for a bit today, which was a nice precursor, but i'm ready for some serious snow business.

last week, my friend and favorite teacher-turned-blogger challenged her readers to take part in the "clean food challenge," a challenge she and a friend created which basically consists of eating no processed foods for a week (no gluten, no dairy, no alcohol, no added sugar [basically, fruits, veggies, nuts, whole grains, lean proteins, and a lot of water]). unfortunately, due to lack of funds, i couldn't take part in it this past week, but i'm pretty sure i can manage to do it this week. i've made a big batch of vegan chili tonight in preparation; organic canned beans (garbanzo, black, kidney; all rinsed), two cans of organic corn (also rinsed), organic canned crushed tomatoes, organic canned roasted tomatoes, one orange bell pepper, three jalepenos, two medium-large onions, and about a clove and a half of garlic. it tastes SO GOOD. i'm also planning on making my first soup ever, and probably will end up making baked tempeh (although i completely blanked and bought no potatoes). i'm feeling pretty confident about being able to do this, and it'll be good for me because i've been wanting to cut out cheese completely again (i haven't mentioned that i've been eating cheese again. it's cheap and we're in that funny time of year where pay is not always something that happens with regularity, but i always feel guilty [and usually gassy] afterwards), and i've been wanting to drink more water, and to stop eating so many carbs and so much crap. that being said, craving carbs is one of my biggest concerns. i usually have a bagel for breakfast every day, a sandwich for lunch, and sometimes pasta for dinner. it's a lot of carbs and not enough fruits and veggies. i have tomorrow mentally planned out. it looks like this.

breakfast: oatmeal with frozen straw/blueberries and maple syrup. black coffee? i'm going to try. i've never just had black coffee and it makes me kind of nervous, but i'm going to give it a go. if it's completely intolerable, i'll add a little maple syrup and a touch of silk. one or two clementines. tall glass of water.

lunch: 12 ounces of chili. carrots and peanut butter. three clementines.

snack: apple and popcorn (either plain or with a little nutritional yeast and dill). tall glass of water

dinner: okay, dinner i am unsure of as of yet. i have lentils but have never cooked with them. i have a lot of rice and i do have tempeh and red and yellow bell peppers and green beans. i'll probably make some hodge podgey sort of meal. probably another clementine or two. more water.

i'll only be bending a few rules (nutritional yeast is probably considered a processed food, but whereas it's so good for you, i figure it's okay. peanut butter is also a processed food, but i mean... it's blended peanuts. i could make my own if i wanted, i'm just lazy. tempeh is apparently considered a non-processed food, which is awesome. i am hoping to not add a lot of spices and will try to avoid soy sauce if at all possible. not using margarine will not be a problem). i'm gonna be trying to drink at least one or two glasses of water with each meal of the day (save for lunch, because i will be at work with my nalgene bottle, which i will be trying to empty twice). ideally i should be drinking the water about a half hour before each meal. we'll see if that works out. and my reasoning for doing this.

i've put on about twenty pounds this year. i feel gross. i eat crap. i want to start eating right again and working out again. i think this is a good start. i don't drink enough water at all (i very rarely get through one nalgene bottle at work, and then i have maybe two glasses with dinner and in the evening before i go to bed).

so, yeah. i think it will be fun. i'm not really worried about much of this, given that i don't eat a ton of dairy (just the cheese) and i already don't eat meat. as i said, i am a little worried about the carbs, but we'll see. i have to go to the store again sometime early in the week, as i didn't really get anything for juicing purposes, nor did i get any nuts. i will let you know how things progress (may or may not blog every day this week. we'll see).

other than that, there's not much else going on. work has been kind of slow. bella is upset about the approaching storm and is currently lying on a paper towel on my desk, licking her back. i've started let it snow, which is a trio of stories by john green, maureen johnson, and lauren myracle. i'm not very far into the first story (jubilee express by maureen johnson), but i like it so far. i've been trying to work with my email provider to figure out why i am receiving so much junk mail and how to get it to stop, but to no avail. i've changed my password four times in the past two weeks. i'm not even sure i remember what it is currently. i will probably be officially changing over to gmail after the holidays. oh well. i am really excited about the probability of snow. i will have trouble sleeping tonight because i get excited about things.

this runs through my head a lot.

12.01.010

2010-12-01T21:21:00.001-05:00

today, i was left to fend for myself at work, i had started a nice fire, but the woodstove is far away from the computer and sofa, so i was cold all morning. i finished ethan frome last night, it was very depressing. i'm starting gatsby tonight and looking forward to it. i do enjoy re-reading books i HAD to read in high school now that i am only reading them for myself. i think that if i had gone into every book i read in high school as "i am reading this for myself, even though i have to write an essay about it when i am done," i would have been a lot happier. especially in a.p. english, which i did horrible in. maybe i should write short notes to myself after i am done reading a book that i can read before i re-read the book. i will not actually do this, but i will think about it. my grocery store has clementines on sale this week, which is troubling. i somehow talked myself into not buying another box today. it's a really great deal (two dollars off the regular price for a five pound box), but i am concerned that this is going to result in me eating tons of clementines and getting terribly/deliciously sick to my stomach. i think i am feeling slightly better than i was on sunday, but i'm not very sure. i keep making paper snowflakes because i am stuck in that mode. i watched how the grinch stole christmas and half of rudolph the red nosed reindeer last night. i think they restore the grinch because it didn't look as old as it should. it really bothered me. my goal this year is to see it's a wonderful life, because i have never seen it before. i don't know how that is a thing that is real, but then again, stranger things have happened and continue to happen all the time. i think that i might try to make a gingerbread house out of spare cardboard at work this year. i love the idea of gingerbread houses, but i hate the idea of eating something so pretty. haven't done any cleaning or decorating. this weekend, for certain! there's only three or four more weeks until magic and music with the music tapes. ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh goodness!!! i keep getting really excited. i hope we have some decent snow before they come. and maybe while they're here. snow and the music tapes. i really can't think of anything better.

if you purchase/donate a book to the richmond book drive, you can download pomplamoose's christmas album! information in the description of the video (click through to youtube).

11.28.010

2010-11-28T20:56:00.000-05:00

hillary and i had a nice, quiet thanksgiving (although i did manage to cut my finger while cutting up carrots for the tofurky. whoopsie). i was off friday due to crappy weather (which i didn't really think was all that crappy, it hardly snowed, but it was sleeting all day). i've felt kind of flu-ish the past two days. i may or may not be running a lowgrade fever right now. i'm too thirsty to find out, but i keep having hot and cold flashes. i should get one of those ear thermometers. i've been making paper snowflakes for the windows most of the weekend. i'm reading ethan frome and i love it. today i went to see my parents, and we went on short adventures. i saw a lot of donkeys this weekend. surely a sign of a great weekend. also, bunnies. hillary and i went to get cat food at a pet store in ellsworth, and they had bunnies and chinchillas and a lot of birds. i want a bunny to cuddle with. bella had a bath yesterday, which she either really enjoyed or absolutely hated. both my across the street neighbors got their christmas trees on friday. the folks who live in the house that i can see from my window already have theirs up and decorated. i have done no decorating or cleaning. whoops. maybe this week after work? hopefully! in approximately one month from tomorrow, this will be happening! although, i don't think i ever posted that i had read a conflicting report that said they'd be coming to town on the 22nd. so it's going to be a complete surprise until i hear from the minister of lullabyes. excitement abounds. a few weeks ago, a friend of mine from thee olde television station asked if i wanted to work on a show that he is doing on sundays. i expressed some interest in it, but haven't made it in yet because they shoot it so early in the morning, and sunday is the only day i get to sleep in. i feel sort of bad about this. extra money would be nice, especially this time of year, but do i really want to give up the only day i get to sleep in for it? i don't know. sometimes i feel like a bad person. okay, i'm beginning to get the chills and aches pretty bad, so i should probably get along to bed.

everything about this song is perfect.

11.25.010

2010-11-24T20:40:00.000-05:00

it has been so cold and so windy all week. i get out of bed in the morning and i just want to get back in. it snowed for a little while today, which was nice. obviously i have tomorrow off from work. i don't know about friday, although i'm hoping we have off so i can have an extended cleaning fest this weekend. i'm kind of tired and in a funk. i keep having really peculiar dreams that feel real and terrible. i read chekov's the black monk and peasants today at work. i think i'm reading the great gatsby and/or ethan frome next, although i'm not sure. i tend to get waffley this time of year, due to distractions and weather and general insanity. bella is curled up on my lap right now. she's very warm. i don't know. there are other things going on, but i don't really feel like getting into them. my plans include watching the parade on mute and making some things for general house decorating purposes and then having a big meal of a tofurky roast with extra root veggerables and stuffing and mashed potatoes and corn and peas and green beans and homemade cranberry sauce and ohh man. sweatpants for the win. i hope you all have wonderful, elastic waistbanded thanksgivings!

i found this the other night after watching christmas eve on sesame street.

11.21.010

2010-11-21T22:13:00.000-05:00

sometimes when i'm feeling very stagnant, i like to remember that i am a lot of places all the time. not as many as i should be, but i am in places that i am not always present in, and that feels alright. i bought a winter coat this weekend. i finished the curtains, they came out nice. the living room is filled with this really wonderful blue light during the day now. i was going to clean today, but instead i went to hang out with my parents, because that's a thing that i do sometimes. i hadn't spent time with them during the weekend in a while, so it was nice to talk about things and listen to music and plot imaginary thieveries of many puppies. it's going to be a very busy and short week this week at work. i am looking forward to it. i can't believe the year is almost over. i think i'm abandoning a room of one's own and mexico city blues for something else. they've been living in my bag for so long and i haven't touched either of them in at least a week. i don't know what i'll pick up instead. i want to wait until there is snow on the ground to start the brothers karamazov (i'm thinking after the holidays, when january starts to get tedious). i have a few christmas books to be reading, but i want to wait until december to start those. i could read the only john green book i haven't read yet (an abundance of katherines), but i don't know that i'm up for it. i know i have tons of other unread books. maybe i will read some dickens. maybe i won't. i'm sure i'll just pull something off the shelf tomorrow morning or when i go downstairs to brush my teeth (soon). i should be writing more. i have written so little this year, it's very unfortunate. i really need to make up a schedule and stick to it. oh deer.

somehow my parents and my sister do not remember this. i remembered it so well, but i had forgotten about it until my friend ben posted it on facebook. watch the whole thing. i cried three times.

11.17.010

2010-11-17T22:23:00.000-05:00

my stomach is starting to feel normal again, which is nice. i neglected to write on sunday that i fell down two or three stairs thursday night. completely sober. i have no idea what happened, i was just walking down the stairs and the next thing i knew, i was falling. my left foot is all scraped up and bruised, and both of my knees are really bruised. oh well. i made one of the curtains tonight, it came out well. i will do the other two tomorrow. my plan for this weekend is to clean the kitchen and living room and get all the christmas stuff out of the basement so i can start decorating next week and to move some of the totes in the upstairs hallway into the basement. also, i really need to clean the pellet stove. i can't believe thanksgiving is in a week from tomorrow. at some point, hillary and i need to get the treadmill down to the shop. neither of us use it because it is so loud (also, pointless; why use electricity in order to run in place on a conveyor belt when you can run in place in your house for free?), and it's just taking up space. anyway, i am tired and out of things today. i fear that the last month or so of this year is going to be comprised of blogs saying "I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO." i hope this is not the case. only one way to find out.

11.14.010

2010-11-14T20:51:00.000-05:00

i've spent the whole weekend with an upset stomach, watching things on netflix instant watch. no matter what it is, everything i eat results in terrible things. i slept really poorly last night. i really want it to snow soon. i think i was going to make curtains and clean the kitchen this weekend. neither of these things happened. maybe if i start feeling alright again, i can work on both of these things this week. i'm not sure if i'm going to go to work tomorrow. i wish i was running a fever. it would make the decision so much easier. i know i had a lot of other things to write about that were not about how crappy i feel. i just can't remember what they were. i should really keep more notes on things that happen in my life. i think i saw an owl during the day on friday. alright.

