I walk in the air, between the rain, through myself and back again. Where? I don't know.: October 2005

Monday, October 31, 2005

And So Begins Slow Season

I'm sitting at my desk listening to Death Cab for Cutie a little louder than usual. I just finished drinking my daily dose of herbal tea. I have bits of halloween candy laying around. I'm reading Empire Falls by Richard Russo. I'm bored but I'm rested even on my sixth day of work. Now I remember slow season... We run ourselves ragged for nine months and then we have a brief respite. Ahh. I'll enjoy it for about three weeks and then I'll be pulling my hair out.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

"All is Full of Love," Death Cab for Cutie (Bjork Cover)

You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it
Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at
Twist your head around
It's all around you
All is full of love
All around you
All is full of love
You just aint receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are all shut
All is full of love!

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Damn you, Brian.

1. How tall are you?
5’ 5.5”. I’m proud of my height, but as always, I’d be even prouder to be 5’8”

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
No, but my stepdad used to cook it at home and then I used the stove… So…

3. Do you own a gun?
I meant to buy a glue gun, but then I got sick of making random collages.

4. Rehab?
I’m currently abstaining from theatre, and it’s enough. Thank you.

5. Would you "do" someone in their parent's bed?
Beds are passed down in my family… Oh, wait… THEIR parents’ bed? No.

6. Best way to die?
In bed with the one you love after a long, long life together. Oh, yeah.

7. Least favorite mode of transportation?
On the back of a mad raging bull. Well, mostly it was running into stuff that made it uncomfortable.

8. What do you think of hot dogs?
My tummy feels funny…. Oh, yeah, it’s the idea of eating ground-up pig guts!

9. What's your favorite Christmas song?
ONLY ON CHRISTMAS I like “The Little Drummer Boy.” Kind of.

10. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Water and some kind of fruit juice.

11. Do you do pushups?
Yeah, like I want LESS fat on my chest. Right.

12. Have you ever done ecstasy?
I’ve never done anything.

13. Are you vegan?
Only when I eat at Smart Alec’s in Berkeley.

14. Do you like painkillers?
No, but this nose piercing… Can’t believe I did that…

15. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
I don’t have to lure. If he wants to come home at night, he’s gotta enter my domain.

16. Do you own a knife?
A full set of Cutco knives, which, according to Ben, are the best in the world. Yippee skippee.

17. Do you have A.D.D.?
Very doubtful, considering my tenacity and attention span.

18. Do you love the pain a tattoo brings?
I would run screaming, but I’m at work.

Top 5 Thoughts At This Exact Moment:

1. I want to be at home with my new hamster, Puka. Cutest thing ever.
2. Is caffeine as bad for me as my doctor said? Should I stay away from it? Will it cause me to have more internal bleeding? Would I be this happy if I hadn’t had the badass iced black tea with tons of caffeine?
3. I wish I could blow my nose, but that would just hurt waaaaaay too much. Right now it tickles.
4. Why won’t my leg stop bouncing? Caffeine?
5. I’m thirsty. Maybe I should have had some water instead of more tea….

Name the Last 5 Things You Have Bought: (recently)

1. A hamster named Puka and all her accoutrements.
2. Pet supplies for my OTHER pets.
3. Dinner last night.
4. More beads for my obsession with beading.
5. Nose studs in varying colors and some more Balinese hoops. Love those things.

Name Five Drinks You Regularly Drink:

1. Water
2. Fruit Juice
3. My special herbal tea
4. tea that is not so special, but still yummy.
5. water

19. What Time Did You Wake Up Today?
Uhm…. I think it was 10:30. It’s all fuzzy now.

21. Current Hair?
Long, straight and flat as usual.

23. Current Worry?
I think Puka may be under a bit of stress currently. She truly hated being transported in the little cardboard PETCO carrier, and when I left the house, she was balled up in the corner instead of exploring her cage. Hmmm.

25. Current Hate?
George W. Bush. Current and only hate.

26. Favorite Place To Be?
At home with my love and my pets. Makes me totally content.

27. Least favorite place?
The dentist’s office.

28. Where Would You Like To Go?
Back up to Ashland, Oregon and the surrounding area.

30. What do you wear when you go to sleep?
A sheet when it’s hot and lots of blankets when it’s not.

31. What were you doing 12AM last night?
Glaring at the server who seated two people ahead of us even though we were ON A LIST. Grrrr.

32. What do you think you'll be doing in 10 years?
Living in Oregon, teaching at Oregon State (maybe), directing for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, taking care of my kids, my husband and my MANY pets.

