It was grand

I've read Wil Wheaton's blog for years now. It's very enjoyable. But the posts that get me right in the heart are ones like this. This movie was such an important part of my childhood. I can't even put it into words.

I first saw Stand By Me in the spring of 1987. I think it was a pay-per-view movie that some girlfriends and I watched. It was love at first sight for me and became a very intense and heartfelt obsession. Evidence of such: my diary, age 12.

Looking back at these diary entries, it seems like my love for this movie was wrapped around crushes on the actors. And it's true; I did have major crushes on them, and my walls were plastered with pictures of them from the latest teen magazines I would buy every Sunday at K&B when we went out for beignets after mass. But it was deeper than that for me. I was twelve; the characters were twelve. I had some true and real friendships at that age; so did they. My life was nowhere as adventurous as the trip they took to see a dead body. But in my mind, life held that potential for adventure. And that was enough.

I remember that this movie made me wish I were a boy. I felt like only boys got to sneak away for the weekend and cross railroad tracks and romp through the woods. I was very aware of this aching feeling all the time. Why couldn't I be a boy? I guess that was just all a part of being confused and twelve years old. I would wonder what would become of us when we graduated from that school and went our separate ways, if we would stay friends forever or if we would come in and out of each others' lives like busboys in a restaurant. I would watch the adult Gordie typing on his computer at the end of the movie and wonder what we would all be when we grew up.

My friends and I loved this movie so, so much. It was a major bond between us, it really was. We all had our favorite characters and defended our stances on those favorites. As noted above, mine was Gordie. Always, always Gordie. I think I fancied myself an observer like he was, as lame as that sounds. And the weird thing is that even though it was a movie about boys, I don't remember sharing the obsession with any of my guy friends back then. It was for us girls only, it seemed. We basically started speaking to each other exclusively in the film's dialogue.

I shared it with my family, and they got it. Somehow the first time I watched it with my parents is still cemented in my memory. I still remember how hard my dad laughed when Ace was giving his lesson on what kind religious background girls should have if the guys wanted to get lucky. And how he rewound the part when Milo told Teddy that his father was crazier than a shithouse rat like 10 times, laughing every time, even though that was an upsetting scene. I think he just liked that expression. And how much he LOVED when Gordie told Ace to suck his fat one. (I also remember how much he wished that Gordie had said, "I want my hat back, you son of a bitch," like when Inigo Montoya says that about his father.) My mom understood that it was really about friendship and understood how much it meant to me and didn't seem to mind the talk of Annette's chest and the f-bombs. My sister and I got the soundtrack on vinyl from our parents for Easter that year. We wore it out, and I still have that record even though I don't have a record player. My friends and sister and I still drop the lines into our casual conversation when appropriate.

This movie made me laugh out loud and broke my heart into a million pieces every time I watched it. My heart broke for real when River Phoenix died my first semester of college, and I imagined him fading out like the shot of Chris Chambers over and over. I am having a hard time explaining this without sounding like a major idiot, I realize this. I haven't watched it in years, even though I own the DVD, but I could watch it today and still recite every word. I just loved it so much.

It makes me really happy that Wil Wheaton grew up to be a writer.

Taking stock

So some things happened 10 years ago this summer.

HOME

In June of 1999, I moved back to my hometown after a year away teaching high school. A crazy, difficult, bizarre, sometimes wonderful and thrilling year. I moved in with two girlfriends in a rent house. We had cats and dogs and fun times. This home was in the same neighborhood where I live now. In fact, other than childhood and the year away and the summers away, I have pretty much always lived in or adjacent to this neighborhood ... from my college apartment to a long housesitting gig to the two rent houses I lived in before buying this one. Anyway. This is my hood. I like it. This weekend, I went on a bike ride around the lakes and hot air balloons appeared over my head, drifting through the sky and reflecting on the water. Bright bursts of color. Runners and bikers going around with their mouths wide open, huge smiles, actual "ooohs" and "ahhhhs!" as the sun rose. It was one of the finest neighborhood moments ever and reminded me of how glad I am that I live here.

DOG

In July of 1999, I got a dog. My first ever very own dog. (Here is a tiny picture of her tiny self the day I brought her home.) I got her at the animal shelter. Someone I knew from grade school had found her and was dropping her off, so I just took her in the driveway of the place before she even brought her in to process her. I just knew right away that I loved her. She was really shy, so I named her Daisy. She was about six months old at the time. She is still here and still kicking. I fell really in love with her, and she is still my favorite. Don't tell the others. 10 years ago, I did not anticipate that a couple of years later I'd have another dog. And then a cat. And then another cat. (Sigh.) I love them all, but she came first, and I cannot believe we have been together 10 years. 10 years! Daisy. Wow.

JOB

Also in July of 1999, I got a job. It sort of came out of the blue. It seemed like a good fit for me, and the people seemed nice. It still is, mostly, and they still are. Sometimes I wonder if 10 years is too long to have the same job. Maybe it is. Maybe I will not have this job forever. But I still mostly quite love working there, especially the people I work with, and feel luckier than ever to do so.

ONLINE JOURNAL

10 years ago today, I posted a journal entry online. I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote an entry about soulmates. This is very embarrassing. But I was 24 years old. And I definitely still believed in soulmates back then. A few major relationships later, I'm not sure I do anymore. I don't mean that in a down on relationships kind of way, just in a "I'm 10 years older and the word 'soulmates' sounds a little too hocus pocus woo-woo love for me" way. And that's okay.

Four years ago, I reminisced about starting my online journal and went through a pretty thorough account of the whole history, so I won't rehash all of that today.

I'm not sure how I feel about this site these days. Every time someone in my life tells me that they've come across it, I feel mortified, like it's a punch in the stomach, and I want to pull the whole thing forever. But then ... I don't know. I also feel sort of ready to tell my family about it. They are my faves, you know? How can I have done this all this time and not told them? That's just kind of weird. My mom and I saw Julie and Julia, so at least now I know she knows what a blog is. Hi, Mom! This is my blog. (I am writing that to encourage myself to tell them.) Mostly I just don't want them to think I'm a big weirdo.

Only 2004-present is currently online. 1999-2002 was a bit too cringeworthy and too focused on long-past relationships to keep drifting about in cyberspace, and most of 2003 feels a bit too raw, looking back. I think I'm comfortable with what's up now. As Kymm told me when I recently considered just pulling the whole thing, "Don't! Stay strong! Own yourself!" She also pointed out that in 2009, it's a lot more common for part of one's life to be aired online than it was back in 1999. And I get that. Still, I feel a bit weird about it, even now. Maybe it is just time to let that go and stop feeling weird or embarrassed about it. I mean, I'm 34 and I've been doing it for 10 years. That's almost a third of my life, for Pete's sake. I like doing it, and I love the people I've met through it, I like having this record of my life that is really easy to access when I want to remember what I was doing on a certain day, or how I spent a certain New Year's Eve, or what my favorite books from a certain year were, or what my birthday was like that year, or what I ate at that restaurant, or how I mended this or that year's broken heart.

TAKING STOCK

I guess that's about it for tonight. 10 years ago this summer, my life changed in a lot of ways. It's changed in plenty of other ways since. Right now, I feel good about where I am. This weekend, I went to the farmers' market, and I went to a movie with my mom, and I got a massage, and I went on a run with Zuko and on a long bike ride, and I went to a movie with my brother and my friend B., and I ate really good shrimp and corn soup. This morning, I went swimming, and then I went to work, and the tree man came to trim my crape myrtles, and it rained, and I made homemade zucchini walnut bread, and now I'm watching a little True Blood. Life is good, and I am content, maybe even happy.

Randomosity

Today's entry will be a string of random thoughts.

It turns out that I have some complex feelings about Michael Jackson. At first when he died, I was immediately annoyed that everything was super positive about him with nary a mention of the fact that he was bananas and possibly did some unspeakable things to small children. But then I started watching clips and remembering. Remembering how much I once loved him, the posters on my bedroom walls, my lapel pin with his face on it, how he predated any other celebrity crush I ever had in later years, the way I adored him before my age even hit the double digits, the whole thing. It's hard for me to articulate my feelings about this so I'll leave it to Linda & Sars, who both said it better than I could.

Apologies to those who have already heard me rant about this: I do not think Chace Crawford is a good enough actor to play Ren McCormack in the Footloose remake, and I wish Zac Efron were going to play him as originally planned. Because I actually think Zac Efron is very talented! Shut up. I also think that Julianne Hough in the Lori Singer role (Ariel) is an abomination. She's supposed to be dark and damaged, and I highly doubt that Hough has that in her. Lori Singer was hardcore. It sort of bothered me when I was very young that she was not your typical teen beauty type like Cindi Mancini in Can't Buy Me Love, but as I've grown up, I realize that she was pretty much perfect for this role. Like, if my dad were super strict and my life were that legitimately dreary and hard, maybe I wouldn't eat either. (Not trying to diss her skinniness, I'm just saying.) Footloose is not all feel-good dancey dancey lighthearted goodness by any stretch. I mean, Ariel's brother died. The reverend is genuinely conflicted. There are some long and sort of boring for children scenes dealing with this, particularly the one set in church and the talks between the reverend and his wife. Bricks are thrown through windows. Books are burned. Ariel's boyfriend beats her up. I'm saying, it's got some heaviness interspersed between chicken races on tractors and Ren teaching Willard how to dance. And the director of the remake directed High School Musical. The more I think about the remake the more annoyed I get, frankly.

I've now made these two weekends in a row. I first made them several summers ago for B.'s birthday, and I've been thinking of them ever since. These past two batches, I've had some trouble dislodging them from the muffin pan without breaking the edges, so they look kind of ugly, but they still taste great. (I use sugar cookie dough instead of peanut butter cookie dough because they are already plenty peanut buttery.)

This was a weekend of nonstop chick-flickery. First: He's Just Not That Into You. Despite my enjoyment of Justin Long in anything he does, this is just not a very good movie. For many reasons. I lack the energy today to get as worked up about this movie as I'd like to, so let me just tell you that I don't recommend it. Second: Confessions of a Shopaholic. I rented this movie solely because of Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy, and it did not disappoint. I find them both infinitely charming, and this movie is totally cute and entertaining. Third: Marley and Me. Bawled my eyes out at the end, not just cried quiet civilized tears but bawled. I can't say it was a great movie, but Marley sure was cute and reminded me so much of Zuko, that stupid, wild, destructive maniac of a dog I can't help but love.

Went on a 13-mile bike ride this morning. Yesterday I rode to a bike store to get my bike outfitted with new pedals and pedal brackets (baskets? not sure what they're called) -- things to put my feet into. Not clips or anything that would require me to actually fasten my feet in or buy expensive new shoes, but just something to slip my normal sneakers into so I can pedal more efficiently. Other than actually getting both feet inside these without tipping over -- it took me several tries -- I liked this newfangled way of riding and do think it helped me go a little faster.

