taking it with me, in spirit and in unsurpassable fondness.

recently...

i've been reading: Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, The Nobel Laureate Who Launched The Age of Chemical Warfare.

in the previous two days i was able to start and finish: Devil In The White City.

listening to alot of: Swervedriver, the Danes, and Whiskeytown.

eating too much of: Samoas Girl Scout Cookies and Arbys.

making it a habit to: have a daily shot of wheatgrass. (the claim is one ounce is equivalent to 2 lbs of leafy greens. astonishing if true.)

totally addicted to: sweet ice tea

syyked about: my first sonogram on Monday.

wearing: striped pj shorts and a t'shirt that reads, "Don't Give Me Any Drugs".

procrastinating for no good reason: going to the post office for much needed two cent stamps and making the 'round of calls' and emails. how it's been ages!!!

tomorrow: is my day off though i'm meeting with the management at the City to talk shop about the position offered to be Big Chief of Swimming Bull this summer; after which i plan on taking a past due yoga class, then coming back home to fulfill my domestic responsabilities as Head Custodian.

craving: Breadwinners, Allgood Cafe, and the chicken n' dumplings at TABC(in light that it is, in essence, chicken, cream, and dough, i find no hesitation in claiming their version as culinary brilliance).

i'd really like: a massage and my little sister, in terms of physical domain, to be no further than 25 miles in proximity from me.

on myspace: i recieved a 'friend request' from my highschool french teacher. i accepted for the bizaare quality.

the light of day: publishing old drafts that never made it past the cutting board or my head

feb 2006
"I was not sure of being beautiful enough."Anais Nin

Nursing an upset stomach with the Starbucks version of a Arnold Palmer, sitting in an oversized maroon velvet chair with one of the many diaries of Anais Nin in my lap, my eyes came to a halting stop at those words. Something in me stirred, a feeling in my past buried under layers of pain had been unwantingly purged, and I began to remember the insecurities i've overcome, the faces that caused them, the glances that went over me, and a resolution made to forget them, it. I, like the author, was thin and underdeveloped throughout my formative years; i soon realized the boys were only intertested in me for my proximity to the pretty, developed girls, and I was not one. Unlike the author however, my affinity to be loved and understood wasn't sufficient enough to cause me to compensate with other attributes as a snare, instead I found comfort in the love found in friendships and my family. Neverless, all those years of being invisible to the opposite sex, had a great impact on the woman i'm becoming.

oct 2005
tristan is running around the living room, recklessly; loudly gurgling nonsense to the dog he's chasing and the audience he knows is watching. he is attempting to throw a blanket over the dogs head in hope to suffocate it, i can only imagine. i don't remember ever being this unruly, but anyways. the news/sports/sport news in the background is to focus solely on the aroma. it works for awhile. when i come to, i'm comotosed: i'm really here in this living room in the outskirts of a small oregon "city". i never saw this coming. not until i said yes to moving here at least, and still i can't believe i'm here.


april 2005
finding the words is one thing, manipulating them to jump from a safe and cozy habitat to complete and utter darkness is quite another thing altogather. like so, i have a friend; i have a friend who for two years has buckled under the pressure of the vulnerability that comes with spoken honesty. she feels outloud but shares these feelings only in her head and to her friends, typically more openly after a few cocktails or a cappacino. i can't condone or condemn her behavior--so many times before, so this very second, i too, do. it's not neccesarily a torment without prospect. there is a relief that lies in the belief that time will do the talking for us. afterall, is it not on my side?!?

feb 2005
duck is no longer on the menu

like sneaking a peek into the kleenex after blowing your nose, so i believe is the common secretivity and private shame in many a things. insecurities, curiosities, and guilty pleasures: weighing ourselves, only after (and never before) taking a number two, waking up every morning in time for dawsons creek, an erotic dream concerning the same sex, a solo follicle of hair growing in an unwanted place, hanging on to a box full of mementos from an old lover (years after the fact), eating a piece of candy despite it's 30 second duration spent on the ground, believing the onion was a credible source of news before you were too cool to know better, reading your horoscope before you read the front page, reading your significant others before you read your own, and smoking menthols.fccking a.d.d, i have no idea where i was going with that!!! i seemed to have ventured off for the past two hours, thanks to craigslist and myspace. both are endless entertainment. you wouldn't believe the trashy and irrestible (from a social stand point of course) content found in rant and raves. "

march 2005
"i miss you,do you miss me?
how is work?
how is your life?
if something bad or you are mad e-mail me, it will help.
i am here for you.
love,
nichole"

i never thought the day would come when i would meet someone who talked more than my dear hubbie's mother. the idea alone of someone out there to combat with my M.I.L in a chat-a-thon seems cruel, inhumane; and i'm not being a tad over dramatic either, it's the god honest truth: that woman can talk for hours and days without needing to take a breath or a bathroom break. a freak of nature it is to behold. before i had met her jon warned me but like the naive little child i am i believed that he was either over-exaggerating or that his mother was merely socially neglected and therefore came across as conversationally imbalanced to the only people in her life whom she had access to. as result of this line of thinking i had no excuses conjured up or means for escape for my first encounter. i was a deer in the head lights.