11.10.010

2010-11-10T20:40:00.000-05:00

something about this time change is kicking my ass. i've gone to bed before nine for the past two nights. i am still not feeling well, which doesn't help. it's mostly a lot of pressure and aches in my sinuses and a bit of a sore throat and every once in a while, my stomach gets ridiculously upset too. i think it might be the beginnings of a sinus infection, or maybe just a mild one? i don't know. i'm endlessly cold. i bought a nice coloring book and i will probably color for a little while before going to bed absurdly early again. i'm almost done reading sexing the cherry. i am also reading a room one one's own and three guineas, as well as mexico city blues. there's not much else to report other than me being tired and not feeling well and wanting to curl up and sleep for three days.

here are some bunnies doing cute bunny things.

11.07.010

2010-11-07T22:51:00.001-05:00

i spent a good portion of the day today cleaning my bathroom. it was probably a bad decision, given that i was using three different, really bad smelling cleaners, and i felt kind of scuzzy before starting the cleaning process. i now feel worse. but at least it is clean and the new shower curtain is installed. it took forever to get the shower curtain rod up, because my house is a little crooked and the curtain rod is a dual rod thing, and it rests on two tiles on each side, and none of them are actually flat. i can't use the second rod (which i was planning on using for towels because all my towel bars were not installed right and came off the walls) because it's not up securely. i'm gonna ask my dad what he thinks about screwing it in. i'm not wild about that because i like to be able to take things down. maybe i will just get a different curtain rod. i don't know. it's raining and it sounds nice. i've been feeling really rundown since my last blog. i went with hillary to ellsworth yesterday and i bought twelve yards of cloud fabric at mardens. the cashier asked me what i was making, and when i replied with "curtains" she said "oh, for a baby's room?" and i said "no, for my living room." it bothers me that people automatically assume that you have a kid just because you're buying 12 yards of cartoon-y cloud fabric for curtains. now seems like a good time to mention that i am seriously considering purchasing a bunch of singamajigs. i played with some the last time i was at target, and oh boy. they are fun. there are a lot of donkeys in ellsworth, and that is a nice thing. anyway, the time change and weariness are kicking my butt, so it's time for bed.

11.03.010

2010-11-03T22:16:00.001-04:00

last night went surprisingly well. we were at the station until one thirty this morning, so i didn't get home until two and wasn't in bed until three. fortunately, my dad had told me to come in late, so i slept in until around eleven. it was really nice, but i was still pretty much useless for the rest of the day. i am still very tired. i have eaten mostly garbage for the past twenty four hours. my stomach is upset. i will probably be getting ill shortly, given the eight hours i worked with the kid that has been sick almost the entire year. i started to write for nanowrimo, but it's not anything with a plot, and i don't know if i'm going to continue. i keep starting new things and not letting them develop into anything before switching. and i've only written 700 words. obviously i couldn't write yesterday, and i haven't written anything today because my brains feel bad. so i don't know. maybe i will be inspired tomorrow or friday or this weekend. i don't know. i'm very tired. this post was really half-assed. sorry.

my mom sent me this link to a nice episode of nature about crows. i only cried four times.

Watch the full episode. See more Nature.

10.31.010

2010-10-31T19:31:00.002-04:00

it snowed this morning. i was on my way up to bangor to run some errands, and it was drizzling out, and then in hampden, it started to switch over. and just as though it came out of nowhere, these huge white clusters of snow started to fall and i laughed and blushed and smiled from ear to ear because it was so beautiful and wonderful. snow on halloween is always so nice. yesterday evening i cleared off the dining room table in hopes of making curtains for the living room, but then i discovered i did not have enough fabric, so that project is on hold for the time being. today i have not done much of anything, but that's alright. i'm currently hiding out upstairs because i do not have candy for trick or treaters. not that any ever come here (last year there was one teenager who showed up, not wearing a costume, and talking on a cellphone), given that it is a dead end street, but a bunch of kids moved in around this area this year, and i feel kind of bad about not having any candy. i always meant to buy a bag of something, but never did. plus, kids these days are so weird about candy, with all those nut allergies and whatnot. additionally, it would have be candy that i would want to eat if we didn't give all of them out, and there's only a few types of candy that i like. oh well. my plans for the rest of the evening include taking a shower and looking through cookbooks and trying to plan things. i spilled a glass of water on the keylime ibook that i am very slowly moving all the things i've ever written to. i hope it is okay. i can't imagine that it won't be; it was just water, and it wasn't plugged in. it's drying out in front of the pellet stove. i spent some time on etsy yesterday, which is always a bad idea. but they have such beautiful holiday things, it makes my head swoony. i keep thinking about nanowrimo, but i keep talking myself out of it because i feel as though i would have a lot of trouble focusing on it. i'm going to be working election night at thee olde television job; a decision that i am regretting with each passing hour; i hate working election night, and they have a whole bunch of extra stupidity planned for this year and it's not going to go well. i don't know why i said i would do it. yes i do. i could use the money. but will the money make up for the fact that i won't be home until 12:30 in the morning on wednesday and will be unable to go to sleep immediately after arriving home (i will have to shower and unwind) and then having to wake up at 8 in order to be at work by 9-ish? probably not. oh well. it's just eight hours. but i do love watching election coverage from the comfort of my own home (usually not very sober). maybe i will get dreadfully ill in the next twenty four hours. i do feel abnormally cold and headachey and slightly achey. we shall see. i am so excited for this year to start winding down. i can't remember if november is a slow month or a fast month, but it means christmas is coming soon, and i can't wait.

i don't see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one.

10.27.010

2010-10-27T20:55:00.000-04:00

it's funny because i am actually having a bad week. things at work are bad, i am having sleep issues (lack of sleep and weird dreams), i think i have two infected fingers (at the very least, i have pumpkin stuff underneath two fingernails, and they feel swollen and sore), i haven't been paid for last week yet, and barring some sort of awesome work miracle, this week's pay will also probably be late, our pumpkins have started to mold and had to be put outside (we had them on the coffee table, next to the pellet stove, forgetting that pumpkins don't like heat), i'm officially out of standing room on my bookshelves (books are now being stacked on top of the standing books), i've eaten way too many pumpkin seeds (i have no self control), and the dining room table still looks as though a craft store blew up all over it.

and yet... none of it matters. i am so giddy. so excited. so happy.

why?

because of this.

i came home from a really long and frustrating day at work on monday, and i saw that merge had posted that link on their facebook page. and i clicked in.

and there it was. december twentyninth. !!! i freaked out. i told hillary and then called my parents and texted a few very doubtful friends (oh, doubtful friends, you will be believers in two months). i got the preliminary email from the email polar bear later in the evening, so it is very much so a real, fantastic thing.

it's so wonderful. i can't wait. it's going to be so much fun! i'm hoping that some of my maine-based friends who now live out of state are still going to be home for this (particularly morgan).

it's nice to have something so exciting to look forward to, especially so close to the end of the year.

and i've decided against posting the invitation. at least for now. i may change my mind. i may not. who knows.

suffice it to say, i've been functioning very scatteredly and ridiculously for the past few days.

otterly;

i am excited for november. november is always a weird month, but it usually brings snow, and i could use some snow. it was 63˚ out today. entirely too warm for the end of october.

i finished crime and punishment yesterday, finished grimm's fairy tales today and read fantastic mr. fox while at work today. i also started the complete fairy tales of oscar wilde. and i will probably start reading sexing the cherry tonight as well.

hillary may be going to boston this weekend. my only goals for this weekend are to make the curtains for the living room that i bought material for last month, to reorganize all my craft things and to start to prepare things for hillary's etsy store so i can make some extra money.

this is the same face i make when it snows. ridiculous and happy and sort of blushy. it's such a nice feeling.

i'm not a planet at all!

10.24.010

2010-10-24T22:29:00.001-04:00

i have had a very nice weekend! i bought slippers friday night, and they have quickly become my favorite footwear ever. yesterday morning, i went to a book sale where i purchased thirteen books (most of which were books i had been looking for this year!) and a box of german vocabulary words for $7.50. and then i bought pellets, and they were less than i thought they would be, which was wonderful. hillary and i went to the goodwill in ellsworth, where i purchased more books and some ridiculous records (two records of barnum and bailey circus band music, the soundtrack to rudolph the red nose reindeer, a record of bird songs and poetry, and a record of disco-fied children's songs? AWESOME), and a plaque with some ducks on it. we followed that stop off with a trip to the fancy beer store in ellsworth (purchased sir perry's pear cider [kind of gross], lindeman's framboise lambic [DELICIOUS], japanese hefewizen [also quite good], and blueberry ale [yet to try]), and a stop at ming's, where i purchased garlic vegetables, which were the first vegetables i had eaten in almost week (they were so good). today, hillary and i went up to the treworgy orchards to buy pumpkins. we spent more time playing with the goats then we did buying pumpkins. it was an enjoyable day. we carved them this evening (mine look ridiculous), and i made two batches of pumpkin seeds, which i am looking forward to consuming immensely. other than that, it's been a quiet weekend. i watched the first season of 30 rock on netflix, which i enjoyed. hopefully i will be finishing crime and punishment this week, although i don't know what to read next (too many options). i am planning on building bookshelves at some point in the future. my stomach and i are on slightly better terms than we were, but not entirely. i find myself thinking "who would ever want to live anywhere else?" really frequently, but it makes me feel hypocritical and weird, because sometimes i do not want to live here at all. i am lonely, but that is to be expected at the end of october, beginning of november. i cannot believe it is almost november. i don't know what happened to this year.

i want fifty of these. john greens AND singamajigs!

10.20.010

2010-10-20T21:05:00.005-04:00

we have a very dear family friend who just turned ninety two on friday. when you ask him about the secret to his longevity, he mentions several things, the last of which is being in a state of constant outrage. for the past three days, my stomach has been in a state of constant outrage. everything i consume upsets it, although not to the point of actually becoming physically ill. no, that would be too convenient. instead, i feel like i am going to be sick about 75% of the time. i have been eating mostly inoffensive foods today (bagel, toast, applesauce, potato), and it is still upset. additionally, i've been fighting a sinus (maybe?) headache all afternoon and now into the evening (probably partially because i have had almost no protein today). i don't know what is wrong with me and i don't know what to do about it. i'm hungry and tired and i don't feel well. i would feel better about this whole thing if i was actually becoming physically ill. i recognize that is a weird thing to say, but i'm saying it. i don't know if i'm going to post a picture of the invitation i made this year. i get so weird about sharing them with people, and i don't know why. maybe it's that i figure that once i've sent the invitation out into the world, i no longer maintain ownership of it. i had a series of strange dreams involving new year's eve in new york city, a decapitated clifford the big red dog statue, and eating lunch with dwight and angela from the office while wearing kufi caps (dwight was eating cold cuts out of a squeeze bottle. i don't know). i purchased a new will cullen hart drawing on monday. or maybe sunday. i don't recall. i'm looking forward to its arrival. i don't know what else to write about. my head is not working correctly and does not feel very good right now. and i just got incredibly cold, so i am going to go and sit and read or write either in bed or in front of the pellet stove for a while.

funny fogged phantoms.

here is a cat.

here is a man pretending to be a cat.

here is man man covering a super fantastic marx brothers song that has nothing to do with cats.