Today's ride also marked a milestone I've been working up to -- reaching down to grab my water bottle while pedaling. I have never braved this feat because it's really far down, practically below the seat, and takes a really long reach to grab it, which means pedaling one-handed and reaching down and grabbing it and this just seemed too herculean a task to achieve. But today I reached down and touched the bottle a few times without actually grabbing it (tip from Jessie) to practice the reach down. It got to the point that sweat was pouring from my forehead down my nose to my upper lip into my actual mouth and I was so thirsty I started tasting what can only be described as lung juice in the back of my throat and this disgusting sensation propelled me to reach down and grab the tip of the bottle between my knuckles. Triumph! I swigged with abandon and thought I'd just hold the bottle the rest of the ride and drink out of it at my leisure. But then I remembered I needed my hand for, you know, braking. So I had to reach down and return it to its holder. Which was scary in and of itself but I did it. Then I repeated the whole process twice more over the course of the ride. I am very glad I now know how to do this because it's going to be a long, hot summer and I can't ride without drinking water, hello.

The ride was fairly delightful once I got this new routine down. Nature highlight: gorgeous, delicate egret slowly walking across the water. Nature lowpoint: seeing how low the lakes are due to basically zero rainfall in weeks. Musical high points: the harmonies in Cages or Wings and the theme to The Greatest American Hero and hearing The Weepies sing about how you can't steal happiness.

Swimming, eating, remembering

My first sweet treat since Lent started was a long time coming. I waited until the Thursday after Easter, when I could return to my favorite cafe and enjoy one of their magnificent pastries. I chose a cappuccino and an almond croissant. It was truly heaven in my mouth, and I ate every little bit carefully and slowly and deliberately. I told myself, "Self, see? See what a treat this is? It's so wonderful, and it was worth the wait."

Then the weekend rolled around, along with a limo ride with some friends for a birthday to one of the best restaurants in existence. And lots of wine. And this:

That is a damn fine plate of food in a sauce made with a damn lot of butter. But I didn't care. It was awesome. And I ate it with grilled shrimp over a fried grits cake and crab cakes and shrimp in a bread bowl and more wine. And then some starbursts and tootsie rolls from a candy bowl. And a good time was had by all, and I'd run three miles that morning, and I still felt perfectly in balance on Sunday, if a bit hungover.

Then this happened:

Oops! A friend and I went to see an art exhibit downtown and wandered over to Earth Day, where it seemed the only right things to eat were strawberry snowballs and a giant plate of greasy Chinese food that cost $13. We split this, yes. But still. Not exactly the healthiest lunch on the block. But who cares? It was a festival, and it was fun to park myself on a curb with a stack of napkins and an old friend I hadn't seen forever and eat that hot mess together. And I went on a long walk when I got home. Then I went to my parents' house after going to mass with them and ate tons of my mom's perfect tuna salad and about two pounds of shelled pecans. I'm not sure what possessed me to eat all I did this weekend. Maybe I was just hungry.

(Mass was good if a little strange. Lots of youth group type kids apparently go to this mass, which is swell, and I like the modern music a lot, and the musicians are fantastic, but I need at least one 80s-style Glory and Praise hymn per mass. That's something I had an epiphany about at this service. I like the young, hip tunes, but throw in a "Here I Am, Lord" or "Sing a New Song" every now and then, please, and it would be perfect. My little brother recently announced that "We Are Called" should become the standard recessional hymn for every mass because nothing can top it. I think he might have a point. OMG: the composer of "We Are Called" has a Myspace page. And none of those versions sounds very good, I'm afraid. Anyway, I didn't realize he also wrote "You Are Mine," which is another favorite of mine. Random Catholic music tangent: one of my co-workers and I got a little punchy from stress last week and started singing the first lines of Catholic songs we grew up with. It is very strange to think we grew up on opposite ends of the state but grew up singing the same songs in church. "Sing to the Mountains," "Lord of the Dance," "City of God," the list goes on and on.)

My very tenacious friend who might as well go ahead and become my life coach persuaded me to do the swimming leg of a triathlon for a mutual friend who only wants to do the biking and running leg. Fine. I think this event is months off, so why not? My friend said, "Let's go swimming tomorrow night!" Which was tonight. So I said, "Sure! Why not!" I bought some goggles and a swim cap at lunch and we went to a place where I thought we had permission to swim, but we totally didn't. My friend acted like we did, though, so in we went. I hadn't swum actual laps in an actual pool since 2003. We swam 8 lengths in the 50-meter pool and called it a day. I got tuckered out doing freestyle about half-way through (tuckered out = felt I might have heart attack) so I started alternating between that and breast stroke. I seriously could do the latter, I think, for hours at a time. It is so soothing. I threw in one length of backstroke just for good measure. Turns out the triathlon is actually, like, next weekend. Awesome! We'll see how that goes. I'm glad this is an event that can be split into legs, because I think it will be fun to participate, but I don't think I could ride a bike on a road if I couldn't even ride a bike in my friend's class in Hawaii for more than approximately thirty seconds.

I just have to say that I do love swimming. It is strange to think that my brother and sister and I swam every summer, all summer long, every single morning for practice plus meets on Saturdays. I don't remember much about those summers except that I think we'd end up just staying at the pool all day. It's not like this was a super-elite swim team or anything. There were all skill levels, and it was just fun. We all wore red swimsuits. The meets were awesome because we would eat jello straight from the box "for energy." I think my sister and I both did it from ages, like, four or five to twelve, every summer. That boggles my mind! (The little kids and the big kids had separate practices, obviously.) I was never the fastest swimmer, but I did always come out second in breaststroke. Even though it was my best stroke, there was one girl I could never, ever beat.

One time the coach at practice made me swim a lap of butterfly all by myself, making the other kids stand by the pool and watch, because she said my stroke was perfect. I remember that she basically barked at the older kids, "Look at this kid! If she can do it like this, why can't you?!" I was one hundred percent mortified but also one hundred percent proud. I was never a child who was known for athletic prowess, so to have something like that happen to me was astonishing and I have never forgotten it. I remember swimming the butterfly across the pool at that moment and thinking that all of those high school boys were watching me and was it possible the coach was making fun of me or punishing me in some way? But I don't think she would do that. Other major swim team memories: practicing swimming the entire length of the pool without taking a breath, throwing the coach in the pool after the meets, and always, always going to Godfather's pizza after the meets with wet hair.

Anyway, so swimming laps brings back mostly happy childhood memories. I know that cardio with impact is important for joint and bone strength, but I think swimming has to be awesome for you, too. I will try to incorporate it more into my life even if breaking the swim place law made me kind of nervous today. I am just not the criminal type.

Tonight after swimming I made an awesome dinner. Onion, bell pepper, garlic, yellow squash, and celery with fresh rosemary and cayenne pepper mixed with chicken breast and slivered almonds cooked in olive oil and quinoa with a little grated mozzarella cheese on top. It made me feel more in control of myself and was delicious.

I would literally give my right arm for a disc of In Treatment to watch right now. Only three weeks left! I love it so much. Must wait for Netflix, though. This is a busy week of dinner and lunch with friends and a date with Ira Glass. Life is good.

Weird.

It's unfortunate but unavoidable that pretty much the most traumatic time of my life coincided with my birthday, so every time a birthday rolls around, I can't help but feel a little twinge and remember that time. It feels like a lifetime ago, in a way. Entries from that time are offline now, but I can still go back and read them. Which I don't, normally, except that I just did. I'm not sure why. Reading those entries brings back how I was so unspeakably devastated and sad and functioning so minimally. I look back and wonder if people thought I was totally nuts. Apparently all I did was cry and walk around in a fugue state, all day, every day, and all night long. I can't believe I put all of that rawness on the internet, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. Showing my craziness made me feel healthier. It's a mystery.

More than my shock and sorrow at the time, I remember the faces of my friends, my parents, and my siblings. I remember the flowers and gifts and and books and music people sent me and the notes people wrote me, the prayers they said for me, the walks they took with me. I remember how my loved ones gathered on the night I was supposed to get married and lit sparklers with me. I remember how, even though clearly no one DIED, it was something hard and sad for me, and people recognized that and helped me get through it. I will always be so grateful for that. I hope I can be to them what they were to me in that sadness, should they ever feel so sad.

I look back on the past six years, from that point when my life took a sudden turn from the direction in which I believed with all my heart it was going, and see mostly good things. I still have a job I'm very lucky to have, maybe luckier than ever, considering the sad state of economic affairs. I still have these four animals who drive me berserk but whom I love. I spent four years with someone wonderful. My family and friends are still healthy and with me, babies have been born whom I adore, my sister married someone beyond fantastic, and my best friend is having T*W*I*N*S! I wish I could throw some confetti around those letters to show how spastically overjoyed I am about this development. It feels both like a huge span of time and just a heartbeat between 28 and 34, and I definitely have some clearer visions for what I want out of life than I did then. In another six years, I will be forty. My mom had four kids at the age of forty. Jeez! Can't really process that ... moving on. This entry really has no point. Sometimes I feel a little nostalgic is all I'm saying, even nostalgic for times of heinousness, because those times are so f-ing formative in our lives.

Now I'm going to feed the insistently meowing Marley before before her vocal chords disintegrate forever. And I am going slap down some Patty Griffin lyrics, because lately I'm all about Patty Griffin. Seriously -- where has she been all my life?

May you dream you are dreaming, in a warm soft bed
And may the voices inside you that fill you with dread
Make the sound of thousands of angels instead
Tonight where you might be laying your head

I wish you well
On your way to the wishing well
Swinging off of those gates of hell
But I can tell how hard you're trying

I still have this secret hope
Sometimes all we do is cope
Somewhere on the steepest slope
There's an endless rope
And nobody's crying
Nobody's crying
Nobody's crying

Things I Like

I've been feeling sort of at a loss as to what to write about here. It's weird to think it is now 2009, and I started doing this online diary writing thing in 1999. That boggles the mind. I think about all I wrote that is no longer online, all I've written that still is, and what kind of things I'm still comfortable writing about here. It's all a bit much lately. Lots of things happened in 1999, and it is now 2009. In January of 1999, I was teaching Shakespeare to 9th and 10th graders in Florida. In the summer of 1999, several things happened. I moved back here. I got Daisy. Daisy is 10 years old! I got my current job. I've had this job for almost 10 years! I started an online journal. 10 years, 10 years, 10 years. It's just a weird thought, that's all. It makes my head hurt a little bit.

So today I think I will keep it simple write about some things that I like. (There are plenty of things I don't like, of course, but I'm not focusing on them today.)

I like my new purse. I have it in Rhombus Blue. I coveted my sister's so passionately that she bought me my own. I love it! I love that it's cute, I love that it's sporty, I love that it's big, and I love that it's reversible. (It's a nice mocha brown on the other side.) The only thing I don't love is that it doesn't have a zipper or snap at the top to keep me from dumping its contents out on the floor, which I tend to do constantly with purses, but it's deep enough that sometimes things don't fall out even when it's turned over. Yay, new purse!

