Friday #1

something i used to do on my old blog. Friday is a good day for random cogitation. this week, it’s all about me.

1. i still don’t like fried twinkies.
2. i am a northerner who thinks 60 degrees is cold.
3. i’m going to miss the cat. he’s moving to alabama today.
4. i can’t decide if i’d rather have an iBook or …something else.
5. i want to stop dreaming about boyfriends. i miss them when i wake up.
6. can Nashville please have a fall that feels like a new york fall (minus the snow)?
7. i think i just want to be understood. i don’t want the empty nod.
8. if one more person tells me to see Moulin Rouge, I’ll have to see it.
9. i’m getting tired of drinking coffee. it’s almost like taking my vitamins.
10. the year’s not over yet – i still have time to do something amazing in 2005.

PS:
i have one more thing on my mind. it has to do with monopoly. i get irritated when people pronounce reading railroad as if it were a childrens' literacy line rather than a city (pronounced REDDING) in pennsylvania. i know i won't change the south, but i can at least start an argument every time someone tries to say, "take a ride on the reeding."

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sensing a pattern

last night, i had another boyfriend dream.

while i was in a park, i met a gorgeous redhead named Jase. His voice was deep and startling. My first thought about him was “wow” – he was an impressive person. In the next scene, I was getting emails from him (only they were called pods, not emails, and they came like little pieces of butter in a frying pan). The first one said, “Meeting you has been carrying me through.” I started blushing when I read it. The next one came immediately after that, and it said, “Still carrying me through.” I was so giddy. For some reason, I only had incoming pod capability. I tried to write him a note back, draw a box that said “send”, and push the box with my pencil, but that didn’t work. I kept writing him notes on paper. I could hardly see the pencil, even when I traced the words again and again.

Finally, he came around in person again. Things were pretty awkward, due to the fact that I never answered his pod.

He was setting the picnic table, and I walked up to him. I said, “I’m sorry. I kept writing you notes and throwing them away. I really like you. You carry me through too.” He smiled and then my alarm went off louder than it’s ever gone off before.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Jase was a midget. But not all the time. I think whenever I was worried that he wouldn’t like me, he was a midget. And when I admitted I liked him, he was about 6 feet tall.

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had a bad day again

I had a bad day today.

I don't really like to cry.

Unfortunately, I'm way too sensitive and I cry, on average, twice a week.

After a weepy and hyperventilated phone call to my best friend, Katie, I was able to calm myself. I listened to some soothing music and sent her an e-mail telling her thank you, and i felt a million kajillion times better, etc. Her reply?

"I am completely for you. AN' YOU KNOW DIS SMOKEY!!!"

See... this is what I'm talking about. Tender and hilarious. Quieting and irreverent all in the same line of text! Being an amazing friend AND throwing out a line from Friday?

my word.

Where have all the cowboys gone? And when they come back, will they know exactly what to say?

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single and dreaming

Last night I dreamed that Chevy Chase was my boyfriend.

Let me be exact – I dreamed that Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher was my boyfriend.

The whole night, everything he said to me was a line from Fletch.

Thankfully, at no point in the dream did he look like Ed Harley.

I guess Chevy was kind of attractive...

considering he was 42 when I was in the 3rd grade.

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baby's got sauce

what am I, 16?

G. Love's playing in Nashville!
G. Love's playing in Nashville!

I'm so excited.
I have perma-grin.

It's going to be a long 2 months.

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maryjane's last dance

the button popped off my right maryjane today. this means that the cute little strap across the top of my foot is now an unwieldy little flap.

you’d think my non-materialistic self wouldn’t really give a crap about this, but you’d be wrong.

i bought the shoes in buffalo, at the target on niagara falls boulevard, in 2003. i wore them to church every sunday in 2003 and most Sundays in 2004 and 2005. i wore them to job interviews, graduations, and also to work at least 75% of the time.

i love them. they’re non-traditional with a little wedge heel and a teardrop cutout. and buttons covered in black leather to secure the straps in place. of course, the leather has been reduced to a frayed little cuticle after this time, revealing the dented metal skeleton underneath, but it doesn’t make the buttons any less amazing. or functional.

which is why, when i was inserting my right foot into my right maryjane today, and i lost my balance, and jammed the strap forward, and popped the button, i broke my shoe.

but i’m still wearing it. i’m trucking on these babies until a) they fall apart at the seams b) i get an interoffice memo referencing section 1.4.5a of the employee handbook, “Ratty Articles of Clothing”, or c) a “well-meaning” friend steals them from me.

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right to be wrong

sometimes i get frustrated with myself. mostly it’s because of the level of complacency i allow to survive in my life. right now i’m thinking about my week: wake-shower-eat-work-eat-gym-coffee-read-sleep x 5. then on the weekends I’m so shredded from the effort of monotony that sometimes i don’t even leave my apartment. it’s not the job—i enjoy deleting commas. my boss gives me little assignments here and there. i look up the information and assemble it in a tidy little email report.

what is the proper usage of semicolons vs. colons? how can i decide which dash to use? i enjoy it, since i don’t know most of it anyway. we both just go by what we like. that makes no sense. i love to learn, and yet i have taken no time to educate myself in the intricacies of grammar, style, and other stuff.

yes, i received an english degree. my courses were all shakespeare, milton, creative writing, and film.

may i recommend the hitchcock class? or cities in cinema? horrors, perhaps? quite intriguing. the grammar i did learn in college, i learned from the papers i wrote in my film classes—the corrected, graded, red-penned versions.

i know that i have a gap in my knowledge. it’s a sizable and extremely relevant gap, too, considering both my current job and my future aspirations.

but i’m content to roll along. i know i have enough knowledge to get by. and as long as i’m getting by and not falling behind, i am happy. happy and stupid.