10.17.010

2010-10-17T21:58:00.001-04:00

i've been trying to fight extreme tiredness for a few days now. this comes post-invitation making every year, where i feel run down and exhausted for a bit, due in part to the fact that i am either a) used to staying up late to work on the thing or b) so excited that i can't sleep. i've been trying to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, but i usually don't end up putting my reading down (started crime and punishment on thursday) until around one in the morning. and then my alarm goes off seven hours later. and i never sleep straight through the night, because i get restless. at least the invitation is done and out in the world, en route to where it belongs. i've been thinking about posting a picture of it, but i'm dont think that it has reached it's destination, and i get kind of weird about posting the invitations that i make for some reason. we'll see how i'm feeling on wednesday. hillary was in and out most of the weekend, as her friends amber and ron were staying with us for a wedding that took place yesterday. they all took naps in the middle of the day, which was strange because i'm not used to having to try to be semi quiet at three in the afternoon. it was nice to see them (they usually let hillary and i crash at their place when we go to shows in boston [or when hillary goes to visit on her own]) and they bought me wine with a duck wearing a hat on the bottle, which was very thoughtful of them. today hillary and i went goodwilling and had wonderful luck with things. i bought a bunch of books i had been looking for, and a lot that i hadn't been looking for, along with two records (american fantasia and a 45 of a fifth of beethoven) and some nice wall hanging things and a little brass bird and a nice irish coffee mug that i am currently drinking cider from. we also went to camden to visit with the ducks, which was nice, except for that there were stupid young boys throwing rocks at the ducks! who does that? how would they like it if people started throwing rocks at them for no reason at all?? boys are terrible people sometimes. they had to stop when we went down to see the ducks (because no one in their right mind throws rocks at people). the ducks were really nice friends and we tried to feed them seaweed and leaves, but they were mostly uninterested. we also saw a wedding party that we being held in the amphitheater at the library, and we got a cat to return to what we believe was her home. AND i parallel parked for the first time since i took my driver's test. all in all, it was a very nice day. i've consumed a lot of cinnamon over the weekend. i think that's alright. they are doing roadwork in my town, andso i've been taking back roads anytime i need to go north of here. there was a field of corn along one of the back roads that they recently cut down, and now the field is filled with crows and turkeys and geese. if i remember to, i will get a picture of it this week, because it is such a nice thing to see all those birds being friendly. i don't know what this week will bring. it's bound to be interesting, if nothing else.

birch friends in camden.

for i am a rain dog too.

10.13.010

2010-10-13T20:03:00.002-04:00

i wasn't going to blog tonight, as i am still super busy and trying to get things done TONIGHT because i want to get them out tomorrow, but i am currently at a sort of standstill while waiting for things to dry, so i figure i can write very quickly about things. i have managed to get mod podge all over a lot of things (obvious things, like pants and t-shirts, but also not so obvious, kind of confusing things, like the mouse on this computer, and the water pitcher). my living room looks like entire contents of an a.c. moore store exploded in it, which is simultaneously awesome and terrible. awesome because i function well in disarray, terrible because we've got people coming up this weekend, and whereas there is currently not a guest bedroom (hillary is living in it), the living room is the guest bedroom, and it currently looks like a craft store blew up in it. hopefully i will get this done tonight and be able to spend tomorrow afternoon tidying up before people arrive on friday. this week has been really strange. four day workweeks always are. yesterday i went to bangor and brewer with my parents to run errands and so my dad could meet with some of our customers. my mom and i hung out in the car and talked to the dogs in the car next to us. that was a good time. today i became friends with two seagulls and i fed them bread. i hope they come back tomorrow. i am almost done with mrs. dalloway and will be carrying crime and punishment with me starting tomorrow. the project is going well, although i had to change it quite a bit because of time restraints and what not. my hands smell like crayons, and i think that's nice.

i love everything about this video.

also, youtube recommended this video to me yesterday. thanks, youtubes.

10.10.10

2010-10-10T23:35:00.005-04:00

i don't remember how the rest of the week was. i think things went okay. things are starting to settle down and recover from the first half of the week. yesterday hillary and i spent the entire day running errands. i went out again later in the evening, and i got out of my car and the clouds were low and there were geese flying overhead, i couldn't see them, but i could hear them; they were honking. as though the sky was filled with post-labor day traffic trying to escape southerly. as though they all knew; frost advisory in effect until 8:00am sunday morning. i didn't see any frost upon waking (i was up around eight). i went to get silk this morning, and on the drive home, i passed a house that had a front lawn covered in ducks. it was the silliest thing i had seen all week. they were adorable and i wanted to be friends with them all. i spent almost all of today working on a secret project for a friend of a friend. we aren't working tomorrow, andso my entire day is going to be dedicated to this. i spent all of friday waffling about what to do, as the proposed dates and locations for northeast lullabyes aren't really even remotely close to maine, and even though they are always very kind and pleasantly written, rejection emails are not so pleasant to receive. and i always feel kind of bad after sending in an invitation for a place where i don't necessarily believe there are a bunch of friends of the music tapes (which is not to say that it would be an empty house; my friends are all ridiculously curious about what goes on during these things). there is the "option" of not inviting them, or just emailing an invitation, but it's not actually an option at all, and for me, at least right now, not making a physical invitation is problematic. when i get an idea for a project that i think is a completely brilliant idea, it gets stuck in my head. it gets stuck and then it grows legs and arms and starts to rearrange its face. and i can't not do it. the idea for this year's invitation moved into my head in march. it's been building a bowerbird nest since then, and i can't not make it. i could make it and not send it, but there wouldn't be much point to that, would there? and even if it ends up that this little magical endeavor could not reach maine, i still want to make it and i still want it to get it out of my head and into the physical world and get it to julian and friends. and if it can't come to maine and my life decides to work out for a change, i might be able to go somewhere else for lullabye-ing. and there is some sort of saying about third times and charms, so who knows. we'll see. at any rate, that's my plan for tomorrow. i have this theory about a thing that happens and in the past few days i have noticed some other things and it now seems to me that my theory may also have legs and be pretty accurate, which is kind of terrifying because i don't know how to feel about that at all. sometimes i am so vague. sometimes not so much. i have a real bad headache and i have been having a lot of trouble sleeping (i didn't go to bed until 1am saturday morning, and 2am this morning), so i think i am going to try to sleep now.

10.06.010

2010-10-06T21:51:00.011-04:00

this week has not been very good at all. monday was alright, except for that i discovered that my pellet stove was malfunctioning; it was refusing to feed pellets. i was up until 12:30 trying to get it to work, to no avail. yesterday was awful. all sorts of bad news everywhere, extremely upsetting stuff that i am not really at liberty to discuss. additionally, i ended up staying at thee olde television job very late because of a car accident. didn't get home until 9:30, completely exhausted. i read an unpleasantry that may or may not be true, but if it is, it breaks my heart into millions of little pieces because i missed so many things i wanted to go to/do/see this year and the only thing that made missing these things feel less terrible was the hope that this specific pleasantry would happen. i am due for some pleasantries, and especially that specific pleasantry that i am being vague about, but i think maybe at least one person will be able to figure out what i am referring to. at any rate, if it is indeed true and my gut instincts are correct, it is going to make me so sad. i tried to go to sleep early, had a lot of trouble with that. today took place. i went to pick up a new auger motor for the pellet stove and to get my car inspected, but it failed because apparently my front tires are showing steel. awesome. but i guess it will pass once i get them replaced, which i will be doing first thing in the morning. i didn't get home from my mechanic's until 6:30ish. i had planned on spending the afternoon and evening working on a project i haven't started on yet (given that today was the only day this week i was not scheduled to work until at least 8:30 at thee olde television station), so i will probably cut this short to go work on it. the snow is gone from the forecast. i'm generally in a bad mood and upset about most things and i really just want to hide again. at least there are sweatshirts to hide in.

10.03.010

2010-10-03T22:55:00.003-04:00

THE MOST IMPORTANT OF IMPORTANT THINGS: there is snow in the forecast. according to accuweather.com, we are going to have occasional snow next monday. this is the best news i've read in a while. the latter half of this past week contained the last day at thee olde television station for a dear friend of mine. i went out to dinner with a whole slew of people thursday evening for her going away party. barbara walters was there. not even kidding; we were in the back room of a pub and there was only one other party of about twelve people back there, and she was one of the twelve. i guess her daughter married someone from maine, so she was up to visit, or something. i am not certain. but i am certain it was her (we heard her speak). yesterday, hillary and i went shopping. i purchased some really beautiful handmade indian decorations and some old fashioned german christmas ornaments from tj maxx. and ac moore was having a ridiculous sale, during which i purchased a ridiculous amount of paper. today i went to the chicken barn and purchased a little swiss chalet-style music box (without the music part) and a little plastic santa house and the talking heads' remain in light. i also went to goodwill and purchased a bunch of records, including two of bird songs, which i am arguably far too excited about having. hillary has been sick most of the day, which makes me slightly nervous as to how my immune system will fare this week. it also is not helpful that a lot of the people i've encountered over the past week have been recovering from little illnesses. we'll see what happens, i suppose. i am working at thee olde station almost every day this week (except for wednesday). i watched major organ last night, and it was really wonderful to relive that night two octobers ago, half sick and half feverish in a crowd of people i didn't know, witnessing this night that became one of the most important nights ever. it came at this pivotal moment in my life, much like my delving into the collective did when i first started to really get into it; when my friends had basically deserted me and i couldn't go home at night after work and i didn't know what to do, so i drove and became friends with this music. i found out about the holiday surprise show four or five days before it was to take place. the only reason i found out about it was because i had left thee olde television station and was working regular person hours (9-4), and had my evenings free and i had this realization that i could go to shows after getting out of work. i could go home, shower, eat dinner, and be in portland for an 8 pm showtime. so i had logged onto the space gallery's website, to see if they had anything worth going to see going on, and the first thing was the elephant six holiday surprise tour. my mouth went so dry. i thought i was dreaming when i read the names. i could not believe it. why was this happening? and why in portland? i did a little googling to learn of the new found momentum in the collective, mostly fueled by the new music tapes album (i had refused to sign up for the townhall everytime i checked it [which was at least once a year]), which i then streamed in merge, and thought i was going to die over. and then learning that julian koster had been living in maine for a while (which explained the show in portland) and oh man. the amount of regret i felt then for not staying in touch with the goings-on in the collective on the townhall was astounding. but the fact of the matter was that when i started to listen to those first bands that i became hung up on (neutral milk hotel, the music tapes, the olivia tremor control, circulatory system, major organ and the adding machine. additionally, i got into elf power, a hawk and a hacksaw, the apples in stereo, dressy bessy, of montreal, the minders, the essex green, and the ladybug transistor accidentally in the years to follow. er, i knew of certain bands' connections to the collective [the apples and elf power], but others, i was clueless about), it seemed as though nothing was going on within the collective. we're talking 2002-2003. i didn't know that anything was happening. i didn't know. so i had to go. even though i had gone to see andrew bird in portsmouth the previous wednesday, and i traveled to northampton to see man man that saturday, and i came home feeling flu-y and terrible that sunday. i fought with myself all day monday, back and forth as to whether or not i should go. i knew i was getting sick. tuesday morning came and i felt awful, but i couldn't not go. so i went. and everything changed again. it was okay that i had just left my job and the majority of my friends in bangor, because i had all this music again, and the music is the one stable thing i have in life. i recognize that me leaving my olde job is a lot different than the things that were going on in my life in 2002-onwards, but it still brought about this feeling of being alone and not having many friends that really understand much of what has gone on in my life. partially because i don't think many of them do. i don't know. it all sounds slightly insane, i think. because it is.

i'm heating my bedroom with a candle because i don't want to start up the pellet stove yet. blue light has been flickering all afternoon/evening.

dear rock and roll hall of fame people,
do the right thing.