I like my new calendar. My friend Grace made this calendar with her own breathtaking photographs and included some lovely quotes. I cannot tell you how much it brightens my day to see it every day. It is such a nice gift to have given to myself to start the new year, and I am grateful to her for creating it.

I like that David Sedaris exists and keeps writing books that make me very happy.

I like that I had the good sense to hire a dependable yard man years ago and that he and his crew just did an excellent job plowing down the backyard jungle.

I like my new washing machine and that my mom recommended a nice plumber who fixed the leaking faucets and that his nice son, when I noted the heinousness of my hated outdoor laundry room, as I always do, said, "Hey, all you do in this room is laundry -- who cares?" And that suddenly all of my anxiety about the laundry room, its rotting walls, and its motley crew of vermin residents lessened significantly. I also like that the plumber took one look at my 27-year-old hot water heater and scolded me in sputtering exasperation for even considering buying a new one, saying they don't make them like that anymore and to use it until it decides one day to empty itself of its contents all over the floor. I decided that's just fine by me.

I like that I've made a little progress in decluttering my life. Small things like cleaning out the kitchen pantry and bagging up a few things for the food bank, pulling a few books off of the overcrowded bookshelves and boxing them up to give away, and pulling out my dresser to wipe the piles of cat hair from the floor underneath it, and even making my bed every day make me feel good and better about the world in general.

I like that we'll have a new president very soon.

I like that the sun has come back out after several very rainy, gloomy days.

I like the fact that my BFF is not only pregnant for the first time but pregnant with twins. There are no words that aptly capture my excitement about this. I am more grateful than ever to have had our visit in Hawaii last fall and to have had such great time together over these holidays ... a nice coffee date with her, our other BFF, and our favorite five-year-old kid in a Peter Pan costume; a night of Rock Band and pizza; a soup and sandwiches lunch; a night of gumbo, etouffee, and jambalaya; her fun wedding reception (party of the century); dinner the night before she left; etc. All of these occasions were mostly built around food, photographs, laughter, and tears. Without getting too much into the story of the twins (because that is her story), all I can say is that this unexpected news reminds me that life is full of surprises, and in the immortal words of Kevin Arnold in the series finale of The Wonder Years, "You go where life takes you." I think it is a beautiful thing.

And now, some random photos from the holidays that I like.

Things Worth Doing, 51-75

51. Standing in the room where Keats died.
52. Holding my grandmother's hand when she died.
53. Eating the mashed up frozen red kool-aid snow-cones my other grandmother would make for us.
54. Riding the gondola across the river at the '84 World's Fair and thinking the gondola shadows on the water were giant turtles.
55. Singing songs in the camp dining hall before a meal.
56. The way Dove dishwashing soap still smells like the bubbles on the camp slide.
57. Walking around Lake Derwentwater in the rain with my sister.
58. Finding the Singing Machine hidden in the closet right before Christmas.
59. Walking along the Chesapeake Bay beach looking for shark's teeth.
60. Going to a concert at Red Rocks.
61. Hearing our voices echo by candlelight at Christmas choral concerts in the cathedral.
62. Sitting around the piano belting out showtunes with the siblings.
63. Standing in the Sistene Chapel first thing in the morning and realizing it's both a lot smaller and a lot more awesome than anticipated.
64. Riding the funiculare up to the overlook over Lake Como.
65. Staring out at the Pacific Ocean from the California cliffs with my family.
66. Staining our fingers with red Jell-o powder at swim meets.
67. Doing my first 5K in Cambridge on a drizzly morning.
68. Finding out that the sellers accepted my offer on the house.
69. That one time I got up on water skis.
70. Visiting Boston's Public Gardens and feeling the presence of Cynthia & Tom Terrific.
71. Ice skating at Rockefeller Center.
72. Hearing my 30-something older brother speak baby talk to his cocker spaniel.
73. Seeing the Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter at Chastain Park.
74. Hearing the Avett Brothers sing "Murder in the City" live with my little brother by my side.
75. Falling in love with B.

(1-25, 26-50.)

Monday update

Another weekend, another Monday.

On Friday evening, we went out for pad Thai and spring rolls and frozen yogurt. On Saturday, I have no idea what I did. Seriously. How can I forget so quickly? I stopped by an estate sale and browsed. I went to the bookstore and bought a textbook. I went to the dog park with Zuko, who might be dumb and a pain in the butt a lot of the time but is a great dog park dog. He doesn't bother anyone, he doesn't scare the nervous dogs, he doesn't participate in the big group scuffles, and he just runs around a pees on everything he passes. I visited with the fiancée of one of B.'s school friends. I like both of them a lot, I like their dogs, and I'd like to get to know them better. I met B. later that afternoon for a quick lemonade at the coffee shop.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon shopping for and preparing this salad. Don't bother making this salad if you don't have a strong affinity for chopping. There is lots of chopping involved. I didn't make anywhere near the whole recipe and it still made about a million servings. I am already sort of sick of it, but we will be eating it for many days to come. The best things about this salad are (a) the dressing and (b) the fact that it's really pretty to look at. It tastes great, but it might not be balanced in the effort/enjoyment ratio (at least for me, but then I'm sort of lazy). If you can get someone to make it FOR you, that's the way to go. I followed the recipe pretty closely as far as ingredients except I didn't use nuts (B. doesn't like cashews and I forgot to get a substitute) or bean sprouts (they were rotting in their container at the store, gross) and I used whole wheat linguine. Overall: thumbs up but kind of a PITA to make.

On Sunday, it rained the entire day, and I spent much of the day lying around. I attempted to go running on the treadmill, but that didn't go well, so I took to the couch and watched hours upon hours of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, the first two seasons of which have been placed on YouTube in their entirety by various people who must have coordinated their efforts somehow. How happy this makes me I can't even really tell you. I am loath to post the links because I think the longer they are shrouded in secrecy the longer they will remain online before being pulled. Here's a hint: this show ran for four seasons. A lot of people loved it, but a lot of people hated it. It hasn't been released on DVD. It has seven core characters. It rhymes with "dirtysomething."

It's still so, so, so good. Now that I am actually the characters' ages instead of half that (as I was when it was on the air), I see it with whole new eyes, and I don't know that I ever saw myself as the Melissa or the Ellyn of the group even though that's who I am. In the pilot, Melissa is 31. 31! Stop, I can't even think about it. Sometimes I don't enjoy some of the fantasy stuff, but it turns out that I still adore the episode about the couple who used to live in Hope and Michael's house and the WWII scenes about their life. I first heard of "Stardust," of course, in Taking Care of Terrific when Hawk plays it during the secret midnight Swan Boat ride, but I never heard it until seeing this episode all those years ago. And it has remained one of my favorite songs in life ever since, especially when sung by Harry Connick, Jr. or Nat King Cole. Anyway. Just like I always have, I cried during this episode.

I also cried when Michael walked in, face crumpling when he saw that Melissa had brought the menorah. (Their fight during that episode = still awesome. Another awesome fight = Michael and Elliot in the office after they lose the business.) I cried when Melissa and Gary talked about how together, they brought up a couple of kids. I cried when Elliot sat at Ethan's bedside, post-rocket accident, apologizing. I cried when Nancy said, "It's just something about the way his mind works." As hard as I try, I still cannot like Susannah. It was great to watch the very beginning of the Miles Drentell saga, knowing now just how long it will last. I've cried so much just watching these episodes that I don't think I'm fully prepared for what comes next. Everyone remembers seasons three and four -- the cancer and the death and the major stuff, with "Second Look" in season four as the sort of emotional climax of the entire series. But seasons one and two are also really good. I don't know what to say except that I love this show and apparently always will. I am going to look back and find my 30-page paper on the evolution of Nancy Krieger Weston. I remain oddly proud of that paper.

Also this weekend: I finished Pilgrims by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I really liked. I liked every single story. I feel like people roll their eyes at Eat, Pray, Love now, but I loved that book, and I think she's a really good fiction writer. I also started Watchmen, a gift from B. As usual with this sort of graphic novel, I have no idea what's going on as I start it, but I'm hoping all will become clear.

In searching through files which contain my high school and college papers for that damn Nancy paper, I just found a "pre-test" I wrote for English III on August 20, 1991. The assignment was to write about a book we read over the summer. Mine was called "Meg's Brave Fight" and was all about the life-or-death decisions Meg Powers had to make in Ellen Emerson White's Long Live the Queen. A book I just re-read last week at age 33. I had no memory of writing this paper almost 17 years ago to the day, but reading it again makes me unspeakably happy. Being a packrat is not always a bad thing. And now I am awash in memories. I just spent the past few hours looking through old floppy discs -- is that what you call them? the little square ones? -- on my old desktop for papers saved during college on my parents' computer, and I found a ton of old papers, but not the Nancy one. I DID find the notebook in which I wrote pages and pages of notes while watching the Nancy-centric episodes which I analyzed in my paper. And an analysis for yet another English class on how James Joyce's "The Dead" was the inspiration for an episode of this show. Which it was. The professor wrote in her margin comments, "I remember that episode!" It's the tie that binds, apparently.

I spotted files in my filing cabinet with the following labels: First Apartment Mementos, Mail Received at Camp, Ally McBeal, River Phoenix, 20th Birthday Cards, Chicago Hope, and Homicide: Life on the Streets Drinking Game. It might be time to cull some of these files. GOOD LORD.

In other thoughts, I really enjoyed reading this columm, namely because its author is smart enough to know that Tiger Eyes is the best book Judy Blume ever wrote.

Things Worth Doing, 26-50

26. Watching my older brother shoot free throws.
27. Tubing down Boulder Creek.
28. Canoeing down Green River in North Carolina.
29. Lying on the new Pier One throw rug in the living room of my first apartment on the first night.
30. Walking the dogs after work around my neighborhood with my mom.
31. Sparklers and toasts to new beginnings with friends in the backyard.
32. Sneaking out to Sliding Rock at night to bid a new friend farewell.
33. Riding on the back of a motorcycle through New Orleans City Park.
34. Moonlight canoe trips in the swamp.
35. The first time I saw the Indigo Girls in concert, skipping school with friends one Jazz Fest afternoon in 1993.
36. Floating on rafts in the Gulf of Mexico with friends one spring break, counting the fish.
37. Going to Thursday gumbo lunches at Piccadilly with my grandfather.
38. Riding home with Daisy on a towel in my lap after deciding on the spot that she was the dog I was taking home.
39. Seeing the egrets on the trees at sunset while running around the lakes.
40. Watching a flock of big white pelicans take flight.
41. Drinking sazeracs on the porch of the Columns Hotel in New Orleans.
42. Seeing my little brother take second place on ESPN 2.
43. Reading what my students wrote in my yearbook.
44. Hearing my sister sing to me from an iPod on speakers from across the country at my karaoke birthday party.
45. Watching my friend's four-year-old daughter belt out "Tomorrow," arms flung wide, while standing on top of her backyard slide.
46. Hearing Better Things in the middle of the night in a sweaty French Quarter Bar at the last "secret" Counting Crows Shim Sham show and feeling like it was being sung directly to me.
47. Putting my head down on my desk and laughing when one of my favorite students called out, "Stick a fork in him! He's done," when Romeo killed himself.
48. Sitting in the booth with my dad.
49. Replanting my front flower bed with my mom.
50. Driving down River Road at night in high school with cigarettes, friends, and songs.

