you're all the pretty music that i need.

We were driving home from a wedding and it was December, but unseasonably warm. I was hungover, with that shaky, tired, blah feeling. It has started to sink into the entire day following a night punctuated with any amount of drinking. Old at 25.

He sat behind the wheel of my Jeep and maneuvered us through the cities' grid and leisurely steered our way toward the highway. Toward home. Two hundred miles to go.

We'd had an explosive fight the evening before, midway through the reception.  The drinking had been fuel for the fire. Threats had been made, but without the umph behind them that carry enough weight to bring out tears and desperation. Still, it was ugly. And then, just like that, minutes or maybe a half an hour later the storm passed. We were drinking beers again, rolling our eyes to each other in secret alliance. He bought me a hot dog from a vendor on the way back to the hotel. We curled up and tucked in and slept in a cloud of fluffy white, then cuddled as sun steeped in through the floor to ceiling window overlooking an Orthodox synagogue below.

I was feeling a bit silly, as I often do when cooped in a car for long, or let's be honest, short periods of time.  I slouched down in my seat and banged my feet against the dash to the rhythm of the music. I threw my voice all over the range it would stretch to, and boogied in my seat.

Suddenly he grabbed one of my feet. The left one, closer to his place in the drivers' seat. He started singing into it for a couple of lines, until he flung it back to the dash and took both hands to the wheel, smiling, but otherwise acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred. 

No one has ever made my foot into a microphone before.

I wondered, in that instant, and still: Is this what love is? Those fleeting moments that you remember when you're screaming at each other across the room, that keep you from hurling those certain words and phrases that would surely tear the whole thing down?

A microphone foot. Love. It must look different for everyone.

baggage.

There are people that treasure a brief jaunt down memory lane over coffee with a long-lost friend.


There are those people that are caught up in the past, or planning for the future, or just living in the moment.


All kinds of people.


And then there are people that hoard memories to the point of needing a token, a tangible reminder from every fucking county fair, movie theater, trip to the hospital, concert, novel dinner locale, job, etc... that they've ever experienced.


I've recently discovered that this is the group that I fall into.


I've been feeling really bogged down with all my stuff lately, plus I have to move AGAIN in just over a month,  so I've taken on the project of compulsively organizing and taking inventory of everything that I have.


I've honestly never been so pissed off at myself.


Tiny scraps of paper, everywhere. Boxes that I can't account for and certainly don't contain anything that a rational person would categorize together. I found a broken desk-lamp in a box with some unopened arch supports, several binders of random papers, and a half a dozen shot glasses. So.... yeah?  I can't just let things go. And I'm terrible at packing, apparently. What's worse, if I can't find something I already have- I'll just go buy a new one. I get that from my father; it's probably a byproduct, like road rage, of having shotty patience.


For the record, I own two glue guns, five staplers, and about a dozen finger-nail clippers.


I could get robbed and never even realize it!




It doesn't make sense, because I'm a compulsive organizer, but it happened. The project just got too big, too daunting for me and so I just made myself forget about all the unorganized boxes of crap that I've been toting around, unopened, for years. I'd open my closet, shake my head at the boxes, make an empty promise to myself that 'this weekend is the weekend,' and shut the door again. Something better, more important, always comes up when there's a task looming that I dread.




On the one hand, maybe I should feel a sense of pride that I can fully document every activity Manfriend and I participated in together during our six-year-long, sexual-tension-filled friendship that eventally led to me pulling a homewrecker around year seven, after he threw in the towel in year six, and and staking my claim.


But I mean, I lived it. So, meh.


Anywayyyyyy.


At this point it's honestly taken weeks of spurts of motivation to wade through the junk and just THROW THINGS AWAY. It's stressful, my jaw gets tired from clenching. Do I need a pom pom that I got at an involvement fair my freshman year of college? I think not. Good memory, really, but I DO NOT NEED a fucking pom pom.

I never realized what a sappy, sentimental, sucker I am.


Last night was the kicker. Cards and letters. Old library cards, movie tickets. my student football ticketss from college, concert tickets, awards. I guess I think of these sort of things as 'the guts.' The things that are -or were- really important, that demonstrate how I have taken shape over time, that could show anyone what was important to me leading up to now, be that living on drama island for two summers or geeking out over road-tripping to warped tour during my high school teenage angst phase.


