i threw the biggest fit of my childhood at the age of five in a strip mall outside of Dallas. We were just passing through and I found a pair of red cowgirl boots that were just my size. My mom said no. My Dad said lets go.
I spent the next several years thinking Nancy Sinatra was the only one who ever really got me.
These Boots are Made for Walkin\’
Living alone has given me the opportunity to really appreciate two pieces of good advice I have received about housekeeping/living conditions:
1. The reason hotels feel so good when you wake up is because there is no pile of clutter staring at you in the face first thing in the morning or last thing thing at night (…unless you’re traveling with me and all my suitcases, but I digress…). Keep the bedroom just that … a bedroom. All you really need are a bed, a nightstand large enough to accommodate a lamp, a book, and a cup of tea (or diet dr. pepper) and that’s it.
Moving to XXXXXX I pared down. My former room had taken on the crazed-albeit-charmingly-eclectic look, and I wanted to simplify when I left home. I invested in some good quality white sheets, a white down comforter and a minimalistic, non-intrusive blonde platform bedframe. In my new apartment, the bedroom is - just that - a BEDroom, with little room for anything else. There are two pieces of art in the bedroom - a replica of Van Gogh’s sunflowers and an organically-shaped vase made of aqua glass the color of a Tiffany & Co. box. The curtains are white sheers, and everything about my bedroom makes me feel peaceful, clean, calm, and relaxed. A little elegant, a little sexy. It’s an inviting room that invites naps and weekends.
2. It’s a known fact that you cannot clean a shower properly unless you’re naked and in it … otherwise you’ll be too afraid of getting wet.
I don’t know why it never occurred to me before. It’s so true. The stress and “eek” factor of shower-cleaning is completely null-and-void when you’re in the buff. You can hope in and scrub down and fearlessly wield the showerhead …getting the spray into all the nooks and crannies.
Bonus points if you bring a friend.
Maybe one day I will write a book called Getting Clean, Getting Dirty: The Modern Girl’s Guide to Shower-Cleaning and Seduction
1. My favorite utensil in the kitchen is the wooden spoon. KITCHEN –>
2. KITCHEN –> Every day after work I come home, take off pants, put on dish gloves and do the dishes pantless listening to / singing along with girly country music ( i.e. click here ) COUNTRY –>
3. COUNTRY –> I like men that have roots that are a little bit country.
4. ROOTS –> I grew up eating black-eyed peas on New Years Day. —> BLACK EYED PEAS
5. BLACK-EYED PEAS —> One year I literally spilled the beans, and accidentally spilled a bucket of black eyed peas on a friend’s porch. It didn’t ruin New Years Day whatsoever, but it sure made a big mess.
One of the most exhilarating experiences of your young life is the first time you truly see someone you’ve been looking at day after day after day - and in an instant, finally understanding the word “soulmate.”
One of the hardest experiences of your mature life is realizing how beautiful and tragic that discovery, more than ten years too late, really is.
I was not a brave girl. I chose to fall for the men who told me I was like clear water, calm and unturbulent. Men who told me I was like soap bubbles. Men who vowed to never fall in love. Men who thought of me as a noun to be boxed up and stored on a shelf.
I dated a banker who thought I was a good investment.
And a lawyer who called me convincing.
And a poet who always said he knew I’d leave,
loving me with one barefoot out the door,
making analogies from my favorite quotes
“…you are a strange new world. Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own, but with you I am ingorant, insignificant, unimportant - one in millions whose destiny concerns no one. You do not even know of my existence. Nor do you care.”
It was truer on rainy days.
I’m braver now.
I’m smarter now.
I still want the wrong things.
I still hear what’s being said between the lines
in the hush between sips and sighs.
If you asked each one I ever loved
to define
seven different boys
would give you seven different answers
that remind you vaguely of a girl you knew once, too.
Who liked the song “Moon River”
and floated in a pool with a ballgown on
like a taffeta water lily on a hot august night.
Who hated long division, but always did well on spelling tests.
And scored a 101 on her state capitals test in 6th grade.
Who believed in hand-written thank-you notes
and white bed linens
and family ties
and staying up to see the eclipse
and bending the world to her unreasonable reason
somewhere over the rainbow
with an upside down welcome mat.
I’m braver now.
My huckleberry friend.
You’ll see.
You love literature and the arts and dreaming and traveling. You love attention and are constantly attracting people with your charm. People find you very stimulating intellectually.
nurturing, domestic, understanding, artistic, generous
codependency, resistance to change, stubborn, manipulative, needy
“This is an apartment for an affair,” he said, taking me slightly aback. “It reminds me of a Parisian nook, tucked away in some corner of the city.” It surprises me, his choice of words, as I think back to the exterior of the house, light gray, and unmistakably Americana, certainly not traits I would connect with Paris.