(Inspired by Maggie of Mighty Girl.)

100 Things Worth Doing: 1-25

This entry and others like it to come = 100% inspired by Maggie of Mighty Girl. I loved her idea of making a list of some of life's most special and memorable moments, and I like the idea of holding onto these memories when life seems mundane, hard, or sad. Andrea wrote recently that she heard Elizabeth Gilbert tell a story whose moral was not the message we usually hear -- that we should live in the moment -- but that "the key to a happy life is about having great memories to look back on and great things to look forward to. So take lots of pictures and make lots of plans!" I loved reading that, and it tied into the idea of making this list. So thanks and all credit to Maggie & Andrea for the inspiration.

1. Sledding down a wildflower-covered hill on the Sound of Music tour in Austria.
2. Wandering around Boboli Gardens in Florence.
3. Seeing Paris at night from the top of the Eiffel Tower with my sister.
4. Running the last mile of the half-marathon knowing I would make it to the finish.
5. Walking along the Seine all by myself eating a pain au chocolat on my first day in Paris.
6. Hiking up to the top of Black Balsam and seeing the cloudshadows floating over the hilltops.
7. Hiking through Rocky Mountain National Park.
8. Walking a golden retriever through Chatauqua Park in Boulder.
9. Seeing the view of the snow-covered Alps from the fortress in Salzburg.
10. Walking along the pastel rainbow-colored buildings in Campeche.
11. Braving the bumpy roads to Monteverde.
12. Sitting a hot springs mineral pool in Arenal.
13. Walking through the butterfly garden at the Peace Lodge in Costa Rica.
14. Stirring the makings of peanut butter fudge under my grandmother's watchful eye.
15. Spending the night on a freezing sidewalk in New York and seeing Rent in its first year from the front row.
16. Piling on the bed for a nighttime song with the girls in my cabin at summer camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
17. Attending national championship college football games and being a part of a joyful crowd upon winning.
18. Dipping beignet fingers in mugs of half hot chocolate / half cafe au lait.
19. Riding a horse around the base of a volcano in the rainforest.
20. Hearing Anne Lamott speak at a Baptist church on St. Charles Avenue.
21. Driving an empty Friendship Boat across Epcot's World Showcase Lagoon at midnight.
22. Singing with my high school choir in Carnegie Hall.
23. Seeing the protesters lining the sidewalk in front of the White House during the first Gulf War.
24. Building drip sand castles on the beach.
25. Watching my friend's babies being born.

One year

One year ago today, my godchild was born. I met her a few minutes after that:

And what a year it has been! It is fun to be a godmother.

Here are some things I will remember about her first year: her baptism, carrying her in her sling through Whole Foods when she was still tiny, the day we went to the fair and sat in the grass, pushing her in her stroller on a walk around the block, seeing her clap, seeing her wave, watching her try to crawl, holding her hands as she took steps, and pushing her in her swing.

If you look to the sky

There's a man all alone
Telling me his friends are gone
That they've died and flown away
So I told him he was wrong
That your friends are never gone
If you look to the sky and pray

--"Cannonball"

Giant beds of flowers are being planted all over town. Signs of spring are everywhere and mean everything.

I love Brandi Carlile so much that is starting to become ridiculous. I just had to turn off the hairdryer because I was listening to "Cannonball" really loud and I had to take a moment to cry. Brandi Carlile's music makes me fill up with feeling until it overflows while I am trying to dry my goddamn hair.

Pizza and wine with a school pal tonight. New pals, old pals. Pals are important.

Marley is watching a mosquito bounce on the ceiling with crazily good eyesight.

Not sure what else to say. Trying to drown out worries about work and homework and the flies that seem to be swarming from our drains and the fact that my front yard and sidewalk have been destroyed by a sewer line repair, and sure, it's only grass, but I was quite fond of that grass, and pull in towards me only what is important and what matters. I'm frozen in my bed till the day comes around, how I'm lost, how I'm found. I miss my sister. I miss my friend in Hawaii! I am depressed about knowing that as of next week, barring some emergency, I will not be able to take a single day, hour, or minute off of work until July and then July is going to turn around and be crazy at work in a whole different way so Lord knows when vacation can occur??? I am emotional. My sweatshirt that I've had since senior year of high school and is in remarkably great shape smells like marinara sauce, like my clothes used to smell when I would come home from the restaurant I where I worked in college. It's very weird how many memories can be dredged up by the smell of marinara sauce mixed with clothes. WEIRD. I'm feeling groggy and wondering how my friend is functioning having not gotten a full night's sleep in basically a year. I just don't know how she does it and I think she must be fueled by the blue eyes and smile of her nocturnal baby and the hilariousness of her four-year-old. I wonder how people function in general. Truly? How does the world keep spinning? Jim Sturgess is in a new movie with an American accent, and the trailer startled me because I expected him to sound like Jude and start singing in the aisles of a bowling alley.

I think I'm going to bed to read Dreams from My Father. Clearly I'm in no shape for coherence.

Boys & girls

Last night, B. and I watched Friday Night Lights, and Smash's little sister was receiving obscene phone calls from the complete jerks who were harassing her at the movies in last week's episode. And it made me remember something that I hadn't thought about in a long time.

I'm not sure how old I was ... I think it was sometime in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade. I woke up one morning and there was an envelope with my name written on it taped to the outside of my bedroom window. I opened it, and it had some rude, foul things written in it. The main thing I remember is that it asked me to circle my lingerie size and leave the note out for the sender to retrieve. I remember that it freaked me out, and I threw it away. Some time later -- not sure how long -- I got another note. For this one, I remember that my parents were out of town and the older sister of my older brother's friend was staying with us. She was a really nice woman, and we loved her. I remember she always smelled really good. Anyway, I got another note and this one had something about wanting to do something that rhymes with top my ferry. And I was SO completely mortified and horrified and I don't even remember if I knew what that meant. I don't think I did, actually. At least not in those terms. I remember sobbing and sobbing and the babysitter holding me and telling me it was okay and not to be scared. I remember saying through bawling hiccups that it was probably just some stupid boys from the bus, several of whom lived in my neighborhood and would have been in walking distance or biking distance from my window.

I know that it was probably one or more of them, and I knew that then, and that the notes were harmless, but I still remember being so upset and so scared by them. I did not like the idea of someone talking to me like that, thinking of me like that, even if they were just being stupid and playing a joke. Maybe to them it was funny, but to me it was so mean. And though we had our afterschool arguments and dramas on the bus, I thought that we were all friends at heart and that it was mean to do something like that to a friend. Maybe somewhere deep down I worried that it wasn't one of them and that it was some grown-up weirdo, but I don't think I allowed myself to entertain that possibility. After all, only the boys on the bus would know my house and know which window was mine and all that jazz, right?

Anyway, the minute I remembered these notes last night while watching Smash's sister cry over those mean phone calls, I started crying, too. And I cried for Smash's sister and for me and for all the little girls who are taunted, harassed, bothered, and scared by mean little boys or big boys who might think they're being funny but who are really just being awful. I've been thinking about it all day, and it just makes me so angry, thinking about how in 2008 we still live in a society where boys being lewd and disgusting to girls is something that happens and makes girls cry. And it makes me feel frustrated that the way this makes girls feel is something that men will never be able to understand, even the best men.

I never found out who left those notes on my window. I ended up going out later in life with one of the neighborhood boys, and I wish I'd thought to ask him if he knew anything about it. I remember knowing then that the notes weren't in his handwriting and trusting that he was my friend and would not treat me that way. I remember not recognizing the handwriting at all. Again, I know they were just jokes, and I know they were put there by kids, but they were still gross and made me feel so heartbroken and terrified inside. I don't know if I can explain it, really.

I don't really have anything else to say about it. Except that I understand why Smash wanted to smash those boys' faces in. I hope my brother wanted to do the same thing for me.

Make Lemonade

The bookcases in my room are mostly stocked with children's and young adult books I've read a million times. Paul Zindel, Lois Lowry, Jean Little, Judy Blume, Madeleine L'Engle, and so forth. Mixed in with the multiples by those authors are a few singles. One I hadn't picked up in years is Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff.

I couldn't sleep last night and could not get into the new book I was reading, so I pulled this one off the shelf and read for more than an hour past my bedtime. I just took a long bath and finished it and cried my eyeballs out. It is a beautiful and powerful little book, and I loved it a decade ago, and I love it still.

I first read this book in a multicultural adolescent literature class my first summer of graduate school. It was taught by the professor whose other class in adolescent literature I'd taken with my sister as an undergrad. That class had three sets of sisters in it, weirdly. My sister and I discovered a long lost cousin in that class as well. I could go on and on about how special that class was to me, but I won't right now. I'll just say that the fact that the same professor headed up the graduate program I entered promptly upon graduating from college was pretty much the reason I did it. I loved her. She taught me so much about teaching and about books. I was never the teacher I think she wanted me to be or half the teacher she was, but I still cherish all that she taught me, and it's books like this one that I'm so grateful to her for sharing with me.

OKAY, I JUST LOOKED THIS BOOK UP ON AMAZON IN ORDER TO LINK TO IT IN THIS ENTRY, AND I SEE THAT IT IS PART OF A TRILOGY. OH MY SWEET LORD.

And excuse me, but the second book won the freaking fracking National Book Award? And was a Printz Honor Book? Oh Jesus Pete, where have I been? Now I am crying with happiness! I do not see a third book, so I'm not sure why they're calling it a trilogy. Maybe the third book is still unwritten.

I just ordered True Believer. I am so happy. I love everyone and everything.

I've got issues

1989



1990



1991



1992



1993

Sassy retrospective

I've been putting my hands on my old Sassy issues. They've been moved in a giant stack from house to house since I first moved out of my parents' house at age 18. I haven't looked at them in a long time because they're always in a closet.

It turns out that I have exactly zero issues from 1988. Which bums me out. But I do have all of 1989 (except for June ... what was I doing in June of 1989? I had just graduated from the 8th grade and was most likely headed to summer camp ... maybe I brought that issue with me and it never made it home) and all of 1990, 1991, and 1992. Can you say "treasure"? I can. Treasure. I only have January through August of 1993 (except for April ... maybe it got tossed as a soiled contagion while I was in the throes of mono misery that month). In August of 1993, I started college. Maybe I decided I'd outgrown Sassy once that happened because I don't have another issue after that.

