Timecard

Its funny to me that whenever I'm trying to think of a song, in my head I visually look through the stacks at the Record Exchange, trying to remember where I used to file what. I mean, it's not the worst system, it's alphabetical.





Friday: at Bac with Tara, got the Pad Thai which is what I always get because that's what I do, I find one dish at every place and I just order that every time. I would like to know the number of times in the past ten years I've ordered chicken fried rice from Johnny Mango's, no cucumbers, extra lime sauce. It's probably like ten million and two. After dinner, we went to my mom's house to play with the chicks, and Tara put one to sleep in her hand by squishing it. Which makes it sound like she killed it, with her heavy crushing palm, but in fact if you are something light and fluffy, you like to be reminded of heavier creatures sitting on you and keeping you warm, so you go to sleep automatically. That is a true statement that can be applied to multiple life forms.

Saturday: went to Kelly and Krista's joint birthday party. I got there late, because I do that, I get to places late. The other day I was meeting Jere somewhere, and I texted him where I was, but he didn't even bother to check his text because he assumed I would be running late. Anyway, wore sequins, I like to do that the most these days. Spent a large amount of time talking about places and things I hadn't thought about for years, like the Ledges, and psychic vampires, and Brunswick. Turns out that many of the things that shouldn't exist actually take place in one of the places I know don't exist. I Was heartened to learn that I now had a large amount of friends, the majority, who had to have psychic vampires explained to them, that's nice. I've been in weird places in my life. Look, here is the easiest explanation. They are terrible boring people who kill every mood or room they walk into and somehow they have turned that into a delusional belief in their ability to feed off life energy, or some shit like that. Jesus, people are fucked up. They are capable of believing anything.But I guess that's what we get for allowing religion to be socially acceptable.




Sunday: Went to meet Sarah's new dog, Maurice. Afterwards I went to the Grovewood and drank some wine and read Edward Albee at the bar. That place is really more of a restaurant, so I felt a little out of place, but hey, I bought food. I haven't had dinner by myself like that in a while. You'd think at 31 I would be better at it. Then went to the cafe arts collinwood, which will forever be called the Waterloo in my head and really thats for no good reason, for a reading. I got a little lit there, and there was a very drunk guy who sat next to me who made a big deal out of having to go drink someone under the bar at another bar, then left to go do that. He was wearing track pants and had been drinking at the bar down the street from my house on the other side of town. I don't remember much about the readings except there was a story about giving birth to a dead baby that was very long. And I don't mean to belittle this woman's pain, but when you are a little fucked up, and it's nice outside, and it's been a good day? A 20 minute story about something like that is just...well its not okay.



Monday: Jere and I went to the film festival downtown. The first movie was at 9:20am, which is just a ridiculous time to start watching a movie, and even worse the one I chose was this movie about an old woman who has spent the last decades of her life only reading and translating Dostoevsky. And I had to know what that actually did to a person. It was a great movie. But we needed coffee badly when it was done. Went to a shorts program, and then to a bar to drink a little. The last movie we went to was Paradise Hotel, which was this documentary about these Gypsies living in this cold war style concrete slab apartments complex, which had over the last 20 years become completely gutted, so that it really literally was only these empty concrete box rooms one after another. All the plumbing and appliances had been stolen or sold years ago. They were living in caves basically. There was no electricity, so a few of the rooms were hooked up with generators. A mother bathed her kid by pouring plastic bottles of water over him. Everyone just threw their garbage out the window, and there was a moat of garbage around the building, which were then picked through by the men collecting bottles and horses grazing on it. Another older man paid these other guys to pick the okra that was growing by the fields outside on the empty hills surrounding this place. This young woman had slept with this guy, and therefore since she was a virgin, he had to come and take her away from her mother's house in a horse and cart, with her mother screaming after her not to go with the Gypsy! Well she told a story about how the first three days she was there in his apartment, she couldn't eat because it was so filthy. But they were all so happy and smiling as they are telling the camera about living there, because, you know, they're Gypsies! That's what they do. Smile about everything.



In completely unrelated news, I really really want to go to Gypsy, West Virginia. Like, right away.



Tuesday: I don't quite know. I'm pretty sure that's the day I met Laura up at Deagans. Which, frankly, is not a place I go to a lot. The staff is nice and the food is good, but there's something about the crowd in there that gives me the willies. And there's nothing obviously bad about them. It's not like ostensibly full of douchebags or anything. But still. It makes me nervous. Also I really hate parking in the large lots that Lakewood has all over. Also, for no apparent reason.

Wednesday: Went to see another movie at the festival, which was this Polish film about being occupied by the Nazis, only the family is three sisters who are hiding out in their very large well off Polish aristocracy country estate. It is about as awful as it sounds like it should be. I don't know why we didn't figure it out when we read the description, but I suspect we picked it while drinking Monday. Anyway, it was 2 hours long and Jere actually left before it was over, which is shame because the ending was SO BAD, I feel like he really missed out. Later, it snowed heavily, the last hurrah of winter, and we drank whiskey, and I hung out with a friend and stayed up listening to old country vinyl late.