There was a sturdy, white, wooden staircase leading upstairs, nearly a century old, protesting after all the years of footsteps falling there. We ascend and I notice that all the walls are painted a muted, warm shade of brown, like coffee when they’ve already added cream. A small, upholstered chair sits in the far corner of the room, covered by a knitted, red throw. Unglamorous, but inviting, beneath a too-modern light that stretches toward the ceiling like fingers. Her books, movies, and music neatly tucked away on bookshelves, with spines facing out, unapologetically, exposing her tastes to anyone who entered the room. In the first bedroom, two white, wooden stairs lead to a doorway with a transparent glass knob. I turn it and discover a staircase leading to a third floor, where I do not go. In the kitchen a small, black table sits in the corner – with only one place setting, but enough room for two. A bamboo placemate, white linen napkin, a single solid, black napkin ring made from some type of horn. In the corner of the table sits a large, dark wooden bowl, and nested inside it, a smaller, blonde wooden bowl. Both empty. The kitchen is small, so small, in fact, it may be the only echo of Paris in this place. At one end of the room, a tiny white stove, with 4 burners and a red, round teapot. I open the oven and wonder if she could even fit a Thanksgiving turkey inside. At the end of the room sits a baker’s rack, silver, with four tiers. On the lower shelves sit plain, white dishes. Blank canvases stacked neatly on the wire shelves. Her cupboards border on barren – dry pasta, an unopened jar of salsa, pastel paper baking cups, a moderately expensive bottle of Tuscan red wine. In another cupboard, three shelves full of glassware, neatly arranged, and, on the top shelf, almost hidden, two red espresso cups sitting on small, red, heart-shaped saucers. A single wineglass in the dish drainer.
I move to the bedroom now, small, but comfortable. The bed fills almost the entire room. It’s covered in crisp, white linens – a soft, white down comforter topping it all. Light filters into the room through the slatted shades of two large windows, causing the blonde frame of the bed to take on an even golder appearance. The nightstand is unassuming, of the same wood, with a small bedside lamp sitting atop it. The base of the lamp is made from a dark metal, I cannot tell which type, and shaped to look like a pineapple. The shade is upholstered with brown cloth, small, glass, amber beads dangling from the rim. Beneath the nightstand sits a singular glass vase, the color of a Tiffany & Co. giftbox. It is the only piece of art in the room, save for a painting of Monet’s sunflowers on the wall opposite the bed.
I enter the bathroom last, noticing a wall that is slightly out of line, not quite a 90 degree angle. The floor is covered in organic, ceramic tile, cool beneath the feet. Glass bottles of lotion sit on the edge of the sink, one brown, one green. I lift the bottle to my nose – sage and cedar wood. A handful of bobby-pins sit on the ledge of the white, ceramic tub – the only original feature of the house remaining, I’ve been told. This tradition, I imagine, has remained the same for all the life of the tub. The lady of the house letting her hair down here. Bobby-pins resting on the ledge.
Back in the living room there is an aquarium, the subtle hum of aeration bubbles rising to the surface. A single orange goldfish swims about, and I wonder if he too believes this is Paris.
He swims to me, but says nothing.
Dear Readers,
It should be noted that yesterday, in the throws of grief, Amelie mistakenly placed the Monterey Bay Aquarium in San Francisco, rather than lovely Monterey. There are various reasons for this gross geographical miscalculation including:
1. Amelie was an English major in college, which, while filling her brain with a plethora of linguistic devices, took her attention away from other matters such as math (why can’t we use a calculator!? There is noooo situation in real-life where someone is going to forbid me from using a calculator!” …) and geography (leaving her with a penchant for generalizing the location of things ranging from spectacular aquariums to “that reddish container that holds that stuff, you know, the stuff. The red thing we keep in that one place.”)
2. The last time Ms. Amelie traveled to the lovely American west coast, after leaving the not-so-lovely Los Angeles, and heading north, Amelie suffered what has become known as a “defcon-5 level panic attack” - having been given no pre-warning as to the terrors of highway 1. The ensuring hours were spent in the backseat of a rented Lincoln Town Car breathing into a paper bag, fully anticipating the dive toward her untimely death with each turn and bump in the road. All the while her family laughing at this unusual reaction. Upon arriving in lovely Monterey, Amelie was not quite certain where she was, only happy not to have arrived there in a coffin.
So don’t go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in San Francisco, go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey. You’ll like it. It was the first place I ever saw jellyfish and realized how perfect they are. Seeing them there prompted the most beautiful dream. I fell into the ocean at night and all the jellyfish were swimming around me, all of us just floating there, diving and floating, diving and floating. And all the stars fell into the sea and lit up the water - glowing white jellyfish, glowing white stars. And then I went to the surface of the water and it began to snow white feathers and magnolias on the dark blue of the night and water…and all the jellyfish came to the surface and gathered together like a bouquet of balloons that lifted me into the blue night sky.
