les savy fav, i am having your baby.

three things have happened this last week that will, hopefully, exact change in my life.

1. i think we finally found someone to adopt the beagle! erin's brother fell in love with her. he met her over the weekend when keith and i were in seattle watching the red sox play. (i am happy to inform you that the groundskeepers have resumed their fourth inning dance routine. this time it was michael jackson's "bad". i wept.) and who wouldn't fall in love with her? my fingers are crossed that their love affair blossoms. i imagine them riding down the highway, hair and ears blowing in the wind.

2. i went to a reading for the graduate fiction and non-fiction writing students at psu. it's been a long time since i have been around people taking their art seriously and not just bedazzling their knee socks or what-have-you. it was inspiring and i felt like a bit of a sham being there, too shy to eat the cheese platter or sit with anyone else. there was a woman who read excerpts from her fiction and she was so fucking great -- confident and talented and beautiful and unadorned -- i wanted to walk up to her afterward and either slap her or kiss her. i did neither. i smiled at her instead, knowing i would say something too enthusiastic and sound totally crazy, which has become my m.o. with people at school lately. it's like half of my existence is happening only inside my head, and then the outside world doesn't get it. too exclamatory. too cheerleader-y. so i am hoping that i see her at school and i can calmly, rationally say (insert psuedo-intellectual voice here) "i really liked your reading." and then walk away. i hate social graces.

3. i have officially quit drinking. i woke up wednesday feeling like total trash and i spent a few hours with jeffrey, who is a 5-years-sober ex-drinker, and we ate dandelion greens with bacon. he cemented my desire to quit and also assured me, just by example, that being sober doesn't have to be dry and boring and square. it can be smart and sexy and hilarious and interesting: in short, like jeffrey. i am debating taking up a new addiction. maybe sex, or licorice, or jumping jacks, or cloud-counting. any suggestions are welcome.

xo

we love you john lester

i rediscovered jane siberry today! there was a strange video on vh-1 in the late 80's called "ingrid and the footman" that i loved, in which she is dressed like a viking dorothy. you can't find it on youtube, but it's on mtv's archive. when i searched her on youtube, i found all of these videos that people had made of their dogs with her song "everything reminds me of my dog" as the soundtrack, and i wondered why ms. siberry hasn't sold that tune to be a jingle for something dog-related. milkbone or petco or tapeworm medicine or something.

maybe because she is canadian?

my birthday was great! it was maybe 94 degrees (is that a band?). e. and i drove around in the convertible and ate frozen yogurt (i actually call it fro-yo. it started out as a mocking thing, like when i started saying "dude" and before i knew it, it was the capper of every sentence out of my mouth.) and bought plants and ate sushi and drank wine and then i drank more wine and made keith watch "harold and maude" for the fiftieth time. he fell asleep before maude died, though.

maude is my idol, including the heidi-ish hairdo. tho i'm not doing a great job of living her legacy lately. ( i am adjunct administrative assistant in the accidental alliteration association, however..) i nearly cried yesterday in the computer lab at school, for example, and today i had a mini-breakdown over my schoolwork. (like a mini-muffin, except not cute. or tasty. and no blueberries.)

goal for this, my official start of middle age: medicate.

xo

practically my birthday blues.

there's something about birthdays that just sucks. it's like new year's eve. you are supposed to have the Best! Time! Ever! and also evaluate your life/year to see what's working and what isn't working and adjust accordingly.for example: i didn't get any taller in the last year. what gives? not enough calcium?
i woke up this a.m. with two thoughts neck-and-neck on my brain's track.
1. i need to stop drinking for reals. i am too old for a hangover.
2. i want to make little scenes in shadow boxes with all these plastic things i keep buying, before they all end up under the refrigerator because the cats carried them off.
maybe they are linked, like my personal version of the craft table in an adult foster care house. maybe a glue gun and some pipe cleaner will cure what ails all of us.
xo

band names for imaginary bands

-the johnsons (all-acoustic rock band, consisting of drag queens with full wig-and-glitter)
-the high hard ones (robot costumes and smoke machines. they would sing songs about tenement buildings and raising rabbits for fun & profit)
-new math (i think this one dates me a little, in the same way that you can tell people were born pre-1970 if they have that little round immunization scar on their upper arm. three flutes and a theramin.)
-yes, yes (pronounced "yes comma yes". would be an electonic-goth-avant-garde band, like if you put devo, new order and sisters of mercy in a blender.)
-pin money (an all-girl folk-punk band who wear calico dresses.)
-the dead room (cheerleading costumes, megaphones, three drummers and a man with a long grey beard who sings from inside of a refrigerator box.)
-ABF (an acronym for Anne Bancroft's Army. they can play whatever the fuck they want.)
xoxo

things i sometimes wish

1. i had learnt to play the cello, because it would be a good showcase for my knees.