It's fun to see all that stuff, like the cards my mom sent me when I moved away from home for the first time. A fourth place ribbon from my favorite cross country course. The library cards from every place I've ever lived. I love that I have post cards sent to me from everywhere you could imagine, I've been collecting them since I was a wee sprout and they make me so happy.


But it's also exhausting.

I've always been a person that keeps a vice grip on the people I love, even when that involves my heart being spread around the god's green earth.  It just means a lot to me that I stay in touch with people. I've got the post cards, letters, mail in return to prove it. And I just really feel that you can't throw stuff like that away. And when they're right there in front of you again, it's almost impossible not to invest the time to read every last one of them. It's a lift, to realize you've done a great job surrounding yourself with heart-felt, caring, enthusiastic people. But it's also a blow to the innards to make see a stack of letters from someone that's no longer in your life. At all.

And I keep them all. Every single written correspondance I've ever recieved, I have- because I think fan mail is evidence of a well-lived life. It's a snap-shot of a moment in time and we get to keep it. Like I said, I've recently discovered that I'm incredibly sentimental... annoying. With the exception of a particularly soul-crushing ex-love, of whom I ceremoniously burned every reminder, love letter, poem, gift, in an attempt to rid myself of his toxin and relentless grip on my rational mind, I've got everything anyone has ever written me. That shit takes a lot of time to sort through. And a lot of wine.

I've made peace with most of my failed friendships and relationships. I look fondly on the boy I first fell in love with and gave my virginity. There's a group of fleeting, yet poignant, characters whom I've discovered on summer adventures and short-term living situations, and that I will never doubt their importance in my life. After all, they cared enough to put something into words for me. I accept that not everyone who was once important can always be important. I know we've got to grow, and not everyone does that at the same pace. We've only got the capacity to keep track and emotionally invest in so many people.



But some things still sting.


So, amid feeling a boost at reading the people I love and have loved telling me how awesome I am, I felt heavy. I can't purge this stuff. And I can't ignore the falling out I had with a person who largely supported and encouraged me through some of the roughest times I've ever had. I think it may be time to chug some of my pride and break the now two-year silence. The thing is,  I'm worried that it's too late and some things can't be fixed.

As I sat in my room last night next to my now-empty wine glass, surrounded by what would probably look like a disaster area of junk to any sane person, I made the decision to reach out and try to repair something that once seemed easy to walk away from. You never know until you try, right?


XO Sara

blood is thicker than water, but peanut butter is thicker than blood

Since I emotionally don't have the tools to deal with the fact that the sky is snowing its balls off right now, ON MARCH 30TH, I'm taking a walk down the sunny side of memory lane, where the temperature mostly stays above 65 degrees and I don't have to deal with minor annoyances like wind-shield wipers and wearing socks.


I've mentioned my love of summer camp before and I think it's safe to say that it effectively made me into a geeky, 'girl power,' tie-dye loving freak. Amazingly, I still have a successful social life and due to my extreme awkwardness, vastly competitive nature, and fairly strict social upbringing, I'm sometimes told I come off as intimidating and unapproachable, which couldn't be further from my own actual perception of things, but hey-o, I don't hate it.


My sister, nearly three years younger than I, is similarly blessed with these qualities. Minus the tye-die loving freak part, that's all mine. Although, just to be clear I'll have you know that I actually work the power-suit and pumps look and I like to keep drum-circle Sara limited to certain area of my life, if you know what I mean.




When I was a senior in high school, my sister, Beth, was a freshman. PSH, more like FRESH MEAT. Bahaha.  Okay that wasn't funny. Anyway, we were both on the Cross Country team. Except, I was like, a senior, and like, totally varsity, and she was significantly lower on the totem pole, because duh, FROSH. It's kind of a tough thing to build up your image or popularity level or status or whatever bizarre pissing contest it is in high school and beyond for three years and then have a family member who actually knows you and the fact that you cry during the fucking movie previews and also uses the bathroom after you at home where all the number twos go down. It's an intrusion. Or, it can  feel like one.

There's no mystery.