but as the years have progressed i have adapted to ignore politeness and go straight for survival, which means cutting her off mid sentence when needed and not calling her back until i have an hour minimum of time to commit to the possibility of not being able to end the conversation. i know this must paint me to be a horrible person and i might very well be but i do love her and in moderation i sincerely enjoy her companionship; through it all i have learned to accept constant idle chatter as an unique personality trait rather than a mental illness.

then on monday morning i was sent out to grants pass for training. it was there that i met the Ultimate Chatter Box and there i might die if this training really does last for a month like they say it will. the lady doesn't just chat about every aspect of her life, oh no, she gives full detail, commentary, dialogue, and cross references as well. it's enough to make me want to get stoned while carrying a perfect child dependent on me making good and healthy choices.

thank goodness for her i'm not there on my own time, cause if i was i would turn the gun on her before shooting myself.

;)

feb 14th is my second favorite holiday; doesn't matter if i'm single, heart broken, or married because when True Love gets inside of you...


you want to explode with happiness.
you want to inhale the intangible world of joy, holding it in till your head begins to spin .
you want to call every single person in your phone and tell them how happy you are because of their participation in your life.
you want to smile crazy like an imbecile.
you want to buy small heart shaped candies and pass them out to total strangers .

( it also makes me invincible)

knowing so many see valentines day as a day of expectation or disappointment kills me. i won't be so pompous as to say what this day shouldn't be about but i will say it should be about and that is celebrating the palpablity of Love: the fact it exists, in all forms, shapes, and sizes. who ever decided it should only be used for romantic interest should be hung by their toe nails-love is so much more; exceeding such limitations, empowering the feeblest of men to be the greatest of all, and encompassing in it's practice indefinite healing power. it should be celebrated on it's designated day by all.

and i hope you do.

there is something very unsettling about getting a voicemail from your doctors office moments after you left that same afternoon requesting you come back first thing monday morning for some tests, as requested by the doctor himself. i can't tell you how eager the paranoia in me becomes at such a rare occurance. within ten minuetes of hearing the message i had already begun imagining the Lifetime movie made about me and my struggle with the rare illness; the letters i will have to start writing to my unborn child explaining how even without It being born It has already become my greatest achievement; and then the cries Jon will have my family-everyone telling one another "She really loved you SOOOOO much."

but after talking to the nurse at the doctor's office i found out my trip in is for a bilateral mammogram. which, as i've read, finding lumps in your boobies when your pregnant is quite normal. the odds for breast cancer are like 1 in 20,000.

neverless, "first thing monday morning"...good lord a tad dramatic don't you think?!?

i'm starting to feel like a duck when i waddle. today was my second day to venture out of the confines of my driveway and explore the road i live on. the first day i headed towards the wittle town of jacksonville. i made it about a forth of the way there, partly because i was nervous walking around the sharp turns as cars and semi's whizzed past me, secondly because my ears were so cold i thought i might loose them for good, but mostly because i'm abdominally convex and as so i walk a little slower, funnier. however this inability to graciously put one foot in front of the other isn't going to stop me anytime soon, i plan on conquering the opposite side of the road tomorrow!

i just found out this afternoon i got the job i was rooting for. which is great, time to celebrate, wahooo; unfortunately, the obvious and required implications of this job means i'm going to start needing to turn up the heat on my daily walks from a waddle to a run. in a few weeks i'll be expected to swim an exoberant amount of laps in an allotted amount of time; while at the present moment, i don't even have a bathing suit that fits to go practice in. in previous years, i've taught this certification- which means, i have no idea, even without the bowling ball in my tummy, if i have the stamina for such a feat. but who knows, ducks swim better than they waddle so i might be golden.

