things i'd like on facebook if liking things on facebook wasn't so damn uncool

-The line 'you are the smell before rain, you are the blood in my veins' from that one Brand New song that reminds me of early college. Like, before I even had an ipod, which isn't really saying much because I jumped on that train a little late, I think.


-The way Rachel Ries' voice make me want to cry and laugh and howl at the moon all at the same time when she's singing Valentine, NE.


-Really good gchat conversations that go down when my boss is basically looking over my shoulder but I'm too fast and superior at minimizing my shit for him to catch on. Oh, I'm typing fast? Must be responding to a pressing work issue.


-Driving without talking on the phone.


-Actually, not knowing where my phone is for extended periods of time. Not in the way that it's lost because I'm careless or negligent and I've dropped it or left it somewhere, but in the way that I don't need to be connected to anyone that way right now. And that's totally fine.


-Seeing my parents hold hands.


-Sliding my feet into flip flops for the drive home from work. Better yet, taking off my shoes completely and walking on grass that's still a little cooler than the air temperature because it hasn't been warmed by the sun yet. Even better yet, not wearing shoes. Period.


-The knowledge that summer is so much closer ahead of us than further behind us.


-The way it feels when I'm holding my niece and talking to her about all the stuff I'm going to teach her and all the things we're going to do and she stops crying and opens her eyes a little bit and just looks at me. Like, "Okay, tell me more."


-Planning long car rides and concert trips and canoeing adventures over glasses of bourbon.


-The excitement of realizing you have enough coins on DrawSomething to buy more colors. I swear sometimes I think the only reason I'm still playing it is the draw to get more colors.


-Mashed potatoes.


-The moment when you could easily let yourself fall down the endless hole of worry and despair about something and everything being uncertain and not having a time line about All The Important Life Events and why at 25 you're still more worried about scheduling a hair cut than going to the dentist and then you suddenly merge onto the highway and put on your sunglasses and look around and don't let yourself go there today. Because in all reality, there's not a whole lot you'd do differently. And fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.


-Noticing when I get home that my plants have grown so much since the last time I saw them. And feeling so proud.



-The routine that goes along with spending my evening reading at the park. The acquisition of a drink before I leave. The spreading of the blanket. The leaning against a tree to get into just the right position. The finding of my page. The settling in. The getting lost. The realizing it's almost dark and packing up.


-Preparing play lists for each new season.


-The building anticipation at work all day, every Friday.

streak.

I have a grey streak running through my hair. Really, it's more silver, but still, grey. It's on the right side of my head, midway up and maybe an inch behind my ear. Sometimes when I'm bored or nervous, I'll grab a cluster of hairs in that area and check just to make sure it's still there.

It's still there.

I've always had it. My mother used to have the hairdresser cut out the grey strands from the rest of my mess of hair when I was a kid. I've got so much hair, it's so thick, that no one notices if I'm twenty or so hairs short of my normal full head. I don't think she meant anything by it, it's just strange to have a child with grey hairs, why not simply rid me of any evidence of abnormality? At least of one so easy to remove.

In college, I went through a phase where I dyed my hair pretty regularly. Usually just a few shades darker. Occasionally I'd fall prey to the pictures I'd seen in magazines and go for some highlights. I forgot all about the grey. It was always covered up.

I literally just forgot about that part of myself. Maybe the hair dye killed my brain cells.

Anyway, partially due to financial constraints and partially due to me becoming the kind of person I actually want to be, I stopped dying my hair a few years ago. It kind of feels good to know that the chemicals are out of it. I kind of feel smug to be comfortable in my own skin. At least in that way, for every one part of me I've grown comfortable with, it seems five more insecurities pop up daily. Don't even talk to me about my pores, I'm set on spending an exorbitant amount of money trying to shrink them back to the size they appeared when I was sixteen and worried about the size of my boobs.

It's always something, I guess.

It was December when I noticed that my grey streak is back. I'm twenty five now, so at first it wasn't exactly a happy reunion with an old friend. I was curling my hair for a rehearsal dinner the night before the marriage of two of my college friends. Matt was in the shower in the next room.

I veritably panicked at the sight, because my first thought was that it made me a mortal. Someone who can't stop the sands of time. I mean, duh. I exclaimed for him to come and look and of course, he didn't see what all the fuss was about. When it comes to appearances, Matt is one of the least fussy people I know. Usually I appreciate that. In that moment, I did not.

My parents are both in their forties. I've never spotted a grey hair on either of their heads, and lately I've been looking more closely. None in my father's beard from what I can tell either. Isn't that where men show their age first?

 I'm standing frozen, transfixed, with a hot curling iron in my hand, wearing a salmon colored sleeveless dress in the middle of winter in a dark hotel room next to a highway in Columbus, Ohio, ticking through the Rolodex of grey hairs I have archived in my memory, significant ones. My Nan's blond color shampoo in the shower at the lake house when I was young. Her first attempts at covering what she now wears proudly. My aunt confessing that she's been dying her hair black for 15 years. A few streaks of silver in a couple of my friends, always yanked. And then there it was. The streak, buried far in the back, but still there. A forgotten memory of my childhood. Squelched as quickly as it could stubbornly reappear every time I sat down, cape resting around my narrow shoulders in the spinning salon chair.

Since then my grey streak has been more novelty and less foreboding omen for me. I'd like to say I've always been an old soul or something equally cliche, but the fact is that I haven't. I haven't always been an old soul. Sure, I like a lot of the same activities as my grandmother, and I'll gladly partake in them with her or alone, but really, I'm still figuring out new things about myself just about daily. I think that makes me still pretty young in the grand scheme.