Thursday: Oh! The Books! Were at the Beachland, and I sort of wavered about going since I hadn't had sleep in two days, but then did anyway, and it was fantastic. Pavel from tango was there too, so I tagged along with him, and when we walked in, all these little hipster kids were sitting on the floor of the Ballroom, listening to the opening act. But Pavel refused to sit on the floor for the Books, so during the break, he positioned himself right at the front of the stage, defiantly blocking the floor people. Then as new people came in, they all stood right by the stage too, so then eventually all the floor people were forced to get up, and it was sort of war for a minute. Are you a stage person or do you sit with the floor people? That show was so good.



Friday: Went for drinks with a friend, so he could tell me about his friends bachelor party in Belgium the week before. Ended up talking crudely about snaggletoothed prostitutes and various other sexual proclivities. I'm personally of the opinion that when given the option in Bruges, one should always get a dance from the snaggletoothed young woman in the red booth. Felt myself getting sick, that just a little high feeling and that little nagging cough?

Saturday: full on sick. Went looking in my cabinets for Tylenol PM, and found three bottles of the stuff, cause I just keep losing it and buying more. Ended up doing the whole "take 2 pills and drink a pot of coffee to counteract it" routine. Later went to have dinner with Jay and Dawn and Thomas. Its interesting to think about how your friends decorate their living spaces, especially those friends you've known a while and seen move. Tara, for instance, has a very distinctive put together dark wood bright walls look, which she assembles miraculously in a day. Buddy likes things spare and clean. Marty likes a little bit of clutter, the line of sight broken up. Jay and Dawn lived together so long, they both sort have the same style, though Jay is a little bit more clay and Dawn is a little bit more silk. Now that they are in different places, its funny to see how much their homes still resemble each other. We were supposed to be doing artsy stuff, but instead we just sat around and talked. I was getting progressively more and more sick, coughing constantly. I drove home through E. 55th and was totally impressed by how the city fixed up all the potholes. Got home and went straight to bed, but couldn't sleep. I got a fever, and kept getting up through out the night, in the middle of strange constant dreams, to drink water and brush my teeth obsessively. I hate the way my mouth tastes when I'm sick.

Sunday: Woke up with that cold sweat light headed clear feeling that washes over you when a fever breaks. As if you've been bathed in cold water. But I mean, for instance, I just enjoyed a Chris Isaak song, so I have to still be pretty sick.

Places In Ohio That Do Not Actually Exist No Matter Who You've Slept With That Claims to Have Grown Up There. They Are Lying. And Probably A Spy.

Broadview Heights
Seven Hills
Middleburg Heights
Willowick
Pepper Pike
Russell Township
Boston Mills
Independence
Linndale
Grafton
Sheffield Lake
Bay Village
Aurora
Wooster
Olmsted Falls
Parma Heights
Brunswick
Highland Heights
Elyria

Edit: Reminderville? It's like they are not even trying to sound real.
Edit 2: Oh Oh Oh HOCKING HILLS
Edit 3: Hunting Valley, Sagamore Hills, Geauga County, Oakwood, Wadsworth for the win..

Family Visit

So these are two cameras my dad had sitting around, back in the days when he was going to put a dark room in the basement bathroom. It's nice to have things in common with your family. I mean, all of us as a group, we're pretty similar anyway. But my two aunts from Washington stopped by yesterday on their way to Niagra Falls, my dad's sisters, and I haven't seen Aunt Mary since I was a very little girl, I know next to nothing about her. She brought out her new field camera to show me, and then Dad broke out these two, and they all started talking about their dad's photography and cameras, and it was just pretty nice. Then Dad agreed to let me take the one on the right home, and it needs to be cleaned up a lot, but how cool would it be to learn how to use that? So there's a new thing to do. It never occurred to me that my grandfather was into photography, and my aunt, in addition to my dad. That it could be like being into science fiction, or being big readers, or not liking ketchup.

We're not very close with our extended family, I haven't seen most of my aunts or uncles since childhood. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that (Carrie says my greatest skill is tolerance? That came up recently. We'll discuss that further another day, I have counter arguments.). We all have separate lives. They keep in touch a little. But the dynamic of watching my dad or my mom with their siblings is rare enough to be watched closely. Sometimes when he's talking to one of them, I see little peeks of Nick and Carrie and I. Funny how even when you don't grow up with it, the family patterns maintain. Also funny, how you forget that you are all grown from the same weird lifestyle tree, until you hear stories about your cousins doing odd things like becoming a doctor at 39 in the Caribbean when the kettle corn business didn't work out, or studying linguistics in Astoria and being really into RPGs, and it's like, well of course we're sort of the same, even from all the way across the country. Our parents grew up together after all. You know what's a real weird world? The destinies of middle class liberal family kids. There's some odd shit that happens there.



These are Mom's new chickens. We are going to call them The Survivors. We are not going to elaborate on that. Chickens are apparently all named out after travel trailers. Winnebagos. Wyandottes. Oh, and the white crested Polak. That one's my favorite.