 It was high school, it was cross country, in Indiana. This wasn't exactly Laguna Beach or 90210 or Gossip Girl. Again, cross country. Not a headline sport. But whatever, I had the team of girl and guy runners and we all sat around together on Friday nights and ate carrot sticks and watched Forrest Gump or Sandlot if we were in season, while the rest of our fellow student body was robotripping or getting busted for throwing corn husks at semis from the overpass.  It was vaguely cult-like, as most sports with semi-talented athletes are.


And boy, did we have some hot ticket events of which to look forward. One particularly exciting highlight was TEAM CAMP. Team camp was when we stayed IN THE DORMS of a college campus twenty miles away from our hometown for three nights and basically gorged ourselves on each other... and running three times a day. And sometimes swimming. And playing ultimate frisbee. And having ping-pong and basketball tournaments in which everyone, even the most uncoordinated, were required to participate. ALSO, the talent show.

Oh, the talent show.

Senior year summer team camp talent show, it was the 'cool' thing to be in as many skits as possible, or maybe that was just me. I'm not sure on that, I just know I was in several talent show acts, but that was maybe just because of my compulsion to win and so I felt being in as many of the acts as possible would up my chances.  The senior ladies coreographed a dance WITH PROPS and MATCHING OUTFITS to the tune of Video Killed the Radio Star. Style, bitches. Also particularly memorable is the skit I'm about to share with you and the reason for this post.

It's called Peanut Butter and Jelly.

And if I may say so myself, it was a crowd favorite. Even if we were scammed out of the highest honors.


Right, so Peanut Butter and Jelly.



The premise of this skit is to act completely stoic the entire time. It's to be treated with a sense of gravity and artsy pretentiousness to the crowd, who is hopefully losing their shit and laughing their asses off. One person is Peanut Butter and the other is Jelly. Essentially, you just go back and forth smearing the ingredient you're assigned on the other person, naming the part as you do it, taking turns until you're both miserable, sticky, messes. We used entire over-sized jars of each on one another, and if we're being honest, I wouln't have hated having two a piece.

My Sister and I attended the same summer camp, albeit at different points in the summer, as children. We'd both witnessed said skit, and been amazed by it as wee lasses. So, in an effort to be less of a bitch to my little sister, the newbie on the team trying to gain some notoriety,  I decided good old Beth and I should perform this together. It's kind of the perfect skit for sisters to do, because nobody knows how to be malicious like closely-aged sisters know how to be malicious to one another.



Our version when something like this:

Me: (Smearing peanut butter on Beth's pig-tailed locks) Peanut Butter hair gel!

Beth: (Playfully ringing my neck with jelly) Grape Jelly necklace!

Me: Peanut butter tube socks!!

Beth: Grape Jelly Sleeves!!

Me: Peanut butter lip gloss!!.

Beth: Grape Jelly blush!!

Me: Peanut butter eyeshadow!!

Beth: Grape Jelly underwear!!!!!


Grape jelly underwear. ON STAGE. It was totally on after that. I'm not kidding, we had an all-out war. The camp counselors we'd seen perform this skit as children were friends, so they hugged it out at the end. A third counselor had run out and rapidly threw a loaf of bread, slice, by slice on them and proclaimed 'Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich!!!!!!!' And they bowed it out and it was met by overwhelming applause, by the fourteen and under crowd.


We were NOT met by overwhelming applause right away. We were sisters, and shit was getting serious, seriously out of hand.  The other high-school aged members of the team had NO idea how to react. Perhaps it was weridly erotic for the male members and we didn't really think it through. My coach nearly LOST. HIS. SHIT. about the mess we made, us failing to realize just how fucking sticky everything was to become around us. Plus, we started getting legitimately pissed at each other and my friend Jessica ended up akwardly running out with the loaf of bread and kind of breaking up our shoving and condiment flinging as she doused us with bread.


In the end, we gave each other the one-stage hug, but like, the kind where you squeeze so hard that you're actually trying to hurt the other person without making it super obvious.



Crickets.



AND THEN, WAIT FOR IT.


The ROAR of applause. Weird, confused, oh-shit-what-just-went-down, 'that was fucking awesome,' applause.


God, do I love the sound of applause.