33. Do you burn or tan?
Last time I was in the sun that long without sunscreen was more than five years ago, but yeah, I tan.

34. Last thing you ate?
A plain bagel with cream cheese. (Ben ate a hamster treat, if you want to know.)

35. If you could be a pirate, would you?
No, considering what tends to happen to female pirates.

36. Last time you had an alcoholic drink?
Never.

37. What songs do you sing in the shower?
I don’t sing in the shower unless someone outside the window is yelling, in which case I have been known to sing the Veggie Tales theme.

38. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
A bewitched and deadly china doll.

39. What's in your pockets right now?
Nada.

40.what's on your bedroom walls?
A tiny print of a couple smooching in Paris, a wild poster of Pele (the Hawaiian goddess of fire, that is) and an original painting of an earth spirit by my friend Ahna Jotter.

41. Last thing that made you laugh?
Reading Brian’s responses to this survey.

42. Best bed sheets you had as a child?
My Lion King set, of course.

43. Do you like your teeth?
After all the money and work that’s gone into them? Hell, yes.

44. Worst injury you've ever had?
The time I tore off my big toenail. Completely. Using my teeth. Maybe it just seems worse because I was three, but that stands out to me.

45. What are your dreams like?
Waaaay too real for comfort. That one where I had to defeat Hannibal the Cannibal three times in one night was just… gross, really.

46. How many TV's do you have in your house?
One, but there’s no cable, just a DVD and VCR setup.

47. Who is the loudest friend?
I don’t have loud friends. I don’t hang well with consistently loud people.

48. Who is the silent friend?
Ben.

49. What song do you want played at your wedding?
Uhm… I think Alice is going to sing “How Deep is the Ocean.” Probably.

50. What song do you want played at your funeral?
“The Trapeze Swinger,” by Iron and Wine.

51. red wine or white?
I don’t drink wine, but in my vast experience SNIFFING wine, red wine smells infinitely better.

52. France or Italy?
Italy. Their food is better and their men are the sexiest alive.

53. Favorite roast meat?
Chicken.

54. Holiday destination?
I plan to work through the holidays. Again. Ah, holiday pay. Woo hoo.

55. Real fires or central heating?
Heater. Most wood makes my nose feel funny. Although now that there’s a metal post in my nose, who cares?

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Also, I feel like

You'll never make me leave
I wear this on my sleeve
You wanna follow something
Give me a better cause to lead
Just give me what I need
Give me a reason to believe

Friday, October 21, 2005

So I feel like

At the end of the world
Or the last thing I see
You are
Never coming home
Never coming home
Could I?
Should I?
And all the things that you never ever told me
And all the smiles that are ever ever...
Ever...

Get the feeling that you're never
All alone and I remember now
At the top of my lungs in my arms she dies
She dies

At the end of the world
Or the last thing I see
You are
Never coming home
Never coming home
Could I?
Should I?
And all the things that you never ever told me
And all the smiles that are ever gonna haunt me
Never coming home
Never coming home
Could I?
Should I?
And all the wounds that are ever gonna scar me
For all the ghosts that are never gonna catch me

If I fall
If I fall down

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

On Silence

Brian asked a good question on my blog this evening: Why, in 2003, when my former church's youth project was shut down, did I not say anything about it? I had been posting on progress regularly, and then... Nothing. Silence. I'm here to answer his question and hopefully address my general periods of silence.

To begin at the beginning: I started a blog. This blog was my first true journal. Before that, I had written poetry, stories, brief vignettes, and rarely, a chronicle of an actual event. I liked blogging, though. It gave me an audience, it let me communicate with people I might have left out entirely otherwise, and it was free of censorship.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!UNTIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I learned that our blogs were being censored. Supervised. Eyes were on us. Suddenly, something that I had thought of as honest, innocent and expressive became a source of tension. Even when I'm not doing anything wrong, I DON'T WANT PEOPLE WATCHING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I get a little touchy. So anyway, that explains my first silence; why I didn't throw fits about everything falling apart. I didn't want to bring up the lies, the arguments, the hypocrisy, the absolute fear of losing control... I took the more diplomatic route and just shut up.

As the months passed, I learned to omit. My blog became a place more for entertainment of the masses than a place for soul-baring honesty, and when things stopped being funny, I lost interest. It got the point where the only things in my life that were important were highly controversial, and rather than make life miserable for the four people who had become my family, I again chose to keep my mouth shut. I wasn't sure what I wanted, who I was becoming, what I was willing to give up, what I might need to fall back on...