ANTM Cycle 16: Alex is Going to Cut A Bitch One of These Days

Bridget: so I get that Alexandria is recording her commentary for these episodes after the fact, but did they have to record all of them in the big blue hair bow?

Sarah: I know, I hate it

Bridget: because it is making me think of Ms Piggy in Muppet Babies

This week's LiveBlog: The Commercial.

Sarah: what's with the tiny hat?

Bridget: I want that giant silver carp shirt

but yeah, that hat is way too small

Sarah: she's like a French clown

Bridget: like, she's a tiny midget thug

lol

a french midget thug clown

Sarah: "help me open my jar of rainbows!"

Bridget: "life is sad and therefore we drink!"

Sarah: "now ride away with me, on my invisible pennyfarthing!"

Bridget: "the moon is crying"

Bright Eyes

The day Elizabeth Taylor died, everyone woke up in a bad mood. The coffee got spilled, and people didn't wake up next to the people they wanted to, and it snowed in New York, and it was rainy and cold everywhere else. Why were we all such horrible grumpy stained people, crawling out of the muck and mud, our souls tamped down like church candles that burned too long and melted the wax into the thick red industrial carpet? We didn't know it at the time, but obviously the ghost of Virginia Woolf had infected us all in her fury, raging against the setting of her sun. Obviously. She was probably pissed off that its impossible to find a youtube clip of National Velvet that some fan girl hasn't set to awful modern country music.

I remember a conversation once where someone told me, or I told them, that Liz's purple eyes were a sign she was an ancient Egyptian alien? That seems about right.

Twitter leaves a weird imprint of you when you die.

@DameElizabeth Hold your horses world. I've been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself. 8:17 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

@DameElizabeth No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself. 8:19 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

@DameElizabeth Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all. 8:20 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

Ice Cream: How Sweet Moses Gave Us Sugar Comas

It's kind of neat when you get to do things like go with your friends to preview ice cream parlors, though I have to wonder if there has ever actually been a bad review of an ice cream parlor? I know it's only March, but ice cream right? Ice Cream is my heroin. I had pretty much kicked the habit completely all winter. You don't understand how impressive that is. But like, I can't turn down a free sundae. I mean seriously.

So this is Sweet Moses, which is an ice cream parlor at Gordon Square. It's being opened by this very nice man who got out of corporate work and was like "dude, I wanna open an ice cream parlor" and then did just that. Which is impressive. Most of you will never do that. I will probably never do that. His family was all aproned up and working as well, and they were all really sweet, especially his son. The staff was fresh faced and rosy, and the whole place had that shiny clean new feeling of the just polished. There's a beautiful bar to sit at in front of a huge mirror with bright lights, the soda fountains in front of you and the whole array of syrups and mixers and chocolates. All three of us got turtle sundaes, cause who picks anything else? Soulless jerks that's who. Or, I guess, people allergic to nuts.

The thing about Camilla and Sarah and I is that we are sort like Sex in the City, if Sex and the City was actually about a bunch of weird girls with raccoons paws who cannot resist popcorn.

We had a lot of little free candy samples of the bark and ice cream and caramel corn and white cheddar corn and jesus, we all went into sugar shock like an hour after. Camilla later took way too much money out of the ATM and stole a shark pinata. I later had a conversation on the phone in which I'm pretty sure I sounded like a 10 yr old Brownie scout. I did in fact twirl my hair for the rest of the afternoon. The whole damn day became like a run through of Bye Bye Birdie, only instead of the phone call song, just flash text messages across the screen. Sugar high 30 yr olds, god. For instance, look at the condition of our table when we left. Remember, none of us have kids.

Popcorn on the floor even.

C: Oh my god I have diabetes now.
S: We all have diabetes now.
C: My feet are going numb.

So okay, how was everything right? Well Sweet Moses makes the best caramel corn ever. I'm not exaggerating. It's pretty amazing. Just go there first to get that. And in the bag of samples we got to take home The English Toffee was incredible. Really melty on your tongue, like the maple candies you get from Burton during the sap season, but you know, made of pure butter. The ice cream itself made me think it was soft serve, it was that kind of creamy, and the sundae all together was huge, definitely something to share. The homemade hot fudge was pretty good . The white cheddar corn was great. I know it sounds like I'm just extolling their virtues cause they gave me free sugar, but let's face it, if you're going to think about opening an ice cream place on the corner of Detroit and W.68th, you'd better know what you're doing. And I'm just saying, they seem like they know what they're doing. The only thing I wasn't really into were the peanut butter sandwiches, with fillings like nutella, marshmallow, and bacon. But I'm not really a peanut butter girl anyway, and I guess if I was a kid and someone bought me a peanut butter nutella sandwich for a snack, I'd be pretty happy. It'll be a great place to walk to after a movie in the summer. Babysitters and first daters who aren't going for the drunk first kiss, take note.