09.29.010

2010-09-29T21:05:00.002-04:00

today i finished reading the girls' guide to hunting and fishing by melissa bank. it was a very quick read (due partially to the way it was written, with several major chapters split up into smaller ancdotes, which i loved) and an enjoyable story. i also read most of what the national geographic wrote about the oil spill in the gulf. they had a sad picture of three pelican chicks covered in oil that made me cry. poor little pelicans. i wish they could all come live with me. back to books, i was hoping to start crime and punishment, but it has become warm again (seventies), and i have told myself that crime and punishment is most definitely autumnal reading, so i will stall myself, perhaps with something else that is in my bag currently. i do not even recall what all i have in there. walden, mrs. dalloway and the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. perhaps i should see if walden feels better now than it did when i tried to start it last month. i feel as though if i were to read mrs. dalloway, i would want to read a room of one's own and three guineas next. i don't know. i should probably finish grimm's fairy tales; i've been reading them forever now. i received my order from orange twin yesterday. it contained the expanded major organ album (on cd; they had sold out of lps by the time i could afford the preorder [thus is my existence this year]) and movie, elf power's new album on vinyl, and the gerbil's battle of electricity on vinyl. i am going to try to wait until the weekend to listen/watch everything (this is sort of silly because i have seen/heard everything before except for the new elf power), in hopes that the other order containing wonderful music things that i am waiting on (and have been told that they should be arriving soon) will arrive in the next few days, and i can spend hours ripping in cds to the laptop and then transferring them to my regular computer. i wish my optical drive worked. i wish my optical atlas weren't so hard to read. olde television station job is going as well as it can, although pretty much everyone who works there is sick, and i'm functioning under the belief that i will be getting ill soon as well. i think i'm going to edit my eating habits and start working out again really soon. i feel gross and i'm pretty out of shape. i'm feeling pretty stagnant and as though something needs to change, so why shouldn't it be me. i keep looking at upcoming maine-based shows and nothing looks attractive to me. am i honestly going to go a year without live music? traveling to boston is always an option, but i don't really like going to boston unless i can stay for a while and i don't like going to boston to see bands i'm only semi-interested in and there haven't been any shows going on down there that i've really wanted to go to since that apples in stereo show. i don't get it. i wish i lived closer to everywhere, and then it wouldn't matter so much. there is a tire place in belfast with a sign up that says THINK SNOW and it makes me smile everytime i pass it. i just want it to be cold now. i just want things to slow down and get exciting in the way it does in late october/early november when there are possibilities for nice things to occur and i just want the nice thing to occur. i think about running away all the time. sometimes i just want to see life somewhere else. or i wish that life here would feel okay again. i am writing a song, it is terrible and currently lyricless, which is so embarrassing. i've been writing on and off, usually in the car, while not looking, which results in things like this:

illegible chicken scratch to anyone who isn't me. which is alright, because at least i don't have to worry about people finding the awful things i write. although writing while driving is probably not the wisest thing in the world to do. at least i still watch the road. i don't know. i still have weird feelings about everything that i cannot explain. it is 79 degrees in my bedroom and that's not okay. today at work i said "if you can't be making money, you might as well be making fires," and my dad proclaimed me a genius and called his professor friend to tell him about the brilliant thing that i had just said. applicable because we were making fires. i'm sure there are other things i'm meaning to write about. i'm pretty sure i wanted to write about october. i suppose i will wait until october to do such a thing. alright. this post has been schizophrenic enough.

09.26.010

2010-09-26T23:46:00.001-04:00

i spent most of today trying to make my bedroom less of a disaster. i have done reasonably well. i've moved the bed back to where it was in the beginning of summer. all the instruments are centrally located by my bedroom door again. i wish my room were just a little larger so i had more options for arranging things. oh well. it is organized and vacuumed (needs a swiffering), and that's what matters. this week i am picking up some shifts at thee olde television station. not as many as i thought i was going to (three days instead of five), but that's fine because i don't really enjoy twelve hour work days. i've been very emotional lately, but i suppose that isn't really anything new, is it? i'm having trouble sleeping (partially to blame for such a late posting tonight), and i am still having really bizarre dreams about things. i have purchased new sweatshirts that should be arriving sometime this week. i also bought my first few bags of pellets, so it can go ahead and get reasonably cold now. i still have yet to procure a winterish sort of coat, so that is still on the agenda. oh, i took a photo of my great-grandfather's hungarian obituary today. it has the actual hungarian spelling of my last name in it (also, the hungarian version of the name frank).

living room floor replacement may be happening soon, which would be really wonderful, given that it's old and awful. although having the work done while living here is going to be tricky (the subfloor needs to be replaced as well), but we'll see. there are some things that may occur this week that would make it very interesting. of course, it is also quite probable that the week will bring nothing interesting at all. only one way to find out, i suppose. more to say, on another day.

she hates cleaning days.

BONUS TRACKS!

09.22.010

2010-09-22T19:49:00.002-04:00

i finished reading coredlia underwood last night. i regret not reading it while summer still tightly clutched the air and i, but it was a rollicking good-time romp of a book. today i read lighthousekeeping in it's entirety in one sitting (while at work, only pausing to make a tofurky sandwich and to use the bathroom). it was the perfect day for it, overcast, slightly warm, and my immune system is still feeling buggy. the book is probably in my top five favorite books of the year. i want to read it again already.

A place before the Flood.
Was there ever such a place? The Bible story is simple; God destroyed the wicked world and only Noah and his family were saved. After forty days and forty nights the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, and as the flood waters began to subside, it stayed there.
Imagine it; evidence of an impossible moment. Marooned like a memory point above time. The thing couldn't have happened, but it did - look, there's the ship, absurd, grandiloquent, part miracle, part madness.

It's better if I think of my life like that - part miracle, part madness. It's better if I accept that I can't control any of the things that matter. My life is a trail of shipwrecks and set-sails. There are no arrivals, no destinations; there are only sandbanks and shipwreck; the another boat, another tide.

i recommend the book to everyone. i feel as though one person in particular would really enjoy it, but i am uncertain as to how to tell her about it. i think she used to read my blog, although i don't think she does anymore. oh well, maybe someday i will have the opportunity to tell her about it. i started teaching a stone to talk this afternoon, and will probably be done with it either tomorrow or friday, depending on things. a week ago today, i wrote to a friend saying that the leaves had yet to start changing. it is so strange how quickly autumn sets in, as today, i noticed how punctuated the grey sky was with reds and oranges and yellows. we're just at the beginning of foliage season, and i'm very excited about it. i love autumn so much. it's so strange to feel so hopeful in a season of decay and the beginnings of so many endings, but something about autumn always rouses this feeling in me that i can't explain. it also brings about massive bouts of peculiar depression and loneliness and restlessness. i am still trying to save money to go somewhere either this autumn or winter (new york? elsewhere?). we shall see if that happens. there are some other kind of weird things going on that i don't know why they are happening or what they mean, but they are happening. i guess there are always things going on in my life to which their meanings are masqueraded and guarded, so i don't really talk about them, but they always linger at the back of my mind, these things that may or may not mean something. i don't know. i reread something i wrote a few months ago, and i have no recollection of writing it, although i believe i may have written it in the backseat of my parents car, as i make reference to sunday, and if i visit them on the weekend, it is usually on sunday. at any rate, as with everything that i have committed to paper this year, the voice is really strange. i don't know what's going on with my writing this year (partially because i am not writing as much as i should be), but every time i read something i've written pen(cil)-to-paperly, i don't recognize the voice, and it's a sort of weird disconnect between the maria who wrote it and the maria who is reading it. i don't know what to make of that, but there it is.

i still do not feel very well.

09.19.010

2010-09-19T20:55:00.000-04:00

i am not feeling well. i am assuming the cause of this is fourfold. fold one: i am due for some sort of illness. fold two: it is getting colder out. fold three: i went to thee olde television station on friday and saw my friends and they have germs that i am no long used to. fold four: hillary went to portland, which means she carried home portland germs that probably will not affect her, but will affect me, because that's what happens. oh well. in more awesome news, my friend kyle got engaged this weekend. and my friend heather just announced that she and her husband are pregnant. everyone i know is getting married and/or pregnant. it's all very strange. this is a very long age of people settling down and procreating. it makes me feel strange because i have absolutely no desire to do either of those things right now (well, it would be lovely to spend time with a nice guy, and i do own a house, so arguably, i am kind of settled down, but not settled settled). i don't know that what i'm trying to say is conveying, so i will stop trying. in unrelated news, i'm in the market for at least two new sweatshirts (one for work, one for not-work), but i'm having trouble finding things i like. i bought fabric for curtains today from marden's. they have a surprisingly awesome fabric department. hillary bought me the woot!shirt with the otter on it from a week or so ago, which was a fun surprise. i went to the chicken barn before hillary and i went to marden's, and i purchased three books: virigina woolf's a room of one's own and three guineas, jeannette winterson's lighthousekeeping, and annie dillard's teaching a stone to talk. i've made very little progress in cordelia underwood, but that is partially because i'm to that point that i am completely in love with the book, and i don't want to finish it. but i think perhaps having picked up a bunch of books i want to read in the last few weeks will be helpful. i have to run errands after work tomorrow (i am almost out of dr. bronner's, and i did not go grocery shopping today). i don't know what else there is. i will be going to bed early-ish tonight in hopes of shaking these crummy feelings. we shall see.

my uncle forwarded this video to my dad, who then proceeded to forward it to me. the first video has the translated lyrics, which are funny, and the second video is more of a "music video" instead of a performance video. that bearded guy is amazing. i do not know why we did not know of ivan mládek prior to friday evening, but i've been obsessed since then.

09.15.010

2010-09-15T21:45:00.001-04:00

four years ago today, i signed my name a bunch of times and was given a mortgage and a deed and .03 acres of land and two (used to be three) bedrooms. simultaneously a brilliant and terrible decision. brilliant because it is a good investment. although i will not be able to cash out on this investment until forever (or when the real estate market turns around and becomes a sellers market again). terrible because it is oftentimes like wearing cement boots and not knowing how to swim (i do not know how to swim). i miss out on doing things because i have to pay all of these home-related bills (mostly the mortgage, but also the water/sewer bill, and paying for heat when it is the season. all expensive bills that result in me being unable to go places and do things). moreover, i don't really want to live in maine anymore (at the very least, i want to live somewhere else for a while), and the market being garbagey isn't very helpful. it's a stupid thing to be upset over, because i own it and that is kind of neat to some extent, and i can't really do anything about it right now, but.... i digress. i've been having really terrible headaches all week. rather brief, but intense. usually focused behind the eyes or at my temples or at the top of my head. they happen at least once every half hour. i don't know what it means. i am not adjusting to new pillows very well, but i like them a lot. i'm glad it's colder out, but i need new sweaters and sweatshirts and a jacket. also, pellets. i'm in love with cordelia underwood, although i am making slow progress. i don't think i have any major plans this weekend, so perhaps i will just settle in and read. i am still having trouble sleeping. i saw my first kingfisher of the year the other morning. he was perched on a wire, handsome, and shaking his head. i was so happy to see a kingfisher; it had been a very long time. i've been seeing a lot of fairy rings in the front lawns of the houses i drive by on a daily basis, which i enjoy. they're really lovely things. progress on the collage and my other weirdo project are going well. hillary is going to portland tomorrow, so i might be home alone tomorrow night, which would be nice. blue flickering light returned a few nights ago, a much welcomed return of a sign of something. nothing? i don't know. ferocious headache just set in behind my eyes. there are other things, just not now.

09.12.010

2010-09-12T21:53:00.002-04:00

all progress is slow. collage is going slowly, other project is going slowly (and kind of terribly), and i can't settle my head down long enough to commit any of the things i want to say to paper or wherever, but that is nothing new. it is beginning to smell and feel a lot like autumn, so at least the present has that going for it. i bought new pillows and they are quite puffy. i can't remember the last time i had new pillows. bella keeps finding a way to get my head off the pillow so she can take it over completely. cats are weird and gross sometimes. i talked to my friend mark a few times this weekend. at one point we got to discussing music, and i told him that i felt as though i had basically crashed and pulled the blankets around me tight for the past year and a half and that i am having a lot of trouble letting new things in, to which he replied "well, you'd been overdosing for years, it was about time for you to crash." and it felt okay to hear. i would like to go camping, or at least to a bonfire or somewhere with a big open fire. it is awkward and unusual to miss people you do not know so well. this week is going to be odd. i can feel it. it holds the anniversary of an arguable mistake, which i am sure i will write about on wednesday (thee aniversary itself). i keep listening to christmas songs and it feels alright to do such a thing. christmas is reasonably soon. i have to start another project soon. very quickly, i will find myself with too many projects and not enough time. i don't know what else there is. i'm sure there are things i am forgetting, but they have been forgotten.

09.08.010

2010-09-08T20:07:00.000-04:00

collage progress is slow, but mostly steady. i've come up with a new project that i can't get out of my head, and i think that is a good sign. i've started some prep work for it and i am excited about it. i finished franny and zooey and started reading cordelia underwood, or, the marvelous beginnings of the moosepath league. work is going reasonably well this week, except for that it is a short week, and short weeks are always problematic. i've seen a lot of birds this week, and i think that is helpful. a blue jay in the spruce tree this morning, looking for bugs amidst the branches. a rafter of turkeys in the turkeyfield in prospect. a hawk on a wire on frankfort. and always, so many crows and starlings and doves, although i am pretty certain mine will not return again this year. i think i am slowly moving past feeling terrible about everything, which is good, i think. i don't know. this year has been long and short and overwhelming. i am having a hard time coming up with highlights from the year, and that upsets me a lot. i wish i had more mainely located common interest friends. while my common thread friends are nice and wonderful people, i wish there were more overlaps in our interests. all my common interest friends are so far away, and that sucks, especially when i could use some company. oh well. maybe someday the real estate market will not be such complete garbage and i can sell my house and live out of my car until i figure out where to be. i can't believe we're already so far into september. i hope the rest of the year is less abrasive.

