they're the cheesiest!

so i just ate about 10 lbs. of food which is way too much for my 5-meals-a-day stomach. will you help my mother clean asian coleslaw and cous cous off my apartment walls when i explode? i promise to leave you a favorite record!

it happens every time i cook, a too rare event in my little kitchen. (it's the dishes that kill it. i long for the days of a dishwasher. i embrace laziness and wastefulness in exchange for that hot steam it leaks and the squeaky clean plates it produces. the payoff if far too grand to ignore). i am but one, but cook always for 2 or 10 or some invisible army that nvr actually appears. my greedy eyes want it all, though, so i eat until i can eat no more. it is a symptom of my shoddy self-control. i forget about it as long as its not before me, but if its there i want it all, whatever it may be.

that's the only way i eat heathy, i think. my grocery cart is the ultimate in leafy greens and wheat bread and tofu and i don't buy processed, packaged foods so much, but set me before a bag of doritos and be prepared for a whirlwind of orange tongue and fingers. i think it propelled me to a resounding win in trivial pursuit last thursday.

exit bummersville

So I ditched this way back in May, right before I went home to visit and I caught a serious case of the bummers.

I had been all jazzed on writing all the time cause I was reading this cheesy self-help book for artist I picked up on the advice of the friend most people would least expect to be into that sort of thing but totes is. I promised to write everyday, and even went so far as to pick the rock that I would clutch tight to remind myself of my goals (nerdface, I know)and thought some sort of public forum that no one actually has read would force me to be more productive, cause practice makes at least better, right?

No dice.

I nvr evn finished the book.

But I've been thinking. And though I am morally opposed to New Year's resolutions, as I believed from the deepest parts of me you should make changes when they need to be made, not when some manufactured holiday tells you to, now seems as good of time as any to start things up again.

I've been thinking about old friends and future friends, and old plans and future ones, and taking hold of the fact that it's not going to get any easier or less heart-stoppingly scary if I don't do anything about it.

So this is a little step I guess.

hangover medicine

i would really like someone to bring me nachos.

i drank too much last night and danced in high high heels i spray painted gold.

i made my friends listen to songs on my ipod before we all fell asleep on a hard, small futon.

i got a back massage from a poet with a girlfriend + it was creepy but i didn't stop him because back massages are nice.

i reaffirmed my hatred for poets that act like poets + say things like "i think poetry will save the world" + truly believe they will open me to a whole new world if i will just show up for their small town open mic poetry night when really i will just be a little embarassed for them.

i think some poets may be brilliant, but most of them are just boring

but mostly, i would really just like someone to bring me nachos.

new store, used dress, $8

I spilled chocolate soy milk on an old dress yesterday while looking at a photoblog of the most rich, colorful photos of a portland man's daily life. i hadn't thought about the dress in years, in fact have never worn it, but was briefly overwhelmed by the memory of when i bought the dress. maybe it was looking at another person's memories that triggered my own.

the tag is still on the dress, a gauzy pale blue thing with tiny polka dots, round buttons up the chest, a white peter pan color and white cuffs at the end of long sleeves (very pre-surgery courtney love): the new store $8.

the new store was the first genuine thrift store i had been in, and i can still picture it. dark, wood panneled, bright light from the open door filtering through the dust rising from the old clothes, the unmistakable 'body odor + grandma + must' smell of a used clothing store that is now so comfortingly familiar. i was thrilled.

i didn't wear the dress because kinderwhore doesn't really work on a 15-year-old girl who still looks like she's in kindergarten (i didn't grow breasts or an ass or confidence until college). but buying the dress at all was important. it marked my first brush with underground culture; the realization that the downtown art crowd weren't birthed by some unholy union of coffee + cigarette + unimpeachable snobbery. they actually bought their tattered hipster shit in stores that i could enter. the closest i had come before that was sacks of goodwill t-shirts and dark jeans, converse and the wrong doc martin boots in 8th grade (the soft, sueded ones instead of the shiny black ones).