yesterday i got a call from my childhood best friend, it was totally out of the blue. the last time we had spoken or seen eachother was seven years ago at an Italian Garden in south arlington. she remebers me urging her to try to a squeeze of lime in her diet coke( which when said over the phone sounded like "wine in my diet coke". we had a good laugh after i said, "i made you do WHAT with wine and diet coke!!!") and i recalled her having a crush on a 16 year old. we were 19 at the time. much as changed, for the both of us. she is now married(to the 16er) and has an one and half year old little girl, Emma. got a picture from her in my inbox this morning of her and the little one and wasn't surprised at all; kristy looks the same and her little girl looks as i always imagined a little girl of kristy's to look: short wavy blonde hair with big curious blue eyes. but what was surprising was how it seemed a day never went by when in reality 2555 have. we picked up on that same magical best friend rhythm we shared as 1st graders under the monkey bars. two hours went by like they did when we were teenagers chatting away for hours on the phone till we would both fall asleep...on the phone, unaware we were that tired or it was that late. i have so many perfect memories of me and her, it warms my heart thinking back to all of them.

it's sunny again today. i'm wishing i could call michelle to see if she wanted to go on a walk with me this morning, instead i'll ask about the new apartment she got all by herself. sometimes the distance seems unbearable; i feel i'm missing so much and so much is missing her, back home doing the things we would do, the fullfilment and joy garnished from it. it kills me that i won't be there to help her move into her first place and that she isn't here to go with me to doc this coming friday to see and hear her niece or nephew. and at the same time, i remember what it was like to be so far away from jon- every thought was consumed with missing him and wanting him. how happy i was this summer when i had them both in arms length, and this past janurary when the three of us piled into jon's truck together, me in the middle, and made the long drive down to san diego.

sigh...

i just need a good cry this morning and a nutter butter.

a bright white world lies on the other side of my window; the fog has made it's way from the valley floor now up my side of the hill, it's a bizarre sight. blinding. i'm very aware this morning my days of lax are coming to an end here soon, on wednesday soon. from here to then i will try my best at utilizing every second of non-responsability i have left. of course, the house needs repaired and cleaned after this weekend. not that anything crazy happened here, we just, apart from me doing 90% of the dishes last night, chose not to clean up after ourselves from friday to last night. as if our mama was a maid. taking a quick look around the room i see my jacket tossed on the floor, my blow dryer and contacts next to the mirror, every single pair of jon's shoes by the front door, his pj pants dropped by the computer desk, an open bag of oreos lying on the counter, and so on and so forth. i wouldn't consider myself a clean freak, but that is an assumption drawn from a comparision to my sister, who is, the cleanest of them all. as children we had to share a room, which we split down the middle: her half and my half. her half was always spotless, tidy, categorized, dusted, and licked splickty clean. while my half was as i put it "i at least know where everything is"- words i now cringe at when my husband offers it as a defense for wanting to live out of non-organized plastic crates-but that was me then. somehow, in some mysterious way, in some ways, i think my sister and i have metamorphised into one another. i became prevy to this phenomen back when michelle was living in london. a friend of ours, who did traveling back and forth from dallas to england because of a band, had the oppurtunity to see the both of us on a 'on again/ off again' basis, and from that he was able to see michelle, an once shy and extremely introverted sort of girl, become outgoing and socially intrepid. while i on the other hand started to withdraw-experiencing for the first time in my life anxiousness in new social settings. his theory for this changeroo was sweet: that we, being soul-mates, without our other half, compensated in ourselves for our other half. whether that was the case or not, i do know it took me about a year after michelle had moved back to dallas to start to feel like the self i was before she moved away, though the anal retentiveness i picked up from her absence might be permanent. i guess you can say i tasted and saw, and i really bought into it. though i don't think i will ever make jon sit on the floor because i don't want wrinkles made on my bed spread. that one is a michelle special.

the fog is stuck. i might as well get going on mopping the kitchen floor now.

jon's remedy for having to share a bed with a nocturnal snuggler:

"what we need is a king size bed with satin sheets, you'll wear satin night gowns to bed that way when you get too close all i have to do is give you a push...like air hockey."

interview with Misty from Survivor (fiction. yes, i'm doing my first fake interview.)

me: hey misty, long time. congratulations on the Survivor spot.

misty: thanks, it has been a long time hasn't it?!?

me: yah, i think the last time i saw you, you were trying to hide my clothes in the back of your closet. nice one.

misty: sorry about that, but after living with me didn't you kinda expect crazy tactics?!?

me: i suppose i should have. i did expect you to be on reality tv eventually; although, i must be frank, i expected to see you on something like "Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire" not Survivor. which has me wondering, what lead you to do something like Survivor?

misty: well, you know how competive i am being the former Ms. Teen Texas and coming from a military family...i'm a tomboy in highheels.

me: (laughing)

misty: what?!? you know how down to earth i am.

me: (still laughing) i'm sorry, i'm sorry. it's just your so good at convincing not just other people but...never mind, that's rude of me. i'm being a total bitch and it's totally uncalled for. i think you'll win this thing. i really do. good luck.

misty: (tries to hug me so she can lift my wallet out of my purse)