09.05.010

2010-09-05T21:41:00.001-04:00

i completely melted down friday afternoon while at work. i am still terribly out of sorts/weepy/distressed/etc.etc. fortunately we have tomorrow off for labor day, so hopefully this extended weekend will do me some sort of good mentally (yet to be determined). unfortunately, i have seven dollars in cash and 56¢ in my checking account, and very little gas, so i've been stuck here all weekend, and while that is okay, it's not ideal (the weather was perfect today). i watched daria most of the day yesterday, and today i finished watching season one of flight of the conchords, i watched the aristocats, ponyo, and what about bob? and i've been knitting all day. my fingers kind of hurt, but in a nice way. i might spend the rest of the evening preparing for a collage i am hoping to start tomorrow. hurricane earl was disappointing; it didn't even rain all day. i just want it to rain all day. at least it's cooler now. i'm still reading franny and zooey, which i love. my dad had commented that when he was in school, he had to read franny and zooey and he hated it because "it was boring and nothing really happened." what a silly thing. i realized while reading last night, that the seymour glass from f&z is the same seymour glass from a perfect day for bananafish, so will be rereading that story after i finish franny and zooey (either tonight or tomorrow). i am hopeful that someday my head will work out and shut up long enough for me to write about important things again. maybe autumn and winter will be better.

09.01.010

2010-09-01T23:04:00.000-04:00

i don't really know what to write about tonight, and that's slightly problematic, because i have it in my stupid head that i have to blog every wednesday and sunday, regardless of whether or not i have things to say. and it's not that i don't have things to say, it's just that i've run out of ways to say that i'm having a hard time, i don't really want to get into it, and besides which, it doesn't really matter much anyway. and whatever i do want to write about, i don't want to write about here, but i don't really want to write about anything anywhere else. so, this is wednesday. i'm having a lot of trouble staying asleep (i wake up approximately every hour and a half), and when i do sleep, i have terrible dreams that leave my throat straw dry and lumpy. the loneliness is palpable and i don't know what to do with it. i have moments that feel okay, but then i get so swept up in my head, and i lose them. i don't think i'm going to be able to do much of anything this weekend, due to lack of funds. i was hoping to go to the blue hill fair, but i don't think i can afford to go. i wish things had panned out last tuesday. it is stupid to linger on things, but i don't know what to look forward to, and i think that is a big part of the problem. i don't know.

08.29.010

2010-08-29T22:48:00.000-04:00

i wrote a little on friday while at work. my head has been swirling with things to write about, but the thing is that i don't really want to commit them to anywhere. i don't know why. well, i do know why. it seems scary for some reason. foreign. is that a biproduct of reading so much this year? i think it might be. maybe because i feel as though anything i write will pale in comparison to everything i've read. i am a terrible critic. the version of walden i bought has all these other thoreau writings in it, and i don't really want to read the things proceeding walden, but i feel as though i have to. so i might not read walden right now. i don't know that i'm in the right mindframe for it. i might read franny and zooey instead. i don't know. i have so many books. i went to a book sale in camden yesterday and picked up more, because it is like some sort of bad habit, but it can't really be that bad, can it? i don't know. i am tired, despite having not really done anything all weekend. i am trying to organize my crafty things for crafting times, but it is not really working very well. my dad came to my house thursday night to pick some stuff up and he was outside banging on something. i didn't know what it was until friday afternoon, when he told me that he had fixed the soffit under the roof along the long side of my house. which is where the starlings used to nest in the spring. i could hear their babies singing from my living room and it was nice. and now that's not going to happen anymore. it's sad. there is this turn as you are coming into the village part of my town from the north, and the tree canopy stretched across the road, and it was so nice all year; in the spring the new growth would be overhead, in the summer you were shaded by the green, in the autumn it was always so nice to look through the sunroof at the blur of colors passing over you, and even the bare branches draped in snow in winter looked friendly. it was my favorite part about the entire drive headed south to my house. but for some reason, they just cut down a whole slew of trees along the road, including all the trees that stretched across the road. now it's vacant and blue skied, with only the stumps and lingering limbs and scent of freshly cut wood to distinguish that stretch of road from the rest of 1a. i am tired and disconnected from most things again. i don't know how to reconnect, or maybe i do not want to. i am thinking about running away to for a little while this winter and walking across the brooklyn bridge while it is snowing (i am terribly obsessed with photos of a snowy brooklyn bridge) and riding the central park carousel (which i am assuming they run on snowy days, because it seems like the most magical, appropriate thing ever) and to see morgan, who i completely missed while she was up because i was preparing for my failed tuesday travels on monday night. i get especially upset when i think about the fact that i could've seen my best friend and received some sort of human connection about feeling completely terrible and upset about everything (and i probably would be feeling slightly better about things), but instead i decided to prepare for seven hours in a car that only yielded a lot of disappointment and booze (mostly for my parents, but also a bottle of rum and a bottle of schnapps for myself). there are very large spaces between my fingers. i hope things change soon. i want autumn and snow.

08.25.010

2010-08-25T23:50:00.015-04:00

blogger ate my blog. this is the gist of what i wanted to say.

yesterday was a bust. i almost made it to the massachusetts border before finding out the carousel was closed (even though around ten am, the carousel had posted on facebook that they would be opening at 11, and i awoke to discover that the weather forecast for southern new england wasn't looking that bad). it was a long day of seven+ hours of driving and i am still very tired and feeling upset. this is probably the fifteenth time in the past two years that something outside of my (or anyone's) control has happened to stop something nice from happening.

both my father and my sister questioned my adoration and devotion towards him and his music today. i don't know how to react to such questionings. the best i could do was explain that it was not his decision to not open the carousel (i don't understand how this was lost on them in the first place). i can't explain why he is important to me, that his music is something like a safe haven that doesn't exist for me anywhere in the physical world; but it does exist in this world built in notes and chords and warbling voices (human and otherwise) and silences and wax cylinder scratches, and thusly it becomes some sort of temporary physical location while it is happening, and shortly afterwards in some amber tinted afterglow. they don't understand it. it is a hard thing to understand, i suppose, if you're not experiencing it firsthand.

at any rate, i am tired of the weather and time and money and things that keep me from doing the things i want to do and seeing the people that matter most to me. i feel so solitary all the time, all i wanted was to not feel that way for a while.

i don't know why i expect things to ever work out okay. one would think that after twentysix years with this surname that one would know better than to think things ever work out for the best. i don't know why i look forward to things. you would think i would know better.

i am entirely too sensitive and i don't want to be, but i don't know how else to be.

maybe i'll sleep it off tonight. sleep wasn't being very friendly with me last night, so i've been out of sorts all day. i would like to not be out of sorts tomorrow.

08.22.010

2010-08-22T22:53:00.000-04:00

my fingertips hurt for two reasons. number one, i bought an acoustic guitar. nothing fancy, just a johnson student guitar. kind of impulsively, but i had the cash and i very rarely use cash when i buy anything, and it seemed like a good idea. the only problem is that i have unusually small hands for an adult lady, or at least kind of stubby fingers, and thusly fretting certain chords is kind of impossible, but i still am trying, hands be damned.

number two, i also bought knitting supplies. i have not knitted in about fifteen years. i am working on a plain yellow scarf, because i never successfully knitted anything in the past that didn't end up becoming a pot holder. also, i never learned how to cast on (my mom always did it for me), so i have learned that via the youtubes. i am also going to have to learn how to cast off. and different stitches. i'm just doing the basic purl stitch, because it came back to me naturally. or at least it's something like a purl stitch; i do it differently than all the videos i've seen*. i think i am actually doing it dyslexically, which is pretty funny/awesome. i had to start over three times due to me picking up stitches. i am not entirely sure how i managed to do it, but i started with 40, and about six rows in, i ended up with 45. currently things are going well. i've only managed about 12 rows in this current incarnation, but it's the most i've managed so far, so, there is that.

in news that is necessary to maintaining (or i guess we're to the point that i should say restoring) something like sanity, it appears as though hillary and i will be out of the state for a day or two towards the middle of the week of the week, which may or may not have something to do with this. i am excited for about a thousand reasons, only few of which i will mention, in no particular order.

; time away from everything about my life in maine has become a strange, unfortunate necessity. it will be nice to get away, even if only for a day and a half.
; i will hopefully be able to see my wonderful e6 loving friends amy and casey. and perhaps we will meet some new people, although i have yet to prod about on the interwebs to see if anyone else i know of but have never met is going.
; hi, it's julian and singing saws at the carousel. i haven't seen julian (or a singing saw that is not poorly encouraged to sing by those of us with sore fingertips) in a year and a half. it's going to be overwhelmingly beautiful; the carousel is such a nice creature, as is julian, and band organs make me happier than i have words for, and when you consider the combination of the colors and the lights lights and whirling things and julian... it has the makings for a really nice day.
; and of course, it's always nice to see the ocean, unobstructed by islands. it's really rare to see unislanded ocean in maine. i remember that it struck me as so strange to be able to look out to sea and not see anything but blue, that there is no differentiating between the water and the sky. it will be nice.

so of course because i am planning on trying to get out of dodge this week, my throat feels terrible and i've been coughing all day, and so i'm taking extra vitamin c and elderberry syrup as a precaution. i'm still working out the details of lodging, since there is nothing attractive about making the approximately ten hour long round trip to and from mass in one day, and in a dream world, i'd love to stay for two nights and be able to go do things in the city at some point. we'll see. hillary has a friend who we could go stay with, but driving in boston is one of my least favorite things in the entire world, and especially whereas it's an unfamiliar part of boston (brighton). i'm thinking about getting a room somewhere (rockland, probably), and then maybe we could stay in brighton the following night? i don't know. planning last minute trips makes me feel like a jerk. i have an email in to my friend heather who lives in weymouth to see if we could stay with her, but i have this weird feeling that she is out of town. i'll know more tomorrow. i've also invited my friend morgan, who is up visiting, assuming she doesn't have a whole slew of things to do tuesday/wednesday. although i don't know how long she is up for. it seems to me that we're having a weird misconnection this time. those happen with us every once in a while; sometimes when she's up to visit, we can never get our schedules to mesh. so i might not see her until around christmas. hopefully sooner if i can get my act together and get down to nyc for an autumn/early winter visit.

SO. i might not write on wednesday, depending on where i am and what is going on in my life, but i will probably write on thursday if i don't write on wednesday, but you can't hold me to that because i don't know anything about anything.

i watched me and you and everyone we know today, as well as 500 days of summer. both were good.

i finished dubliners earlier this week, read nine stories in about a day, and i have been reading the diary of anne frank during the day, and a few of grimm's fairytales before bed each night. i believe i'll be reading walden next.

at any rate, i am quite tired, so we should remedy that.

someday, i'll resume videos. but not today.

*apparently, i am doing the garter stitch, which i subconsciously picked up from watching my mother knit in the car and at my parents house when i go to visit them.

08.18.010

2010-08-18T21:51:00.003-04:00

today i was dismissed from work early in order to pick up some things in bangor for an order we're working on.

on the way home, on the other side of the road, there were three crows in the breakdown lane, picking at something. they started to fly off as the column of traffic i was in approached.

two of them flew up and across the road, and one just started to fly across, but didn't have enough altitude.

when i realized what was about to happen, i looked in my rearview, and the guy behind me was too close for me to slam on my brakes and come to a screeching halt, and all i could manage to do was to slow down a little and it was just so awful.

he hit the windshield.

it made the worst sound and my stomach turned and my face flushed porcelain and my heart died a lot and i couldn't look back to see if he was okay (there is no way he was) and i started shaking and crying hysterically. i have no recollection of the next five minutes before walking into the house and falling apart on the kitchen floor. i keep crying about it. i am entirely too sensitive and that is a terrible thing to be when all you see on a daily basis are dead porcupines and raccoons that only ever wanted to come over to play monopoly at your house and you work somewhere where you are told that you are useless on a daily basis and then you are accidentally responsible for the murder of a crow, an animal you revere and love and respect and want to be.

i hope this stops soon. i miss nice things. the blue light hasn't flickered in about a week. i feel too much.