In the end, our coach was seriously furious about the skit and how we weren't *exactly* forthcoming with details prior to performance (um, we knew he was going to say no, and it's obviously better to beg for forgiveness.) and purposely didn't include us in the applause level judging to determine a winner. AND we had to scrub a nasty dorm common-area for a unreasonably long time. However, the clean-up did allow us time to make ammends and bond over the fact that we just made total fools did the most badass skit ever, together.



Beth and I already knew we were the real winners. You know, sisterly bonding and blood being thicker than water and stuff.


I think there may actually be some pictures of this circulating around still, so I'll see what I can do in the means of evidence. Oh, shit.


Xo Sare

it's raining grapefruits.

Over a month ago now, I, in my infinite wisdom, purchased a twenty pound bag of grapefruit.

A sane person might ask why, why, one would ever think it was a smart idea to purchase that volume of grapefruit?

A month ago I would have argued the logic until I was blue in the face and, in my own mind, come out the clear winner, no matter what.

Not anymore.


You see, a month ago grapefruits were my favorite fruit.


Winter is the time of year this citrus crop is in full swing, and it's a ray of light onto my otherwise dismal cold weather existence. For the majority of this particular winter, I would buy grapefruits by the handful, two or three at a time, maybe a five-pound bag here or there. But, they're dirt cheap in the winter, and my waning budget won out that day, I went for the twenty pounder because it was six dollars and my god am I a sucker for a bargain.  


That's a fuckload of grapefruit.


But, I figured, I eat one for breakfast almost every morning already, they keep for a relatively long time, they're delightful and delicious, good for you, and why the hell not?

So, I embarked on a solitary journey. Me and my mission to consume twenty pounds of citrus before it becomes too mushy and disgusting for even I to deem edible.


Why do I get so much enjoyment out of a food that requires at least two utensils and a four-part process to consume? Some sick, wrong, part of me actually enjoys working for my food. So, I don't mind at all the necessity of a detailed preparation before the enjoyment portion of my morning meal. I quite like cutting the fruit in half and outlining each triangle portion with a knife, to make removal less arduous. Aside from chop sticks, the grapefruit spoon is my favorite utensil. A single fruit, designated its own human eating mechanism. Now that's status.


It's a dignified fruit. One for sitting down, actually having a meal that can't be scarfed amid traffic and slammed breaks and mascara application during the morning commute. This is a now sit down and read the paper and concentrate on this one task-at-hand hand food, and I respect it. For all my crazy and hurry and rush, I respect a goddamn fruit for forcing me to slow down and enjoy something, maybe just one thing, before letting the rest of the day get the better of me.


I fully realize that grapefruit is larely consumed by the elderly, who actually have the time to sit down and read the paper because they don't have shit to do other than go play bridge and watch the news, but maybe that's part of why I like it. My grandparents eat grapefruit frequently, with them even breakfast is a sit-down affair. As a child I waited impatiently for the day that I would be allowed to cut my own grapefruit, side-by-side with my Papa and help him with the crossword. I'd try to be like him and enjoy slightly bitter flavor instead of dousing mine with sugar. I still need sugar, so I guess I'm still not an adult quite yet. Maybe it's the nostalgia it stirs in me that keeps me coming back to such a formidable foe.


Whatever the reason, I've done what I always do with things I feel any affinity toward. I live and breathe the shit out of the thing until I'm so sick of it I never want to see it again. I do it with songs, listening to a tune on repeat until I know every nuance and pause to the point of complete familiarity and in time disgust, clothes, books, foods, drinks, and even grapefruit.  Now that I've been forced, in a race against their fragile produce expiration date, to consume grapefruit as if they're actually going out of style, I get absolutely no enjoyment out of eating them anymore. The people at work probably think I'm on some fucked-up diet where I'm only allowed to eat grapefruit for every meal.


IT'S LIKE THEY KEEP MULTIPLYING.


I'm not even close to the bottom of the bag, and I'm so sick of grapefruit I could start throwing them though car windows.

So, despite my otherwise not-very-good-at-sharing personality, I'm making this announcement:


FREE GRAPEFRUIT FOR EVERYONE!


You want them? Come and get them.



XO Sara