So yes, thumbs up on Sweet Moses. Although they need more stuff on their walls. Hopefully as they become part of the neighborhood that will start to fill up, cause it seems like they're running that place with love, and usually that leads to collections. Which will probably be a bunch of art I won't like, but that's how you can really tell when places are really staying, when they get a little clutter. I personally like the old Cleveland prints they have up now, they just need like, more of them.



Sweet Moses officially opens up this Saturday. Another sign that finally Spring is here and I am never ever ever going to wear a coat again.

What's Kinda F-ed is That I will be 49 when this happens again

The moon, wandering alone between the stars and the clouds, every 18 years can no longer resist the pull of the Earth, and has to come closer. Just for a visit right? Just a quick romp and back to business as usual. It doesn't, like, mean anything. It's not like the moon is looking for anything serious. The moon has other things to think about after all, like its wide circle of friends, and all those various moon projects it's got going on.

And after all, there is the serious danger that the earth will swallow the moon whole, just pull it crashing into pieces in the center of it, and then everything will explode and look, that could totally happen at any second. You don't know the plan of the universe. Sure it all seems like clockwork and surety, but if everything's a cycle, and it's all in little increments of years, but then those increments get longer and longer the bigger you go, then how do you know that some unknown crazy millennium long cycle isn't going to come due, like, tomorrow? How do you know for sure that it isn't the very end of the cycle right now? There's a beginning and an end, and we have no idea where either one is. Things are ending and beginning all around us all the time.

Everyone here on earth is walking around in their own private cycles, and they keep bumping into other people's cycles willy nilly (I see a mass of people all wearing hula hoops, wandering around aimlessly in bumper car dance patterns, that's us). That seems to keep working. Only very once in a while does something get severely derailed, and then the huge human system just starts to work the wound clean and closed again. Like ants. Or blood cells coagulating and skin cells regrowing. So the moon tells itself that hey maybe it doesn't matter what happens, you just gotta do what you feel like, what the universal forces are telling you to. The moon is a little bit of a fatalist, though if you corner it one night at a party, it will furiously deny it. The moon is made of contradictions.

Also it's patently incapable of not being in a story. Like, if something just makes sense at the time, then why try to resist the tentacles of light rising up from the great glowing cities on the dark continents? It's so pretty and sparkly and the moon had forgotten how fun it was to get as close as possible to the bulbs, until it can see spots and colors on the back of it's moon eyelids.

And then rush back again, a moon rabbit, to sense and sensibility. Having adventures.

Thought While Driving

There are things that I should do,
And there are ways that I should be.
If I pull off half of them, 
I'll be a better me.

ANTM Cycle 16: PORN

Well, so I just got home from the incredibly awesome Elephant 6 Holiday Tour, which was gold and crystal and warm worn t-shirts, and ended on this even more amazing moment, and the whole thing was just pure and wonderful and beautiful. Scott Spillane has the best voice of all voices, and I got to hear Glue live, during which I mostly just closed my eyes and stood in the middle of the room. Did you know you can be completely alone when you close your eyes? There was a snowball thrown at the moon, and a parade of horns, Tara danced a bunch in her cute stripey sweater, and I said hi to lots of people and there were lots of hugs. David brought the French Nouveau looking beauty from La Petit with him, and Lauren bought me an Elf Power LP which I don't have a turntable for but the next boy I date will own a turntable for sure, and it was magical. Except for the part where my sister and Jere made out with the same girl at different times. We are going to gloss over that story. Everyone I know is a slut. Carrie freaked me out by telling me I had not one but actually two hickeys on my neck (it wasn't true). Some girl he made out with stole Jere's phone.

Driving home in a sequin dress causes all these little reflections from the street lights, and they bounce into your eyes, and make you think there are cops behind you the whole ride home. When I started the stretch down Lorain towards my street, there were multiple lonely boys in green, stumbling home alone from the bars at Kamm's. Way to be survivors boys.

So a wonderful night, and I've forgotten that tomorrow's Friday already, and as I sit here typing this the wind is picking up outside and all my windows are open to let in the sounds.

Which is why I almost feel bad giving you the link to this, the live blog from this week's ANTM.

Sarah: why is Miss Jay dressed like Dorothy Parker?


You should probably just listen to this song a few dozen times instead.

The Bare Quiet Places are Great

So I think my excuse for this past week is going to be that it was the very last winter week, and winter basically broke me in the end. I drank too much. I behaved like I was 22. It was either one of my worst weeks in a while, or one of my best, it's sort of up in the air. Point is, right, Spring.



Usually Jere is a little picky about where we go on Mondays. He wants it to be an adventure for sure, he doesn't like being stuck in the car with no purpose. I like no purpose. Maybe just a vague idea, like a direction. But even he was so caged in, when I was like, hey listen I just want to drive out to the country, cool? He was immediately on board. He said his goal for the day was to see something alive. Anything.

Which is exactly where we all are. For one week this was a city of fucking stir crazy fuckers.I mean, yeah we've all been sick of it for a while, but there's a difference between just being sick of it, or literally starting to act in sporadic irrational twitches. It's the city jitters.