08.15.010

2010-08-15T20:52:00.000-04:00

i finished dubliners today and was mostly unimpressed, except for that last story, which was quite good. i found a copy of salinger's nine stories for 99¢ in goodwill yesterday immediately after complaining to hillary about having never even seen it during any of my book seeking adventures this year. i went to borders today mostly to be surrounded by books and ended up buying franny and zooey and a new copy of walden, and some moleskin journals because i obviously do not have enough journals. i am having an incredibly difficult time mentally right now and i can't innumerate why to anyone. or at least i don't want to. it's hard, and i don't think anyone has the patience to listen to it all and to try to work it out with me. it's such a stupid long story and it is emotionally draining to have to go through it all so i'm refusing to. i locked myself in the bathroom to cry for half an hour at work on friday and then i cried again while walking out of thee olde television station after picking up my paycheck. this happened while exchanging hellos with people. i am awkward. i am hairpin triggery. i am tired and sad and distant and disconnecting and it's not good. i talked to tyler last night, and he was trying to get me to talk, and i just can't. everything is so longwinded and boring and it feels really trite and self involved and i hate feeling this way. i just need something good to happen because i'm getting to a place that i forget what it feels like to have good things happen. i need to shake things up, but i don't know what to do. i need to get out of maine, but i can't afford it right now. i have more needs than i do means, and that's problematic. so i'm just gonna drink and listen to music and just stay curled up in bed for a while.

maybe i was following hashtags on twitter all week (especially friday night). i want new pipes you see, pipes you don't. music so bad, it kind of hurts. probably the most bummed that i missed this set. and the circulatory system set (which i heard was spot on). and the apples in stereo set. and the marshmallow coast set. and everything. and everything. i am never where i should be.

08.11.010

2010-08-11T23:50:00.005-04:00

i'm really out of sorts. i'm short tempered and angry and upset and depressed. i want to delete myself completely and i just want to go away. i figure this is either some longwinded identity crisis or something more slightly more serious. anytime i am anywhere (and i’m always somewhere), all i can think is that i’m not supposed to be where i am. and i feel like all thoughts are snowballing in my head to this gigantic mass of general crappiness in regards to my "friends" and my "life" in maine and my "job" and my "education" (or lack thereof). i feel like i have missed all the opportunities i wanted to take advantage of, and i can trace it back to when it happened (things were set into motion [or at least i became aware of them] in the beginning of 2002, and those things started to effect everything in the middle of 2002 into the beginning of 2003, and then 2003 found me honest-to-god friendless and depressed and having dropped out of college and never going home, but never going anywhere instead of home, just driving all night long with the music that saved and changed my life), and it just makes me want to die. of course, there are things that would probably never had happened if some of these things didn't take place in my life, but the fact of the matter is that i hate where i am and i hate what i'm doing and i don't know what to do with it because i have a deed in a lockbox and i don't know why i have a deed in a lockbox. i didn't want a deed in a lockbox. i treat it like a death sentence. there are so many things i want to go back in time and fix but i can't, so arguably, shouldn't i be focusing on trying to remedy the things that suck now? i can't. my head won't let me. i can't get out of my head. it's the only place that i am all the time and it's such a curse. i don't know what i'm doing in regards to anything in my life. i keep hoping to sleep it off, it keeps not happening. maybe tonight.

i hope i am feeling well enough to see morgan when she is up (which might be now?). we spent three hours talking about our lives in a mexican restaurant last year and i think i need that again now.

08.08.010

2010-08-08T19:43:00.002-04:00

on thursday, i got paid. post-bill paying, i did not end up with enough money to do the trip to georgia. additionally, i started to get sick.

i heard from my friend morgan on friday, saying that she was going to be headed up to maine late next week, and asked if i was going to a local music festival. i told her about my hopes to travel to new york, although they had been dashed since i was feeling completely miserable by then. she said that i would be welcomed down anytime.

but for now, i am home. i don't know. i don't really feel very sad about anything, but that's mostly because i feel so goddamned miserable. hillary and i are composing cacoughphonies. it's bad that she's still mostly sick a week later. this means i have at least another five days worth of feeling crappy, since my immune system is the worst immune system in the world™.

i'm sure i won't feel sad about missing popfest until my friends start arriving and posting from georgia (tomorrow). i might be absent from the internet for a while. i don't know. i feel like i felt in the third grade, when i was supposed to be the daisy in alice in wonderland. i only had one line which consisted of one word ("daisy") and i was to sing in the small ensemble of flowers that sang golden afternoon. and i got sick. miserably sick, a day or two before the opening (and closing) night. i was devastated. to make matters worse, for some reason i was watching wheel of fortune, and they had an alice in wonderland themed show on. i kid you not. it was nutso.

so basically, i feel sick and miserable and sorry for myself. like a giant ball of pathetic. i've been watching newsradio and the deadliest catch (???) and random movies (amelie, the jerk, the breakfast club). i don't know how much more work i'm going to miss. i hate being sick. and i can't tell if this is very pneumonia-esque because i have apparently blocked all of that out of my mind. i feel as though i'm having trouble breathing, but i can't tell if it's just from being really phlegmy or if it's something more nefarious. i don't know.

08.04.010

2010-08-04T21:20:00.000-04:00

they're doing this thing along the road i traverse daily, where they are air blasting the plants that have had enough tenacity to grow up through the asphalt and then tarring over the cracks. it makes my heart break.

additionally, along the same stretch of road, they're also amputating kind old spruce and fir and pine tree limbs to make way for cables and wires and things of that nature that are not nature at all. also heartbreaking.

i am making the popfest decision tomorrow. casey has determined that she can do the trip, although it would leave her with no post-popfest funds. so it's my decision to make. there's no nice way to say this, but my financial situation is fucked so royally. i am getting paid something tomorrow. the only way popfest can happen for me is if i am paid all the money i am owed in back pay tomorrow, which might happen, but i doubt that it will because my brother is also owed back pay and my dad has bills and there has been no additional money and it's just a mess. i'm trying to mentally prepare myself for this. it really has been the only thing i've been looking forward to all year. it sucks.

additionally, hillary came home from vermont with some really terrible respiratory illness (it sounds like pneumonia to me), and i am living in this absolute crazy panic attack where i am certain i am going to get sick and i feel as though i might be getting sick, but i can't tell if that's just me being crazy or if it's an actual thing that is happening.

if i can't go to popfest and i don't end up getting sick in the next few days, i'm going to contact my friend morgan, who resides in new york city, to see if i can run away to her place for a few days. i might not even be able to afford to do that (there's also the chance she'll be unable to put me up), but it's something i would like to do. if i can't afford that, i don't know what i'm going to do, but i have to do something because i feel psychotic.

at any rate, i cut my hair tonight because that's what i do when i feel like this.

might not write again this sunday or upcoming wednesday. i don't know. unless there is exceptionally good news tomorrow, i'm pretty certain i won't be feeling very communicative. if there are travels in my near future, i will post something tomorrow evening. if there aren't, i won't.

i don't know what else to say.

Nick Drake- Way to Blue

Nick Drake | MySpace Music Videos

08.01.010

2010-08-01T22:26:00.002-04:00

ribbit ribbit.

fruit flies keep completing suicide missions in my wine tonight. it's kind of depressing, but fact of the matter is that i am currently plagued with fruit flies because i bought a lot of fruit (rasp/black/blueberries), so while it is kind of gross to be dredging up the corpses of dead fruit flies from my wine, it means less hand clapping. although, hand clapping can be fun. albeit kind of gross when you're trying to rid yourself of fruit flies.

i digress. i am waiting to wash the berries until the fruit fly situation gets a little more under control/in between palms.

winteringport had fireworks in honor of my half birthday yesterday. okay, they had fireworks for their own birthday, but it also was my half birthday. only six more months of twentysixdom. more like twentysixdoom.

i went to seriousport yesterday morning for a book sale. i bought a two books about birds (one of which is in dutch?), a pictorial learn to speak russian book, a book about america's wonderlands, david copperfield and empire falls. i visited with the parentals for a little bit before heading home.

hillary's been in vermont for a wedding all weekend, so i've had the house to myself. it's been nice. i've played music loudly and done whatever i've wanted whenever i've wanted. not that having her around prohibits me from doing such a thing, but one has more freedom when they are completely alone. kittens have been reasonably nice, although bella threw up yesterday and one of them peed in a really peculiar location friday after hillary left. i don't know.

perhaps i should've done laundry today, but i didn't. i will tomorrow. i didn't accomplish much today, but that's alright. i cleaned half the kitchen. i am still very tired from the last two weeks. i really just wanted to stay in bed all day. i am still in the boat, and probably will be for a few days this week.

popfest is still up in the air for me. it's in almost a week.

the week of fill-in work at thee olde television job was actually really fun. i had a nice time, but i think it was because i knew i was only doing it for five days. it was not fun when there was no definite end in sight.

regular job is slow and troubling.

my dove friends are back, after about a month or so hiatus. it's nice to see them again.

i finished notes from underground friday night. it ended with the dream of a ridiculous man, which was also so good. i don't know if i ever posted, but the book contained white nights, excerpts from house of the dead, notes from underground, and the dream of a ridiculous man. i could take or leave the stuff from house of the dead, but everything else was really nice. i haven't started a new book yet because i don't know what to start. i have five books in my bed right now. i guess i will just pick one and start reading.

i'm tired and i need to shower.

my friend laura posted this on facebook and i've watched it many times. i love it. it makes me cry in a nice way.

07.28.010

2010-07-28T22:31:00.003-04:00

not tonight.

07.25.010

2010-07-25T22:25:00.001-04:00

brevity.

things are not very good. i'm in love with notes from underground. there is a terribly long passage that i am particularly enamored with, that ends with this quote:

… feeling that you’ve been short-changed, cheated, deceived, that everything is a mess in which it is impossible to tell what’s what, but despite this impossibility and deception, it still hurts you, and the less you can understand, the more it hurts.

e-mails to silk friendy fellow have proven themselves to be impossible to draft. i start and start again and again and i don't know where to go from anywhere. the blue light flickers a lot and i miss him and i just wish he would just show up unannounced. i bought a book for him that (from what i have read of it) was written for him. i want to give it to him, i almost invited him to come up this weekend, but i stopped myself, because i was entirely too weepy, and no one (not even me) should have to deal with me while i'm weepy. and i pretty much had no food. maybe i will invite him up this weekend. i don't know. hillary is going to vermont for a wedding the second half of this week, so company that is unrelated to me/work would be nice. i probably should've cleaned this weekend, but i am tried and tired. maybe when i get out in the evenings i will not be so tired and actually get some things done. i am probably not going to write on wednesday, but i make no guarantees to anyone. astral astray ashtray.

face;

just push play and don't watch the video.

07.21.010

2010-07-21T23:10:00.001-04:00

ok, i'm really tired and it's very late. here is a quick rundown about this week.

; thee olde television job is going really well. i am actually enjoying myself, and i think it's because there is a definite end in sight.

; regular job is pretty abysmal. we are waiting on a check that feels like it is never going to come.

; i get to see my friend chris tomorrow. i haven't seen him in about three or four years and i'm really excited about it.

; i am trying to draft an email to silk friendy fellow, but it keeps coming out sounding ridiculous. because everything is ridiculous.

; it's nice and rainy and foggy tonight.

; one of my favorite autumn trees in hampden has already started to change.

; popfest is unbelievably soon, however, i have started to dip into the popfest savings box for living expenses.

; i finished the bell jar yesterday and read the old man and the sea today. started dostoyevsky's notes from the underground/white nights/the dream of a ridiculous man/and selections from the house of the dead today. i love what i have read of white nights (the first story), which admittedly hasn't been much (two pages), but oh. i love it. the way he writes about being friends with houses. good heavens.