My grey streak? It's not exactly a badge of honor, because I can't for the life of me figure what it's done to deserve that. I guess the best I can decide is that it's been a constant. It's stood there, stubborn, despite all the ways I've tried to yank it, cover it, or forget about it. No matter what I do, it takes root and hangs on for dear life. It's watched me change and grow and love and hate just about everything about myself. And it never mattered because it wasn't going to change, not really, not even when it was unrecognizable.  And now, I like it, just the way it is. Finally. 

I guess it's kind of like me. 

SIGH (of relief)

I now interrupt your regularly scheduled emotionally-wrought self-indulgent drivel for some big news!

 

I got into grad school!!!!!

 

I'm still waiting to hear back from my top choice school, but at least one place I applied has found me worthy, which is a total morale boost/game changer.

 

BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Yesterday around noon my dad sent me a text, informing me that I had received a letter in the mail from one of the schools I was waiting to hear back from.

 

Boom. Body slammed by dread, instantly!

 

Since I was meeting my entire family for dinner in celebration of my youngest brother's birthday last night, I asked father dear to bring the letter with him.

 

And then for the rest of my work day I really marinated in my own anxiety. I decided, because I'm completely neurotic, that I would wait until I was completely alone to open the letter and learn my fate.

 

So that prolonged my agony.

 

After dinner where I was constantly pestered, but held fast to my conviction,  Matt drove us home and I basically fled to the park in my car. It was a lovely night, I had my windows down and the music up, a total knot in the pit of my stomach.

 

As soon as I parked, I pulled the thin little envelope out of my purse and turned it over in my hands a few times. It was terribly thin. The kind of thin rejection letters are known to be.

 

I took a deep breath, reminded myself that this wasn't my first choice school and I was going to be fine either way, and started ripping it along the seam.

 

Much to my surprise, I looked down at letter inside and the first word was a resounding "CONGRATULATIONS."

 

Color me shocked.

 

After that, my night was a flurry of feverishly texting, sipping champagne, and fielding about a million questions I don't have answers for yet.

 

So basically, it was awesome.

 

And now?

 

A big, huge, gargantuan sigh of relief.

 

 

 

 

 

rothbury skip down memory lane

The other day I composed my plea to the allocator of everything good in the world. Because my need to attend Sasquatch this year is a force I simply cannot control. I gotta go. SRSLY. This appeal led to a little jaunt down memory lane, which brings me to the pictures below.

Behold, 2009. The event that rocked my quasi-adult world.

Rothbury.

this is what it looked like.

my friend dom and me mid-dance party. consequently, i'm wearing this shirt today. at work.

magical wood to frolic in? obviously.

artsy sun set shot? yes, everyone gets to be an artist at this festival. even me.

SIGH. Summer, I know you're coming at fast as you can, but please, please hurry.

wiping away the dust.

I was going through my old drafts today, little snippets of discarded insight, when I came across the passage below. I wrote it about the year I spent in Kentucky, living hotel-to-hotel, as a union organizer. I was 22 and it was my first job out of college.


I'm so glad I found it, a little glimpse of summer in the middle of January.


---------------
7/29/11

There was something that I loved about walking out of my hotel room on a summer morning, when the air was still cool enough and everything was still damp, before the sun scorched mad and forced the dew to evaporate.

 

 

I never had to be at the office until 10. TEN! Do you know how long I'd already been awake by then? Hours. I almost never had to rush around in the morning to get ready, and if I did it was because I'd taken too much time eating breakfast, gotten engrossed in my book, let the shower water caress me longer than usual.

 

 

My walk was cheerful then. I was approached once walking into a gas station by an older gentleman who asked me if he's seen me reading the news. I grinned and told him it wasn't me and he said "Darling, you've got the aura of a movie star." I told him he made my entire day, and it had. I felt pretty, assured.

 

 

I guess having a career at 22 will give you a false sense of confidence.

 

 

Those mornings, they stick with me.

 

 

It's really one of the most lovely times to be by yourself. You have time and your full attention to devote to the subtle changes around you as morning gives in and the meat of the day begins to take shape. I had a lot of mornings like this, in Kentucky. All the time in the world to myself and I think I realized that I needed to relish in it a little. I almost never turned on my televisions in the room. I loved that. I don't prefer to spend my time that way. I made friends that invested their time in hiking and tennis and seeking out adventure. At night I'd drink wine and soak in the bathtub while reading a book almost every night.

 

 

I was lonely, I remember that. At least for part of the time. But I think I settled in to a point where even that faded.

 

 

I miss it.

 

 

I miss those mornings and the freedom and the frustration and the challenge.

weeeeeeee december!

Today is December 1st and despite what the calendar hanging on the wall says, I've always seen this day as the marker for the start of Winter.

Last year around this time, I decided to put my knowledge and advice for the winter months out into the universe here. Minus the canoodling with strangers in hot tubs, it was really more of a reminder for myself to stay positive.

I always get a really bad attitude this time of year. And by that I mean, I become cripplingly depressive until I can comfortably roll around town with my windows down and the wind whipping my face and hair in a non-abrasive way once again.

The driving to work in darkness and getting home to darkness is really hard on me. The past two winters have been especially trying since I don't have to freedom in my current job to set my own hours and enjoy the daylight, save a one-hour span where I generally wolf down my lunch and spend the rest of the time tearing through whichever book is currently monopolizing my interest. Whatever problems I have going into Winter usually become magnified to the point where I can't focus on literally anything else.

However. This time around, I'm in markedly higher spirits than usual. I don't feel as heavy.

I'm staying up past 9pm. I'm actually blow-drying my hair in the morning. I haven't punched the seek button when a Christmas song comes on. I haven't even gained my annual winter weight. Times, let's hope they are a changin'.

I don't know the cause of this lovely lull from the winter doldrums, but I'll take it.