So we drove to Wellington, cause I hadn't been out to the reservoir in a while. The drive there is so familiar to me, but it's all very different when you are the one driving. Every time I saw another building I recognized it all over again. We stopped at the weird gas station so I could piss, and I even remembered where the gum was and that really overly cheerful woman was working. We saw a Russian Poet wandering in the town square. The stretches where it's nothing but wet field and shrubs and silos, those are my favorite places. And like, every part of Ohio has a different color blue. There was some photographer filming the geese at the lake. I saw one small dead silver fish in the water, lapping up against the rocks. The geese were pairing up and being assholes. We walked around on the slightly squishy muddy grass for a little bit. A guy on a bike rode by with a pair of matching copper colored hounds running in front of him, off into the woods, after each other. Oh outside is so nice. Outside is just the best. I forget every year, and then it's like OH RIGHT THIS. I start typing in caps a lot, that sort of thing.



On the way back we stopped in at the Wellington City Hall and went inside, cause it was always there and I'd never been. Only it wasn't like a city hall at all. They had gutted most of it for a gym. There were kids playing basketball in there. And two narrow wooden staircases that took you up into a few redone offices, but everything was so small. It was like being in a dollhouse. The dimensions were shiny and stiff and made for much smaller men than a 7 ft tall Egyptian and fat faced me. But pretty, like a Lutheran Church. One of the old ones.





I got it into my head I wanted to drive to Norwalk, because really I wanted to go further to Bellevue and see the trains, but I knew we didn't really have time for that, cause we had city plans. But we did go to Norwalk, just to drive the main street a minute. Notice how at every small town, you think to yourself, hey, I could totally live here, this might be nice?

There's no counterpoint to that. I could totally live there. It might be nice.

But I mean, I'm probably not going to. This is my thought process every time we cross the city limits "I could totally live here. I love that city hall. Where the fuck would I work?" I mean, my Irish ancestors left the fields for a reason. And boom, there's your St. Patricks Day reference. Done.

Pothole Personals

"its hard to describe myself. every one says that i know. i guess i could be seen as a bad boy"


"I want to meet interesting, open minded, and smart women. Who in joys living life."


"A tolerance of sports would be great and if they played golf.....bonus....although that is not a deal breaker..hah! Doesn't mind a late night pillow chat session. But most importantly, someone that gets me and allows me to get them! "


"People that are cruel and abuse animals are bad in my opinion. I want someone that like animals too. You should want to spend time with me and be affectionate."

Goddamn Middle Name: Updated with Sober Notes

I met Meredith at her apartment between W. 6th and W.9th tonight, the dead zone right? The place that all of us in our right minds avoid, because what's there except shriveled egos and skinny jeans? But apparently enough people go there to tie me up in cop controlled traffic, a clusterfuck of cabs and skinny co-eds running on their stripper heels through the cars, dropping their clutches, and men in collared white shirts standing on the other curbs yelling at them to hurry the fuck up.

Went to a fantastically lovely (watch out, I use the word lovely a lot when drunk it turns out) party at Julie's, a St. Pat's party. Completely forgot to talk to Regina about the Sudan, instead drank green punch and cajoled everyone into smoking and drinking champagne. Met a lovely 26 yr old who just moved here from Williamsburg and hasn't got a clue about how to establish a meaningful existence in the Rustbelt. I mean he's perfectly capable, (He's got the adventure gene.)but only a month in. Cities are a strange thing only a month in. All the boys are mid-20s now, I don't know where the guys my age disappeared to. Probably Chicago. Erin and Julie are lovely girls, their friends were all architects or soccer teammates, and later Meredith and I, driving back from the heights, talked about dorky things we liked, and wearing heels, and living downtown. Oh Heights! Oh Downtown! Oh W. 6th! All the places I will never understand people living, when there are so many other places to live. It's disturbing to sense an existence you can't understand, and driving out of the gated garage, into the apocalyptic mess that is W.6th at 2am, I texted a project partner, "oh this is me when I drunk text I will send you reams of pixels that might mean nothing in the morning, but this! This is what I'm feeling right now! How do I make that happen?" Poor guy. Probably doesn't understand that trying to write something new on command involves being vulnerable in sometimes a horrifically awkward sense, and therefore drunk texts will happen. I end up falling in love with half the world just by trying to find something worth remembering. (This is definitely true) I want to make something perfect so badly that I scar it, and then I want to tell you all about the scar and how ridiculous it is. (I wonder is this is actually true) I just want to be honest all the time about everything, but you all know my name, so I can't. (Totally true, I miss Livejournal and anonymity when it comes to drunk posts. You would hear a lot more about sex it turns out.) What a very long excuse for sending drunk texts. That awful kind of past drunk, where you are sober enough to know better, but riding on the high of the party. The mental drunk stays with you longer than the physical. (I think this whole last part was added to convince my mother I was in fact okay to drive.)