people always assume that since i grew up in olympia, i experienced k records + the riot grrl revolution first hand. truth is, i was just as clueless and alienated as any kid in the suburbs. the whole downtown scene scared me. not because it was so weird or transgressive, but because i wanted to be a part of it so badly and didn't know how.

i was vaguely aware that some sort of "indie culture" existed, but didn't know anyone that was a part of it or how i could approach it. i certainly couldn't do it on my own. i was incredibly shy + kind of a pollyanna. so instead, i read books + did my homework on time + sometimes let my shitty friends cheat off my papers (they'd give me pens that made thick black strokes so they could see my answers better). i played soccer constantlyh + took bit parts in plays + scribbled strange drawings in my notes + couldn't decide what cd's to buy at the used record store. i drank beer with the punx + turned down pot from the theater crowd. i went to concerts backstage at the capital theater friends i didn't like + felt lonely + stared at the kids i wish i could talk to.

the dress didn't really change anything, but it made those kids a little less foreign.

a co-worker recently asked me what i was like in high school. i told him and he said he wasn't surprised: no one in high school can care so little about what people think, he said. no believes me anymore when i tell them i'm shy.

in a way i guess this move has been good for me. with all my free time and loose ideas about the future, i'm discovering girl punx + riot grrls + dreaming of my girl band, inspired by the slits, kleenex, bikini kill, penelope huston of the avengers. (i remember my lesbian friends playing me l7 in 8th grade, i think. i hated it.) i will teach myself to play guitar badly as soon as i can afford the cheap guitar, though sometimes i'm afraid i'm about 10 years too late. is 24 too old? i wish i would have learned this all years ago.

so when my first niece reaches 12 or 13 or 15, i will take her to the new store and help her find that awful, $8 used dress.

bridge to terabithia

i have decided to re-read all the childhood novels i once loved.

i went for a walk in the woods today and could not stop thinking about 'bridge to terabithia,' but all i could remember was a girl a boy a fantasy in the woods a crush on a teacher who wore eye makeup but no lipstick. it made me cry mrs. dorian's class once and i was embarassed a little, but not too much because i was only 8 or 9.

in a fit of royal tennenbaums obsession, i re-read 'from the mixed up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler' over christmas, but that doesn't count because it was never a childhood obsession. i don't think i finished it when i was a little girl. i remmber thinking it was boring.

i was supposed to be on a date with a husky named lula today, but she was too lazy to get in the car even. dumped by a dog!

i went with a notebook instead. there was no one around and i took off my shirt so i could feel the sun on my back while i wrote.

mostly i just got bug bites in awkward places.

nature = beautiful vile

to re-read:

island of the blue dolphins
hatchet
treasure island?
are you there god? it's me, margaret
bridge to terabithia

obsessing

i am obsessssssssssed with music blogs.

downloading is totally 90s era music theft.

even my dead grandma has heard of itunes.

you must join the new wave.

other obsession = prince pretending to be a woman on vanity 6 records, keeping a notebook with me always, ginger ale, $1/lb clothing, obsessing

girl at war

the other day a friend declared me a lost soldier.

i have been gone for sixth months + one week... a city girl paused in the country, where every time you enter the room at least one person stares at you with equal parts curiosity and thinly veiled horror.

no shows. no art. no death disco lift yr skirts + grind til dawn.

i came here to write — girl reporter. while most of my friends languish in bars + bands, i am actually using my degree (for what that's worth). filling out my taxes this year i panicked, minor crisis, when i had to write in my occupation. i could not decide whether to put writer or reporter. reporter is technically correct, but i put writer instead. i am bound enough at work that i leapt for any tiny amount of freedom to declare myself. my little temper tantrum to assert that i am an artist, a member of the creative class, the underground, the not out of touch.

i'm sure the irs bees will take my weighty decision to heart.

perhaps i was just trying to convince myself.

it was but one of many times the fear gripped me that i will forever be constrained to writing weather stories + school news, that what i decide today will label me forever. my job is good, one where i get away with writing nearly anything at a respected paper in a town they call a city, but i wither a little every time "not tolerated" replaces "anathema" or i must have an hour-long conversation about what euphemism we will use for "cunt."

i am a girl at war.

glandelinia

i have only just begun