2. i hadn't gone out with my first boyfriend, who i honestly only liked because he was beautiful. he was a freak and wanted to keep me locked in his attic room with the tropical fish aquariums. if i had been less shallow (read: self-confident) i would have gone out with the nerdy boy who sat next to me in european history and told me once how he thought don amici was a great actor.

3. i had discovered bikini waxing sooner, or that i was Peaches and didn't bother.

4. i had never asked my first post-high school English teacher whether she thought going to school was really important. she said that if i thought i could live without a car, i could probably survive without going to school. i am certain i was just looking for an excuse to quit school, but still. what kind of freak-ass logic is that? and i listened to her!

5. that i could have my life be exactly how it is now without having to live my life during 1991-1993. everything sucked: me, my friends, the music, my job, my boyfriends, my clothes. i think i read one book during that time and didn't eat a single stalk of broccoli. when the time comes for nostalgia about the 90's i am going to live on the moon.
xoxo

i'm the new black

had lunch with bob yesterday at cafe du berry. the food is amazing, the service is weird (it's like the island of misfit toys for waitstaff. am i just used to the portland hiring style of choosing cuteness over ability? i don't think so. we call our favorite server pagoda. he is of indeterminate foreign origin and has freckles and one time was wearing a very old yucky band-aid on his arm. we love him.), and it feels somehow like a fake restaurant. as if you were eating in someone's kitchen.
then i had a haircut, which is like going to the dentist for me. when i like this particular cut, i laugh and think it looks like joan jett/ hanoi jane. when i don't, i think it looks like janet from three's company. my hairlady told me that she is getting married this summer and i asked who was marrying them (b/c they are doing it on her friend's farm).
hairlady: no one.
me: oh?
hairlady: we aren't doing the legal thing.
so it's like a fairy wedding! like the time i made my barbie marry skipper, even though i knew it wouldn't work out! like when i put two half-containers of mustard into one container and say in a high, yellow voice:
--will you marry me, mustard?
-- why, yes, mustard, i will!
and then make kissing sounds.
interesting.
xo

where the heck have i been?

1. busy!
i am training to run a half-marathon in s.f. in august. plus a healthy dose of school and trying to rehabilitate an 8-year-old beagle i rescued from an unsavory situation on whidbey island. (scout was living outside and just being fed by her owner, who didn't want to be at the house because her husband killed himself there. you can bet i am mining their situation rather heartlessly for writing material.)
2. disorganized!
for one thing, my blogger.com page is IN FRENCH. i know a bare minimum of the language, so sign-in has been a little game which i have lost on several occasions. just like scrabble! (the secret to winning in both situations has been to leave my ego out of it. spelling the most impressive word isn't strategic and not looking french words up isn't going to get you into your blog.) and i never remember my password to anything. i am looking forward to getting old and having my keys and my passwords tucked into my bra or tied around my neck with a piece of yarn.
3. not vegan!
ok, i tried. but by the time easter came, i was being viciously mocked by my family for making pork chops for dinner. ("are those vegan pork chops?!") there are things i can live without (cheese, chicken, bacon, etc.) and then there are things that i! must! have! (cream in my coffee and a burger now and then). and as much as i love being a tourist in the extremist world, i never stay for long. (witness my brief love affairs with my bicycle, yoga, hair extensions, pot smoking, etc.) any activity that involves a membership vibe, including specialty stores and lingo, can only interest me for a short time. i think that's why i love running: other people do it, sure, but you can do it everyday for years and not have to talk to anyone about it. it's solitary. (that and it gives me a reason to punch the air and sing "eye of the tiger")
more to come!
xo
p.s. check out my brother's awesome blog! he's the best! if sasha frere-jones and orson welles had a baby, it would be him!