crushed

NOTE TO SELF:

whoa. slow down. he's 23. he's a punk. he is so many shades of wrong for you. this is going to end very, very badly.

does that matter?

not at all. i'm going to keep bringing him juice boxes and fruit snacks until i get in his pants.

at least i have a plan.

welcome to my new life

i lost my best friend because of a boy. the boy really was a total shithead that weekend. really. totally. no doubt about it. the kid was ass-craptastic. those are the nicest things i can say right now about someone i really liked. (i really, really liked him beforehand... ok, ok, i still like him alot.) bottom line: boys are bullshit and i miss sunny.

in other news:

i walked out on my career. in the middle of a meeting. picked up my shoes and went home. 8 to 9 years of corporate bullshit... then your boss tells you, "you're being punished because of your competence". right. i'm out. have a lovely afternoon, suckers!

that was that.

since then, retirement suits me. i have six classes this semester. i spent a week on my lake. i'm learning to golf. i bought a new rake for when october rolls around. i got to play "Bolingbroke" (he turns out to be Henry IV and he is EVIL) in "Richard II,", i am loving my last few weeks in the Chi. my own Little Kim is coming to spend my last weekend with me. if anyone "curbs" you'll know... i've never been more excited to have Kimmy in my city. but i am spending more time in Indy... i have PUC written all over me. i love school. i am a dork. which is working out well... aside from snacking out of my harry potter lunchbox, i've pretty much got my guys lined up to buy me breakfast and dinner. all of school and life revolves around naps. i'm finding that i *love* shakespeare. i am a starting forward on my bball team. i bought (and can use) an iPod. on 9/18, Mike and I are going apple picking. i'm making 6 pies. sunny, my crust won't rival yours.... but if you want a pie, i will be on my way to madison.

(I could retitle this "Sorry. Love You. Halfway There.")

bed of awesomeness

doug has moved back in for the month. we got him a cozy inflate-a-bed and some new sheets for his stay. deciding on the sheets was tough. he refused the hannah montana sheets.

this is what we settled on:

cuter than a box of puppies!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Dee: Is that blood splatter on your window?

Me: No, it's fire sauce.

Dee: You went to The Bell without me? YOU, CHALUPA-EATING-CHEATER!

TV only makes it hurt worse

On those days, when you feel wholly craptastic and basically want to die, what makes you feel better?

Me? I tend to curl in a ball and cry for my mom. Yessssss, I'm thirty-one and still need my mommy. Shut up. I'm a momma's girl.

And a daddy's girl.

And a gramma's girl.

Whatevs. I dig my fam. So what?

Anyway, back to the "feeling better" question. I have the answer:

Have your best friend fly in from the east coast, let him make fun of you for crying for your mommy, force him to make tons of pudding (any flavor, as long as it has bananas), play tons of games, remain seated, rememeber your best friend is your bitch, make him do dishes and take out the trash, eat more pudding, get a lot of hugs and turn off the TV.

I am so lucky to be in pain this way. And I have pudding,

new love of my life - or - i am officially geeked out

***UPDATE # 2: Saw it a third time with a disbeliever. She wants to have ten thousand of Spock's babies. She's weird.***
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***UPDATE: Saw it a second time & I've changed my mind. I want to have 20,0000 of Chris Pine's babies.****
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Saw the new Star Trek movie last night at the IMAX, and have to say it is hands down the best movie ever. And Chris Pine is dreamy. And I want to have ten thousand of his babies.

no flowers today

so the weather finally broke. by broke, i mean, it went from snow to heat exhaustion overnight, which was followed by rain this afternoon. finally, at 65 degrees and rain-free, i was able to go out and meander through my 'hood and snap some shots of the best thing about may... things budding. things growing. the world becoming green again.

i'm not posting any of those pictures today.

i set out to find the beauty of spring. i wandered a good twenty blocks. i heard the sounds of the neighborhood. kids and parks. hipster guitars coming from windows. lots and lots of traffic. laughter at every corner. the ice cream truck. sirens, sirens, sirens.

sirens are very common in my neighborbood. i live vey near the intersection of two very busy thoroughfares, which is four blocks away from the nearest ER.

sirens are a sound of springtime.

i thought nothing of it... until i passed the park...

one block from home, the sirens amplified and i count eleven squad cars on my corner.

an eleven year old boy was beat to death with a golf club by a ten year old boy.

i walked the other way.

and i'm not posting my pics of things in bloom.

there are no flowers today.

i set out to find the beauty of spring. but in my heart of hearts, i am a winter girl.

i need time to process.



i am always waiting for winter.

it's the climb

i am about to blow my lid; i am the happiest girl on the face of the planet.