Inexplicably, I have two copies of February of 1991 (the month I turned sixteen) and three copies of March of 1991 (the month after that). Also two of November of 1992, which featured Mayim Bialik on the cover. (On one of them, I drew make-up on her face with multi-colored paint markers.) I have the covers with Johnny Depp, Juliana Hatfield, Robert Downey, Jr., and Courtney Love/Kurt Cobain. October of 1990's cover was ripped off at some time. Apparently that was the Christian Slater cover. I do vaguely recall making a Christian Slater collage on my bedroom wall after Pump Up the Volume, which came out in 1990, which explains that the cover was most likely collage fodder.

I am looking at these covers and they are so familiar to me even though I have not glimpsed them for years. Decades even, maybe. All told, including the few duplicates, I have 56 issues. Is that excessive?

I did a lot of doodling in these magazines, which is kind of dumb but also kind of funny. Lots of doodles about the love of teen boyfriends and one guy friend quoted as saying "no more tampon talk!" with an arrow drawn from a Tampax ad.

My boyfriend was at one of the Sassiest Colleges in America in 1989, when that article was written. He knew someone named in the article. That just made me jump up and down in my hall.

Also in November of 1989, I circles and drew arrows around a poem that started like this: "They wait to die / You wait to dine / You think it natural / They await a painful death ..." (about animals) -- I guess I was embracing vegetarianism at the beginning of 9th grade.

I really ... just cannot even begin to say how much I loved this magazine. I don't even know what to say. I think I'm going to try to take some pictures, but not tonight.

The love of my young life, River Phoenix, talked about veganism in October of 1989. The cover says, "River Phoenix wants to tell you something." I wish I could have told River Phoenix something, such as "I love you. Please don't die four years from now this month."

Day three

It's 6:59 in the morning. I managed to get out of bed, but I have now relocated to the couch and am having trouble forcing myself off of it. 25 degrees is too cold to face. I am pretending I don't have to be at work in an hour.

So, it's the beginning of the third day of the new year. 2008 was rung in quietly but happily. A matinee of Juno with Skittles and popcorn, then an afternoon of crock pot cooking and No Man's Land (excellent, thanks, Kymm) and Superbad (dumb but funny) and a bottle of red wine. I was asleep when the clock struck twelve, but I'm fine with that.

On New Year's Day, we watched yet another movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, and I jotted it down, hoping to actually stick to keeping my movie and book lists for 2008.

Last night in the tub, I finished What Gets Into Us by Moira Crone, which was very good, and then I tackled How Sassy Changed My Life. It really took me back to the days of Sassy. I have very vivid memories of lying around on my friend's bed reading it. I think she was the one who first discovered it; I'm not sure how. But I know we loved it from the start, and it meant so much to us. Reading this book was a nice way of learning that it meant the same thing to lots of other people. I also remember quite clearly getting the issue run by the new staff and being like, "What are you and what have you done to my Sassy?" It was kind of crushing, like the end of an era. This book was also enlightening relative to the boycott of the magazine and how it tied its hands when it came to sexual topics. I had no idea that ever happened. I was just happily reading it in my friend's bedroom and spinning my little REM record that came in one issue. I wonder if I still have that record somewhere? That I still have so many issues is one positive aspect of being a lifelong packrat. I don't see ever parting with them, honestly.

I am vowing to embrace the joys of this new year and focus less on the bummers. I really want to stop waking up in the middle of the night and using that time to fret, fret, fret the dark hours away. I want to be healthy and kind and energetic and creative and loving and have plenty of fun.

I guess I need to face the music and get up off the couch. I'll end this with a few pictures -- flowers by me, dogs by B.

Noted and cherished

I haven't been able to sit down and write about Madeleine L'Engle's death because every time I think about it I start crying. I tried to tell my mom about it on the phone the other night and I could barely get the words out. It is bizarre. But I really can't think of another artist who has touched me more deeply or for longer. I read my favorite books of hers over and over, and they are always both familiar and new. I just re-read Many Waters recently, and I've been itching to re-read A Ring of Endless Light, but the pages are literally falling out and it's not an easy thing to do, practically speaking.

I don't remember when I first started reading her. I know my friend read her first. I remember trying to read A Wrinkle in Time in grade school because a boy in my class was reading it and I did not have the faintest clue what was going on and I put it down. It was so far over my head at that point. This was maybe like third or fourth grade if my memory of what classroom I remember reading him in serves me. Anyway, I can only guess that I first read it in 7th or 8th grade? Friends who were there, do you have any memory of this? I know I was deeply entrenched in the Murry books in early high school. And then came A Ring of Endless Light, which I could not possibly love more and which fully made me believe that if I called to the dolphins in the Gulf when we were on summer vacation, and even as a grown-up staring at any big blue sea, they would come. I chose A Swiftly Tilting Planet in an adolescent literature class as the book to present that I thought everyone should read. For my master's project, I gave my subject the pseudonym Meg. I called her school Murry Middle School. I gave the girl A Ring of Endless Light when it was all over because she helped me so much with my paper, and I wanted to help her in return by giving her Vicky Austin.

I don't even really know what to say. These books have moved me, shaped me, in many ways raised me. The characters are almost like real people to me. And Glimpses of Grace has provided solace to me more times than I can even count. I consider her one of the great writers and great women of our time. I am so deeply sad that she will never write anything again. But I am so immensely grateful that through her writing she will live on. Kids will be picking up A Wrinkle in Time forever. It will probably end up on the banned books list over and over again. I think it's so ridiculous for that book to be challenged by religious groups when Madeleine L'Engle, much like Anne Lamott in my mind, is one of the most inspiring Christians ever to walk on the earth. It is such a blatant case of people jumping to ban something because it has witches in it without possibly having read it. Ridiculous. I can't even get started on this topic because it makes me so damn mad. Madeleine L'Engle was so tough, though. She was so funny and sarcastic and brilliant and strong. I read once that an astronaut carried A Wrinkle in Time into space during a mission because it was reading the book as a child that sparked her interest in astrophysics before women were allowed to enter the space program. Is that not the most awesome thing you have ever heard? (In trying to look up the astronaut's name, I just came across this. I can't wait to listen to it.)

I love A Wrinkle in Time mostly because of the way Meg loves Charles Wallace, the treasure of her heart, so fiercely that she loves him back into being himself. I love A Wind in the Door mostly because of what Proginoskes does in the end and also because reading it made me think for the first time about how everyone and everything are connected and because thinking about them being inside the farandolae inside the mitochondria was largely why I ended up really enjoying high school biology. I love A Swiftly Tilting Planet - maybe my favorite of the three - because of the awesome mythology of Charles Wallace moving through history within other people. I love the names in that book, I love the rune, I love the story of Calvin's mom, I love the unicorn, I love the changing of the might-have-beens, I love the whole damn thing. I memorized the rune as a kid and it's still stuck in my brain the way things you memorize as a kid are. I love Many Waters because Sandy and Dennys were finally given something to do other than grow vegetables. I love A Ring of Endless Light so much that I can't even put it into words. I love Vicky's relationship with her grandfather. I love Adam Eddington. I love Basil and Norberta and Njord. And I've read so many of her other novels but I love those the best. Some of my favorite copies of her books that I've collected include A Wrinkle in Time in both hardcover and paperback with this cover and an ancient copy of And Both Were Young. I have whole shelves of her books, fiction and nonfiction, and I love them.

I loved her. She opened whole worlds and universes for me. She made my imagination come alive. I am having trouble articulating what her books mean to me, what she has always meant to me. So I will let Vicky Austin say it for me.

The earth will never be the same again.
Rock, water, tree, iron share this grief
As distant stars participate in pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
Is Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried,
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies then would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
That every life is noted and cherished,
And nothing loved is ever lost or perished.

Not Laboring on Labor Day

Right now I'm sitting at the coffee shop with Herpreet. She's working on her laptop, and I'm working on mine. I'm not sure what she's listening to. I'm listening to Grease 2. It's not a bad way to spend part of a Labor Day afternoon.

My boyfriend is a deep thinker and has been having especially deep thoughts lately in the wake of his plunge into academia. Last week, I was only sort of awake when he started to intelligently explain Barack Obama's appearance on The Daily Show, and I actually interrupted him to say, "Yeah, that's sort of like Danny Tidwell on So You Think You Can Dance." Showing how nice he is, he nodded as if that were a totally apt and legit comparison.

I've found myself more than once recently talking about Wil Wheaton. "Well, Wil Wheaton says..." and he finally asked me, "Who is Wil Wheaton?" And I walked into my bedroom and walked out with the framed showcard I bought off of eBay with a framed picture. It's a piece of one of those big cardboard displays in the movie theater, the image of John Cusack and Wil Wheaton sitting on a bed in one of the flashbacks in Stand By Me. I pointed to him, "That's Wil Wheaton. Now he has a blog." And I really do enjoy it. It's weird sometimes to realize that the little boy who played Gordie LaChance, one of the characters that pretty much consumed my entire psyche throughout the entirety of sixth grade and who grew up to be a writer, is now a grown man and a writer. But he's a good writer and seems like a genuinely nice person, and there's something that feels right to me, in a corny way, about that.

Speaking of blogs, there have been two blogs I've been keeping up with this year that have moved me down to the depths of my being. This one chronicles a family's battle with lymphoma. Even though I don't know these people at all, I followed it so closely, hoping and praying for a good outcome and healing beyond the heartbreak they suffered. To read about them coming back into the light has been nothing short of inspiring. The writing on this site is some of the best I've ever encountered on the web. This one also has incredibly beautiful writing and tells the story of the birth of two babies and the survival of only one. It is hard to know how to describe these blogs because they involve struggles and heartbreaks of a degree I've never experienced and can't even imagine and I don't want to come off like a dork talking about how beautiful they are and how much they've moved me. I just am grateful to have been able to read them, really, and to have witnessed from a million miles away the beauty and the strength they have been able to express. I don't even know.

I watched The Pianist recently for the first time. It certainly was harrowing. Worth watching for this scene alone. {Warning: Huge spoiler in that link.}

Meanwhile, I have finally started The Road. I haven't gotten far, but I know I want to keep going. I just finished Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach, which I thought was pretty excellent.

This week I've been spending a lot of time with my sister, which has been great. She came to exercise class with me and marveled at my ability to roll around in other people's sweat. She was proud of me. "It's definitely good germophobic therapy," I said. Class continues to be hard but fun. Sometimes I'm so tired during the cooldown that I almost fall over during the stretches. The other night a panting man saw me about to keel over and then right myself and he nodded in agreement. "Talk about spent," he said. I nodded back. Spent indeed. My sister and I went to Piccadilly for lunch, site of many childhood family meals. I ordered a side of orange macaroni and cheese and a side of orange baby carrots for my lunch and decided to drink some orange Fanta with my meal. The three went well together. It is impossible to quantify how much Piccadilly macaroni and cheese we consumed as kids. Back when they had the really delicious red punch, not the Hi-C fruit punch. Good times.