I found a girl's purse on the street, walking lopsided back to the parking garage, and I tried to ask the drunk frat boys in their pressed sweaters and cuffed jeans if they knew the girl whose ID and camera and tampons I was holding, but she was lost in the late night shuffle of hookups, where you run from bar to bar trying to find your friends, I've been there but on much different medication and cock (I don't know exactly what I meant by this, but I had a visual, a vague memory), and on the way out I saw another girl just like her drop her purse in the road too. (like, you could totally make a living just picking up all the purses at 4am on W.6th.) Alexandra Smith, I will try to find you tomorrow, but tonight I just wonder at your existence, and who you might become later, and all the people in the city I have nothing in common with at all. (Also, Alexandra, it's 4pm the next day and I just called your bank to have them give you my number, and you hadn't even canceled the card yet. Which means either a)you think you left it on the party bus, b)you're extremely irresponsible or c)you are kidnapped or dead or otherwise gone. Please don't be dead. Also yes, I totally looked through your pictures.)

Sometimes, like with this run of nonsensical entries (by which I mean boring) lately, I remind myself of that one Dorothy Parker story, but in a completely uncomplimentary way. That one of the Lady's Diary? Where she changes her nail polish constantly and there is always the same troupe of Hungarians? I sound like that.

Also I tried a shamrock shake tonight and it was utterly ridiculously awful, and now I wonder about all of you.

(I got three hours sleep and then went to Andrew's for a birthday brunch for Jere, and Buddy made a pyramid cake and covered it in gold sparkles, with like palm trees and shit. And that new guy was there, which is even more impressive. Hey, meet some strangers at a party, and then when they drunkenly invite you to brunch, actually come despite only having 3 hours sleep himself. I'm like that too, or I try to be. Andrew, Jere, they are too. It's obviously the best way to be.)

At least the snow is pretty, and things are pretty in it

Meeting people who you just never stop talking with. The people who, within 1 or 2 good long conversations, you suddenly find yourself discussing everything you can think of. It used to be we found those conversations at the all night coffee shops, but people get older and have to wake up for work, and forget to be interested in other things, even though inevitably at first it's the talk of ex relationships. Girl or Guy, it always comes up and quickly between new people. Cause let's face it, if you're really introducing yourself to someone, if you're being honest with yourself, those exes are critical phases of your development. You get older, they rack up like chips, becoming maybe the first thing you want to know about that person. How fucked over have you been? How fucked up have you been? What lengths did you go to, and why do you think that was, and what do you think you failed at, are failing at still?

Or perhaps that's just a portion of us. Or maybe that's just how it always happens with me. I mean, there's someone else in the conversation, so it can't just be me. It must happen to them too.

Took notes all night, sipping coffee black with Jameson's, in a little soft tip blue pen in a little blue notebook and my friend drew lots of diagrams and graphs. And jesus, did you ever have a moment where you remembered having all the same stories at one point in your life, a catalog of quaint events that got repeated to boys, and right now you're listening to yourself talk and you realize that the entire catalog has been backlogged and burned and suddenly there's this whole other cache of things you're mentioning. You have somehow lived enough time that now there is a whole 'nother set of stories to tell, that you hadn't even realized were stories until you thought of them, sitting at a wooden booth and wiping burger grease from your fingers as daintily as one can hope to ever complete that awful task.

The bedtime story tonight though is how I drove home from Cedar and Lee tonight, all the long slow way back to the West Side and the safety of a garage. It had snowed a lot more than I thought when we finally left, and it was sticky and feathery. Like, if there's snow powder, than this is snow cotton candy. I cleaned off my car, and almost got hit by some guy backing out of his driveway when I left the parking lot, he just kept backing straight up, and every goddamn conversation with clients I had today flashed through my head, and I swerved just a little and rolled on past safely. Cedar Hill is what scared me, this steep curvy descent, the kind of road that in traffic causes you to judge your space in the lane closely, and in the rain you end up braking the entire way down, just to stay within the speed limit and not rocket down the street. But I coasted down carefully, and everything down Carnegie was fine, white but new.

When I turned onto E.55th, there were no rules anymore, cars just made their way best as they could. Cause the problem with E.55th right now is that it has been beaten apart by potholes. I mean, not little cracks, but huge deep gaping tire eating holes. Big square chunks of collapsed asphalt. It occurs to me that E. 55th might be the chewy poison center, the fault line of Cleveland. Perhaps there is just some chemical burning up from the sewers, eating away the concrete and brick and industry. So you can't stay in your lane, you have to drive with your eyes peeled for shadows and tell tale dips. It is a fucking obstacle course that road. Which is terrible when you are driving it, but the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when you make it past the last one right at the entrance to 490 is hot.