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things

last night my friend andrew IMed me to tell me that he is a vegetarian, that blue doesn't matter, and that I still have it together.

Oh yeah, and to tell me that he updated his website.

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self-awareness

I removed the counter from this blog. it was stressing me out to know how many people were reading and not commenting. ever.

It made me insecure. Is it that bad? Too bad to even leave one comment?

This way, I can just tell myself that nobody’s reading at all. It’s just for me.

“And everything will be as it was before.”

My layout vanished one day, and now I hate to come here. I want to revamp, but I don’t have the time or skill to do it.

and, in other news, I’m learning how to work in a café. I have trained for 2 days. I made one mocha and 17 fruit shakes, poured about 56 cups of coffee, and served up dozens of cinnamon buns, juices, teas, sodas, cheese Danishes, and croissants.

call me crazy, but it has been a life-long dream of mine to work in a café. The pinnacle will come when I have mastered the espresso machine and can barista like no other. And that day will come, even if it takes months of training one day per week.

one last thing – xenophobia was the word of the day today. "Fear or hatred of strangers, people from other countries, or of anything that is strange or foreign."

I realized when I was reading that definition that replacing the words "fear and hatred" with "love and adoration" sums up Amy.

Before I am anything else, I am one part of a relationship. When I see something, someone, some some, that I don't understand, I want to know. I want to talk, taste, touch, learn, learn, learn.

I never quite understand it when other people shy away.

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hand

you press your palm
to my face it is flat
then four fingers
one thumb slightly moving

this whole experience is slightly moving
but it’s not really happening
it’s just clammy and
i can feel my makeup coming off on your skin

when you peel it apart it will be:
you with powder on your palm.
me with a giant insecure spot.
and my awkward eyes.

one rides a bit lower, i admit.

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work it out.

i'm forcing myself to work until i can't hold my head up. or until the eye twitch in my left eye takes over my entire face and i have a seizure.

there are so many things to think about right now, and the harder i work, the less i let the wheels turn.

here's a sampling:

can i get into cornell for grad school?
gee i'm glad i talked to pat last night.
my right hand hurts.
why can't i be in africa somewhere making a difference?
or in italy making a bazillion dollars a year?
or asleep? right now?
can I stop waking up at 3 am? and then 5 am? and then 6 am?
I had a nightmare last night in which I had to pull a dismembered corpse out of a dumpster. and an entire corpse of a friend of mine. Then I dreamed I went to visit my friend Stewart, and all of his furniture had been stolen by his roommates and sold for drugs. He refurnished with a hodge-podge of Ikea and rummage sale finds.
I hope it actually gets cold in tennessee this fall.
I wish I could be back in New York to watch the leaves turn.
I still hate snow, though. Could I even live in ithaca if I did get into cornell?
Should I go to law school or go for an MFA? Should I just stay deleting commas until my favor runs out? What will I do about money if I do that? I can't stay at this salary and move forward financially. Which makes me think I should just forget grad school.
Does he think I'm cute? Does he think I'm smart/funny/a decent writer/worth a 5-minute conversation?
Why can't I go to Gulfport and help them? Oh yeah, money.
What if I found my way? What if I became what everyone always tells me I can become? What if I get a briefcase one day and stop wearing maryjanes to work everyday? What if I make enough money to buy another pair of jeans?
Will I live in tennessee long? will i ever make it to california? will i drive my civic for the next 9 years? what will my little sister's kids look like? will she get married before me? geez, she's 14 now, it's quite possible.
am I really going to be 30 in 2 years?
where has my life gone?
I said it to pat last night, and I still mean it: I don't regret any of it, not even the mistakes, because they made me learn about the world and people and love and me. I told him, "my life would never be the same if I hadn't met you retards." and by retards, I mean people that go through life getting in trouble on purpose. i was one once, but now i'm all cleaned up. squeak.
i want an iPod and an iBook. I only have 1300 songs? I thought I would have way more. Katie says I need a nano. She says I'm all high-tech and I can reprogram anyone's computer in 3 minutes. She's just impressed because I once changed out my own modem and I teach my friends how to use Windows Explorer. And I can hook up printers. That's me, leader of the information army. Call me Kip.
the joy of the lord is my strength.
i need sleep.
why do i have a blog? why do i have 4 email accounts and another blog? who is that masked girl?

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re: pat

I found him. One stalker~ish call to a small town to people that may have been his parents. He said they were highly suspicious. They called me "some strange woman." But they passed on the number anyway.

He is doing well.

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firsthand

http://www.nola.com/weblogs/nola/

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hear it happen
here, it happens

happened to be here
it happened years ago

it’s happening here.

my onionskin peeling papers and pens
your oily hands reach too deep they
fill me with ink and love until my
onionheart bursts over the sink

now my little onioneyes see you, you’re more than me.
i’m just a crinkly little drawer dweller
smaller than your whole palm but
i know i have that smell it must bring tears to your eyes

the way i lay on my side as if
it’s next stop: rot
i won’t move i’m waiting for you to pick me up
peel me open

more and it hurts this time i’m exposed but that’s your business
you peel off the dead the things that are unusable and i know
i’ll thank you for it later even though now i get a chill

i feel too real and raw and i
i look but i can’t find a mark.

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