We had a party with all of her lifelong friends the other night before sending her off to South America, and we ate jambalaya and shrimp and brownies and it felt good to be in my parents' house with all of those old friends and their babies. So many babies! Wow.

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to New Orleans together for the first time since he's moved here. We ate at our favorite brunch place -- he got debris and poached eggs and I got a bacon, arugula, tomato, and egg sandwich on focaccia. Later, we stopped for gelato (strawberry and chocolate hazelnut). Because it's so long, we've been watching The Lives of Others in installments. I thought the first 15 minutes or so were sort of boring, but now I'm hooked.

What else? I'm liking my classes so far. The material is alternatingly mindnumblingly boring and very interesting. I guess all of grad school might like that, no matter what you're studying.

Jessamyn and Grace have been schooling me a little bit on the ways of the Canon Digital Rebel. I borrowed B.'s and tried to do a little shooting with it. My main goal was to be able to shoot at my sister's party indoors without using the pop-up flash that comes with the camera. It was not a completely successful mission, but I learned a bit about apertures, shutter speed, and ISO and just knowing a little tiny bit makes me want to know a lot more. Mostly I just want to be as good a photographer as those two ladies even though that will likely not happen in this lifetime. Here are a few shots that I like even though they're nothing sensationally arty.

Summer

Summer. Summer is so hot. It's still really quite hot. Hot.

I've always remembered Pamie's entry about moving in with someone, so I went to her archives and found it. Here it is. It's still very funny.

So far, we've lived together for 2.5 weeks. We haven't killed each other or any of the animals yet. We baked honey whole wheat banana walnut bread in his bread machine. We made this in the crock pot which continues to taste much better than a Weight Watchers recipe should. I think it's the mango chutney. It's just so good, and I don't even like mangoes. We watched season two of Weeds. We ate sushi and played 80s trivia with friends. Somehow B. got the "Tim" and I got the "Reid" on the answer to a question about a WKRP in Cincinnati actor's show, Frank's Place. That was some good teamwork. He's been studying mostly every waking minute; I've been lying on the couch sweating and wishing the So You Think You Can Dance tour would come to my town.

I started going to my crazy exercise class again because I can no longer button my shorts and I need some endorphins released pronto before I melt away with summer blahs. It has been good to go back. I recognized most of the people there my first time back, the old faithfuls. It is still very painful and sweaty but not in an altogether terrible way. The teacher still shouts, "Love yourself." The gym is a bit like Dante's inferno, but I'm bringing a big bottle of water and drinking from it every few minutes. My shins hurt me so badly when I tried to jog very slowly around the gym for sixty seconds that I cannot believe I once ran 13.2 miles in a row without stopping. How did I ever do that? I'll never know. I wiped sweat out of my eye with my hand, which had just gotten someone else's sweat on it from a sweaty, sweaty mat, and I marveled at my ability to ignore germophobia while actively struggling to catch my breath. Sometimes breathing is more important than cleanliness, you know? And that is why I should probably keep going to this class. Being covered in other people's sweat reminds me that other people aren't walking around trying to make me sick and that their bodily fluids are much like mine. I am crazy; it is true. I also like how people meet eyes across the gym. I'll be doing some insane abdominal exercise and on every sit-up I'll meet eyes with someone on the bike across the gym and she'll be peddling like crazy and looking either empowered or about to die and it's sort of silently acknowledged that there are only sixty seconds to this round and please God we will all make it through until the teacher yells for us to switch. There is a camaraderie there. I am inspired by the fast, lean, incredible hardbodies and by the slower, more overweight people who all seem to be working equally as hard. It's all just sweaty and hot and inspiring and I don't even care how fat my stomach looks or how completely uncoordinated and ungraceful and unathletic I am when I'm there because at least I'm there sweating to high heaven and trying.

I am taking some classes myself this fall and went through a credit card debacle with the bookstore wherein they charged my card four times the price of my textbooks and thus threw my checking account into jeopardy of being overdrawn. So that was a joyous way to start the semester.

Sometimes internet dreams do come true. The entire Days of Our Lives 1986 Thanksgiving episode is now up at YouTube. When we were kids, we would always have Thanksgiving at my aunt's convent, and my brother, sister, and I would sneak upstairs to watch the show every year after lunch on a communal nun TV. And this was by far the best Thanksgiving episode of Days of Our Lives that we ever clandestinely watched. It was flashback bliss.

My latest internet hope is to somehow find a video or a recording of Shawn Colvin singing "Try to Remember" on Broadway's Best on Bravo. Sometimes I wonder if anyone but me even saw this show. But it was a beautiful, heartbreaking rendition and I'd love to hear it again. (There are few clips of the special up, such as Mandy Moore singing "Adelaide's Lament," though the audio is kind of uneven in this clip and makes her sound kind of off. I remember her doing it quite excellently, though.) I'm just putting it out there in the universe so hopefully one day this song will magically re-enter my life.

Songs 87-88

I am listening to "Songs 87-88." A classic mix tape if ever there was one.

SIDE A

Lots of blur and 20-year-old tape messiness, then ...

1.) In My Dreams by REO Speedwagon.

Video is here.

2.) I Think We're Alone Now by Tiffany.

Truthfully, I still sort of like this song. I don't think this is the official video, but here's some kind of video involving a mall. (Here's Robin Sparkles for good measure.)

3.) Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Belinda Carlisle.

Video is here. I do not remember it being this bizarre. Belinda Carlisle looks very pretty, but the people in blindfolds? Dancing with the globes? Weird. I really loved this entire tape in the 8th grade.

4.) I've Got My Mind Set on You by George Harrison.

Video is here. I have a vague memory of my mother really liking this song.

5.) Shake Your Love by Debbie Gibson.

Like Belinda, I also wore out this tape. Video is here.

6.) FAITH BY GEORGE MICHAEL in all caps because apparently this is the song I love the most to this day from this collection. Video is here.

7.) Push It by Salt-n-Pepa.

Video is here. I remember being very proud of myself after committing the "Salt-n-Pepa's here, and we're in effect ..." verse to memory.

And then dedications. Just the kind of wonderful stuff that makes sitting here going through these tapes on this wretched walkman worthwhile. Every night when the radio station counted down the top 8 songs of the day at 8:00, they would take phone dedications. We called a lot. Here's one from someone else on the tape: "To Caleb from Danielle. I hate you so much and I resent what you said about me." I don't remember the nasty dedications, but apparently they were allowed.

And then the dedications on the tape … become so awesome that I almost cannot fathom it.

Here are ours. (Names of boys have been changed.) Please keep in mind that we were 12 years old.

Shelley: "To Joe from Shelley ..." (Hands phone to me.) Eliza: "And to Andrew from Eliza." Then in unison: "WE LOVE Y'ALL A LOT."

Next, dedications from another night.

Eliza: "To Andrew from Eliza. I love you so much." (Hands phone to a Mean Girl named Callie.) Callie: "And to Jeff from Callie and to Ben, I'll always ... [dramatic pause] love you." DJ: "Always?" Callie: "Always."

And still more dedications ...

Shelley: "HI!" (most excited "hi" ever heard on the radio) "Ok. To Joe, I love you so much, and hi to his cousin Jacob, from Shelley." (Hands phone to Eliza.) Eliza: "And to Andrew from Eliza, I love you a lot, and we want to say hey to all of our friends at school! Thanks!" DJ: "Boy, they were a happy sounding bunch."

AND THEN, THE BEST PART: "This is Shelley, and you're listening to Countdown '87! Here's song #79, Samantha Fox, Touch Me."

8.) I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2.

Video is here. I was only first becoming aware of U2 around this time, partly due to Maryelizabeth and her always advanced taste in music and partly because of a conversation I had at Thanksgiving with my cousin, whom I idolized. I told him about my love for Whitney Houston, and he said he preferred bands like U2. I think I tried to defend her, and he said, "But Eliza. On the one hand, you've got I Wanna Dance with Somebody. On the other, you've got Sunday Bloody Sunday." I understood what he was telling me. And that is that I was very young, dumb, and shallow. But he did it with love. Weirdly, I've always thought my cousin looked a lot in the face like Bono. Maryelizabeth and I used to sing Running to Stand Still on the playground at recess. I'm sure everyone really enjoyed it. I know I was deep into Bono love by some point in 1987, because I wrote a paper for 7th grade English that if I could spend the day with anyone in the world, it would be Bono, sitting with him on a grassy knoll discussing how to bring about world peace.

SIDE B

1) I Wanna Dance with Somebody -- number 1 in Countdown '87.

Shelley and I went with Callie and Callie's mom to see Whitney Houston in concert in 1987. It was, needless to say, awesome. Video is here. Oh, how I loved her.

2.) Tell It To My Heart by Taylor Dayne.

Video is here.

3.) Hungry Eyes by Eric Carmen.

Callie's mom also took us, incidentally, to see Dirty Dancing, much to my own mother's chagrin. Video is here.

4.) Cajun Rap Song by ??

5.) True Faith by New Order.

Very, very awesome video. And I still think this is a pretty great song.

6.) Honestly by Stryper (the Christian heavy metal band).

7.) Candle in the Wind by Elton John.


Listening to this tape has definitely been an enjoyable walk down memory lane. As embarrassing and silly as they were, it makes me extremely happy, twenty years later, to listen to our 12-year-old selves make proclamations of love to boys on the radio. At that time, Shelley and I both had braces and really big bangs, and I like picturing us lying on my bedroom floor with the rotary-dial phone (with the really long extension cord from my parents' bedroom because we weren't allowed to have our own phones in our rooms at that time) being total dorks. I have no idea what happened to Andrew. I think he might be an attorney. Meanwhile, Shelley's seventh grade love, Joe, is now a Christian rock recording artist.

Maryelizabeth, who first showered the light and love of U2 upon me, stopped by tonight, and we decided to look up this video. Fatigued by newborn-induced sleep deprivation, a three-year-old, an obese cat, a husband, and a job, she declared, "This video is the most inspiring thing I have ever seen." Old friends + old music = love.

"Exam Songs" Tape (1990)

1990. So, 1990 exams would have been spring of freshman year in high school or fall of sophomore year. This is a very weird mix. My Harry Connick, Jr. obsession had begun in earnest. I guess, based on the title, I made it for studying. But most of them are kind of downbeat and blah, so maybe I felt like I needed to be calm and centered? Who knows? Some of them are pretty horrid, but I still love lots of them. I was fifteen.

SIDE A

1.) In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. It was mostly all about Say Anything in my early teen days. It's true.

2.) Crossroads by Tracy Chapman.

3.) The Friendship Theme from Beaches.

4.) Cowboy Bill by Garth Brooks. (?????)

5.) Theme from Top Gun. (Embarrassing, but maybe I thought it would make me feel triumphant while studying.)

6.) Love Can Build a Bridge by The Judds. (More embarrassing.)

7.) Katie's Theme from Stealing Home.

8.) Promise Me You'll Remember by Harry Connick, Jr. (The only good thing about The Godfather Part III.)

9.) Theme from The Princess Bride.