The highway itself I had complete control over, riding on that high from playing the pothole video game. I stopped at Dunkin Donuts to buy coffee for tomorrow morning, having mistakenly bought whole beans at the grocery store and oh my me without my grinder. Everything was empty, the parking lots and streets. The traffic lights continue changing for no one. Driving up to my house, I saw a young guy walking in the street on his cellphone. Dressed in standard issue Northface, red baseball cap, collared shirt. Can't understand why anyone would be walking in the neighborhood on their cellphone in a snowstorm at 1am, but I'm sure it's worth knowing. Meaning, I would like to know please. And I might have actually asked him, but he had turned the corner by the time I parked the car and made my way up the driveway with baby blue steps.

Edit: And all this was what I was doing while earthquakes hit Japan on the other side of the world, and tsunami waves fractured across the Pacific Ocean. A thought that overwhelms me with size.

Seriously though, this song.

The thing to do, when you're feeling blue, is to find someone to go drink with and try to be charming for. Being charming for someone else will remind you quicker than almost anything how you like to dance in the car, and hang out talking to strangers at the bar, and sucking at pool, and watching Rocky Horror Picture Show with the sound off. That's the thing to do. Helpful hints: make sure it is raining outside. Don't wear a coat. When you walk across the parking lot, you should feel the wind in your skirt. Make sure you don't care what you look like. Have someone around who will compliment the color of your nails because it doesn't go with anything else you are wearing. Specifically because of that. Maybe get your haircut right before you go out. Bite your lip a lot. I bite my lip all the time. It probably looks dumb as shit, but I can't help it. These are the things that make you what you are to other people, the way you make eye contact and the gestures you make while smoking your cigarette. Dancing in the car is key to this though, good music in the car is so much more important to our mental states than maybe we acknowledge. Almost, every time I go out, this is the thing that defines the night, what I'm bouncing to while driving in the just slightly chilly Cleveland spring night with the wet reflections all around you, and your cheeks flushed, and your eyes smiling, everything dark and disco around you. Trees shining with rain. Soundtracks. Soundtracks are the key.

The thing is I'm wonderful in the car. Spend anytime driving with me, and you'll like me more than you want to admit. And me, I'm so in love with everything while in the car, I'm in love with everything sometimes. Even after the worst day, put me in a car and drive me somewhere, I'll be back like crackerjack.

Also, This Happened.

International Women's Day

I'm sort of at the top of the pyramid when it comes to being a woman.
I mean, I guess I could always be a heiress or a movie star or an astronaut.
But generally speaking, I'm in the luckiest 1%
I'm unmarried, un-babyfied, employed, living alone and paying my bills and my evenings are free to write, or drink, or sleep with whoever I want, and no one says shit to me. In fact, I publicize all this stuff online, and people read it for fun. I'm (relatively) healthy. When something really bad happens to me, I have about ten million people I can call.

Today I woke up, worked from home, painted my nails, went to the gym, drove my own car back to my own apartment. I didn't have to drive through any military checkpoints. My bra strap was showing, and nobody yelled at me for it.

Nobody but me cares if my apartment is clean. Nobody but me cares what I do tonight.

So, you know, it's all sort of fucking sweet. Look, I just swore online. No one is going to beat me for that later.

My life is goddamn miracle.

And so maybe we make all kinds of witty quips about International Women's Day, like it's funny to us, we'll make a bunch of jokes about it falling on the same day as International Pancakes Day, ect. Because it seems so irrelevant to those of us in our miracles lives, with our miracle strides and prides.

But don't forget, there are people out there who want to take away your birth control. They want to take away the life I have, they think it's sinful and wrong for a woman my age, any age, to have freedom and choice and independence. They keep other women, the ones they have control over, down like chattel. They rape them like inconsequential meat. They mutilate their bodies. They fill their minds with self hatred. They keep them from learning to read or write. They think of women not as people but as possessions. They are everywhere, in this country and all over the world. And it's not just men. It's a way of thinking that has dominated human society for thousands of years, because childbirth is a resource and a way to control and have power.

The thing to not forget today is that there are still Villains. And our miraculous existences, us the first creatures to ever be on this planet in this incarnation, we cannot allow ourselves to believe they don't want to wipe us out, to shame us and enslave us and purge us out of time. We are wrapped up safe here, but it's only through luck of location and class, a fucking genetic dice roll that put our minds in these particular bodies. Which is why we must always fight for Choice. And remember how rare we are.

Wait, What's Going on?

Has been my refrain since Wednesday.

Thursday I met up with Haley and drank so much coffee, I was almost incoherent with the jitterbugs by the end of the night. Started at Sahara, then went to the Prosperity, where I realized the best way to get to know someone is to start off somewhere not quite familiar, and then end up at their favorite bar. This is a true thing, that people open up immensely with that combination, like their bar is a hothouse and they are Easter lilies. Thought about the Happy Dog a lot, about my aversion to it, and it's place in this city, and everyone says the same thing, "oh I like it when it's not so loud" because it's always loud, but that's the thing with hipster centers right, there has to be a reason you don't like it even though you go there. It's a requirement. My reason is avoidance. But I'm stopping that this Spring. This Spring has become the Social Season, and I can't hang out with a lot of people I know and NOT go to the Happy Dog sometimes. It's that place. I vowed so long ago that I would not grow up into one of those older people who has places they don't go because of people they don't like, one of those entrenched denizens of the scene who has old scars they protect. I want all the scars ripped open and healed the way they should be.