two days ago, i thought i was the luckiest girl in the world. then i discovered when it rains, it pours. but opposite style. my life is a full-on flood of GOOD! following the flowers, i have been crazy excited to see bish (aka dysfunction) and never thought anything could distract me from that...

until i found the newest addition to my Bestie Club. her name is tess. and she totally *hearts* hannah montana. and i *heart* tess.

we went and saw the hannah montana movie last night. not quite "slumdog millionaire" as far as the as the Academy is concerned, but it totally wins the award for "jay's ultimate heart-tug, super fun and fabulous movie of a lifetime award".

i thought yesterday night was the epitome of happiness...

then i walked into work today, to have tess super stoked to learn the hoedown-throwdown. she rocks it. i need ALOT of practice. fortunately for me, i have bish in town for the weekend. we can have a hoedown-throwdown weekend.

ok, so bottom line: super happy girl. bishbishbish! hoedown-throwdown. dancedancedance. (and bishbishbish!!!)

parting words (and words to live by):

there's always gonna be another mountain.
i'm always gonna wanna make it move.
it's always gonna be an uphill battle.
sometimes i'm gonna have to lose.

it ain't about how fast i get there.
it ain't about what's waiting on the other side.

it's the Climb.

i'm totally embarrassed that it took ten years of bish and a little hannah montana to make me happy... but, i feel like i am the summit and looking down at how far i've come. the view is beautiful from the top.

third time's a charm

so with just two words, dysfunction has agreed to be a regular part of my life. for the third time.

.

this comes at the end of a r e a l l y long week wracked with worry and fear, self-doubt and accusations and exhaustive, emotional emails.

.

that was the easy part.

today's latest obsession: self

one of my closests friends just called me out on one of my (many and varied) flaws. it is among those that i am aware of and working on.

immediately following, i received this email from the caller-outter:

wow. that was really fucking rude and totally unfair. i get the asshole of the day award, for sure. can we just pretend that never happened?

here's my dilemma: i want to pretend that it never happened and go on about my day. problem is he said it. it's out there. i know, not only, am i flawed in a fundamental way. but also, i know now that he is aware of this hideous flaw.

i will obsess over this until someone threatens me with bodily harm to stop obsessing over this. that is also a flaw of mine, but not one i'm working on. today.

thinking about miniature horses, chicken and roof shingles

I don't know where to start...

I am upset and sad and selfish.

A very dear friend of mine has been in a very difficult predictament for quite a while and he finally made a decision to save himself the grief. He has decided to quit graduate school and move back to his family farm in Maine. Tonight we are all going out to celebrate his new freedom. But I don't feel like celebrating.

I feel like crying.

Cam made this decision suddenly and it came as a shock to us all. And I don't understand how I'm supposed to process it, be happy for him and wish him well inside of three days.

I just don't think it's fair to me. (And of course, this is so all about me...)

Cam has been a foundation for many of us and a source of inspiration to me.

The best trip I've ever gone on, I went with him. We were playing road games in the car, heading to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We weren't really paying attention. Obviously... We ended up in St. Louis. Five hours the wrong direction. The three of us who had made this error of a journey together finally arrived at Mammoth Cave at 3 am. It was a great weekend. We explored caves, we rock climbed, we dry-bobsledded down mountains, we had chicken fights (Cam and I won), we had campfires and hotdogs and corn and beer and laughter. On the ride home, we all agreed that the best part of the whole experience was the ride down. How do three people extend their car ride essentially by ten hours and still have a good time? Because we were together.

Beginning this post, I was upset. But after telling that story, I've come to realize that Maine isn't that far. And after all we've been through and all we've meant to each other, we always will find a way to be together.

It doesn't mean that I won't miss you every single day, Cam.

You are a great friend.

You always will be.

I still can't say "fireplace" without cracking up.

Happy Land

So while the rest of the world is all doom and gloom, and layoffs and firings, and banks going under, etc, I am in “Happy Land”.

I am in week two of my new badass position. I landed this badass position at exactly the right time. Last week my former employer laid off 1.2 million dollars worth of salaried employees in one day. I find that number staggering, scary and really, profoundly sad.

That being said, I now work in “HappyLand”. We have had an ABBA dance party, my new Dean is throwing me a “Welcome-to-your-new-badass-position-pizza-party”, we eat French toast and drink chocolate milk, we make embarrassing You-Tube videos of us playing rock band, and –get this- we have Gummi Flintstones vitamins for the office and they are delicious. My boss is adorable and my coworker is a rockstar. The only downside of this new, badass position is that my huuuuuge window is street-level, so I have to be very careful about when I pick my nose.