; working 12 hours a day is kind of exhausting. i can't get enough sleep. i thought about not blogging tonight, but then, i did this. i might take this sunday and upcoming wednesday off. we'll see.

face;

i had really nice bedhead today when i woke up. i wish my hair looked like this all the time. maybe someday i'll figure out how to do hair.

maybe i posted this already. i can't remember. it doesn't matter, it's wonderful.

07.18.010

2010-07-18T22:52:00.002-04:00

i don't recall the second half of the week. another quiet week resulting in quiet pay. i read all of girl, interrupted in about six hours and i am almost done with the book of poems and sketches by e.b. white. the bell jar has been sleeping with me all weekend, but i haven't started it yet. for some reason, i want to finish the e.b. white book first, and i've been distracted by the living room. i am mostly done with the living room, except for that some of the walls feel really vacant, so i need more things to hang, but i can't really afford new hanging things, so it will just have to wait. here are a few photos. disclaimer: the floor looks like a disaster because it is. that is what it looks like when it's clean. there's pretty much no finish on it, and there's no point in refinishing it because it's going to be replaced someday in the next year or so anyway. i need to get a rug to put over that center patch where there was once a fireplace (we think) because the nail heads are sometimes troublesome. i had purchased a rug for it in 2008, but the cats puked on it while hillary and i were away overnight and it was impossible to get out. thanks, cats.

in 2010 is an abysmal year news, the younger brother of a friend of mine from school died this weekend. he was my sister's age, they graduated the same year and we've known their family seemingly forever. i don't know what happened, but it has me feeling thrown even moreso than i already was feeling. i don't have much else to say. tomorrow starts a very long stretch of working two jobs for two weeks (about 13 hours a day). i'm not really looking forward to it at all, except for that it means that popfest is that much closer. the weekends are going to be much welcomed friends. i am hoping some nice things happen that will make the weeks tolerable and kind. we'll see.

face;

my eye floaties have been really active lately, and i actually had an incident where there were flashing lights going off in my eyes, but there definitely were not any in the room. i think after popfest, my next goal will be to get to an eye doctor and to get some new glasses. also, i am wearing a tank top, i've got the fan going, and i'm wrapped up in a fleece blanket. this all makes sense to me.

they do not make them like this anymore, and it's a crying shame.

07.14.010

2010-07-14T22:37:00.000-04:00

so since the terrible day that was sunday, i've been picking away at living room cleaning. i am almost done. every day after work, i come home and work on doing something for four or five hours. and then i shower. and then i go to bed. monday, i mopped half the floor and did some cleaning of things that were not in the living room. tuesday i mopped the other half of the floor and arranged the furniture in the basic layout i wanted. today, i hooked up the turntables and the speakers and hung speakers. have you ever hung speakers? it's not an enjoyable thing. it's actually really awful. wires kept falling and i swore a lot, but i did get it done. i also brought down my entire record collection, as well as the cabinet they live in. and i bought a desk today for $25.

the top flips open and there are two shelves on each side of it. it's kind of awesome. i'm thinking about moving it upstairs though, because now there is a hole in my room.

tomorrow the plan is to bring all my books downstairs and arrange them somehow (i have not decided how [binding color? genre? author? title? TOO MANY OPTIONS.]). i will also be hanging up all the wall things (bringing home the screw driver again) and doing general decorating things, and then it will be done. which will be awesome. because this has taken forever.

the only thing that could make it infinitely more awesome is if the floor was done too. but that will happen in due time.

so since i have been doing this all week, i am extremely tired and i don't have much to say about anything else. i finished to the lighthouse and high fidelity. i started and finished a wild patience has taken me this far by adrienne rich. i am reading poems and sketches of e.b. white currently. i've added cordelia underwood by van reid, dubliners by james joyce, the bell jar by sylvia plath, and girl, interrupted by susanna kaysen to my bag. i am still in a weird mental place. popfest is in less than a month, which i cannot believe. i also cannot believe that my fill-in training starts on monday, and then i am filling in all the week after. it seems like just yesterday that it was a month and a half ago, and now it's in a few days. time flies when you want it to. i would really like to be eating an onion poppy seed bagel with melted margarine on it, but i fear it's too late and would spoil the evening's respite from waking life. okay.

face;

sometimes i bite my fingers.

here is a cat in a hamper.

07.11.010

2010-07-11T23:12:00.001-04:00

i went yard sale-ing with jayson yesterday. it was a fun time. there weren't many good sales going on, which was disappointing. i found a nice old book that i think i will make a nice gift for silk friendy fellow. i took a nap when i got home, and mostly spent the rest of the day procrastinating and not starting the living room cleaning process.

today everything has been against me. i wish i had stayed in bed. yesterday i ran out of conditioner and realized that i was almost out of the gallon of dr. bronner's i purchased in february. this morning, i decided to go up to the natural living center to price out dr. bronner's. the last time, i had ordered it online because it was less expensive than buying it locally ($31 from vitacost). so i went to the nlc, and a gallon of peppermint soap was $47. i decided against buying it locally, buy a bag of vegan onion poppy seed bagel central bagels, and went home. i logged on to vitacost to discover that they are also selling it for $47, plus shipping. so i will have to purchase it the next time i am in bangor.

i started to clean the living room around noon. mostly clearing things out in order to do a proper full cleaning. my dad informed me, after years and years and years of telling me otherwise, that is okay to keep totes in the basement, despite it being a wet basement. they just have to be off of the floor. this is great news, because i had been living with stacks of totes in the living room and upstairs hallway since i moved in. i went into the basement to consolidate the things my dad had on the shelves. he had stuff spread over five shelves, which could all fit onto three. while taking off one of the layers of shelves, i knocked a gallon bucket of urethane sealer onto not only the floor, but all over my feet and legs as well. i go running upstairs and jump into the tub (flip flops and all) and rinse off. i called my dad to inform him of my faux pas. he said it wasn't going to give off toxic fumes or anything, so i wasn't terribly concerned. the only thing that made me kind of wary about the whole thing was that it has been raining all day, and one of the "streams" that runs through my basement was washing a lot of it away. i don't know where the streams drain to, but at least part of the streams are going to be glossy.

i moved the christmas totes that had been stored in the living room for three years into the basement and go upstairs to start vacuuming. while vacuuming, i discovered that i had not done an end-of-season cleaning on the pellet stove, which was hugely upsetting because pellet stove cleaning is a really miserable thing to do, and i really didn't want to do it. i went into the kitchen to get a bag to put the ashes into, and i stepped into a puddle. finding that to be concerning, i looked down and saw the puddle, about two feet square. while looking down, the water dripped down the back of my shirt. i looked up and started swearing, because that's what i do. i put a bucket beneath the one drip and went back into the living room. i started to clean out the stove but got frustrated. then i realized that i had only eaten breakfast, and probably was suffering from low blood sugar or something (this was around 4:30). i decided to go out to the grocery store to get a few things. before leaving, i saw that the leak had started in another area about two feet away from the first one. i put a coffee can beneath it and went out.

the grocery store was fine. i got the things i needed and headed home. it started to downpour when i pulled into the driveway, so i decided to run to the door. i slipped and fell on the stoop. i definitely did something stupid to my leg, and i can't recall if i hit my head, but i've had a headache ever since then. i ate dinner and cleaned out the pellet stove to the best of my ability (there is a bit of creosote build up that i am concerned about getting out, because it's in a location that is kind of hard to get at, so my dad is going to come up this week to try to chisel it out). i discovered that i hadn't washed the urethane sealant off as well as i thought i did and it is splashed all over my legs. the good news is that it does peel off. the bad news is that i don't care enough to do it tonight.

so today has been a wash. i only vacuumed about half of the living room. i did clear off the white shelves, but i still have a lot to do. i am going to be actually mopping the floor instead of just swiffering it because of all the drywall compound that has built up. it would be easier just to refloor the whole thing. oh well. i will probably pick at cleaning the living room all week after work and maybe it will be back to something completely unembarassing by the end of the week. or not.

otters;

my preamp came on friday. i have plugged it in to see if it turns out (it does). i am not going to hook it up to the turntable until i finish with the living room and move the turntable and the speakers to the living room, since i have decided that is where it is going to live.

low-pay payday on friday. hopefully things will pick up this week. it was absolutely dead last week, and while it is nice to be able to spend a lot of time reading at work, i really need to be getting paid regularly.

i had a crazy dream wednesday night. i dreamt that i was in an entirely glass train station. the station overlooked the tracks, which turned fairly sharply after the station and then went up a hill. julian koster was there, along with a large crowd of people. he was going over the directions for one of his games that we were going to play. this HUGENORMOUS train went by and the sound was so loud that it drowned his voice out, so he stopped explaining while the engine shuttered past the building. he started explaining again, but shortly after he did, people started yelling because the train was now moving in reverse down the hill at a high rate of speed and gaining momentum. it was also in the process of derailing and heading straight towards the building. the crowd broke into a rousing and rowdy rendition of the olivia tremor control's "a peculiar noise called train director" and started to run away from the imminent accident. but i stood. i stood singing and watching the steel careening off the tracks, toward where i stood, and i was completely calm. the crowd was screaming and running all around me, but no one was trying to push me along with them. it was as though i was standing on some tall pillar and couldn't be moved, but i wasn't. i was just stood.

at any rate, julian spots me and grabs my hand and says "MARIA WE HAVE TO GO." i hesitated. i don't know why. everything seemed very still. finally, my head made the connection that, yes, if i did stay where i was, i was going to die, and no, i did not really want to die (i just wanted to see what was going to happen), so we took off running. the wheels were screeching against the tracks and the engine sounded like thunder and the glass shattered and there was this rush of heat that came in as the caboose smashed into the window and he tried to shelter me from the shards and impending death and then i woke up.

it was really strange because i have never felt actual heat in a dream. i have woken up sweaty from dreams that have been really intense or when i have been feverish but i woke up immediately after the dream and felt really physically warm. i had left the air conditioner on, so it was actually quite cold in my room. it was weird. i wish he was coming to maine on these lullabye travels. i haven't seen him since last march and i miss him. maybe this christmas. something about third times....

i am reading virginia woolf's to the light house and nick hornby's high fidelity. they are my first books by each author. i am enjoying both of them, although have neglected them pretty badly this weekend.

i might be going to jayson to mount desert island this upcoming weekend. the president and his wife are going to be somewhere on the island, and he's going to go try to see them or meet them or what not. we went to see the president to speak in february of 2008 while he was campaigning in bangor. it was a fun day, and i think this would also be fun. it depends on how much cleaning i get done this week and how exhausted i am by the weekend. i have a feeling this is going to be a mentally draining week.

i am in a bit of a funk, partly due to work things, partly due to my house being a nightmare, and partly due to being maria and having maria thoughts. the thing that gets me through most days is the thought that in less than a month, i am going to be very very far away from maine. i am concerned that, if things at work do not pick up, i am going to have to use some of the money i saved for georgia in order to pay bills, but even if that's the case, i am still 99% certain i will be going to popfest. it's just that 1% that makes me nervous. it's always that 1%.

i am tired.

i want to live in this. the whole thing is beautifully, but the winter scenes in particular. i want it to snow now. and oh, that carousel (aside; i was watching perfect strangers earlier this week, and in one of the episodes, balki and cousin larry are being chased, and they cut through a carousel, and i said "that's a philadelphia toboggan company carousel!" i looked it up online just to be sure and it was [the santa monica pier carousel]. i don't think regular people can tell or know such things, which is kind of nice)! yuri norstein is a genius.

07.07.010

2010-07-07T21:51:00.003-04:00

things are easier to list.

; the first shift at thee olde television station went really surprisingly well. of course, it was a holiday and almost everyone was off. i had forgotten how great those days are, when hardly anyone is there.

; i'm in the process of filling out the official paperwork to become an official fill-in employee again, and that is weird. i realized the last time i had filled out that paperwork, i hadn't graduated high school yet. it was the year 2000. i would have been employed there for ten years this november if i hadn't left in 008.