Friday, desperately wanted a burrito. Really what I wanted was to be back in Phoenix at a taco truck, but did not have the gas money. Picked up with Chris and went to Mi Pueblo, where the burrito I got had chunks of stewed meat fat in it, and I ended up having to pull that trick where you spit into your napkin because I just couldn't get the gristle down. I cannot play tricks with my mouth, if I don't like it, I can't swallow it. I wanted absolutely everything in that burrito except the gristle, and performed surgery on it later at home. Went to bed early like a good girl, to get up in time for work the next morning.

Saturday, Laura had a haggis night, also Robbie Burns night? You can read about it at her blog, we'll do that. There was this turnip cheese soup that made the table go silent for a few minutes. Which in that group is a minor miracle, to stop the dirty innuendos. The haggis itself was like barley sausage filling, and not scary at all. We all toasted to poems and ate a lot of bread, cookies, beer, meat, ect. It was a thing. Almost everyone there also went out to smoke, which never happens anymore at parties, and we decided it was because the call to try haggis had separated the real people, the ones who are willing to take anything into their body at least once. Andrew made Jenga bread.

Left the dinner party, and it was raining hard. Rte 2 was glass as I drove to the East Side, the highway signs reflecting on the road as perfect as mirrors. Went to Kat's birthday party. She was wearing feathers, Jimi was wearing an ascot, and I felt bad that I didn't recognize Lauren from twitter, but that's a thing, see? I will never recognize you from your icon folks, it won't happen. I don't think of you as real people at all that way, you are all just numbers and pixels and imaginary friends till we talk about mascara and living situations. There were chocolate covered guiness marshmallows, and gift bags with skull candies and mix cds. Sipped champagne and then tried to leave at a reasonable time to drive home, but we went outside it and the rain had turned to snow, a lot of snow. There were icicles on the step railings. Jimi walked us back to our cars like a gentleman. Gentlemen! Always walk the girls back to their cars! I walked in tiny little steps, like I have all winter, as if my feet were bound, because I cannot walk in the snow and ice. I have lost my way for it. I am ridiculous, like a fucking baby bird.

Driving home, I took the long way. The main city streets were empty, and the highway an undisturbed snow field, as if I was the very first person in the world discovering it. Got home safely. Falls happened the next morning.

Slept until 2pm Sunday. Woke up at 10am actually, but then lay there and made the decision that I was for sure not getting out of this bed for at least an hour, then promptly fell asleep again for hours. When I finally got up, there was falling, and then broken-ness, and then picked through the clothes I had left (laundry day some time this week). Could not get the falsie eyelashes off, and looked a little bit like a wanton rag, but that's a Sunday look of a specific ilk. Speaking of ilks, discovered I cannot text "ill" on my phone, it will always correct it to "I'll". Technology has killed the word ill. Met up with Jason at Sullivans, and chatted ourselves through whiskey flights. The bartender told us about his skill at finding hetero-flexibility. They closed early, and we went to Parkview, the place of so many sledding meetups I had yet to go to, and it was adorable. Once again, people just, you know, become something else when they get in their favorite bar. I wonder if I have a bar like that myself. The place where I become a little less diluted.

My car lock was frozen when we left, had to wrangle it for a minute. Finally got in, got home, couldn't go to sleep till 4am. I have no idea why, it just happened. Woke up today though at ten, not hungover at all. Whiskey loves me more than champagne. Which makes me feel like champagne just doesn't appreciate me the way it should. But all the best lovers are the ones who don't need you at all.

Now today, I have laundry, I need a haircut. I'm going to do nothing of any of that, despite once again having plans every day this week and therefore needing to not shirk, and instead I'm taking off for a point on a map, because I just can't stay here anymore. "Here" meaning something larger, as in here this season here this house here this city here this head space here this point of time I've been stuck in since February reared it's ugly head. I went through the urbex boards looking for something new, and it's all the same old buildings I've already conquered, so this year is the year of the Fucking-A Somewhere Else Day Trip. Declared.

ANTM Cycle 16: Bees.

I had a dream last night where I was attacked by a giant black widow spider, that latched its cartoon fangs into my pointer finger, and I couldn't get it off at all. I was hitting it against the wall, and with things, and objects, and it wouldn't die or even just let the fuck go. Surprisingly, this was not a nightmare. When I woke up, the first thing I remembered was the loud crack of the spider armor finally cracking and crushing as I slammed it in a door. It was extremely satisfying.

I suspect I will feel exactly the same way when this season is over.

I know, I totally thought they were leeches first too.

Bridget: It's bees! How do you fuck up bees?

So far this episode I've learned that peanut butter is junk food and crying is good for getting you jewelry and winning photo shoots

Sarah: also, never marinate chicken

How Brittani Hatched a Plot: Week 2 Live Blog

Bridget: I am afraid to light a cigarette with nail polish on