10.) Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid.

11.) If I Only Had a Brain by Harry Connick, Jr.

12.) Sonnet XXIX by Shakespeare (as read by Ron Perlman on the soundtrack to TV's Beauty and the Beast).

SIDE B

1.) Long Lost Friend by Restless Heart.

2.) But Not for Me by Harry Connick, Jr.

3.) We'll Never Say Goodbye by Art Garfunkel.

I need to pause for a moment to say that this is the song I wanted to find. At the heart of this mix tape nostalgia was wanting to find this song. It was on the Sing soundtrack, long lost to me. It's never been available anywhere else. I got my mom to ask the vice principal if they would play this for our 8th grade graduation. She (kindly) said no. I think it's beautiful, and I love it very much. Here are the lyrics.

We've shared the days of laughter
We've shared the nights of sorrow
And in the morning after
We face a bright tomorrow
Side by side we'll always stand
Spirits flying high
Long as I can hold your hand
We'll never say goodbye

We've walked the halls of learning
And served the proud tradition
The flame of truth is burning
To clarify our vision
Look at how the future gleams
Gold against the sky
Long as I can share your dreams
We'll never say goodbye

There's little to be sure of
But we will last forever
For now we know the pure love
We feel when we're together
Then if someday we should part
We will not say die
Long as you are in my heart
We'll never say goodbye
Long as you are in my heart
We'll never say goodbye

It's really so pretty and cheesy. I wish you could hear it.

4.) Where or When by Harry Connick, Jr.

5.) Some very beautiful flute song I remember well but cannot identify. Maybe it's from Beauty and the Beast? I think that's it. (Note: I see that this CD is now available for a very reasonable price. It must be back in print. I spent an obscene amount of money on this CD a few years ago. Oh, well. And I had no idea the first two seasons are now out on DVD! Some fan I am.)

6.) I Could Write a Book by Harry Connick, Jr.

I HATE THIS PIECE OF SHIT WALKMAN. This is taking forever.

7.) Let's Call the Whole Thing Off by Harry Connick, Jr.

8.) What Is a Youth from Romeo and Juliet. I taped this from my mom's album from 1968, which is now framed in my hall.

9.) It Had to Be You by Harry Connick, Jr.

10.) One Hand, One Heart from West Side Story. Also taped from my mom's ancient vinyl.

11.) Tonight (see #10).

12.) There's a Place for Us (also West Side Story).

13.) How to Handle a Woman by Richard Burton from Camelot. I guess I was deep into recording-from-records mode at this point.

14.) Camelot Reprise by Richard Burton. Still gives me chills, honestly.

Mix Tapes

Sometimes when someone has a crush on you, he'll make you a mix tape to give you a clue.

I'm in the middle of reading Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield. I can't remember who first recommended it, but whoever you are, thank you. I love it.

I love it so much so that I stopped at the drugstore this morning and bought myself a walkman so I'll have some way to play the old mix tapes I dug out from three full shoeboxes on the top of my closet last night. Mix tapes by me, mix tapes by others. For some idiotic reason that escapes me and makes me want to go back in time and kick my own ass, many moves ago, I decided to trash all the cases with their carefully numbered side A and side B songlists and just keep the tapes. Many of whose labels have worn off, so I'm not even sure what a lot of them are. I remember many by the color of the sticker or the look of the tape even when the writing is long gone. I knew them all so well.

Sadly, I forgot to buy batteries. Walkmen take batteries. Oh yeah. So I picked some up on the way home from work, and here I lie on the couch. The first tape I have chosen was the mix Shelley made me when we graduated from high school. Side B was cued up and ready to go, so I started with that. I've made it through the first four songs so far:

1.) Give It Away by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

2.) These Are Days by 10,000 Maniacs.

3.) There Will Never Be Another Tonight by Bryan Adams. (AWESOME)

4.) The "Lloyd, Lloyd, All Null and Void" clip from Say Anything. (Scroll to about 2:35 in this clip to hear it.)

It is so wonderful to revisit these songs that I am laughing and crying at the same time. I haven't had a tape player in my car since the fall of 1999 or a working tape player in my house since God knows when, so I haven't heard these tapes in so long. Some of them date back to 1987-88. I labeled them with things like "Eliz.'s Fave Songs 88: DON'T ERASE!" with the bright blue fountain pen I got for Christmas. I cannot wait to find out what is on that one in particular.

In the shoebox was the first tape I ever bought: Madonna. The first Madonna. I was with Shelley and her dad when I bought that one, I think. Circa 1983. How is that even possible? How did I know about Madonna when I was 8 years old? I almost tossed it last night, but I noticed there is scotch tape over the little squares, tape I must have placed there in order to tape over Madonna. What's on that tape now? I have no clue. But I will find out soon.

5.) "Ghost" by the Indigo Girls. The cornerstone of hundreds of break-up tapes. Thousands. Millions.

6.) Variations on the Kanon by Pachelbel by George Winston. Probably the hardest song I ever taught myself on the piano. I wore out this song trying to learn it, not realizing it wasn't the actual proper "Pachelbel's Canon in D." What is up with spelling it with a "K"? No idea.

I have mix tapes from my older brother and my sister. My little brother: born too late for mix tapes. I have mix tapes from my friend A., who always alternated songs by male and female artists, who always titled the tape with a line from one of the songs, who always typed her labels on the typewriter because her handwriting was so atrocious. I have mix tapes from my old friend J., which we exchanged like letters.

I wonder how many batteries playing all of these tapes is going to use up.

7.) Part of Me, Part of You by Glenn Frey. (From the Thelma and Louise soundtrack.) Whatever time may take away, it cannot change the way we feel today. Very big sentiment with the graduating sector as I recall.

8.) Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire (For Just a Moment) -- But you and I will never really end, we'll never love again like we did then. I think graduation must have made us cry a lot.

9.) You've Got a Friend by James Taylor. But of course.

10.) Pray for Me by Michael W. Smith. One of our songs from camp. I still think this is a very beautiful song, I have to say. It caused many hiccups and sobs at camp's end, that's for sure. Painted on our tapestry, we see the way it has to be, weaving through the laughter and the tears. But love will be tie that binds us to the time we leave behind us, memories will be our souvenirs. And I know that through it all the hardest part of love it letting go, but there's a greater love that holds us. That is pretty right there. Damn. End of side B.

And on to side A.

1.) Baby Got Back by Sir Mixx a Lot. Lovely.

2.) Broken Arrow by Rod Stewart. Junior year of high school, I bought this tape for Maryelizabeth because she expressly asked for it. She, Shelley, and Josh sat on my parents' couch as we exchanged gifts, and she opened this and said, "Rod STEWART? What was I on when I told you I wanted this?" Pan right to Josh. (I was videotaping.) He said disdainfully, "Who else is gonna give you a broken arrow? Who's gonna bring you a bottle of rain? What?!" And flipped his hair, full of hatred for Rod Stewart and possibly all of us. And we laughed about that for the next few, I don't know, years. And that is why this song is on this tape.

3.) Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams. Two songs by Bryan Adams! Wow. We were young and restless, I guess, and needed to unwind.

4.) Circle by Edie Brickell. This song is very depressing. (Sha la la la la la la la la.)

5.) Beat on the Brat by the Ramones. Oh yeah, oh yeah, uh oh. I am not sure why we loved this song so much; I still love it.

6.) Southland in the Springtime by the Indigo Girls. Still love this one, too. (Part of the song.)

7.) Cheeseburger in Paradise by Jimmy Buffett. Not sure what this is about; I think it was related to a spring break we took to Destin junior year when our friend's mom called us hussies and said when we gave our room number to the parasailing guy that we might as well have given him our panty sizes. I remember listening to this song on the way to that trip.

8.) Strongest Weakness by Wynonna. I'm not sure why this was on this graduation mix. I think we might have liked this as a break-up song. Shelley, do you have any memories of this?

9.) Born to Be My Baby by Bon Jovi. I think this song got put on here because I LOVED it. I always thought it was a very underrated Bon Jovi song, and I think I used to proclaim that a lot. All I can really say about it at this point is "light a candle, blow the world away / table for two on a TV tray." (Video.)

10.) Out of the Blue by Debbie Gibson. Wow! This one surprised me. I didn't remember this being on here at all. But I am very glad it is. This entire album was very big with us in seventh grade. I could not help myself and just sang it very loudly, and it scared Marley, and she propelled herself off the couch in flight, scratching my foot along the way. Damn you, Debbie Gibson. (P.S. Still love this song, as it turns out.) (Video.)

11.) Istanbul (Not Constantinople) by They Might Be Giants. I don't know how this song entered our life, but thank God it did. (Video.)

12.) Romeo and Juliet by the Indigo Girls. Loved it then, love it now. I associate this song with daiquiries and cigarettes and singing loudly in cars -- many, many cars.

It was very traumatic when Maryelizabeth and I sent Shelley off to college. We spent the night together at Maryelizabeth's house the night before and sent her off in her Saturn. Maryelizabeth left later. We are still friends, through it all, now. We are scheduled for a three-way call tomorrow night. We are lucky.

I wonder if people still have the mix tapes I made for them.

Take this sinking boat and point it home

It's Sunday night, and I'm listening to the Once soundtrack. Glen Hansard is singing "Say It to Me Now."

It was a full and lovely weekend. On Friday night, I did a lot of chores aroung the house that were long overdue. I woke up on Saturday morning, watched a little bit of Return with Honor, got packed up, stopped for a frozen coffee, and headed to see my boyfriend. On the way there, I had a nice long talk with my sister, who was stranded curbside in Queens with a dead car battery and a spilled iced coffee just trying to get the hell out of New York about religion and faith and whether it's possible to have faith in a higher power without having a religion and whether it's possible to believe in a higher power while deep down knowing that it's all pretend even if it's just to make yourself feel better about rotting in the ground vs. living on. It was a good talk, and it was good to talk to someone who understands where I am coming from in this realm probably better than anyone else ever could because we grew up in the same house believing the same things and now have many of the same questions and doubts.

Once I got to the big city, my boyfriend and I had lunch and went to see Once, which I loved. Loved, really, in italics. There was not a moment of it I did not love.

The next paragraph will be full of Once spoilers. I would not read it if you have not seen the movie and plan to because it will ruin it. Okay. Don't ruin it.

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Beginning of Once spoiler space.

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Don't read this next paragraph. I mean it!

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I started crying the first time she sat down at the piano in the back of the piano store and they sang "Falling Slowly" because not only is it a beautiful song, it was such a beautiful moment. It basically blew me away. And then I cried and cried and cried at the end, when it was clear she wasn't going to show up, when the piano got delivered and she smiled that huge smile, when it showed her with her husband and their daughter through the window, when he called his ex-girlfriend who looked perfectly nice in the old home movies, when their lives went on without each other. My boyfriend and I agreed that if for some reason you don't like the music in the film then you won't like the film, but I reckon, how can you not like the music? It is so beautiful. I thought their performances were so incredibly natural and real and moving. It was such a moving film. Even though part of me of course wanted them to live happily ever after, I think I liked that they didn't, or at least if they did, they didn't do it together. Even if their lives didn't dramatically change due to their meeting, at least on the outside, they changed so much, clearly, on the inside. And they'll always carry the secret of their experience and their lives will be better for it. GOD, THIS MOVIE IS AWESOME. I loved it so much, and the tears I cried weren't really sad tears. They were the good kind of tears, the tears of beholding something beautiful, the tears that make you feel cleansed.