It was lovely.
For all of those who have expressed their concern for Blubber, he seems to be doing as well as can be expected.
As for me, they always say one of the hardest things to accept about “Adult life” (i.e. full-time working life) is that there is no free lunch. I say the hardest thing about adult life is realizing….there’s no spring break.
I need a vacation.
Charles Bukowski, of XXXXXX, Ohio was found dead in his tank, at the foot of Venus, just after 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25. The cause and exact time of death are not yet known, but is believed to be connected to a change in PH after relocating to the area, according to the pet owner, who was not home at the time of death. No foul play is suspected. Heroic measures were taken to sustain the life of Chuck, but apparently, not soon enough to prevent his demise.
Chuck’s life is a bowl-to-tank story. While details of his birth and early life are not known, it was suspected that he was born and raised in a fishery, destined to end up in an inadequate bowl on some child’s dressertop. But as luck would have it, he was rescued from that life for one just slightly better - an aquarium on some tall girl’s dressertop. He lived in a PetSmart in XXXXX, Ohio with several hundred others for several weeks during the hot Midwest USA Summer. However, his luck would change July 13th, when Amy would enter the store on a mission for dog food, and leave with more than she bargained for. Chuck was brought home to live the life of a king in a 20 gallon tank filled with black pebbles, a neon pink skull, a martini glass, a statue of Venus, 2 meals a day, and fresh water every other day.
Chuck enjoyed swimming, blowing bubbles, blogging on his myspace page, listening to Amy Winehouse, Elvin Bishop, ELO, and eating frozen peas.
Charles Bukowski is survived by tankmate and life partner, Blubber. The pair first met in July of 2007 at PetSmart in XXXXX. Initially wary of each other, Blubber and Chuck had to be separated by a plastic tank divider, but over time - from their separate sides of the plastic - hate turned to interest, interest turned to like, and like grew to love. Once the divider was removed the pair were inseparable.
“I am greatly saddened by the passing of Charles Bukowski” said owner, Amy Taylor, “I decorated the tank based on his coloring. Now the feng shui of the tank makes no sense at all.” The owners former roommate, who wishes to remain anonymous, was located in a Clintonville bar and quoted as saying, “It’s pretty dumb to name your fish after a dead poet. I mean what did [Amy] expect naming a fish after the American poet known for drinking to excess which lead to his untimely death? It was a dumb idea. But this Bud’s for you, Chuck.”
Memorial services were held this evening at private ceremony at First Bathroom Down The Hall On The Right. Charles Bukowski will be interred in the village sewer system. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that those wishing to make a donation in Chuck’s memory consider the Monterey Bay Aquarium in San Francisco, California.
Ass-to-mouth turned out to be my biggest day ever. That’s not surprising. Internet people are sick, I tell you! Sick, sick freaks! Oh wait. I am one. Which just reiterates my point, if you know me at all.
The new apartment and I are coming to terms with one another, bit by bit. I’m adjusting to the noises of nighttime and George Clooney (the squirrel who briefly lived in the attic and tap-danced above my head before the LL barricaded his in-and-out door). I still feel nervous at night sometimes, but I think that’s just part of being a girl living alone. Once the downstairs apartment is occupied I will feel much better. There is something a little unnerving about living all along in a big, old house. Also, it doesn’t help that I’ve watched just about every horror flick known to man.
Work was fun this week, as usual. If I wasn’t me, I would hate me, simply for the fact that I adore my job and bosses so much. It’s nauseating. I feel really lucky to know that 40 hours of every week are going to be not just tolerable, but truly pleasant. I sometimes look at these people and wonder how on Earth I made it so far in my life without knowing them until now. One in particular, who has become not just a boss, but a mentor. I once read something about the difference between a boss and a mentor … and it defined things so well. Paraphrasing, it more or less said something like “If you’re lucky enough to find a mentor, you’ll know it. These are the people who not only compel you to continue growing and do your best, but they inspire and encourage the paths on which you walk while enriching the road in any way they can.”
Amen to that!
It’s almost Easter and I didn’t dye easter eggs, which is a sin. The Pope said so. Okay, not really. But he apparently did approve the following as being serious sins:
1. Using any form of scientific or unnatural action to prevent conception (ranging from birth control to abortion) — however I find it curious that taking medical/scientific actions to conceive is perfectly okay.
2. Harming the environment in any way - including not recycling. Reduce, Reuse, Repent.
3. Drug abuse. — poor Anna Nicole.
4. Ass-to-Mouth — just kidding. This was a cheap ploy for more blog hits.
Sweet dreams readers.
 | MKB on Come on and do the locomotion … |
 | GµårÐïåñ on i’m trying to light… |
| GµårÐïåñ on Retract & Correct |
| GµårÐïåñ on (reality) check please! |
| GµårÐïåñ on c’mon boots. |