The one thing I had learned by that time was not to burn bridges, especially ones you might need in your escape from death. ("We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that our eyes once watered.") Anyway, I was desperate to cling to both parts of my life, and the last thing I wanted to do was TALK about it under supervision.

So I wrote almost nothing for more than a year. I'm finally to the place where I feel like I'm almost a whole person again, so my musings have (rarely, but often enough) been finding their way onto screen or paper. We'll see where things go from here. I hope that I have learned that this is my place, regardless of who might read it. I hope I am clear enough on my decisions that I can withstand judgment and criticisms. Eh. We can all dream.

"Sing for Absolution," Muse

Lips are turning blue
A kiss that can't renew
I only dream of you
My beautiful
Tiptoe to your room
A starlight in the gloom
I only dream of you
And you never knew
Sing for absolution
I will be singing
Falling from your grace
There's nowhere left to hide
In no one to confide
The truth runs deep inside
And will never die
Lips are turning blue
A kiss that can't renew
I only dream of you
My beautiful
Sing for absolution
I will be singing
Falling from your grace
Our wrongs remain unrectified
And our souls won't be exhumed

Regarding Work, Rules and Wireless

So just when I think I've got a way to stay in touch with everyone, my work's network admin decided not to let us access myspace.com anymore. They've already blocked our access to our email servers if they're not company email... Bleh. Stupid.

So that's why I'm ignoring anyone who's currently trying to get ahold of me on myspace.

In other news, Ben and I are going to get wireless at the house. Soon. Ish. I think. *sighs* It's on the to-do list, at least.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

On Proper Spelling

I begin to despair for modern humanity. I'm sure there must have been a time when people valued their education enough that they bothered to at least pay attention and then remember what they learned! Lately it seems as though no one can spell properly. This afternoon, in my copious downtime here at work, I was reading through guest comments on our GSS surveys (and yes, we DO read those), and I did not find a single one that did not contain some sort of major error.

These people must have no pride...

I mean, honestly, to have graduated from high school (and indeed, many of them had graduated from college: "Dr. So and So," etc.) and not be able to differentiate between "their there they're" and company is just atrocious. It just takes a little paying attention and perhaps a little effort.

****ADDENDUM AND DISCLAIMER****
This bitchy diatribe has nothing to do with and is not intended to be directed toward those who have viable learning differences that make the written word a hurdle to be cleared, neither is it intended to scold those who just don't like to read and write--this is for those who make no effort. You drive me insane.

I GOT TICKETS FOR DCFC!!!

WOOO HOOOOOO!!!!!!! Andre called this afternoon to say he got tickets for the Santa Clara show! I'm so completely excited... *purrs*

Let me try and say this intelligently... I'm going to go see the band who, for me, encompasses the experience of being

WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! I GOT TICKETS!!!!!!!!!!!

Friday, October 14, 2005

Homogenization

All right, so I've decided to just give it up. I can't take the constant self-imposed pressure to keep my blog looking good. David, I love you forever, and thank you for helping me remake my blog at least three times, but I just can't do it anymore. Now it's clean and tidy and very low-maintenance. It doesn't look too bad, does it now? And if it does, is it still easy to navigate? Eh... Well. Let me know, all.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

The strangest thing happened

I arrived home from Jeremiah's around 12:30 last night. Ben had been home from work for about an hour, but he had been playing his computer game, which accounted for the fact that I was the first one to notice it: ANTS. They had come in through the open bedroom window and crawled into India's cage, where they were methodically hauling LIVE MEALWORMS up the sides of her cage and back to wherever the hell they came from. Now, the worst of it was poor India trying to shake them off of her. I picked her up out of the cage and held her as my brave Ben placed borax around the cage (and yes, we do know that we have to replace her sand, etc now). He then helped me jury-rig a cage for her using some extra cage supplies we try to have on hand, a plastic bin and some paper towels as substrate. I FELT AWFUL. Really, though, I didn't know what else to do. The mealworms seemed to be suffering greatly, so I removed them from the cage with some feeder tongs and drowned the mealworms and the ants all together. It was a moment, I admit.

Ah, life was exciting. When we finally were able to retire for the evening, I sat there thinking that this was nothing compared to having a 3-year old with a severe case of the flu, and thinking, again, that maybe I'm really not cut out to be a mother.... which lasted about three minutes.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Another Thing

What I learned I rejected but I believe again
I will suffer the consequence of this inquisition
If I jump in this fountain, will I be forgiven
We all had our reasons to be there
We all had a thing or two to learn
We all needed something to cling to
So we did

Sunday, October 09, 2005

For Bethany

"Love Song," 311

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again

However far away, I will always love you
However long I stay, I will always love you
Whatever words I say, I will always love you
I will always love you

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am free again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am clean again

However far away, I will always love you
However long I stay, I will always love you
Whatever words I say, I will always love you
I will always love you

...that about sums it up....

"Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn."

--Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"

"Baba," Alanis Morissette

I've seen them kneel with baited breath for their rituals
I've watched this experience raise them to pseudo higher levels
I've watched them leave their families in pursuit of your nirvana
I've seen them coming to line up from switzerland and america

How long will this take, Baba?
How long have we been sleeping?
Do you see me hanging onto every word you say?
How soon will I be holy?
How much will this cost, guru?
How much longer till you completely absolve me?

I've seen them give their drugs up in place of makeshift altars
I've heard them chanting "Kali Kali!" frantically
I've heard them rotely repeat your teachings with elitism
I've seen them boasting robes and foreign sandalwood beads
I've seen men overlooking God in their own essence
I've seen their upward glances in hopes of instant salvation
I've seen their righteousness mixed without loving compassion
I've watched you smile as the students bow to kiss your feet

Give me strength all knowing one
How long 'til enlightenment?
How much longer 'til you completely absolve me?

Saturday, October 08, 2005

About Bella

Bella is our oldest leopard gecko. She's a complete sweetheart, even according to those people who may not think that a lizard makes the most appealing pet. The other day, Ben was walking by her cage, and she looked up and walked closer to where he was. I was watching this and said, "Look, she wants attention." So he opens her cage and lowers his hand into it. She raised her little hand and grabbed his hand, looking up at him adoringly....

God, it was the cutest thing I've ever seen. Leopard geckos are one of two lizard species (green iguanas being the other) who have the capability to recognize and show affection for their keepers, and Bella is indeed affectionate. The baby, India, has started to become more affectionate. The other day she let me hold her. She remained fairly calm, and I only kept her out of her cage for a minute or two. After that she seemed to be more comfortable with me. We'll see....

I love all of my pets. Oh, yeah.

Still on Sigur Ros

So the lead singer from Sigur Ros, Jonsi, plays his guitar with a cello bow. If that doesn't make you want to go out and get their new album, Takk, then... Well. I mean, then there's just no hope for you, is there?

Really though, this is some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard. It's kind of weird for me to recommend them to people, because I feel so deeply about their music that I almost don't want to know if people don't like it. It's crossed that funny line where you might hurt me by not liking this stuff. So here's a plan: get the music, listen to it, and don't tell me unless you like it. That might work.

Also, another one of those hidden gems of the modern music world, Iron and Wine, put out a CD called "Woman King," and I highly recommend it. It's like nothing else he's ever put out (except for the CD's one "vintage" track, "My Lady's House,") but I love it. It's quite powerful; one of those albums that follows a theme in a few directions. I think those of you who have previously shared my taste in music *cough* DAVID*cough* will be punishing yourselves by not at least checking out these albums.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Just so I can say I've been posting...

News:

I went to see Sigur Ros on their tour for "Takk," and it was the most amazing concert I've been to. (Of course, Death Cab on the 11th should be something...) Jonsi using a cello bow to play the guitar (traditional for him, oddly enough) was worth the whole thing. The house gave them something like a 10 min. standing ovation, which they more than deserved. I cried. Yeah. In public. *sighs* I couldn't help it. They're just... *shiver*

I have the fabric, pattern, and seamstress for my wedding dress. Yay! The hard part's over. Now it's just having pins stuck into me and panicking that I should just go ahead and lose ten pounds. I might do that anyway since we've starting buying all of our food at Trader Joe's. Woo hoo!

I miss a lot of my friends from school. It's so incredibly odd not to be in school this semester and yet... It's okay. It's really okay.

Okay, that ends the news section. *frowns* Not really sure I have anything else to say. It's my best friend's birthday, and I am grateful that she is alive. I'm at work, and I am grateful that I have a job. I am going home later, and I am grateful that I have a home...

Oh, one more thing that's news: I'm (hopefully) recovering from being very ill. (Internal bleeding, etc.) I'm supposed to have tests to figure out what's wrong, but I can't really afford the $600.00 to have them done. Hhmm. Something must be meant to happen. Everyone please send me positive thoughts in whatever medium you choose: prayer, white light, appeals to the Universe... Whatever works for ya will work for me. Thank you!

I walk in the air, between the rain, through myself and back again. Where? I don't know.