Waking up on the couch at 3 am in wearing Grandma’s pants

Waking up on the couch at 3 am wearing Grandma’s pants… you’d think that would be the start to a beautiful trip, no? Not exactly. Although it was totally a highlight.

New Year’s Eve, I wake at 3:30 in the morning (in Grandma’s pants) to load up the her car and her cats and drive 1250 miles to where she winters in Florida. It’s a two day trip and I hate cats, but I’ve done it for the last fourteen years anyway. Every winter I drive down to Tampa, where I pick Grandma up from the airport, hang out in the sun and have afternoon cocktails with Grandma and the neighbors for a few days, then I fly home. In the springtime, I do that same trip, but in reverse.

That’s 35,000 miles of road over the years.

Wow, really?

Yeah, really.

And while I don’t like the cats, I do like the drive. I like the loneliness of it. I like the road and the scenery and the really good music (Thanks, Sunny!). Truth is, I just like to drive and be by myself. And I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen, never had a problem. Not so much as a ticket or a flat tire.

Which is why I was really surprised that I landed in a ditch at 68 miles per hour. Yep. ~$3,000 worth of damage to Grandma’s car.

I was able to get out of the ditch after a few hours. I was the only one of the five cars that ended up in the ditch that wasn’t totaled. So there’s that. I hobbled down the road (another 900) miles to my warm and sunny destination, dragging the back bumper behind me. I have pictures. I’m just not ready to look at them, let alone share them with the world.

But anyways, I’m fine. The cats are fine. The car will be fine. Someday.

The moral of this story is never begin a trip wearing Grandma’s pants.

Beautiful, sunny Tampa Bay.

Of course it rained the whole time I was there...

been a while

It has been so long since the last post because I was in an alcohol induced coma from participating in the Twelve Bars of Christmas, one of my favorite annual drinking events in Chicago. We (me, Sunny, Vil, Matt & wife) headed out at about 9:30 in the morning. I lost Vil by 10 and was drunk by 10:30. I think I was home safely in bed by 7 pm. That may be a huuuuge exaggeration, because I actually have no clue.


The sticker on my card says I'm the Mistle Ho. I wore it with pride.

Drunk girl in a hat with a beer pyramid.

I *heart* beer. Obviously.

Also, the last picture was taken in the first bar at about 10:30 in the morning.

Nobody's doing any real work today anyway...

Because I've been completely overwhelmed in both my professional and personal lives, I have neglected the blog. But since today is The-Best-Day-Of-The-Year-Eve, and I'm too excited about tomorrow to do any real work, and I've read every other blog on the planet, and 90% of the University is shut down so there's really nothing to do here but wait for my boss to leave so I can sneak out, I have decided to spend the time blogging.

So here goes...

Professionally: After being wooed and courted by three different people, I have accepted a new position. A new badass position. Although I feel horrible and more than a little heartbroken to break up with my current boss, I am really excited about this new position and can't wait to start come the first of the year.

Personally: So I guess I have to begin with the reason I haven't blogged in a while. I have recently been a total and complete trainwreck following a personal tragedy that I still can't quite wrap my head around. My grief is insignificant in comparison to what my mother and our oldest family friends are going through. I find it amazing and inspiring that they can continue to function as human beings at this point. I hope that someday soon I can find some beauty in the life that was, but, frankly I'm too pissed off right now.

Michele, when you read this, please know I am eternally grateful for you letting me snot on your shirt and for bringing me shots while I was sitting on the dirty bathroom floor when I had my nervous breakdown. You are the best!

Now, on to better stuff. And quickly!

• I discovered my new favorite hot dog and french fry hotspot the other day with Sunny and haven't had that much fun or laughed so hard in a long, long time.
• We had an 86th birthday party for my Grandma & she got wasted. It was classic.
• Michele, Vanessa and I tore up the dance floor at a wedding Saturday night. Vanessa was a perfect date! I'm super glad she came - and drove!
• Today is The-Best-Day-Of-The-Year-Eve.
• Tomorrow is The-Best-Day-Of-The-Year.

Why is tomorrow The-Best-Day-Of-The-Year? Thanksgiving.

Four hundred and forty-three years ago some pilgrims and some Indians came together to invent a day to celebrate my Mom's cooking. It is her day. No one in the world could convince me to be anywhere than at her kitchen table tomorrow. It is indescribable. It is holy. It is all things happiness and light. It is The-Best-Day-Of-The-Year!! And for anybody not sitting at my mom's kitchen table tomorrow, your life is lacking, incomplete and meaningless. And I truly feel sorry for you.

But I wish you all the happiest holiday anyway.