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End of Once spoilers.

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After we saw Once, we went out for Vietnamese food and then went to see the Police! My knowledge of the Police is limited to basically whatever songs of theirs made it into the top 40. Which is clearly a lot of songs, because I knew most of them that they played. It was a very exciting concert on many levels. Part of it was my boyfriend about to dance out of his seat next to me, singing along to every word. Part of it was seeing his friend, a drummer, playing the air drums in his lap along with Stewart Copeland. Who, by the way, is one intense individual. He did not just play the drums. He PLAYED! THE! DRUMS! With total concentration and maniacal energy. It was pretty amazing to behold, actually. And Andy Summer, guitarist, was very interesting to watch. He did not really seem interested in putting on any kind of a show, breaking a smile, or in any doing anything but playing the living shit out of his guitar. It was almost like he was thinking, "I am Andy Summer. There is no one in this arena and possibly the universe who can play the guitar like I can, and I am getting paid a shit load for this, and everyone can really suck it." But then at one point he totally broke out of that blase, stony-faced attitude and started doing herkies across the stage. Which was so out of the blue that it made me love him a little bit.

Meanwhile, there was Sting. On the way to the concert, I said, "I hope that Sting wears a shirt that shows off his guns." And my boyfriend looked at me like I was crazy and I said, "Oops, did I just say that out loud?" And the admiration I feel for Sting isn't so much lust as it is just straight-up admiration that the man is 55 and still has the body of a very in-shape 21-year-old. I only wish I were in half as good of shape. Seriously. And the thing is, he obviously knows it. Copeland was insanely wailing on his drums with focus and the occasional burst of silliness, Summer was mostly just playing, like, "Eh, I rock," but Sting was such a natural showman. He smiled, he played his bass like he could do it in his sleep, he encouraged audience sing-a-longs, and he exuded such ease and such cool. Sting is just very cool. That is what he is. And yes, he did show off his guns. And he took several opportunities to promenade around the stage so people in all directions could take in his sunshine and light. At one point during "I Can't Stand Losing You" there was lots of singing along with the crowd and he said something about New Orleans being alive and that maybe if we sang loudly enough, they could hear us in Washington, DC, so I sang as loudly as I could, and I hoped Elizabeth could hear me, because she loves Sting more than anyone I know, and because I was singing to her.

This morning, we went out to brunch, where the best things were the fried green tomatoes crusted in parmesan with crawfish tails and remoulade sauce and my boyfriend's sazerac. We talked a little about faith, non-faith, and the place in between.

After hundreds of old video tapes cascaded upon my head when organizing my closets with contents ranging from many episodes of Life Goes On, Beauty and the Beast, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, thirtysomething, and such things as the 1991 People's Choice Awards and Bill Clinton's first inauguration celebration and the high school graduation episode of 90210, I decided to grab those featuring home movies of friends and family and head over to my dad's machine that lets you record VHS tapes onto DVDs. I only made it through one tape, but it was a great one, indeed. It has our 1991 family vacation where we spent two weeks driving from San Diego to San Francisco, recording every beautiful and annoying moment, and then my brother's 8th and my sister's 15th birthdays that December, then all of the Christmas festivities of that year. Visits from friends and relatives, a legendary rendition the rap song "Friends, How Many of Us Have Them?" by my older brother's best friend at the time while my friend gasped in laughter in the backround, my brother's recitation of inspirational speech after inspirational speech about American free enterprise, my sister telling me to get the camera out of her face repeatedly, my mom looking gorgeous and being infinitely patient, my sister being secretly filmed by me while sitting on our bedroom floor belting out Chicago's "You're the Inspiration," and my dad being hilarious and showing his dad how to use his new razor. Most of all, though, my little brother steals every show on this 1991 tape, being the most adorable 8-year-old ever to live, dressing up as Peter Pan and wearing his Terminator 2 t-shirt, singing "Happy Birthday" to himself, having a tantrum when my older brother took his bullsye-hitting dart off the dartboard to the point where he lay face down on the floor and screamed, "JERK! JERK!" at him, and then recovering and sitting calmly at the dinner table narrating about the whole affair: "He took my dart off the dartboard on purpose, and I pitched a fit. And then I spilled milk on my pants." And he was just sitting there, eating diced-up pieces of hot dog, milk all over his pants, matter-of-factly admitting his fit pitching, like, totally over it already, demonstrating at age 8 the mellow chillaxity that he still displays on a daily basis.

Watching the tape from that year, the year I was seventeen, when I was mostly behind the camera, and seeing that little glimpse into our loud and busy house and how we laughed and cried and yelled at each other -- and watching so much of it tonight with my parents as they said things like, "Woman, you had some hair back then," and seeing how they got bundled up on Christmas night to go walking around the neighborhood with my dad as the instigator and my mom going somewhat reluctantly but merrily along and how they still do the same thing every night fifteen years later ... it was too much. We are all so different now but also so the same.

And that was just parts of one year. And does not even begin to touch the hours and hours I have from filming my friends in high school and college being ridiculous and doing ridiculous and often dangerous things that I will definitely not be re-watching with my parents in the room like today. I called Maryelizabeth to tell her what she was doing on this one tape I was reviewing from New Year's Day, 1993, our senior year of high school (lecturing, "All of my friends' kids are going to have birth defects because all they do is SMOKE!" and lying on the couch under a blanket singing "Welcome to the Jungle") and I was laughing so hard that when he answered the phone her husband thought I was crying.

I think I would like to buy a new video camera.

And now, a scan of a card I bought at Jazz Fest that I love.

Ice cream cake is important.

First things first: big shout out to reader Jana who has finally solved the mystery of those damn five notes from the Planet Earth theme that have been driving me insane as to where I've heard them before. They are from the theme to Somewhere in Time! If you listen to this, you can hear the five notes from about 3 seconds in to 5 seconds in. Thank you, Jana. You have no idea how this has been torturing me.

On Friday night, we went out for honey wasabi shrimp, pad thai, and the best spring rolls in town. For dessert, we had ice cream cake. This was a very easy and tremendously yummy dessert if you like ice cream sandwiches, oreos, and cool whip, which I do.

The next morning, we went out for breakfast. Later that afternoon, we got take-out from the same place and watched Venus, which was alternately good and kind of disturbing. I liked it, though, mostly. It kind of made me think about my grandfather. He really kind of had a rebirth in his later years when he moved into the retirement home. The men were vastly outnumbered by the women, and a number of the ladies adopted him and crocheted for him and showered him with cards and attention. But mostly he liked the young women. The young women who worked there, the young women at his favorite coffee shop, the young women at the Y, the young women my brother dated. He LOVED them. He took pictures of himself with them and scotch taped them around his apartment. And I really don't think it was a perverted sort of lust he felt for them. I think it was mostly that they were young and alive, and they made him feel young and alive, too.

We took the dogs on a walk around the neighborhood after finishing the movie, which they definitely enjoyed if their near hysteria was any indication. For dinner, we went out for Japanese food. He had a sushi roll with coconut shrimp, avocado, mango, and pineapple sauce, and I had grilled shrimp and vegetables over fried rice and some miso soup. We also split some gyoza. That might be my favorite meal, honestly. Rice, veggies, shrimp, some soup, some dumplings. Perfect. More ice cream cake was had for dessert, enjoyed over about five episodes of season two of The Office. I realized I never saw most of season two, and I laughed until I almost cried, especially during the Olympics.

On Sunday morning, we went to the baptism of my friend's baby. (Thanks again to all who e-mailed or commented with advice!) It went very well. I did my godmotherly duties, amounting only to draping a little white garment over her after her head was doused with the water. She was uncharacteristically quiet and serene, and her dad said, "It must have been all that original sin that was giving her a stomachache." We went out for a very nice lunch after, and a good time was had by all. B. had poached eggs over crab cakes and english muffins with remolaude sauce, and I had seafood crepes. We both had shrimp and corn soup with andouille sausage. I had a cappuccino, he had a Newcastle. I don't know why I like to record what was eaten, but I do. It helps me preserve the memory of the experience somehow. As for being her godmother, I can't pretend that I will be able to advise her about faith or things of that nature, but I definitely promise always to be here for her because holy shit, she is cute, and I love her.

Speaking of memories, a veritable flood of them hit me while in mass for the baptism. I don't know if it was being around other people who went to school there or what, but I felt so nostalgic about the school and I felt SUPER nostalgic in the church. My parents were there, which was nice, and my dad took his volunteer photographer duties very seriously, darting around furtively during the actual baptism taking shots from various angles through breaks in the crowd and barking officially such commands as "Stand by!" My mom looked like some kind of radiant goddess in her blue and white checked shirt. Anyway, it was the first time that B. came to church there, and I found myself wishing for the songs to be really good. Sadly, they used versions of the Amen, Holy Holy Holy, Christ Has Died, Lamb of God, etc. that I didn't know or particularly like, and the opening hymn, closing hymn, and responsorial psalm were not all that. Thankfully, the choir came through with "Here I Am, Lord" during communion, one of my all-time favorites. I don't know how I know every word of every verse of that song, but I do. I guess it goes back to how permanently things are cemented into your brain when you do them over and over as a kid. I had a flashback to being in the choir loft way back in the day and singing at the top of our lungs a very rousing song called "Go Ye into All the World and Preach My Gospel to Every Creature!" There was lots of exclamatory singing in that song. My family is in full agreement that the best mass parts are by Bob Dufford. Two examples are the "Amen" and the "Holy, Holy, Holy," which you can hear (sung rather hideously, I'm afraid) here if you click on "Listen." I think these are from the St. Louis Jesuits Mass, whatever that means.

I guess my point is that even though I don't believe in God like I once did, I still like going to church sometimes and hearing the music I grew up on and being surrounded with so many memories of special times, like our fifth grade Christmas pageant where I played an angel with wings made out of coat hangers and aluminum foil, singing in the choir loft as a kid, all of the Christmas masses where my siblings and I stifled laughter over some crazy off-key choral nonsense going on, and all of the school masses and Sundays spent finger spelling whole conversations in the pews with my friend or my sister and how my friend and I used to pick out Eucharistic ministers who looked like movie stars, such as Tom Hulce, Diane Wiest, and the grown-up Yahoo Serious. I wished I could somehow take a picture of my heart while we were sitting there and show it to B. and say, "Here. Here is so much of my childhood and so much of who I am."

Looking forward to: a rock concert and, at long last, seeing Once.