; i finished the wind up bird chronicle last night and read elizabeth and her german garden while at work today. i will now say that as awesome as it is to read an entire book at work (well, save for the first ten or twenty pages that i read last night), i would much rather be working. i don't know what i'm reading next. too many options. both of the books i've finished in the past twenty four hours have been really wonderful. elizabeth von armin is one of my favorite authors. i am glad to have accidentally discovered her.

; my ears feel better. i did sleep with garlic in them on monday night, and it was a really funny thing to do. i laughed a lot and kept smelling garlic bread yesterday.

; the replacement belt for my parents old turntable arrived today. i've already installed it. i ordered a preamp on monday, and it should be arriving on friday.

; i don't know where to put either of my record players. i have a portable crosley, and my parents old turntable is a pioneer pl-450. the pioneer is going to have to be hooked up to external speakers, which means wiring running throughout whatever room i put it in. the crosley's sound quality is kind of scuzzy, since it does have built in speakers, and built in speakers are disappointing. the obvious solution would be to find another decent turntable and get another preamp and another set of speakers for my bedroom, and to use the crosley somewhere else? i don't know.

; my plans for the weekend include perhaps going yard sale-ing with jayson saturday morning, and then cleaning the entire downstairs because it is a disaster and i am tired of it. at the very least, the living room needs to be restored to some sort of order.

; the popfest box has over $200 in it. i am usually really terrible at saving money. i am concerned about bills for this month, but hopefully work will pick up and everything will straighten itself out again.

; this is a weird year. i am having trouble with it. again again again again again. sometimes i wish things would stop turning. sometimes i think drowning would be nice, because i oftentimes enjoy the feeling of pressure against my body. except for the lungs filling with water and the feeling of water in my eyes and the absolute panic that would set in upon realizing that i do not know how to swim, i think it would not be a terrible way to go out. on these particularly warm days at work, i like to go upstairs and stand on the landing. the heat is so oppressive and the humidity feels so good, i feel as though i am in the belly of some bellows and i don't know why i like it so much. the pressure. the pressure.

; more to say, never now.

face;

PUPPIES ARE BARKING. i want them to be my friends.

this song makes me think of last new year's day and i feel funny and sad and happy and warm and nostalgic, which is all being nostalgic is, feeling funny and sad and happy and warm. jingle bells and starchy spiders.

07.04.010

2010-07-04T23:10:00.006-04:00

the end of the work week was quite alright, i suppose. work thursday was nice and quiet and i got the things i needed to get done in a reasonable amount of time and spent the hour or so i had afterward reading. friday was a bit clustery, due to the truck showing up real early for the order we were shipping out. we were finishing the packaging process when it arrived. fortunately, the truck driver had to rearrange all of his shipments, due to everyone trying to get everything in the shipping queue before the long weekend, so we were able to get it done without holding him up for too long. we have tomorrow off from work, so that is nice. except for that tomorrow is my first of the 10 total (maybe 11) shifts at thee olde television station. i'm working from around 2-8:30ish. it is going to be weird.

thursday night, i discovered an update to the orbiting human circus. it appears as though julian will be doing a short tour of lullabies sung at bedsides in august. it also appears as though this will not be coming to maine, at least right now. who knows what future plans hold (there is ambiguous language in the automated reply that hints to maybe more of these events in the future, and i mean, maine is nice and julian is nice and i am nice [i think], so 2+2+2=a little green roofed house). at any rate, if you live in the boston area, the new york city area, or the philadelphia area, you should consider inviting him because i am sure it is going to be ridiculously wonderful.

friday afternoon, on the drive up to bangor, the bend of my knee started to itch. i assumed that i had received some sort of bug bite; we did have the overhead door open all day on friday, and i had spent about 15 minutes outside standing around while my dad was loading the truck. upon stripping down for the evening's shower, however, i discovered a very large, very red welt on my leg, about three inches in diameter. it was itchy and firm feeling and very very warm. i took benadryl and sprayed it with solarcaine. saturday morning, it wasn't any better. if anything, it was actually worse. my mother recommended going to the walmart clinic to have it checked out. i sort of hemmed and hawed at this suggestion for a while; it was very nice out yesterday and i really didn't want to spend any time in a clinic in walmart. however, i eventually did go, since it seemed to be itchier than it was the night before. the guy didn't charge me, which was nice, and he calmed my worried mind, saying it was probably just a severe bug bite and recommended that i take 50 mg of benadryl every six hours. i took some at 2:30, fell asleep at three, woke up at 8, went to bed at midnight, woke up at eight. so much sleep. fortunately, the bite is looking less terrible today, so that is good news.

unfortunately, my left ear has developed something like an earache. i know i got water in there while showering a few days ago (three or four, i'd guess), but i can't imagine it would take that long to start bothering me. i asked my mom about what i should do, and she told me to sleep with a garlic clove in my ear. by the time i checked my email, it was too late to go to the store to buy garlic. to have make my dreams funny smelling while i sleep.

i have still been having very strange dreams. popfest and cancer and candy stores and people and kisses and yeah. my head has been very busy while i have been trying to rest. story of my life.

today i drove around restlessly for a while and then started to clean the organ while watching my neighbor totoro. i used an entire spray bottle of electronics cleaner from radio shack. it's almost completely functional again, which is impressive given that i wasn't able to take it apart at all and it was almost completely non-functional the last time i checked. i am going to pick up another bottle of cleaner tomorrow and i might do some more before heading into thee olde station. i really enjoyed the movie. miyazaki makes some really lovely films.

other; i've been on a big smiths kick. i don't know why. it just feels right. i want to put flowers down the front of my pants and oscillate wildly and dance around with morrissey. i really want a dog or donkey or bunny right now. i am feeling lonely in a funny way that i can't really describe. my eyes get really upset if i get water in them while showering (which is inevitable). i finished mind of the raven and i am considering finishing the wind up bird chronicle before starting up another book, but i don't think that will happen. living room cleaning hasn't really started yet. maybe a little tomorrow. i don't know. because i slept so late last night, i did not go to see micky dolenz, which is disappointing. this probably means that my first live music since november will not be until popfest. this also means that i will be functioning in a state of complete insanity until then. usually there is a cricket that lives on my windowsill and sings me to sleep every summer. he is absent this year. the blue flower light has been flickering again. i don't know how to feel about anything. i know i am forgetting things, but little whirly heads were not made to remember on sunday nights. okay.

face;

well, yes, i am wearing a barometric damper on my head this frothy july.

circa 1995.

06.30.010

2010-06-30T23:00:00.001-04:00

over the past two weeks, i have written four times. i had not read anything that i had written until last night. all i can say about it is that the voice is unfamiliar but friendly. kind of schizophrenic, but when hasn't it been? i don't know. maybe it isn't all that different. maybe it's just the fact that i haven't been writing much. i don't know i don't know.

popfest dreams are becoming more and more frequent. i would like to meet a pelican during my travels, although i'm pretty sure it won't happen. oh well.

i ordered a replacement belt for my parents' old turntable. it's a nice machine that still works reasonably well. i just need a preamp and some nice speakers. last year, my brother gave me a dvd player with a subwoofer thing and five speakers. i could hook it up to the turntable, but i will have to get a preamp for it. and the speaker wires are really long, and the cats like to chew on things with electricity going through them, so i am not all that wild about the idea of doing that. we'll see.

i get to spend most of the day alone at work tomorrow. i might actually go in early to get through the things i am supposed to do really early and then nap or write or read the rest of the day. it should be nice. my dad and brother are dropping off an order to southern maine. we've all got our eyes on craigslist for great free things that would require a truck to move. the truck my dad rented has a liftgate on it. there is a beautiful white wurlitzer theater organ available in southern maine for $500. i want them to get it so bad. it would be so wonderful. if times were different, i'd say "DON'T PAY ME THIS WEEK. BUY ME THIS INSTEAD." but times are not different, and i am saving to disappear from maine for a week.

i still need to do a thorough cleaning of the hammond piper autochord organ. especially now that i am done generating massive amounts of white dust in the living room. i can't imagine much of it is functional right now. i also need to put the living room back together. since we've been busy at work this week, i haven't felt much like cleaning at all. and i'm certain i won't feel like cleaning at all later this month when i'm doing the fill in work at the station, so i have about a two week long window of opportunity to get things done before popfest. which is ab-freakin-surd. i can't believe it's july tomorrow.

this weekend, i am going to go see micky dolenz for free at hollywood slots. it is going to be really fun and i can't wait. it's silly to me that my first live music experience in eight months is going to be micky dolenz. and free. what kind of life is this?

anyway, this took me approximate two hours to get through, and i don't think i actually even said anything worth knowing tonight. botters. oh, today's daily otter is wicked cute.

i drank thirtytwo ounces of lemonade in one sitting last night. okay. more to say, never ever right now.

face;

this shirt is my favorite shirt. i mostly wear it to bed because it is super comfortable and slouchy and i can't wear it to work because it'll get ruined, just like my bruised knees.

probably the best intro to an episode of the monkees ever. also, nesmith was such a dreamboat. and peter. and micky when his hair was curly. okay.

i wanted to get into a very serious area that, of course, appeals to me as frank zappa, sometimes thought of creative genius, especially in the area concerning your monkees' music, which appears to me to be banal and insipid.

you think that our music, the monkees music, is banal and insipid?

well, words like that are hard to read, especially side by side.

06.27.010

2010-06-27T21:58:00.001-04:00

if you will recall, in april i started to drywall my living room walls in preparation for painting them all one solid color. my living room had been multi-colored (a sage-y green, light blue, sheetrock grey, and spackle white) since the springish of 2007ish, when my dad removed the wall that separated what had been my bedroom and the living room. i gave up because drywalling is miserable. and since then, every other friday or so, i would take the drill and the mixer attachment home in hopes that having them present will possess me to actually finish the project, which had yet to happen. this past friday was no different. this weekend, however, was. i went to run errands saturday morning and came home and decided that i was going to finish the living room walls if it was the last thing i did. andso yesterday, i spent about three hours finishing the drywalling process (i didn't add any more mud to the walls, just sanded and smoothed out the rough spots with my hands), and followed that with three hours of painting. i didn't do any edging, figuring it would be fine to do this morning. i did the first layer of edging this morning, followed by the second coat, and another coat around the edges. unfortunately, the edges have dried really light. probably because of the fact that i mixed slightly less than five gallons of different colored paints into one five gallon bucket, and no matter how well i mixed them with the drill and mixer attachment and shook the bucket and stirred the bucket with that pathetic wooden stick, it was never 100% blended together. so the edges are a little lighter in some spots than others, but for the most part, the walls are completely the same color. i am still considering painting them a fun color (right now, it's kind of eggshelly, and it looks weird juxtaposed next to the mostly orange of the kitchen [the nice thing about successfully finishing the living room walls is that i can now go on to finish the kitchen and bathroom walls {i inherited my procrastination genes from my dad}]), but it is nice in the meanwhile. and that has been the majority of my day today (six hours or so). what else, what else. at work, we are finishing up an order that we will be delivering to southern maine later this week. i say we, but i mean my brother and dad. i have been writing in small spurts, but i have not read anything i have written since it first came out. so, i don't know what that means, but there it is. the kittens have been pretty distressed during the painting project. pepper kept lying in the windows right around where i was painting and thusly would get paint in her fur. oh, cats. i'm in a continuous and increasingly ridiculous state of excitement regarding popfest. as it turns out, the inverse theory of the universe is not applicable to other people winning the lottery right now, so the funds box saw an extra $10 on saturday, and will be seeing another $10 on wednesday. that was one of my better ideas, if i may so say myself. i don't know what else there is. i was listening to old mixes while painting, and i listened to a sigur ros song and it didn't make me want to die. and i didn't have to place my hand over my throat. so i think that is potentially good news. i think. i'm not sure. maybe it's just time passing and things being less terrible. i don't know. i never know. okay. i am going to read until i fall asleep (i bought one of those boyfriend pillows with the back and the arms and i love it. so perfect for reading in bed).

face;

over a week later, my sunburn is still as red as it was, but is now peeling and gross looking. fortunately, you can't see how gross it looks via webcam.

i recently remembered how much i love this song. oh, califone. you are so wonderful.